In January 2009, Poole signed a new deal with an advertising company in February 2009, he was $20,000 in debt, and the site was continuing to lose money. However, the explicit content hosted on 4chan has deterred businesses who do not want to be associated with the site's content.

Poole has acknowledged that donations alone could not keep the site online, and turned to advertising to help make ends meet. It is provided to its users free of charge and consumes a large amount of bandwidth as a result, its financing has often been problematic. 4chan's Alexa rank is 853 as of March 2022 though it has been as high as 56. Ĥchan is the Internet's most trafficked imageboard, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The main protagonist of the Japanese Yotsuba&! manga, Yotsuba Koiwai, has been described as an 'unofficial mascot' of the website by Wired writer Justin Ling. Uniquely, the 'Random' board-also known as /b/-enforces no particular rules. Most boards have their own set of rules and are dedicated to a specific topic, including anime and manga, video games, music, literature, fitness, politics, and sports, among others. As of August 2022, the site's homepage lists 75 imageboards and one Flash animation board. The majority of posting on 4chan takes place on imageboards, on which users have the ability to share images and create threaded discussions. BackgroundĬhristopher Poole, 4chan's founder, at XOXO Festival in 2012 In 2008, The Guardian summarized the 4chan community as 'lunatic, juvenile (.) brilliant, ridiculous and alarming'. 4chan has often been the subject of media attention as a source of controversies, including the coordination of pranks and harassment against websites and Internet users, and the posting of illegal and offensive content. The site has been described as a hub of Internet subculture, its community being influential in the formation and popularization of prominent Internet memes, such as lolcats, Rickrolling, rage comics, wojaks, Pepe the Frog, as well as hacktivist and political movements, such as Anonymous and the alt-right. Ĥchan was created as an unofficial English-language counterpart to the Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel, also known as 2chan, and its first boards were created for posting images and discussion related to anime. As of 2022, 4chan receives more than 22 million unique monthly visitors, of which approximately half are from the United States. Registration is not available and users typically post anonymously.

Launched by Christopher 'moot' Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, music, literature, history, fitness, politics, and sports, among others. 4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website.

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