Interview: Ask Christopher "moot" Poole About 4chan and Social Media

Having started 4chan when he was 15, Christopher Poole, better known as "moot", is indirectly responsible for almost every meme you've ever seen. The group "Anonymous" originated on 4chan and has since engaged in a number of well-publicized publicity stunts and distributed denial-of-service attacks. Thanks to users gaming the system, moot was famously voted the world's most influential person of 2008 in an open internet poll conducted by Time magazine. He is an advocate of online anonymity and speaks on the importance of privacy online to foster creativity and open discussion. moot has agreed to answer your questions about 4chan, social media, and privacy. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

What do you think of /. Beta?

[I'm New Around Here]

How badly do you think it sucks?

Canv.as Decommissioned

[eldavojohn]

Canvas (site, not the HTML5 element) and DrawQuest were killed earlier this year. I used it briefly in its beta form and thought it was a neat idea. Any chance you could elaborate on why it was shut down? The e-mail I got was brief and vague -- were you facing copyright issues? Monetization problems? Image space issues? Care to spill your lessons learned?

4chan's effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously there's a lot of discussion of unsavory things that 4chan has done. You obviously haven't shut down the site, but overall, do you think 4chan has a net positive or negative effect on the internet as a whole?

Who will come to the defense of 4Chan?

[Xaedalus]

Even though 4Chan can rightly be considered the black hole of the internet, it can also be argued that 4Chan is one of the greatest bastions of free speech we have. If enough oppositional clout arises to seriously threaten a shutdown of 4Chan, is there a defense plan? Or a back-up plan? I would hate to see it go away without some sort of fight, or a way to resurrect it somewhere else.

Privacy

[sandfox]

You claim to be an advocate for privacy and anonymity but people seem to constantly be using 4chan to invade others privacy, doxing them and, most recently, releasing large quantities of previous private photos. While I understand you're not directly responsible for the actions of your users, does it bother you that people are using the forum you created to do things that appear to violate your core beliefs and the reasons you created it in the first place?