Regardless of 4chan's privacy situation, it's a total cesspool. Nothing worthwhile happens on 4chan.
this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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Privacy
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Lol. Minecraft alone proves you wrong. 4chan is where Notch first posted early builds and got feedback.
No argument on it being a cesspool. It is, and has been, for a long long time. But plenty of good stuff happens there too.
/vr/ has unearthed a large amount of formerly lost media (guides, promotional material, entire games! Most of Osamu Sato's work outside of LSD Dream Emulator had effectively been lost before they got onto it) and is often the spot that leaked stuff drops, like the huge Nintendo leaks a few years ago. The Doom threads there have had a hand in some big, well known mods. It's arguable that Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart grew out of those threads' failed Doom Kart project.
/g/s "friendly windows thread" is decidedly unfriendly, but the guides and links in the OP are wonderful resources on how to set up and configure new Windows installs. I haven't seen the info there laid out as well and as easily digestible anywhere else.
/vg/ has a large number of threads that are really the only source for certain info about certain game series. The emulation general threads are great resources, and the wiki built from them is the best go to one stop shop for info on emulators. The amateur game dev general threads have been the building grounds for a decent amount of games you've heard of before. Risk of Rain is a good example. Hopoo started his game dev journey in those threads. Any game that references "AGDG" is shouting those threads out.
Point is, there's diamonds in the shit pile.
Same is said for email, XMPP, Matrix, ActivityPub, torrent, Tor, IPFS, Blockchain and anything else hard to hijack, classic disinformation strategy.
Contrary to what CNN says, 4chan is not an alt-right community. In fact, most of those idiots have left since 2016.
If you give it a chance and check out a range of boards, you will find it's fairly diverse. Like any other online community, it comes down to finding which boards suit you best
I think its value neutral. It might not collect data aggressively, but its not trying to protect you either.
It might not collect data aggressively
We can't prove this, because we don't control it, because it's SaaSS.
I assume 4chan does not sell your data with 3rd parties (it pays the bills from user donations and people who buy a '4chan pass', I think advertisers might've pulled out from the site long ago, given its vulgar nature) however it does appear to comply with law enforcement. See this 4chan user who was sending death threats to a Florida sheriff on 4chan, and was later arrested for this: https://www.thedailybeast.com/tyler-meyer-busted-for-threatening-sheriff-mike-chitwood-on-4chan
I believe it's possible that 4chan had given this user's IP address to law enforcement. 4chan records your IP address when you post, and only administrators can see it: https://4chan.org/faq#postanon
You can also look at the Wikipedia entry for 4chan, similar users have been arrested for making these death threats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan
I don't advocate for what these users do, it's harmful, and they honestly have it coming when they get arrested--but it shows that if 4chan is compelled to reveal your information, they will.
It's not possible to post under a VPN by default, they're blocked site-wide to combat spam and automated posts, even though there's already a captcha when you post? I guess they're just trying to play it extra safe. You can post under a VPN if you buy the 4chan pass (https://www.4chan.org/pass), however 4chan does not support any privacy-centric options like Monero or even cold hard physical cash, which means even if you post under a VPN, you can still be linked to your posts via payment method.
Me personally? I lurk on there every once in a while, but I've never posted, for these reasons. At least I can post under a VPN on Lemmy.
If you're worried about ai fingerprinting your writing style, maybe have an ai rewrite your posts?
If you're that worried about it you probably shouldn't be posting at all. I noticed reading through reddit and Lemmy that other autistic people write similarly. When I looked into it there's been research done on it, and apparently it's a pretty good predictor or autism. It's not just a matter of identifying you, ai will likely be able to apply various diagnoses.
asking because it’s not possible to post anonymously (each individual post being anonymous without your username visible)
I would like to post freely about my hobbies and such without worrying about AI fingerprinting me from all my posts, and we know in the future AI will be very good at this.
Hiding your username won't hide the way you write.
Changing the way you write won't hide your username though
They're asking for both.
I know
I visit 4chan a few times a month. The only thing I remember all the time is their soramimi cake 4chan version
4chan is Service as a Software Substitute.