The Unthinkable

Today, I saw something that I had firmly believed would never happen in my lifetime.

4chan is, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Does it still exist? Yes, in a sense. However, the community of it is gone, exiled by their own mods. 4chan used to be the meeting place for anons who wanted to express themselves freely on a variety of subjects. That has been shut down today, by their own mods, in the words of one Moot, aka Christopher Poole.

Unfortunately, I was unable to screencap the post before the thread 404'd, however, I do have the link to an image which shows the toxic attitudes of the current mods of 4chan. The image was kindly provided by a former mod who chose to remain anonymous, and wisely so.

https://i.4cdn.org/pol/1411049389055.png

What does this mean? It means that the one ideal I hold, the one thing I want to cling to more than any other cause is more in danger of dying than ever. If 4chan, the previously unassailable bastion of true Internet freedom can be shut down by narrow minded people only interested in their agenda, what hope can the rest of us have? Twitter is already a battleground between people who just desire to make their cause "The Cause" of all and those who disagree completely or even just want to stay out of it. How soon before individual blogs come under scrutiny?

What can we do when those who are supposed to safeguard the freedoms we'd so long depended on turn their backs on us?

I don't have any answers. I hope someone else out there does.

Long live the free Internet

Edit: I managed to find an image of Poole's post, and will add it as soon as I can get it hosted online.