Christopher Poole

Thanks for the feedback!

We're using it during the beta period to handle invites and authenticate users (make sure they're real people). We don't surface your Facebook details anywhere on the site except your friends invite panel, if you request an invite.

Once you register an account, you have the ability to post anonymously by toggling a checkbox next to every comment box, that stays checked until you uncheck it.

Not necessarily. Our original motivation for using it was to handle invites—we were inspired by the way RockMelt did their invites and modeled our flow after it.

Not entirely, but there isn't much that fazes me at this point.

has anyone ever recognised you on the street?

Yes, it happens regularly, depending on where I walk. Areas with lots of college students/young people can be a minefield, so I tend to avoid them.

do you actually feel like you 'connect' with the memes (ie do you feel like you're part of the 4chan community), or do you find them not funny and insignificant?

Absolutely. I've been using 4chan daily for seven and a half years—the humor and culture definitely resonates with me.

oh and do you ever post in 4chan as an anon?

Of course! I've had to more and more over the years, since a single post by me can derail a thread in an instant.

Yep, that was the first time I was ever recognized in public. Richmond, VA in 2008!

A car drove past me as I was crossing the street and yelled "Do a barrel roll!"

So I did.

Have you ever taken a look in the mirror and said "I'm so internet-famous that cars break their vows of silence just to talk to me"?

Cars break their vow of silence in New York a lot :)

Do you consider yourself a celebrity?

I suppose others might. Thankfully it hasn't affected the way I interact with people or live my life.

If so, how do you intend to use your voice in the future?

I tend to be pretty camera and attention shy, so not sure. I've been meaning to write more, and will be doing more to spread the word about Canvas and things I care about.

The four things I spoke about at SXSW this year were fluid identity, creative mutation, playing with media, and shared experience. All things I find fascinating and think are extremely important, and not things I hear others talking about or evangelizing.

Have you ever used your status to try to pick up women? If so, did those women turn out to have penises?

Haha no. I don't go out much and rarely drink/don't visit bars. I'm not sure where else people meet women?

Hahahahaha.

Thanks! The entire team loves Reddit and Redditors, so we're excited to have you guys play around with it. Please feel free to submit any feedback you have via the feedback form on the upper-right, or by e-mailing feedback@canv.as.

The upvotes/downvotes are pretty standard, but the way we're doing categories is Reddit-inspired. We needed something more flexible/less rigid and siloed than 4chan and other sites, and Reddit is a great example to work from.

We <3!

None. It's just me, a volunteer part-time developer, and a handful of volunteer moderators and janitors. The volunteers all do an incredible job, and don't get nearly enough credit for their hard work. Hats off to them!

On the day it was founded, 4chan was posted to the anime sub-forum of Something Awful and so many of the first users from from there, but the site itself is 100% based on a Japanese site called Futaba Channel, or 2chan.net.

Futaba Channel is in turn based on 2channel (2ch.net), which is a huge text BBS that's inspired a lot of the anonymous and otaku culture in Japan.

I had the opportunity to meet 2channel's founder, Hiroyuki Nishimura at SXSW Interactive this year, and it was a real treat. Here's a profile on him from Wired: link

I haven't been to an anime con in years, but the last official panel we did was Otakon 2007, and it drew over a thousand people.

The community. 4chan's culture is unique and spreads and draws people in like no other. It's also important to realize that 4chan wasn't some overnight success, and there was never "hockey stick"-like growth. Its growth has been entirely organic (we've never advertised, past posting it on day one to IRC and a forum), and has been a slow steady build over seven and a half years.

Understood. It's not intended to be permanent, and we look forward to having you try the site out in the future!

Reposting this from earlier.

We're using it during the beta period to handle invites and authenticate users (make sure they're real people). We don't surface your Facebook details anywhere on the site except your friends invite panel, if you request an invite.

Once you register an account, you have the ability to post anonymously by toggling a checkbox next to every comment box, that stays checked until you uncheck it.

Canvas is a place to share and play with images. We're trying to reimagine forums in a world where everyone has a fast, modern browser.

Where are we now? The site is a fast paced collaborative image editing community. Post a fun picture and within minutes there will be multiple remixes of it. Sticker the ones you like. The frontpage works a lot like Reddit but with stickers for upvotes.

Where are we going? More realtime. Much more discussion. More image editing features. More types of content on the site. Better ways for groups to share and have conversations together.

What we've launched so far represents just a kernel of the long-term vision we have for the site, and we're extremely excited to grow the community and explore what's in store!

Perhaps you're thinking of Color.

Canvas has only raised a small seed round, last year.

See this post.

We've been scaling the community slowly and organically, which is why we decided to launch invite-only. It's very important to us that Canvas establishes its own unique identity and culture, and its own core community is able to form.

4chan is such a dominant force in 'Net culture that it'll surely influence Canvas, but that's true for almost every other community on the Web.

Thanks :)

4chan is somewhat of a dominating web force, but was it not intended to be underground?

It wasn't intended to be an underground site, but some users think of it as a kind of secret clubhouse. At 12 million visitors per month, it's hard for me to think of it that way though.

What are your hopes for Canvas, popularity speaking.

As popular as the Canvas community needs/wants it to be. We'll grow organically together, and I don't know what's in store. I'm sure the journey will be fascinating, just as it was with 4chan.

Yep! HTML5 <canvas> :)

Request an invite and we'll get one out to you as soon as possible.

Request an invite and we'll send one to you as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, not at this time. We hope to open it up more soon, so keep an eye out. Thanks for bearing with us through the beta.

What similarities if any would you like Canvas to share with 4chan as it is today

4chan has an incredible community, culture, vibrance, diversity, activity, and content.

We love that, but want Canvas to establish its own unique identity, with its own unique vibrant culture, users, content, etc.

and are there any similarities you would like to avoid?

Insularity and negativity.

Good points. And I agree with you re: Facebook and community.

Facebook does social really well, but continues to fail at community.

Remember that an interview can last hours, and they may only take one or two quotes from it, and those tend to be the juiciest or most central to the author's thesis.

I've said plenty of positive things about Facebook and Facebook Connect in interviews (and meant them), but those aren't the quotes that will make it to print.

I'm a very moderate person. 4chan and anonymity hold a very important place on the Web, as does Facebook and real-ID. I've never said it should be one way versus the other.

Moderation, everyone!

Accounts will be required, but you'll still be able to make unattributed/anonymous posts. We may offer some limited functionality for logged-out users, but there's a lot we want to do with the site that benefits from having accounts (but not necessarily your name next to a comment!).

I've met Mark a couple times, and we've messaged before. Every interaction has been positive. I don't agree with everything Facebook does or his stance on identity, but he's a nice and extremely smart guy who believes in what he's doing.

1) What do you think, 10 years from now, the lasting cultural legacy of 4chan will be?

That it shaped 'Net and IRL culture in a way that few other communities/websites have.

2) If you could go back in time to 10 years ago and do anything differently, would you?

Re: 4chan, I'd involve more people in the running of the site/share more of the responsibilities. Do a better job at engaging the community through news posts (something I did for years and haven't kept up with), and more active participation and moderation.

3) What aspects of 4chan (other than the obvious /b/ != 4chan) do you wish people knew more about?

I think that's the most important one, but also that the "15 year old hacker nerd" stereotype isn't very accurate. People often confuse the entire 4chan community with /b/. We have ~50 boards, all with their own amazing sub-communities and cultures. And tons of normal, functional people use the site. Our [first!] meetup at Barcade a few months ago was proof of that—everyone who showed up was extremely sociable, nice, and we all had a great time.

How have you gotten away with hosting a site that consistently has child pornography posted on it? Have there been serious attempts to shut it down?

How is the site monitored - do you forward illegal material and IP info to the FBI?

4chan gets almost one million posts per day, hundreds of thousands of which are images. As with any large UGC site a very, very small percentage of these posts end up being contraband or questionable content. We have a team of volunteers who do an excellent job removing prohibited content, including CP, which is then automatically reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's CyberTipline.

NCMEC acts as a clearing house and forwards reports to the appropriate law enforcement. This is how all major ISPs and online service providers do it. Here's the law.

Has anyone gotten arrested for posting illegal content?

Yes. Anyone who posts illegal content on 4chan is an idiot.

On 4chan you're anonymous to other users—not us—and we've never claimed otherwise.

Not from Richmond. New York born and raised, but I did attend VCU for a few semesters, and then ended up transferring elsewhere.

I don't understand sports, but I'm thrilled that they're in the Final Four, since it's great for the school and city.

City.

I was undeclared and only there for two semesters.

I didn't love VCU, but I didn't hate it. VCU dorms probably got caught in an unrelated ban.

How frequently do you work with law enforcement? Are your systems integrated with law enforcement systems?

Our systems are not integrated with law enforcement.

No. None. FBI follows normal legal process like any LEO.

Exactly. Sorry to spoil it for the tinfoil hat crew, but despite what you see in the movies, law enforcement officers are extremely careful about obtaining evidence the right away, so it's admissible in court. It's a huge waste of their time and the taxpayer dollars to bring people to trial who you can't convict.

Haha I remember, and I didn't make any face!

Jersey is a great place. I know plenty of people from NJ and have enjoyed spending time there. New York > * though :)

How do you justify rallying against the lack of anonymity that Facebook provides and then requiring it for your next project?

I think it's important to understand the difference between advocating for anonymous contribution, and a pro-anonymity-is-the-only-way!!!!! zealot. (I'm the former!)

I want the public to understand the importance of having the option to contribute anonymously. At SXSW, I focused on anonymous authenticity, and the creativity that anonymity allows for. The ability to fail quietly without having that failure associated with your name/identity allows for more experimentation and limit pushing. People also contribute in a totally raw, unfiltered way, that I'd argue is more authentic than real-ID.

That said, there are times where you do want to know who that other person is, and where real-ID is preferable. A good example is news websites and YouTube, where the comment quality is often terrible. Facebook rolled out their Comments product recently, and TechCruch, which has had a lot of trouble in the past keeping comments on track, adopted it and and it radically improved their comment quality.

So to sum it up: There isn't one way of doing anything. I'm not saying everywhere online should be anonymous, nor do I think everywhere should use read-ID. I just want options! And for people to understand how valuable anonymity can be, and why it's worth protecting.

PS: As we've said before, Facebook Connect on Canvas is temporary. We're only planning to use it for the private beta period, and hope to see you on the site once we're out of beta. Thanks for bearing with us!

Most 4chan threads that I post in as myself tend to instantly become "question time with moot!" threads. I always enjoy them though. It's really nice to be able to chat and connect with the community, and it's something that's become harder and harder to do over the years.

Thanks for the kind words and thanks for reading.

Thanks!

To other users, yes. Internally? 4chan logs IPs and other info provided by users for active posts (and has since day one, since rate-limiting, bans, etc all work via IP). On Canvas, all users are accountable for the content the post, even if done anonymously, but we don't show other users who you are.

Max is a friend. Last I heard, he's hard at work on the next version of YTMND. Just be patient and you'll be pleasantly surprised!

Thanks for the kind words!

Did you start 4chan, especially /b/, with that intent of making an anonymous community or is that just what kept you interested and kept it around?

Nope, it was something that developed on its own and has definitely helped keep me interested/fascinated over the years.

The main thing that appealed to me about Futaba Channel, the site 4chan is based on, was the rate of posting. The ability to hit force-refresh every second, and get a whole new page of posts was really incredible, and impossible to find on Western BBS. And remember this was eight years ago.

Also it helped that it was image-based, since I don't speak or read Japanese :) I think that's helped 4chan grow over the years too, since image-based communities are more inclusive than text-based, because you don't need to speak the language to appreciate the content. 4chan is accessed by almost every country on the planet!

I donated to Jason Scott's Sabbatical Kickstarter to help fund GET LAMP, but more importantly he's a great friend of mine who I'm fortunate enough to see regularly. Jason has been incredibly supportive of me and 4chan over the years and I'm lucky to have him as a friend and advocate.

I'll let timothyfitz, our incredibly talented tech lead, get this one.

My question about Canvas is this - will Canvas have stricter rules than 4chan? Will canvas contain pornography or NSFL stuff that isn't cordoned off in a corner somewhere like it is on Reddit? If I could get some answers, it would GREATLY influence my decision on signing up for a Canvas invite!

Canvas is intended to be a general audience website, and we've decided not to allow NSFW content. There are advantages and disadvantages to creating NSFW ghettos, but for now we are simply not permitting it at all.

NSFW stuff tends to crowd out other more diverse and interesting content that appeals to a wider audience, and we're really excited to be building a SFW community! And for those who want a NSFW community, I know of a great one :cough: 4chan.

You are an internet hero. Thanks for everything you do.

Thanks for the support!

How did the Andrew WK Q&A wind up happening, and do you think there's ever a chance for any other similar events? Or is Andrew WK the only person insane enough to do a Q&A on 4chan?

One of moderators saw that he tweeted about 4chan, and reached out to his manager via e-mail. Andrew was totally into the idea of doing the Q&A, met up with us at said moderator's apartment, and we all had a great time doing the threads. Andrew was incredibly generous with his time, and incredibly nice to boot!

Do you even bother going to conventions anymore?

I don't go to anime conventions any more, but I do attend a few tech conferences. Last year I was at TED, SXSW, and TechCrunch Disrupt NY and SF.

It's really hard to keep up with fast threads on 4chan, and I've had the same issues when trying to keep up with my own Q&A threads. Andrew did the best he could to keep up, and I think overall the event was a big success. He had fun, /mu/ had fun, and that's all that matters.

That photo is from May 2006, and that's actually a styrofoam cucumber in my pants. Which I think is more disturbing, if anything..?

Some things stay in Vegas.

Because the Canvas experience is now driven by image macros and other remixed visuals, will it ever develop the substantive conversations one might expect of an community free of information silos and persistent identity? How might that happen, and would you care if it doesn't?

Absolutely! Remember that Canvas is still in a very early stage, and the site is only about eight weeks old. We've got a lot of changes planned that will promote more substantive conversation, aid discovery, and generally make the site more awesome. Stick with us for a few months and we promise you won't be disappointed.

Is there any way to improve this design? Do you think anything will ever replace 4chan?

I think it's safe to say something will eventually come along that could replace 4chan in terms of popularity, but there isn't anything that will be able to "replace" the culture, identity, community, etc that it has, since they're one of a kind, and unique to 4chan. Think 4chan vs the thousands of other English imageboards that exist. Despite there being tons of sites in this space, 4chan stands out as having the dominant culture, mindshare, and influence that trickles down to the other communities and spreads elsewhere across the 'Net.

Will it live on forever, or do you think it will someday become unpopular or abandoned?

I'll continue to run it for as long as I can, and I don't think it'll ever be abandoned. We're going on eight years old and as active as ever.

Also, what is the most distinct change or evolution you have noticed from the community or the site over the years?

Probably a few years ago when trolling went from more of a fun, playful thing to more of a malicious thing. Habbo Hotel raids -> MySpace invasions.

I've never had Marmite, but Nutella is quite delicious.

Thanks, and the girl you're referencing is our super-duper-helpful intern!

This year was crazy! I'd only been to SXSW once before, in 2010 where I did a talk with Jason Scott on game mechanics as they relate to communities (the opposite of a Zynga talk though—addiction != engagement!).

Thanks for the feedback. We totally agree and are working on tweaking the popular algorithms and making layout and product changes to allow for more simultaneous conversions, better thread grouping, and much more. Stay tuned!

What lead you to found Canvas?

Initially a frustration with the lack of innovation in the forum space. Compare vBulletin and phpBB as they exist today to ten years ago, then think back to Usenet and dial-up BBS. The basic form, function, and aesthetic of a forum hasn't changed in decades, and I started to think about what could be done for modern users and browsers.

It's morphed a bunch since the most basic original idea in 2009, and what we ended up launching is very media-based, and less forum-like, but still an attempt to re-imagine what an online community can be in 2011.

We're thrilled with how people have been using it, the feedback we've gotten, how that's informed our roadmap, and can't wait to build and grow Canvas to its full potential.

According to your wiki, you were a witness in the Sarah Palin e-mail hack trial, explaining 4chan terminology. What was it like sitting on the witness stand, and with a straight face explaining things like "dub gets", "desu", "lurker", "newfag", etc.?

Pretty surreal.

Have you ever received any serious threats or been intimidated by the Church of Scientology or FBI, where you felt like you might actually be in some serious trouble or danger?

None. The media often uses "4chan" and "Anonymous" interchangeably, which is wrong and misleading. To their credit, the Church of Scientology and FBI seem to understand that the actions of people flying the flag of 4chan or Anonymous don't necessarily speak for the community and certainly not the 4chan.org administration.

His name is Seymour :)

Most of the spam you see now is posted by hand, by people paid by the spammers. As long as they keep making their conversions ($), there's an incentive to spam, and pay humans to do it.

reCAPTCHA cut down on almost all of the automated spam, and that's the reason we've kept it. Unfortunately, it looks like it's here to stay, but in my opinion the hassle of filling a CAPTCHA out occasionally sure beats having every index page flooded with porn and link spam.

Something Awful called that "hellbanning." I'm a fan of the concept, but for 4chan it's not possible since pages are all static (nobody sees dynamic/custom pages), and I don't see us recoding the entire site to implement it.

It's a cool idea though! Thanks for the tip.

Also, I'm assuming these people posting by hand are unintelligent workers employed in some system similar to Amazon MT. Any idea if that's the case?

Yep, just Google "captcha solver".

Why have you chosen Christopher Poole as your pseudonym?

Do you ever plan on going by your actual name?

Christopher Poole isn't a pseudonym :)

What is your current relationship with Shii and W.T. Snacks?

I'm still in touch with W.T. Snacks and see him every few months.

Shii helped us start world4ch and coded the software that powered it. He was only with the team for a short while, and although we haven't been in touch for a while, I don't recall a dramatic falling out.

Right now it's true that the community is very remix focused, but we're going to be introducing changes to allow for more discussion oriented conversation soon.

We're still very early and have a long way to go, so please be patient and bear with us.

Here's a longer response.

Check out some of the example threads to get a better feel for the community: http://canv.as/p/1iq1a, http://canv.as/p/2yuu, http://canv.as/p/bwfm.

And please feel free to sign up and try it out for yourself.

I'm proud of what the 4chan community has created.

We've temporarily disabled the direct signup link due to overwhelming demand.

Please request an invite and we'll prioritize all the Redditors, so you should get one in your inbox shortly!

Zero truth. I've posted a few other responses re: our relationship with law enforcement here, here, and here.

Identifying, recruiting, and training thousands of people is very, very difficult. We did a round of janitor applications a few months ago and are still sifting through the applications we received, which numbered over 9000.

We'll be adding more staff as soon as we are able.

Thanks Erik!

The incredible people I've met and friendships I've made.

I can't help but feel that your inclusive and encouraging attitude have had a lot to do with the success (define that as you will) of 4chan.

I tend to be an extremely positive person (although not the crazy aloof hippie type).

Smiling, knowing how to take a joke, and leading a stress-free life are important and make your days way more enjoyable.

Example: After SXSW, Canvas and 4chan were flooded with photos of me looking like a T-Rex. I felt like an idiot for five minutes. And then I spent the rest of the night goofing around Austin walking around with T-Rex arms, and had a great time.

None come to mind—hate mail isn't memorable.

I've gotten plenty of kind, supportive e-mails over the years though, and that's part of what keeps me going.

1) How long do you predict 4chan has the potential to grow it's site traffic before it's too much for one guy and a team of volunteers to handle? Do you ever foresee expanding into a larger "team"?

I feel like it's less a team size issue, and more a community carrying capacity. 4chan is visited by approximately 12 million people every month, but I'm not sure the software (design wise) nor community will scale past 15-20 million people.

The biggest issue is that although we have no structural barriers to entry (registration, etc), we have incredibly high sociocultural barriers to entry. The community has created it's own unique culture and language that is hard for outsiders to parse (think: "lurk more"), and actively resists growth, so it's hard to imagine the site doubling in size any time soon—even if we had twice the staff.

2) Given that it was a small project to begin with in 2003, and there's obvious potential for some competition, in another eight years time do you see 4chan being threatened in anyway by emerging websites competing for it's traffic?

No, I don't. When 4chan launched, it was the first English imageboard, and now there are thousands of sites that look and function exactly the same, but 4chan is still by far the largest and most influential. And 4chan has eight years of colorful culture and history that isn't easily replicable for a new site, since it's a function of having passionate users and time. Some more thoughts here.

3) Is 4chan a business, or just a convenient hobby for you?

4chan has always been run in my spare time, as a hobby. I never envisioned it being something big, or a business. I think investors/startup people use the term "lifestyle business" to describe it.

They're much smaller as far as I know.

100% of the funding comes through advertising.

We haven't accepted a single donation since fall 2005, which is something I'm proud of. I want to be able to deliver the site to users free of charge, without taking donations.

Mootles, how do you feel about the splinter and spinoff Chans? Y'know, 7chan, 420chan, plus4chan, etc.

The more the merrier! 4chan is never going to be all things to all people, so it's great to have others filling those voids.

Do you actually, like, go and visit any of them, or even have one that you actually like?

I don't visit any imageboards besides 4chan. One can barely keep up with 4chan!

Wailord because he's fat and I love food.

Refrigerator magnet game. It's mindblowingly complex—I love it!

Wait, so you know the famous Timothy Fitz and Mike Rooney in person?

I have the pleasure of working with them! And the talented Dave Mauro and Eunsan Huh as well.

Are they as sexy as in my imagination? Do you get starstruck when you talk to them?

Confirmed for sexy + starstruck.

Thank for the kind words, and happy to!

How did 4chan transition from being a place where people share manga to what it is today?

As time went on, we added more boards that weren't related to Japanese culture, and the community gradually became more diverse.

Part of 4chan's magic is in its dynamism. For every five people that leave, ten new people join, and with them they bring their own voice, culture, likes, and dislikes. It's that dynamism that's propelled the site and kept it interesting over the years.

People on 4chan have complained about "newfags" (excuse the language) for years, but it's those same people that become veteran users, and thus the circle of life continues...

♥

1) Do you ever feel bad about all the peoples lives who have been ruined due to the ruthless antics of the people on /b/?

Yes, it's extremely unfortunate and regrettable.

2) What other internet communities do you frequently browse yourself?

I browse 4chan and Canvas, lurk Reddit, and read the news online. My computer use is pretty boring!

What can I say, I was moved by Idiocracy.

My question - Has founding 4chan financially secured you for life?

4chan itself hasn't made me wealthy (unless you count negative wealth!) and isn't a site that you'd expect to exit (acquisition/IPO).

On the other hand, it's given me a ton of extremely valuable experience, and given me the opportunity to meet interesting people and work on new projects (like Canvas!).

So perhaps the answer is "we'll see!"

Nope! Nobody in my family, parents included, knew about 4chan until 2008 when I was 19. They've all been extremely supportive.

Hah. The guy who uploaded the video to YouTube added that. My mic was on my shirt, not butt!

A gentleman never tells.

Nope, Canvas is operated 100% separately from 4chan, in every way.

4chan's servers are hosted at a datacenter in Los Angeles, and Canvas is hosted in the cloud.

We've had some issues that should be resolved later this week.

Redditors should know a thing or two about huge sites that are understaffed and underequipped ;) (Buy Reddit Gold!)

Nope, just a rumor. Did a major OS upgrade and installed new hardware.

Remix! I wasn't sure it'd be popular, but the response has been incredible. Tons of awesome remix threads popped up immediately after our launch.

Hats off to timothyfitz for coding and advocating for it!

Hm, probably a small handful.

Shhhh, PM me.

1)Now that you've maybe had some time to reflect, do you feel like splitting /r9k/ into a bunch of smaller boards was for the better? Some sick part of me misses the unique blend of spices it entailed but considering it strayed from it's original intentions to include misogyny and camwhoring I can't really say I mourn it's loss.

Yes. I do miss some of the old /r9k/ culture though.

2)Sorry if this strikes a nerve but how do you feel about people making money off of the memes popularized by 4chan? Like icanhascheezburger or Hot Topic or other places selling merchandise, or maybe to a lesser extent even Know Your Meme. Do you feel like this might be an "injustice" to your users who created it?

I don't mind it, but I really don't like Cheezburger's model. That said, Ben (their CEO) is a smart guy and great businessman. But again, I don't like the model (if you skim through the ROFLCon II 2010 video here, you can see some of that discussion).

In the end, they're doing something that we've chosen not to do—monetizing 'Net culture—and there's no reason to resent them for it.

I feel like there's a better way to pay thanks to the people who are creating content, but I don't know what it is. Flattr, maybe?

3)Do you still plan on keeping the textboards? I still kind of like them even though people rarely post and it's been overrun with a bit of spam.

Yep!

4)Speaking of spam, now that the captcha is in place is there any chance of an /hc/ type board being reinstated? I'm kind of tired having to shift through /b/ for that type of content......

Doubtful. If you look at the boards we've added over the years, we've strayed away from adding adult ones, and focused on worksafe. Worksafe is participatory and builds community, whereas adult is more consumptive and transient. We want to focus on the former.

5)Any chance of including some of the 4chan extension or 4chan X capabilities to the site? Like watching threads, expanding threads, expanding images etc. Or is this too much of a burden on the site?

Nope. We pride our barebones functionality, and think offering added functionality in the form of an extension is a good tradeoff.

6)Do you have any new ideas or boards in mind you might be willing to discuss? I think someone mentioned a /diy/ type board and you seemed keen on the idea

/diy/ is high on the list, as are a few others. Wait and see :)

7)Any new ideas for Canvas you'd be willing to talk about? What do you hope to accomplish with the end product for it, and do you intend to eventually make money off of it as opposed to 4chan?

Too many to list. We've got a lot in store, think the community will be extremely pleased, and can't wait to build a future with them.

I just want to thank you yet again for 4chan, and even if you don't respond to all or any of these I hope you at least read it.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my AMA!

Come to the hackNY hackathon! I'll swing by both days.

So, my question is, do you think that 4chan changed you? Are you more jaded now, have you gained more respect/disdain for the power of the internet's users? If you initially knew what your website would turn into, would you still go through with it?

Story and a thought.

A journalist spent a day tailing and interviewing me, interviewing my friends, family, and researching and spending time on 4chan. At the end, he told my father something to the tune of "I don't understand your son. I spent a day with him, got to know him, and then I see 4chan—it's craziness, culture, content, and it doesn't fit. I feel like your son is a like trying to place a square peg into a round hole. I don't see the fit."

And so the way I've come to understand it is: I didn't define it, and it doesn't define me.

Mostly, at least. I've spent a third of my life managing the site, and so it's had an incredible influence on my life and how I've developed over the years, but at the end of the day, it doesn't define who I am as an individual, much the way I didn't define it and all of its content. The community did that. I'm just the guy who laid the foundation, keeps the lights on, and occasionally breaks up a fight. That's oversimplifying the role a bit (it's taken thousands of hour hours of work over the years), but you get the point.

Make sense?

Thanks a bunch for making this IAmA. It's pretty interesting - I'll be reading this for a while.

Thank you!

See this post.

How do you feel about a girls having folders just for your pictures?

Haha, I'm not sure they do?

Also, what's your type of girl and why?

Hm. Smart, nerdy, independent, passionate, pretty..? Must like space, trains, and cities. And food. I love food.

Are you dating?

Don't know if someone already posted this but would you consider 4chan as the birthplace of Memes

Absolutely. I don't think that's in dispute.

EDIT: Oops! I misread that as "a" and not "the." 4chan is not the birthplace of Internet memes, it's just a very popular birthplace of them :)

and if you do, why does 4chan spawn so many of them?

Vibrant, active, diverse community. Anonymous culture that encourages creativity. Software that forces people to post material that resonates with others, or it falls off the site and is lost to time.

Answered here, here, and here.

See this picture posted in /a/ for an example of a mod posting personal information (an IP address of a poster), which only a mod could see, allowing the person to be backtraced by the cyberpolice, over a dumb anonymous comment about anime.

I looked up the post you're referring to (we have an audit log to track mod actions), and the IP was not posted by a moderator. It's just somebody anonymously trolling. We take IP addresses extremely seriously, and moderators are not to share them, discriminate using them, or save them.

Also the obvious reserving of post numbers by mods.

Nope! We've never had the ability to reserve post numbers.

Do you still think 4chan is only worth $45,000?

That figure is an offer to purchase the site that I received around six and a half years ago (I declined).

Do you think it could survive in someone else's hands or do you think it would be irretrievably broken by the new owners?

I think in the hands of the right person, it's possible, but tricky. I've managed most of the responsibility for maintaining the site over the years, and if I could go back in time, would definitely have shared more of the burden.

Do you agree with the quote: "It's content no advertiser would ever put its brand near."

No. We've had the same adult and worksafe advertisers re-buy for months now, and they're extremely happy customers. And again, that title is highly misleading.

Big brand advertisers on the other hand (Verizon, Coca-Cola, Apple)... Now that's hard to imagine.

The Social Network, obviously :)

Kidding, although I do think it was a great film.

I was invited to and attended the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. I took a friend as a date and it was a great night (thanks mostly to my lovely date!).

Here's an article they ran in the April issue.

Thank you!

Haha, I used to own a few different ones.

I think I'm down to my last one though... What on Earth will I wear now?!?

The way I originally envisioned the site was similar to Google Wave, in that you'd have "canvases" that were shared spaces for dumping media and having conversations.

The design has changed a lot since then (but the core concept has remained—media sharing and discussions), but the name stuck.

Do you ever get sick of hosting/maintaining the site?

I've hit low points over the years, but have the ability to go to sleep stressed and wake up with a smile on my face.

Life so far has been "up and to the right," and stressing about problems doesn't help to solve them, so I take a breath and figure out solutions.

I seriously rarely get angry/mad/freaked out about anything. Maybe I should be a Buddhist?

What's your motivation to keeping it running?

Over twelve million people call 4chan their home, and tens if not hundreds of millions of people have been touched by the site's culture. Seems like a worthwhile endeavor to me.

Do you have to be careful with IRL friends? (especially making new ones) Are you ever worried that if you have a falling out with a friend they'll get revenge by posting your personal information online?

I'm easygoing and rarely have issues with my relationships (who wants to be in a stressful/bad friendship?), so very few fallings out—mainly just losing touch with people over the years, which is natural.

And how private do you have to be?

I am an extremely private person, and don't share much personal information publicly (this AMA being an exception) or with people I don't know well. I've been opening up more and more though.

It seems you're moving away from the forum type page and moving to something much more visual.

Definitely. Something that's central to Canvas is the idea of "play." We love media and the idea that nothing is set in stone any more—and not just text—but photo, video, and audio is all interactive, malleable, and participatory. Think 4chan, YouTube, and SoundCloud.

Do you think the forum medium is on its way out?

I think you'll see some radical changes in the future. The medium just can't hold, since it hasn't changed for decades. Canvas is our attempt to re-imagine them, starting with a focus on media-sharing.

Mustache.

Mayhaps.

Nope, that's not how legit tripcodes/capcodes display. It's someone trolling using the subject field.

Work, eat lots of of food, see friends, hang out on Internet. Simple pleasures!

I don't have groupies.

Type "noko" in the e-mail field. See here.

I was 15 years old when I founded 4chan.

Thanks, I appreciate it. Doing the core conversation with Jason Scott last year was a blast.

Sorry, long week! Feel free to PM me :)

Shii coded the PHP version of 0ch, which we use on dis.4chan.org. He is credited in the footer of every dis.4chan page (Shiichan link).

He did not have anything to do with the imageboard script we use. The original imgboard.php (Futaba) was translated by me, and we then switched over to thatdog's "Futallaby" (based on Futaba) in late 2003/early 2004. Our current software is called "Yotsuba" and is descended from Futaba/Futallaby.