political discussion board on 4chan

/pol/, short for “ Politically Incorrect “, [ 1 ] is a political discussion imageboard on 4chan. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] The board has been noted for its racist, white supremacist, anti-semitic, misogynous, and transphobic content. [ 7 ] The board serves partially as a “ containment ” area on 4chan : a stead to divert trolls and extremists. [ 1 ] [ 8 ] [ 9 ] /pol/ has been successful in spreading fake news into the mainstream media. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] A count of /pol/ boards exist or have existed on other imageboards than 4chan, such as on 8chan. [ 3 ]

Reading: Wikipedia

overview [edit ]

Screengrab of the front ( catalogue ) page of /pol/ in December 2019, with each discussion thread indicated by an effigy much of the content on /pol/ relies heavily on memes to far spread ideas. [ 12 ] One of the most popular memes found on the board during the period surrounding the 2016 US presidential election was that of Pepe the Frog, which has been deemed a hate symbol in some context by the Anti-Defamation League due to its manipulation in uniforms, places, and people associated with Nazism, the Ku Klux Klan, and anti-semitism. [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 15 ] many have questioned the earnestness of users on /pol/ as possible trolls. [ 16 ] [ 17 ] Flags are displayed on each post. A national masthead corresponding to the drug user ‘s geographic location ( based on their IP address, which could be manipulated using a proxy waiter ) may be displayed. alternatively, users may select a “ troll masthead ”, corresponding to assorted political identifiers, but these are not park per amount of posts — The “ Nazi ” troll iris was the most normally used, while posts with an american geographic location are about 57 times more common. [ 1 ] Common circuit board content involves discussion of current news. A 2020 report categorized about 36 % of news sources frequently posted to the board by american users as “ debris newsworthiness ”, a category that includes sources considered to be propaganda, sensationalist, or conspiracy hypothesis subject. [ 18 ] While 4chan ‘s /pol/ board is the most popular board under the “ /pol/ ” name, versions on early websites have existed. These include Kohlchan, 8chan ( late 8kun ), 16chan, Shitchan, and Endchan, with some less democratic “ /pol/ ” themed boards accessible through the Tor network on sites such as 9chan and Neinchan. [ 3 ] As of July 2021, over 140,000 posts are made on /pol/ every sidereal day. This is the most of any board on the site, and makes up about 15 % of all posts made on the web site every day. Certain events caused a spike in activity on /pol/ : the 2016 United States Presidential Election, Donald Trump photograph op at St. John ‘s Church, the 2020 Presidential Election, and the 2021 fire on the US Capitol .

history [edit ]

prior to the creation of /pol/, there were two boards intended for discussing news that had been added and removed from the locate. The first of these was /n/, which was added on 8 April 2006. frankincense, it replaced /n/ ‘s previous subject of animals and nature. ( The topic of animals and nature itself was moved to the /an/ dining table ). /n/ ‘s subject was changed to exile on 19 February 2008, without moving the newsworthiness subject to another board, efficaciously removing it. [ 19 ] Another news program board, /new/, was subsequently added on 25 January 2010. It was deleted a year late on 17 January 2011 because, according to 4chan ‘s creator and ex-administrator Christopher Poole, it had “ devolved into / stormfront / ”. [ 19 ] [ 20 ] [ 21 ] This was comparing /new/ to Stormfront, which is the oldest and largest Holocaust-denialist white supremacist web site. [ 22 ] According to Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, /pol/ was created by “ 4chan ‘s founder [ … ] to siphon off and contain the overtly xenophobic and racist comments and memes from other wings of 4chan. ” [ 23 ] This has led to /pol/ acquiring the dub of a “ containment board ”, because its function is to keep reactionary and broadly political content off of 4chan ‘s other boards. [ 8 ] [ 9 ]

luminary events [edit ]

Screenshots of Trayvon Martin ‘s hacked social media accounts were initially posted to /pol/ in 2015. [ 24 ] [ 25 ] After the 2015 Umpqua Community College shoot, /pol/ began attempting to circulate on social media claims that comedian Sam Hyde was the perpetrator of a mass shooting event or terrorist attack. They repeated this after respective early multitude shootings, in attempts to troll mainstream news program outlets into reporting Hyde as the attacker. [ 10 ] According to BBC News, CNN mistakenly included Hyde ‘s visualize on their coverage of the Umpqua shoot. [ 26 ] After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, a Google search for a different man ‘s name returned a /pol/ train of thought in the “ top stories ” incision falsely identifying him as the gunman. A spokesperson for Google said that the train of thought had appeared because search queries and news about the homo were rare, allowing for the thread to appear in results, but that the screw thread did not appear in broader searches about the Las Vegas shooting. [ 11 ] On April 6, 2016, users on the dining table ‘s /sg/ ( short for Syria General ) weave collaborated with a russian Twitter report to locate an campsite of syrian rebels. [ 27 ] [ 28 ] The account then claimed to have forwarded the placement to the russian Ministry of Defense. [ 27 ] According to Inquisitr, the report was operated by “ Ivan Sidorenko, a reporter with ties to Russia ”. [ 28 ] On June 6, 2016, the circuit board ‘s users similarly located an ISIS train camp near Mosul, Iraq. [ 28 ] The users coordinated on Telegram deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as on 4chan. [ 29 ] Users of /pol/ engaged in coordinated attacks on LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner ‘s HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US, a 2017 performance art project made to protest Donald Trump ‘s presidency. [ 30 ] Users besides organised the It ‘s all right to be flannel post horse campaign the lapp year. [ 31 ]

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In 2017, users of /pol/ coordinated a crusade to convince mainstream news organisations that the o gesticulate was a egg white power symbol, late the o gesticulate became used unironically by white supremacists. [ 32 ] In 2019, 4chan and 8chan were temporarily blocked by australian internet service providers for containing video recording of the Christchurch mosque shootings. [ 33 ] Before the shootings, the taw posted on 8chan ‘s /pol/ board. [ 34 ] [ 3 ] In late February and early March 2021, users on /pol/ boosted a social media vogue called “ superintendent straight ”, which they said was a modern sex trace heterosexuals who would never have a sexual relationship with transgender people. [ 35 ] The drift began with a later-deleted TikTok television by a user who said he had created the terminus because he was tired of being called transphobic. [ 36 ] The Daily Dot stated that “ trolls, bigots, and trans-exclusionary radical feminists “ were “ reframing their harassment of transgender people ” through this swerve. [ 37 ] The swerve spread to other platforms as well, including Twitter, and 4chan users were tidal bore to “ red pill “ those in the Generation Z historic period group, create division among LGBTQ communities, and use the language of LGBTQ rights to troll leftists. Some 4chan members used nazi symbols in their symbolism, including the logo of Adolf Hitler ‘s Schutzstaffel, which besides used SS as an acronym. Colours associated with “ extremely straight ”, often used in the form of flags, were black and orange. [ 38 ] [ 37 ]

reception and charm [edit ]

/pol/ has been characterised as predominantly racist and male chauvinist, with many of its posts taking explicitly alt-right and neo-Nazi points of view. In detail, the circuit board is ill-famed for the prevalence of anti-semitic threads and memes. [ 39 ] [ 6 ] [ 40 ] [ 41 ] [ 42 ] [ 5 ] The most coarse anti-semitic meme on /pol/ is the glad Merchant. [ 43 ] Southern Poverty Law Center regards /pol/ ‘s rhetorical stylus as wide emulated by white supremacist websites such as The Daily Stormer ; the Stormer ‘s editor program, Andrew Anglin, concurred. [ 6 ] Many /pol/ users favoured Donald Trump during his 2016 United States presidential campaign. [ 5 ] Upon his election, a /pol/ moderator embedded a pro-Trump video recording at the top of all of the circuit board ‘s pages. [ 44 ] [ 45 ] [ 46 ] [ 47 ]

As a electric potential honeypot [edit ]

many have speculated whether the web site is keep on-line as a honeypot for reactionary groups, or to monitor extremists. [ 48 ] [ 49 ] In 2015, an australian Department of Defence alumnus used /pol/ to share classified information, only to be caught by another former Department of Defence actor browsing the web site. [ 50 ] Within /pol/, suspected agents of respective news communities are called “ Glowniggers ”, [ 51 ] a character to the calculator programmer Terry A. Davis who said “ The CIA Niggers glow in the dark, you can see them if you ‘re driving, you just run them over, that ‘s what you do. ” [ 48 ] [ 52 ] Because of this, fishy posts are deemed to be “ glowing ” and “ glowposting ” is a coarse phrase on the forum. [ 48 ]

Alleged moderator racism [edit ]

In 2020, respective past and current moderators spoke to Vice Media ‘s Motherboard about what they perceived as racist purpose behind /pol/ and 4chan as a hale. They described how the director of 4chan ‘s volunteer “ janitors ”, a moderator known as RapeApe, wishes to generate rightist discussion on /pol/ and has dissuaded janitors from banning users for racism. additionally, they noted how janitors were much fired whenever they held leftist opinions. Hiroyuki Nishimura was described as letting RapeApe have full moon control of the site. Neither Nishimura nor RapeApe responded to Vice Media ‘s requests for remark, but RapeApe did, however, provide a video recording of two bare men dancing. [ 53 ]

analysis [edit ]

According to a 2017 longitudinal study, using a dataset of over 8 million posts, /pol/ is a divers ecosystem with users well-distributed around the world. The share of posts containing hate speech ranges from 4.15 % ( for example, in Indonesia, Arab countries ) to 30 % ( for example, China, Bahamas, Cyprus ). Elevated use of hate actor’s line is seen in western european countries ( for example, Italy, Spain, Greece, and France ). [ 5 ] A break 2017 quantitative analysis found that /pol/ was an important influencer of news contentedness on Twitter, with the control panel contributing 3 % of mainstream newsworthiness links and 1.96 % of alternative news links on Twitter ( as a fraction of all links co-appearing on Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan ). The researchers concluded that “ ‘fringe ‘ communities frequently succeed in spreading alternative newsworthiness to mainstream social networks. ” [ 54 ] Adjusted for Internet-using population per country, users were most normally from Canada, Australia, the United States, Ireland and Croatia. Users from early countries in Europe were besides found to be coarse. [ 1 ] Following the announcement of a COVID-19 lockdown occurring in Wuhan, China in January 2020, an external team of researchers noted an increase of anti-Chinese sentiment on /pol/ in reaction to the events surrounding the virus outbreak, in an analysis which besides examined similar activity on Twitter. [ 55 ] According to a 2020 report by the british charity Community Security Trust, many threads contain “ denotative calls for Jews to be killed ”. [ 56 ] A study with data collected from April 2020 to June 2020 and published in Perspectives on Terrorism in February 2021 analyzed the popularity and contentedness present on unlike /pol/ boards. To analyze board content, they examined which word sets were most common per control panel. They found that schisms were characteristic of this subculture, with secede communities being less democratic and more extreme on average. For exercise, discussion on 8kun ‘s /pol/ board contained more racial capacity than did 4chan ‘s much more popular /pol/ board, which hosted racist message american samoa well. Neinchan, hosted on the Tor net, was indicated as having among the most extreme /pol/ boards, albeit with first gear dealings. The researchers indicated that academic work examining this subculture of reactionary imageboards was lacking. [ 3 ]

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