page_title: 4chan
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: 4chan / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Hiroyuki Nishimura in Sapporo in 2005. 日本語: 2005年・札幌で講演する西村博之。
context_page_description: 4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, 4chan hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, music, literature, fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Registration is not possible, and the site's users generally post anonymously; threads receiving recent replies are "bumped" to the top of their respective board and old threads are automatically deleted as new ones are created. As of June 2020, 4chan receives more than 22 million unique monthly visitors, with approximately 900,000 posts made daily.
context_section_description: 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 the Something Awful subforum "Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse", 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).
  Before the end of 2003, several new anime-related boards were added, including /h/ (Hentai), /c/ (Anime/Cute), /d/ (Hentai/Alternative), /w/ (Wallpapers/Anime), /y/ (Yaoi), and /a/ (Anime). Additionally, a lolicon board was created at /l/ (Lolikon), but was disabled following the posting of genuine 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 after Paypal suspended 4chan's donations service after receiving complaints about the site's content. 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/.
  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.
  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 will go towards supporting the site.
  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, after the latter alleged financial difficulties.
  In October 2016, it was reported that the site was facing financial difficulties that could lead to its closure or radical changes. In a pos
caption: Hiroyuki Nishimura, the owner of 4chan since 2015
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