Hate speech on 4chan is up by 40% since 2015, analysis of one million comments finds

Analysis of more than 1 million comments from the site finds dramatic shift toward racist hate content

My heart goes out to everyone that spent time reading those 1,000,000 4chan comments for this story.

The site began in 2003 as a simple image-based bulletin board site where you could post freely without revealing your real name.

4chan was always a wild and crazy place, with a lot of awfulness available if you were looking to find it. But since 2016, the content on 4chan overall has become way more targeted on neo-Nazi propaganda, hate speech, and violent threats, according to analysis of more than one million 4chan comments by Vice News.

"The volume of hate speech is kinda staggering," tweeted the Vice report's author Rob Arthur, "About one in every 15 comments, which exceeds the rate even at an openly Neo-Nazi site like the Daily Stormer. Literal Nazi slogans can be found in about 1 in every 100 comments."

"I interviewed a number of former and current 4chan users for the piece. Most said that they had encountered hate speech on the site; several said that it had desensitized them or spilled over into the way they thought offline or in real life."

"One of the darkest things I found is that 4channers celebrate the terrorists who commit white supremacist violence, especially those who kill many people and mention 4chan or its related sites."

What caused the nature of 4chan content to change so significantly over the last few years?

One sure wonders, don't one.

Go read the piece:
WE ANALYZED MORE THAN 1 MILLION COMMENTS ON 4CHAN. HATE SPEECH THERE HAS SPIKED BY 40% SINCE 2015.

[IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK]