October 01, 2003
The site was launched as 4chan.net on October 1, 2003, by Christopher Poole, a then-15-year-old student from New York City using the online handle "moot". Poole had been a regular participant on Something Awful's subforum "Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse" (ADTRW), where many users were familiar with the Japanese imageboard format and Futaba Channel ("2chan.net"). When creating 4chan, Poole obtained Futaba Channel's open source code and translated the Japanese text into English using AltaVista's Babel Fish online translator. After the site's creation, Poole invited users from the ADTRW subforum, many of whom were dissatisfied with the site's moderation, to visit 4chan, which he advertised as an English-language counterpart to Futaba Channel and a place for Western fans to discuss anime and manga. At its founding, the site only hosted one board: /b/ (Anime/Random).
October 2003
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature, cooking, weapons, music, history, technology, anime, physical fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Registration is not available, except for staff, and users typically post anonymously. As of 2022 , 4chan receives more than 22 million unique monthly visitors, of whom approximately half are from the United States.
February 2004
Additionally, a lolicon board was created at /l/ (Lolikon), but was disabled following the posting of real-life child pornography and ultimately deleted in October 2004, after threats of legal action. In February 2004, GoDaddy suspended the 4chan.net domain, prompting Poole to move the site to its current domain at 4chan.org. On March 1, 2004, Poole announced that he lacked the funds to pay the month's server bill, but was able to continue operations after receiving a swarm of donations from users. In June 2004, 4chan experienced six weeks of downtime due to PayPal suspending 4chan's donations service after receiving complaints about the site's content.
2005
American model Allison Harvard first gained notoriety in 2005 as an Internet meme on the /x/ board where she became known as Creepy Chan. Known for her large eyes and peculiar interests like fascination with blood, photos she posted on her blog were widely circulated on the board. She gained mainstream notoriety in 2009 and again in 2011 by appearing on America's Next Top Model. She would visit /x/ after new episodes of America's Next Top Model would air to see what was being written about her and participate in the discussions.
2005
In 2005, the installment of a word filter which changed "egg" to "duck", and thus "eggroll" to "duckroll", across 4chan led to a bait-and-switch meme in which users deceitfully linked to a picture of a duck on wheels. This was then modified into users linking to the music video for Rick Astley's 1987 song "Never Gonna Give You Up". Thus, the "rickroll" was born.
January 2005
The "paranormal" board, /x/, is dedicated to discussing topics regarding unexplained phenomena, the supernatural, and non-political conspiracy theories. /x/ was initially launched in January 2005 as 4chan's general photography board; in February 2007, it was repurposed as a paranormal-themed board.
October 18, 2006
On October 18, 2006, the Department of Homeland Security warned National Football League officials in Miami, New York City, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Oakland, and Cleveland about a possible threat involving the simultaneous use of dirty bombs at stadiums. The threat claimed that the attack would be carried out on October 22, the final day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security expressed doubt concerning the credibility of the threats, but warned the relevant organizations as a precaution. The threat turned out to be an ill-conceived hoax perpetrated by a grocery store clerk in Wisconsin with no terrorist ties. The FBI considered it a clearly frivolous threat and the 20-year-old man was charged with fabricating a terrorist threat, sentenced to six months in prison followed by six months' house arrest, and ordered to pay $26,750 in restitution.
December 2006
Users of 4chan and other websites "raided" Hal Turner by launching denial-of-service attacks and prank calling his phone-in radio show during December 2006 and January 2007. The attacks caused Turner's website to go offline. This cost thousands of dollars of bandwidth bills according to Turner. In response, Turner sued 4chan, 7chan, and other websites; however, he lost his plea for an injunction and failed to receive letters from the court.
2007
The SCP Foundation, a fictional secret organization documented by the collaborative writing wiki project of the same name, originated on /x/ in 2007, when the first SCP file, SCP-173, was posted by an anonymous user. Initially a stand-alone short story, many additional SCP files were created shortly after; these new SCPs copied SCP-173's style and were set within the same fictional universe. A stand-alone wiki was created in January 2008 on the EditThis wiki hosting service to display the SCP articles. The EditThis website did not have moderators, or the ability to delete articles. Members communicated through individual article talk pages and the /x/ board.
July 11, 2007
A link to the YouTube video of Tay Zonday's song "Chocolate Rain" was posted on /b/ on July 11, 2007, and then subsequently circulated by users, becoming a very popular internet meme. The portion of the song in which Zonday turns away from the microphone, with a caption stating "I move away from the mic to breathe in", became an oft-repeated meme on 4chan and inspired remixes. Fellow YouTuber Boxxy's popularity was also due in part to 4chan.
July 26, 2007
KTTV Fox 11 aired a report on Anonymous, calling them a group of "hackers on steroids", "domestic terrorists", and collectively an "Internet hate machine" on July 26, 2007. Slashdot founder Rob Malda posted a comment made by another Slashdot user, Miang, stating that the story focused mainly on users of "4chan, 7chan and 420chan". Miang claimed that the report "seems to confuse /b/ raids and motivational poster templates with a genuine threat to the American public", arguing that the "unrelated" footage of a van exploding shown in the report was to "equate anonymous posting with domestic terror".
September 11, 2007
Around midnight on September 11, 2007, a student posted photographs of mock pipe bombs and another photograph of him holding them while saying he would blow up his high school—Pflugerville High School in Pflugerville, Texas—at 9:11 am on September 11. Users of 4chan helped to track him down by finding the perpetrator's father's name in the Exif data of a photograph he took, and contacted the police. He was arrested before school began that day. The incident turned out to be a hoax; the "weapons" were toys and there were no actual bombs.
September 11, 2007
Hello, /b/. On September 11, 2007, at 9:11 am Central time, two pipe bombs will be remote-detonated at Pflugerville High School. Promptly after the blast, I, along with two ther Anonymous, will charge the building, armed with a Bushmaster AR-15, IMI Galil AR, a vintage, government-issue M1 .30 Carbine, and a Benelli M4 semi auto shotgun.
December 08, 2007
A 20-year-old from Melbourne, Australia, was arrested on December 8, 2007, after apparently posting on 4chan that he was "going to shoot and kill as many people as I can until which time I am incapacitated or killed by the police". The post, accompanied by an image of another man holding a shotgun, threatened a shopping mall near Beverly Hills. While the investigation was still open, he was charged with criminal defamation for a separate incident but died before the case was heard.
2008
4chan has often been the subject of media attention as a source of controversies, including the coordination of pranks and harassment against websites and Internet users, and the posting of illegal and offensive content as a result of its lax censorship and moderation policies. In 2008, The Guardian summarized the 4chan community as "lunatic, juvenile [...] brilliant, ridiculous and alarming".
2008
Following 4chan's return, several non-anime related boards were introduced, including /k/ (Weapons), /o/ (Auto), and /v/ (Video Games). In 2008, nine new boards were created, including the sports board at /sp/, the fashion board at /fa/ and the "Japan/General" (the name later changed to "Otaku Culture") board at /jp/. By this point, 4chan's culture had altered, moving away from the "early, more childish," humour, as evident by the likes of Project Chanology; trolling underwent a so-called "golden age" that took aim at American corporate media.
2008
In 2008, 4chan was one of the Internet's busiest imageboards, according to the Los Angeles Times. 4chan's Alexa rank was 853 in March 2022, though it has been as high as 56. It is provided to its users free of charge and consumes a large amount of bandwidth; as a result, its financing has often been problematic. Poole has acknowledged that donations alone could not keep the site online, and turned to advertising to help make ends meet. However, the explicit content hosted on 4chan has deterred businesses who do not want to be associated with the site's content. In January 2009, Poole signed a new deal with an advertising company; in February 2009, he was $20,000 in debt, and the site was continuing to lose money. The 4chan servers were moved from Texas to California in August 2008, which upgraded the maximum bandwidth throughput of 4chan from 100 Mbit/s to 1 Gbit/s.
January 15, 2008
Through its association with Anonymous, 4chan has become associated with Project Chanology, a worldwide protest against the Church of Scientology held by members of Anonymous. On January 15, 2008, a 4chan user posted to /b/, suggesting participants "do something big" against the Church of Scientology's website. This message resulted in the Church receiving threatening phone calls. It quickly grew into a large real-world protest. Unlike previous Anonymous attacks, this action was characterized by 4chan memes including rickrolls and Guy Fawkes masks. The raid drew criticism from some 4chan users who felt it would bring the site undesirable attention.
July 2008
Each post is assigned a post number. Certain post numbers are sought after with a large amount of posting taking place to "GET" them. A "GET" occurs when a post's number ends in a special number, such as 12345678, 22222222, or every millionth post. A sign of 4chan's scaling, according to Poole, was when GETs lost meaning due to the high post rate resulting in a GET occurring every few weeks. He estimated /b/'s post rate in July 2008 to be 150,000–200,000 posts per day.
July 09, 2008
Poole concealed his real-life identity until it was revealed on July 9, 2008, in The Wall Street Journal. Prior to that, he had used the alias "moot".
July 10, 2008
On July 10, 2008, the swastika CJK unicode character (卐) appeared at the top of Google's Hot Trends list—a tally of the most used search terms in the United States—for several hours. It was later reported that the HTML numeric character reference for the symbol had been posted on /b/, with a request to perform a Google search for the string. A multitude of /b/ visitors followed the order and pushed the symbol to the top of the chart, though Google later removed the result.
October 2008
The stock price of Apple Inc. fell significantly in October 2008 after a hoax story was submitted to CNN's user-generated news site iReport.com claiming that company CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a major heart attack. The source of the story was traced back to 4chan.
2009
The "random" board, /b/, follows the design of Futaba Channel's Nijiura ("Random") board. It was the first board created, and has been described as 4chan's most popular board, accounting for 30% of site traffic in 2009. Gawker's Nick Douglas summarized /b/ as a board where "people try to shock, entertain, and coax free porn from each other." /b/ has a "no rules" policy, except for bans on certain illegal content, such as child pornography, invasions of other websites (posting floods of disruptive content), and under-18 viewing, all of which are inherited from site-wide rules. The "no invasions" rule was added in late 2006, after /b/ users spent most of that summer "invading" Habbo Hotel. The "no rules" policy also applies to actions of administrators and moderators, which means that users may be banned at any time, for any reason, including for no reason at all. Due partially to its anonymous nature, board moderation is not always successful—indeed, the site's anti-child pornography rule is a subject of jokes on /b/. Christopher Poole told The New York Times, in a discussion on the moderation of /b/, that "the power lies in the community to dictate its own standards" and that site staff simply provided a framework.
February 04, 2009
On February 4, 2009, a posting on the 4chan /b/ board said there would be a school shooting at St Eskils Gymnasium in Eskilstuna, Sweden, leading 1,250 students and 50 teachers to be evacuated. A 21-year-old man was arrested after 4chan provided the police with the IP address of the poster. Police said that the suspect called it off as a joke, and they released him after they found no indication that the threat was serious.
April 2009
In April 2009, an open Internet poll conducted by Time magazine voted Poole as the world's most influential person of 2008. The results were questioned even before the poll completed, as automated voting programs and manual ballot stuffing were used to influence the vote. 4chan's interference with the vote seemed increasingly likely, when it was found that reading the first letter of the first 21 candidates in the poll spelled out a phrase containing two 4chan memes: "mARBLECAKE. ALSO, THE GAME."
May 2009
In May 2009, members of the site attacked YouTube, posting pornographic videos on the video-sharing platform under names of teenage celebrities. The attack spawned the popular Internet meme and catchphrase "I'm 12 years old and what is this?" as a response to a user comment on one such video. A 4chan member acknowledged being part of the attack, telling BBC News that it was in response to YouTube "deleting music". In January 2010, members of the site attacked YouTube again in response to the suspension of YouTube user lukeywes1234 for failing to meet the minimum age requirement of thirteen. The videos uploaded by the user had apparently become popular with 4chan members, who subsequently became angered after the account was suspended and called for a new wave of pornographic videos to be uploaded to YouTube on January 6, 2010. Later the same year, 4chan made numerous disruptive pranks directed at singer Justin Bieber.
July 26, 2009
On July 26, 2009, AT&T's DSL branch temporarily blocked access to the img.4chan.org domain (host of /b/ and /r9k/), which was initially believed to be an attempt at Internet censorship, and met with hostility on 4chan's part. The next day, AT&T issued a statement claiming that the block was put in place after an AT&T customer was affected by a DoS attack originating from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org, and was an attempt to "prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and... our other customers." AT&T maintains that the block was not related to the content on 4chan.
September 12, 2009
On September 12, 2009, Poole gave a talk regarding 4chan's reputation as a "Meme Factory" at the Paraflows Symposium in Vienna, Austria, which was part of the Paraflows 09 festival, themed Urban Hacking. In this talk, Poole mainly attributed this both to the anonymous system and to the lack of data retention on the site ("The site has no memory.").
2010
In 2010, 4chan had implemented reCAPTCHA in an effort to thwart spam arising from JavaScript worms. By November 2011, 4chan made the transition to utilizing Cloudflare following a series of DDoS attacks. The 4chan imageboards were rewritten in valid HTML5/CSS3 in May 2012 in an effort to improve client-side performance. On September 28, 2012, 4chan introduced a "4chan pass" that, when purchased, "allows users to bypass typing a reCAPTCHA verification when posting and reporting posts on the 4chan image boards"; the money raised from the passes to go towards supporting the site.
February 04, 2010
On February 4, 2010, 4chan started receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers that they were having difficulties accessing the site's image boards. After investigating, Poole found out that only the traffic on port 80 to the boards.4chan.org domain was affected, leading members to believe that the block was intentional. Three days later, Verizon Wireless confirmed that 4chan was "explicitly blocked". The block was lifted several days later.
April 2010
In April 2010, Poole testified in the trial United States of America v. David Kernell as a government witness, explaining the terminology used on 4chan to the prosecutor, ranging from "OP" to "lurker", as well as the nature of the data given to the FBI as part of the search warrant, including how users can be uniquely identified from site audit logs.
September 2010
In September 2010, in retaliation against the Bollywood film industry's hiring of Aiplex Software to launch cyberattacks against The Pirate Bay, Anonymous members, recruited through posts on 4chan boards, subsequently initiated their own attacks, dubbed Operation Payback, targeting the website of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America. The targeted websites usually went offline for a short period of time due to the attacks, before recovering.
October 2010
The adult fandom and subculture dedicated to the children's animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic began on the "Comics & Cartoons" (/co/) board of 4chan. The show was first discussed with some interest around its debut in October 2010. The users of /co/ took a heightened interest in the show after a critical Cartoon Brew article was shared, resulting in praise for its plot, characters, and animation style. Discussion of the show extended to /b/, eventually to a point of contention. Discussion then spread forth to communities external to 4chan, including the establishment of the fan websites, causing the show to reach a wider audience across the internet.
December 28, 2010
4chan has been the target of occasional denial of service attacks. For instance, on December 28, 2010, 4chan and other websites went down due to such an attack, following which Poole said on his blog, "We now join the ranks of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, et al. - an exclusive club!"
2011
Publications such as Pitchfork and Entertainment Weekly noted the board played a significant role in popularizing various music artists, such as Death Grips, Neutral Milk Hotel, Car Seat Headrest, and Have a Nice Life. Prominent music critic Anthony Fantano began his career on /mu/ and developed a significant following there. Some artists, like Zeal & Ardor and Conrad Tao, admitted to posting their music anonymously on /mu/ to get honest feedback, as well as find inspiration from the board. In particular, Zeal & Ardor said their sound, which mixes black metal with spirituals, came from suggestions by two users. Andrew W.K. did a Q&A with the board's users in 2011, causing the servers to crash from the increased traffic. Death Grips seeded various clues on /mu/ in 2012 about their then-upcoming albums The Money Store and No Love Deep Web. A rendition of "Royals" by Lorde appeared on /mu/ in 2012 before its official release, although she denied ever writing on the board in 2014. Singer Lauren Mayberry shared on Twitter in 2015 a link to a thread on /mu/ about her band's song "Leave a Trace" to showcase what online misogyny looks like. An alleged unreleased Radiohead song, titled "Putting Ketchup in the Fridge" and "How Do You Sit Still", was initially reported as genuine by NME and Spin until CNN revealed it was a hoax promoted by the board's users.
January 2011
In January 2011, Poole announced the deletion of the /r9k/ ("ROBOT9000") and /new/ (News) boards, saying that /new/ had become devoted to racist discussions, and /r9k/ no longer served its original purpose of being a test implementation of xkcd's ROBOT9000 script. During the same year, the /soc/ board was created in an effort to reduce the number of socialization threads on /b/. /r9k/ was restored on October 23, 2011, along with /hc/ ("Hardcore", previously deleted), /pol/ (a rebranding of /new/) and the new /diy/ board, in addition to an apology by Poole where he recalls how he criticized the deletion of Encyclopedia Dramatica and realized that he had done the same.
January 2011
/soc/ is 4chan's not-safe-for-work social board. It was launched in January 2011 after site founder Christopher Poole approved requests to move "rate my looks", webcam and other social threads off the high-traffic /b/ board into a dedicated space. Threads on /soc/ commonly feature "rate me" selfie evaluations and location-based posts intended to organize meet-ups. Posters frequently swap social media handles or Discord servers despite 4chan's usual emphasis on anonymity.
January 2011
In January 2011, BBC News reported that the law firm announced they were to stop "chasing illegal file-sharers". Head of ACS:Law Andrew Crossley in a statement to a court addressed issues which influenced the decision to back down "I have ceased my work ... I have been subject to criminal attack. My e-mails have been hacked. I have had death threats and bomb threats."
September 26, 2011
/sci/ is 4chan's science and mathematics board. On September 26, 2011, an anonymous user on /sci/ posted a question regarding the shortest possible way to watch all possible orders of episodes of the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in nonchronological order. Shortly after, an anonymous user responded with a mathematical proof that argued viewers would have to watch at least 93,884,313,611 episodes to see all possible orderings. Seven years later, professional mathematicians recognized the mathematical proof as a partial solution to a superpermutations problem that was unsolved for 25 years. Australian mathematician Greg Egan later published a proof inspired by the proof from the anonymous 4chan user, both of which are recognized as significant advances to the problem.
October 2011
/pol/ ("Politically Incorrect") is 4chan's political discussion board. A stickied thread on its front page states that the board's intended purpose is "discussion of news, world events, political issues, and other related topics." /pol/ was created in October 2011 as a rebranding of 4chan's news board, /new/, which was deleted that January for a high volume of racist discussion.
February 16, 2012
The My Little Pony board, /mlp/, titled as Pony, is dedicated to discussion of the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and its associated fandom. Created on February 16, 2012, the board was established by Poole in response to the growing popularity of pony-related content flooding other boards, particularly /co/ and /b/. Along with the board's creation, Poole implemented "Global Rule 15" (GR15), which banned pony content outside of a few select boards, directing all such discussions to /mlp/. The board became home to the "brony" fandom on 4chan, though many users on /mlp/ reject this label, preferring self-deprecating terms like horsefuckers or ponyfags. Notable events include a 2013 Q&A with Friendship Is Magic creator Lauren Faust and the board's temporary merger with /pol/ on April 1, 2017, creating "/mlpol/". Despite the original series ending in 2019, /mlp/ continues to maintain an active community. The board has been the subject of academic research regarding masculinity and online identity, particularly in a 2017 ethnographic study published in the journal Sexualities that examined how users construct collective identity around their interest in the show and its characters.
August 2012
In August 2012, 4chan users attacked a third-party sponsored Mountain Dew campaign, Dub the Dew, where users were asked to submit and vote on name ideas for a green apple flavor of the drink. Users submitted entries such as "Diabeetus", "Fapple", several variations of "Gushing Granny", and "Hitler did nothing wrong".
July 30, 2014
On July 30, 2014, an anonymous user made a reply in a thread on the board /pol/ "Politically Incorrect" of 4chan, criticizing modern art in an ironic fashion, saying:
August 2014
Also in August 2014, 4chan was involved in the Gamergate controversy, which began with unsubstantiated allegations about indie game developer Zoë Quinn from an ex-boyfriend, followed by false allegations from anonymous Internet users. The allegations were followed by a harassment campaign against several women in the video game industry, organized by 4chan users, particularly /r9k/. Discussion regarding Gamergate was banned on 4chan due to alleged rule violations, and Gamergate supporters moved to alternate forums such as 8chan.
August 31, 2014
On August 31, 2014, a compromise of user passwords at iCloud allowed a large number of private photographs taken by celebrities to be posted online, initially on 4chan. As a result of the incident, 4chan announced that it would enforce a Digital Millennium Copyright Act policy, which would allow content owners to remove material that had been shared on the site illegally, and would ban users who repeatedly posted stolen material.
November 05, 2014
According to court documents filed on November 5, 2014, there were images posted to 4chan that appeared to be of a murder victim. The body was discovered in Port Orchard, Washington, after the images were posted. The posts were accompanied by the text: "Turns out it's way harder to strangle someone to death than it looks on the movies." A later post said: "Check the news for Port Orchard, Washington, in a few hours. Her son will be home from school soon. He'll find her, then call the cops. I just wanted to share the pics before they find me." The victim was Amber Lynn Coplin, aged 30. The suspect, 33-year-old David Michael Kalac, surrendered to police in Oregon later the same day; he was charged with second-degree murder involving domestic violence. Kalac was convicted in April 2017 and was sentenced to 82 years in prison the following month.
2015
In a 2020 interview with Vice Media, several current or past moderators spoke about what they perceived as racist intent behind the site's management. They alleged that a managing moderator, known online as RapeApe, was attempting to use the site as a recruitment tool for the alt-right, and that Nishimura was "hands-off, leaving moderation of the site primarily to RapeApe." Neither Nishimura nor RapeApe responded to these allegations. Far-right extremism has been reported by public authorities, commentators and civil society groups as connected, in part, to 4chan, an association that had arisen by 2015. According to 4chan's filings to the New York Attorney General's Office, 4chan signed an agreement to pay RapeApe $3,000 a month for their services in 2015. By May 2022, that fee had risen to $4,400 a month. The submitted documents also revealed RapeApe lamenting that 4chan was "getting the shaft" over the Buffalo terrorist attack and his attempt to persuade the advertising platform Bid.Glass to reverse their exit from the website.
January 21, 2015
On January 21, 2015, Poole stepped down as the site's administrator, citing stress from controversies such as Gamergate as the reason for his departure. On September 21, 2015, Poole announced that Hiroyuki Nishimura had purchased from him the ownership rights to 4chan, without disclosing the terms of the acquisition. Nishimura was the former administrator of 2channel between 1999 and 2014, the website forming the basis for anonymous posting culture which influenced later websites such as Futaba Channel and 4chan; Nishimura lost 2channel's domain after it was seized by his registrar, Jim Watkins due the latter's alleged financial difficulties. Wired later reported that Japanese toy manufacturer Good Smile Company, Japanese telecommunication Dwango, and Nishimura's company Future Search Brazil may have helped facilitate Nishimura's purchase, with anonymous sources telling the publication that Good Smile obtained partial ownership in the website as compensation.
2016
/v/ is 4chan's video games board. The board has spawned multiple Internet memes, most notably the NPC Wojak in 2016 (derived from the gaming term non-player character to describe those who do not think for themselves or make their own conscious decisions).
October 2016
In October 2016, it was reported that the site was facing financial difficulties that could lead to its closure or radical changes. In a post titled "Winter is Coming", Hiroyuki Nishimura explained, "We had tried to keep 4chan as is. But I failed. I am sincerely sorry", citing server costs, infrastructure costs, and network fees.
June 28, 2018
On June 28, 2018, a man was arrested following an indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice "on one count of transmitting in interstate and foreign commerce a threat to injure the person of another." The indictment alleged that he posted anonymously to /pol/ the day after the Unite the Right rally, communicating an intention to attack protestors at an upcoming right-wing demonstration, ostensibly to elicit sympathy for the alt-right movement. "I'm going to bring a Remington 700 and start shooting Alt-right guys. We need sympathy after that landwhale got all the liberals teary eyed, so someone is going to have to make it look like the left is becoming more violent and radicalized. It's a false flag for sure, but I'll be aiming for the more tanned/dark haired muddied jeans in the crowd so real whites won't have to worry," he wrote, according to the indictment.
November 17, 2018
On November 17, 2018, it was announced that the site would be split into two, with the work-safe boards moved to a new domain, 4channel.org, while the NSFW boards would remain on the 4chan.org domain. In a series of posts on the topic, Nishimura explained that the split was due to 4chan being blacklisted by most advertising companies and that the new 4channel domain would allow for the site to receive advertisements by mainstream ad providers. All boards returned to the 4chan.org domain in December 2023 for unknown reasons, and 4channel.org now redirects to 4chan.org.
March 20, 2019
On March 20, 2019, Australian telecom company Telstra denied access to millions of Australians to 4chan, 8chan, Zero Hedge, and LiveLeak as a reaction to the Christchurch mosque shootings.
May 2019
Many of the earliest creepypastas (Internet horror-related legends) were created on /x/. The idea of the Backrooms gained popularity thanks to a thread on /x/ created on 12 May 2019, where the users were asked to "post disquieting images that just feel 'off'." There, the first photo depicting the Backrooms was uploaded and another user commented on it with the first story about the Backrooms, claiming that one enters the Backrooms when they "noclip out of reality in the wrong areas". After the 4chan post gained fame, several Internet users wrote horror stories relating to the Backrooms. Many memes were created and shared across social media, further popularizing the creepypasta.
May 2020
On May 14, 2022, a mass shooting occurred at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, US. The accused, Payton S. Gendron, is reported to have written a racist manifesto released May 12 (two days before the shooting), with the manifesto including birth date and other biographical details that match the suspect in custody. In the manifesto the author writes that in May 2020 he began to frequent 4chan, including its "Politically Incorrect" message board /pol/, where he was introduced to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.
August 2022
The majority of posting on 4chan takes place on imageboards, on which users have the ability to share images and create threaded discussions. As of August 2022 , the site's homepage lists 75 imageboards and one Flash animation board. Most boards have their own set of rules and are dedicated to a specific topic, including anime and manga, video games, music, literature, fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Uniquely, the "Random" board—also known as /b/—enforces few rules.
2023
In 2023, a 38-year-old of Monmouth Junction, New Jersey, was arrested for threatening Volusia County, Florida sheriff Mike Chitwood on 4chan due to Chitwood's condemnation of anti-Semitism. According to authorities, the poster, who lived 974 miles away from Volusia County, advocated "shoot[ing] Chitwood in the head and murder[ing] him" in a February 22 post.
July 21, 2023
On July 21, 2023, an anonymous user posted a link to a self-made free and open source dating app in a /soc/ thread, initially advertising it as an "experimental matchmaking algorithm". In May 2024, the app went viral, briefly outranking mainstream apps including eHarmony on Google Play's "Top for $0" dating category despite the app's creator stating "it was only meant to be a meme app". Mashable dubbed it "the 4chan dating app", describing it as "an amalgamation of other, better dating apps like Grindr and OkCupid."
April 03, 2024
On the evening of April 2 and morning of April 3, 2024, two threats were posted on 4chan claiming there was a bomb in the Norwegian parliament building. Oslo police closed down the parliament building while the Norwegian Police Security Service carried out an investigation. No bomb was found in the building. The culprit behind the threats was not identified and nobody was arrested in relation to the case.
August 2024
Moderators generally post without a name even when performing sysop actions. A "capcode" may be used to attribute the post to "Anonymous ## Mod", although moderators often post without the capcode. In a 2011 interview on Nico Nico Douga, Poole explained that there are approximately 20 volunteer moderators active on 4chan. 4chan also has a junior moderation team, called "janitors", who may delete posts or images and suggest that the normal moderation team ban a user, but who cannot post with a capcode. Revealing oneself as a janitor is grounds for immediate dismissal. Gianluca Stringhini, an associate professor at Boston University College of Engineering, said in August 2024, "The only moderation on the platform appears to be for clearly illegal content, such as child pornography. Everything else remains untouched."
April 2025
On June 10, 2025, Ofcom, the British government's communications regulator, announced an investigation into 4chan for potential violations of the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA), which took effect in the United Kingdom in April 2025. According to BBC News, "Ofcom says it requested 4chan's risk assessment in April but has not had any response." The news agency also reported, "Ofcom has the power to fine companies up to 10% of their global revenues, or £18m — whichever is the greater number."
April 14, 2025
On April 14, 2025, 4chan was hacked by an anonymous user who later announced the hack on soyjak.party, a rival imageboard website with origins related to 4chan. Source code and user logins of those who registered with emails were apparently acquired by the user and leaked online. Additionally, the deleted /qa/ board was restored. On soyjak.party, information purporting to be from the hack was released, claiming "admin" level access, a lack of updates to the site since 2016, and identities of admins, among other claims. One of the last known posts made on 4chan before it was taken down was the "Chicken jockey!" quote, taken from A Minecraft Movie. In the days following the attacks, 4chan and Nishimura's official Twitter accounts released statements confirming that they would work to fix security vulnerabilities and return at a later date. The site returned on April 25.
August 13, 2025
On August 13, 2025, Ofcom issued a provisional decision, finding that 4chan had contravened its duties under the OSA by failing comply with two information requests from the regulator. 4chan's lawyer issued a statement that the website "will not pay any penalty". He also stated, "American businesses do not surrender their First Amendment rights because a foreign bureaucrat sends them an email". On August 27, 2025, 4chan along with Kiwi Farms filed a lawsuit against Ofcom in the United States. Ofcom initially responded, "We are aware of this lawsuit. Under the Online Safety Act, any service that has links with the UK now has duties to protect UK users, no matter where in the world it is based."
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