These are aimed to keep you isolate and anonymous so that you can be exploited online.

Follow at your own risk

>>24638766
wat? no they weren't and if anything ppl ignoring them has led to ppl being manipulated and exploited to a much higher degree than ever before

>>24638766
I figured you'd have a little more appreciation for internet anonymity now that you got scammed for real money by someone here

>>24638874
There is a lot of fluff to make the rules seem fun and quirky, but in it's core it tries to isolate and anonymise you so that if you are hacked, no one knows that you use 4chan and no one knows what you are being asked to do online. By making 4chan some kind of exclusive club no one talks about, it made 4chan a prime website for people to be exploited. I have nothing against anonymous, a lot of the time they are the good guys but this old part of the internet really did some damage and exposed people and children to manipulation online. Heck, they even admit that most banters are aware of the dangers of being isolated and anonymous deeming the board "unusable" i.e. there's less people to exploit on bant.

>>24638880
What are you even talking about? I'm totally fine financially.

>>24639002
I think ur way off base and it was just healthy gatekeeping and ppl openly talking about this site on places like preddit and Twitter has done irreparable damage.
also the fact ppl have forgotten to ignore shit that upsets then has led to not just a massive decrease in post quality here but has also led to millions of ppl being manipulated by social media algorthms that only show them shit that upsets them because it drives engagement.
if ppl just ignored trolls none of this shit would have ever happened.

I like you gon but I strongly diagaree with you on this one and I really do not understand ur perspective on it at all

>>24639066
It wasn't just gatekeeping and why would you even want to gatekeep a website aimed at sharing text and images? The only reason for the gatekeeping was so illegal things could be done without consequences. Countless suicides, murders, and just all around fuckery has risen from the "anonymous" cult that came about through 4chan use. It wasn't a naturally occurring phenomenon it was calculated and purely aimed at anonymisation and isolation of people to be victimised. The idea that if you are not "anonymous" you are somehow at a disadvantage online is only true because bad actors target people with an identity online. Back in the old days it was always custom to have an online persona or nick name but being identifiable made crimes against you prosecutable. Being anonymous has it's advantages, sure, but at it's core it's probably more dangerous than being an individual online.

Totally agree with you that feeding the trolls has kept them around but the trolls goal isn't to improve bant, it's to exploit and waste the time of posters.

Even though we might disagree on points I like you too!

>>24639134
the website was not made for any nefarious reason and the ability to be anonymous or pseudanonymous online is very important for shit like free speech and privacy.
even without anonymity ppl will still do shitty things so being against anonymity is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
anyway 4chan does not allow for full anonymity without a pass so its kinda a moot point to say that ppl want a culture of being anonymous to victimise ppl, if someone does something illegal the moderators cooperate with authorities and give them the IP address the post were made under and probably a load of other info.
if ur against online anonymity i dont quite understand why youre here when u could have a social media account linked to your passport number or whatever instead.

>>24639134
also a low level of gatekeeping is great to keep people who shouldnt be here in the first place out like kids or ppl who just wanna do bad shit.
not talking about the website is passive gatekeeping anyway not active gatekeeping it dosent intend to drive away new users but rather to keep niche boards niche instead of normalfag infested hellholes like new /b/.
the reason /b/ went to shit is because ppl failed to stick to rules 1 and 2

>>24639134
>The only reason for the gatekeeping was so illegal things could be done without consequences.
Not really.
It might not be your case, but I like 4chan because unlike Reddit, X, or most other social media websites, you don't need an account to post, and so you don't necessarily have to leave trace of every single post you make.
A lot of people on these other websites often make posts about work/technical issues on the same accounts that they use to post pornography or make heavily political comments, which are all 100% legal, but don't always make them look too well before strangers.
If I had kept on using the same Reddit account for the last 10 years, you'd see all sorts of weird posts jumbled together, going from pro-communist posts, anti-TERF posts, but also some long sequences of posts where you'd see how I jumped all over the political spectrum (except for libertarianism).
The thing is, whenever I make "serious" posts, or posts asking for help with something, say, at my computer, I'm not really interested in having someone else look through every single thing I've ever posted, and then judge me because of my seemingly schizophrenic opinion shifts (which I just attribute to adjusting to my environment).
I've never posted anything that, to my knowledge, was illegal in any country I've lived in or visited, but I have posted plenty of stuff that would be regarded as questionable by people with different tastes or moral criteria from me, so I use 4chan because I don't always want to leave a mark of where I was or what I wrote one day at 4AM, and how I contradicted myself on that the next day when I had a much clearer mind.

So just as I like having my privacy, I believe a lot of other people like having privacy too, not so much from law-enforcement officers, but rather from people who are eager to find fault or reasons to ridicule what other people do.

>>24640683
Also, much of this applies for communities dedicated to discussing specific topics. It is normal for people to want to have a small group of people whom they can more or less recognize everybody in, address people in a certain way, share some insider jokes, and have a certain way of talking to one another. Such groups tend to preserve their identity for as long as the people who come in are actually interested in being part of the community and accepting its rules. When communities become too large, they tend to either splinter or have to loosen their rules, while in the process lose some of their old practices and heritage.
If you want a real example of this, look at any regional language or dialect, like Ladino or the old Mission accent from San Francisco. Ladino, for instance, was the Spanish-derived language spoken by Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, one that had many songs and some books written in it. Once the Sephardic Jews moved from the former Ottoman Empire (Bosnia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, etc.) to Israel, their language, Ladino, had no real purpose anymore, since they couldn't use it to identify each other as Jews, which is why the language was quickly supplanted by Hebrew in Israel.

It is normal for people's social circles to only include a certain number of other people, since beyond a certain level it becomes impossible to really "know" every single person, or to feel like one has anything in common with them. Therefore, I think gatekeeping is just a very autistic, nerdy way of drawing the boundaries of a social circle, rather than a uniquely anti-social form of behavior.

4chan may have gained its fame from events like the Habbo Hotel raid and Project Chanology, but from my experience, many people on 4chan (just like on other websites) are just socially awkward people who find it difficult to make friends with others, but really enjoy discussing stuff.

>>24639571
>>24639589
I agree with you, 4chan happened naturally and there hasn't been any nefarious activity by 4chan staff or mods (and in the rare occurrence that it does happen, 4chan deals with it). I'm just of the opinion that the movement towards "anon" was artificial and played straight into the hands of criminals who want to use 4chan for their own gain, mainly to isolate and anonymise a victim. If any of the well known lolcows had good social networks and had their mental health issues addressed, they'd be half as fun to make fun of/trick as their friends would come to their defence and know where the hate was coming from. Instead it's the most isolated people who either because of their mental health or social skills that become long standing lolcows. If that is happening much worse must also be happening (maybe not on bant as much but we all remember the trans girl that started posting on bant who ended up knifed in the UK).

>>24640683
>>24640737
I agree the gatekeeping might not have been exclusively so that illegal things could be done but it sure does help criminals get away with a lot of stuff.

>>24641090
that's kinda flawed logic.
people like lolcows are victimised because they fail to remain anonymous not BECAUSE of being anonymous.
how can u even rlly have a lolcow without them being at least partially doxed.
>sure does help criminals get away with a lot of stuff.
ur acting like there's some vast criminal networks at work on 4chan when really at most theres a few small cliques that don't even use the site to organize their activities

4chan was the real reddit, this is so cringe

>>24641160
What I meant by the lolcows being anonymous is that they are not known in their communities or to the authorities. Not even their neighbours know them, they have no social footprint or network so make easy pickings. They are isolated and usually have some mental health issues that cause them to become victimised. Again, a lot of lolcows are pieces of shit who reject help from well meaning people but that kind of culture only succeeds where being "anon" is considered standard.

I don't think there are vast criminal networks on 4chan, but criminal networks will use 4chan to find victims. I still get AI emails in my spam when I posted my email address in an image during a mental health relapse so suggesting they are not around looking for ways to exploit people is a little naïve.

If you are not talking about 4chan to your friends and family or introducing them to the website and explaining exactly what the website is, you'll have a bad time.

I still think "The Rules of the Internet" was a psyop to isolate and anonymise 4chan users in order to exploit them and I think there are many examples of where that has been the case.