>I find it very confusing that 8ch users tend to hold this "migration" as a huge event in 4chan history. As far as the archives can tell, the whole "gamergate" scandal had no affect on traffic
I'm sure HN users will understand that quantity != quality. HN's community is certainly not without its faults, but I doubt that anyone would argue in 2015 that Reddit is the better site for discussing topics relevant to HN's interests just because it has more users.
8chan users tend to think that most of the people worth talking to left 4chan over the past year, and that only the dregs remain on 4chan. Whenever I've visited 4chan since then, it feels like a completely different site from what I remember not even a year ago. Like the mildly edgy bastard child of the latest generation of reddit and tumblr kiddos, full of awkward fucks desperately trying to fit in by spamming shit they read about "4chan history" on Know Your Meme.
>In hindsight, its no different 7chan before it
I was there for 7chan. The difference is that 7chan was about people being elitist for the sake of being elitist, rather than leaving because they thought moot and company were compromising 4chan's core values.
To this day 7chan mods will ban anyone for coming even close to admitting that they have ever visited 4chan. On 8chan, people will just laugh at you and tell you to lurk a bit more.
>a small group of users got a mad, on a single board and decided to create a new website. More power to you guys, but for those us who don't browse /v/ (and 4chan is more than just /v/), we didn't notice anything.
I didn't (and don't) even browse /v/, and I thought GamerGate was just /v/ being stupid again in its early days, but I immediately left 4chan when moot banned discussion of it from the entire site (read: banned anyone that mentioned it anywhere, in any form). I had become fed up with moot and company's meddling in the affairs of the community (see the "janny" in this comment section commenting about how it pained him to ban people for "minor infractions", or rather, things that no member of the community actually cared about or considered harmful in the slightest), and outright banning a controversial topic was the last straw. This should have set off red flags for anyone with any kind of backbone or sense of awareness left in the community.
If you really hadn't run into problems with the staff from 2012 onward, then either you mostly lurk, or you're a clueless frog happy in his boiling pot. Have fun being datamined by the Japanese equivalent of Kim Dotcom, while your janitors delete and ban anything resembling dissent.
The only reason why there hasn't been a backlash since the Hiroyuki takeover is that today's 4chan users are utterly clueless about the community's history. You can easily see that by how they have responded positively to the takeover instead of recoiling in horror at their site's death knell.
>Whenever I've visited 4chan since then, it feels like a completely different site from what I remember not even a year ago.
"Remember when 4chan was good." "4chan was never good." This isn't new - the term "x is the cancer killing 4chan", where x is facebook, reddit, normalf--s, newf--s, its almost as old as the site itself.
>moot and company were compromising 4chan's core values.
4chan never had any core values - and it certainly wasn't founded on any. The moderators have always held the power to ban you on a whim. You could still be banned for posting Naruto (an anime) on /a/ (the anime board), as early as last year. The vast majority do not subscribe to your self defined faux-values .
>and outright banning a controversial topic was the last straw
How this any different from the banning of any other "controversial" topics, that tend to flood specific boards? Is your recollection that bad? What about Project Chanology? While 4chan has been relatively anything goes, moot has never made the promise that he wouldn't ban you for things he didn't like. In any case GamerGate is not videogames and there wasn't any reason why he couldn't ban it, or regulate the conversation back to /b/.
Again, "8ch.co", is largely a collection a users who have got butthurt that moot wouldn't take their side in SJW boogeyman witchhunt. Its so apparent given the fact none of the community outside /v/ really moved to 8ch. /a/, /co/, /tv/, /sp/ and /fit/ hardly exist on 8c. If it were really the case that 4chan users were having a mass exodus, 8ch's user base would be much more diverse than the site statistics claim.
I'm sure HN users will understand that quantity != quality. HN's community is certainly not without its faults, but I doubt that anyone would argue in 2015 that Reddit is the better site for discussing topics relevant to HN's interests just because it has more users.
8chan users tend to think that most of the people worth talking to left 4chan over the past year, and that only the dregs remain on 4chan. Whenever I've visited 4chan since then, it feels like a completely different site from what I remember not even a year ago. Like the mildly edgy bastard child of the latest generation of reddit and tumblr kiddos, full of awkward fucks desperately trying to fit in by spamming shit they read about "4chan history" on Know Your Meme.
>In hindsight, its no different 7chan before it
I was there for 7chan. The difference is that 7chan was about people being elitist for the sake of being elitist, rather than leaving because they thought moot and company were compromising 4chan's core values.
To this day 7chan mods will ban anyone for coming even close to admitting that they have ever visited 4chan. On 8chan, people will just laugh at you and tell you to lurk a bit more.
>a small group of users got a mad, on a single board and decided to create a new website. More power to you guys, but for those us who don't browse /v/ (and 4chan is more than just /v/), we didn't notice anything.
I didn't (and don't) even browse /v/, and I thought GamerGate was just /v/ being stupid again in its early days, but I immediately left 4chan when moot banned discussion of it from the entire site (read: banned anyone that mentioned it anywhere, in any form). I had become fed up with moot and company's meddling in the affairs of the community (see the "janny" in this comment section commenting about how it pained him to ban people for "minor infractions", or rather, things that no member of the community actually cared about or considered harmful in the slightest), and outright banning a controversial topic was the last straw. This should have set off red flags for anyone with any kind of backbone or sense of awareness left in the community.
If you really hadn't run into problems with the staff from 2012 onward, then either you mostly lurk, or you're a clueless frog happy in his boiling pot. Have fun being datamined by the Japanese equivalent of Kim Dotcom, while your janitors delete and ban anything resembling dissent.
https://i.imgur.com/dkIFWMK.png
The only reason why there hasn't been a backlash since the Hiroyuki takeover is that today's 4chan users are utterly clueless about the community's history. You can easily see that by how they have responded positively to the takeover instead of recoiling in horror at their site's death knell.