Big outage this morning on 4Chan. Over 1,200 users logged reports to Downdetector after the site went dark around 4am ET. It’s still not back for many. Naturally, the internet has theories.
Some users claim the site was hacked and the entire database has been leaked including admin and janitor emails, chat logs, and internal data. Others are pointing fingers at old code, saying it was a disaster waiting to happen.
There’s no official word from 4Chan’s staff yet (does it even have staff anymore?), but the general consensus is that this is bad as a user, an internet historian, or just someone watching the fallout.
Reddit’s split on how serious this is. Some say it’s the “end of an era.” Others think it’ll blow over like everything else.
So, a few questions for the room:
Some users claim the site was hacked and the entire database has been leaked including admin and janitor emails, chat logs, and internal data. Others are pointing fingers at old code, saying it was a disaster waiting to happen.
There’s no official word from 4Chan’s staff yet (does it even have staff anymore?), but the general consensus is that this is bad as a user, an internet historian, or just someone watching the fallout.
Reddit’s split on how serious this is. Some say it’s the “end of an era.” Others think it’ll blow over like everything else.
So, a few questions for the room:
- If true, how damaging is a full database dump from a place like 4Chan?
- Should this be a wake-up call for long-standing platforms running on legacy code?
- Is 4Chan still relevant in 2025 or are we watching something that already faded?