4Chan is an imageboard on the open web with 900K daily posts allowing total anonymity to post illicit content.
- Site Name: 4chan
- Founded: October 1, 2003
- Number of users: 22 million unique monthly visitors (as of June 2020)
- Typical Users: The average user is a Western, college-educated English-speaking male (between the ages of 16-30) interested in Japanese cultures, video games, comics and technology
An English-language imageboard website with over 3.5 billion posts, 4chan is unique for allowing its users to post content with total anonymity. As an added security feature, posts time out and disappear after a period of time, so they cannot be found by users or law enforcement.
The site guarantees anonymity in several ways: Users cannot register to 4chan, and they can post without a username by leaving the name of that field blank. This anonymity lends itself to a wide variety of illicit content and has received media attention as a source of numerous controversies, including cyberbullying, a source for child pornography, harrassment, threats of violence, misogyny and racism.
But it is important to remember that 4chan was originally focused on discussion related to anime, a Japanese style of film and television animation also known as Japanimation. The community of users is known to have been influential in spreading benign internet memes like lolcats and chocolate rain.
On the homepage of 4chan you can see a wide variety of board subjects, ranging from Japanese culture to politics and adult content.