Illuminati Anonymous: How 4chan Controls the Internet

by Robert Quigley | 11:21 am, December 10th, 2010

» 16 comments

Editor’s note – this post was originally published in July of 2009, but given the recent prominence of both 4chan and “Anonymous” with regards to both “Operation Payback” and WikiLeaks, it serves as a wonderful primer for those initiated with the the crowdsourced set of vigilantes – or hactivists as the mainstream media has taken to calling them.)

When AT&T blocked 4chan on Sunday, every blogger who knew what was what could see the dark clouds looming on the horizon. “AT&T Reportedly Blocks 4chan. This Is Going To Get Ugly” was TechCrunch’s headline. “AT&T Has Managed To Piss Off the Wrong Bunch of Web-Nerds” was Gawker’s. “AT&T did the Internet equivalent yesterday of poking a beehive with a stick: the company blocked parts of 4chan,” Pete Cashmore began a post. Net neutrality was as respectable a journalistic hook as any, but a key part of the equation was: 4chan is scary. When AT&T restored service, and when they claimed that they had only suspended it to stop a DDoS attack (moot, the founder of 4chan, said “this wasn’t a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T’s part”), the whole Internet breathed a collective sigh of relief. A crisis had been averted.

grammarcat

4channers, you see, are a formidable bunch. In Malcolm Gladwell’s terms, they are “influencers,” hubs at the center of many spokes that know how to exert power in every direction. Anonymous, the crowdsourced vigilantes who have pulled off stunts as varied as punking Scientology, uploading lots of porn to YouTube, and supporting the Iranian demonstrators, have a strong presence on 4chan, though they are not strictly affiliated with the site. In April, 4chan users famously hacked the Time 100′s online poll to make moot, the site’s owner, the most influential person in the world. In a fascinating account of the hack that speaks volumes about 4chan, Paul Lamere writes:

Ultimately, this hack involved lots of work and a little bit of luck. Someone figured out the voting URL protocol. A bunch of folks wrote various autovoters, which were then used by a thousand or more to stack the vote in moots favor. Others, sprinkled the spam urls throughout the forums tricking the ‘competition’ into voting for moot. When Time.com responded by trying to close the door on the hacks, the loose collective rallied and a member discovered the ’salt’ that would re-open the poll to the autovoters. The lucky bit was when Zombocom discovered that no matter what he did, he wouldn’t get banned. This opened the door to the fine grained manipulation that led to the embedding of the Message.

At the core of the hack is the work of a dozen or so, backed by an army of a thousand who downloaded and ran the autovoters and also backed by an untold number of others that unwittingly fell prey to the spam url autovoters. So why do they do it? Why do they write code, build complex applications, publish graphs – why do they organize a team that is more effective than most startup companies? Says Zombocom: “For the lulz”.

The Internet runs on lulz, the lulz of a few. LOLcats started on 4chan; so did “Chocolate Rain” and the Rick Roll; so did those fake motivational posters; so did Candlejack and ‘so I heard you like Mudkips’ and some awful racist memes that thankfully didn’t make it to the big leagues. You might like to think that memes, those collective ideas or jokes that everyone suddenly has or tells at the same time, are democratic, that they just randomly sprout up from anywhere and from anybody like some goofy in-joke that catches. But that’s rarely how it is. So many have been carefully planted, nurtured in secret, incubated in Hell’s hatchery — thought up by a bunch of creative, remorseless kids on 4chan.

4chan, Anonymous, AT&T

skyfet

They are a complex bunch to understand. But sometimes they are like a necessary evil to have around. Since the media are interested in celebrities and fake news, these bunch are there to keep the Govt. accountable, sometimes controversial.
justanotherconservative

skyfet said:
They are a complex bunch to understand. But sometimes they are like a necessary evil to have around. Since the media are interested in celebrities and fake news, these bunch are there to keep the Govt. accountable, sometimes controversial.

why am i not surpised to read this?? you are so anti -american. i wonder why.
Kitsune

Mediaite has a bit of an unhealthy obsession going on.
Jackie_Treehorn

justanotherconservative said:
why am i not surpised to read this?? you are so anti -american. i wonder why.

Why because some people want to hold corporate America accountable? If the puppets in Washington and the right wing lemmings won’t do it why not a bunch of script kiddies?
Kitsune

Jackie_Treehorn said:
Why because some people want to hold corporate America accountable? If the puppets in Washington and the right wing lemmings won’t do it why not a bunch of script kiddies?

Because all the script kiddies do is steal credit card numbers and commit identity fraud on whoever they feel like.
skyfet

justanotherconservative said:
why am i not surpised to read this?? you are so anti -american. i wonder why.

Sounds like Cheney and Rumsfeld before the war on Iraq. Calling anyone who ask question un-American. Now looking back and the cost of war (Life&Money), who is the real un-American POS?
SpineCrusher

Kitsune said:
Because all the script kiddies do is steal credit card numbers and commit identity fraud on whoever they feel like.

HA! It’s painfully obvious that you have absolutly no idea what you’re talking about!

Prepare to be PWNED!
Scrub

Welcome to the Internet. When things do not go the way people plan to it doesn’t imply malice on the part of those who wish to see it done in their favor. When corporations attempt to improve their public image by fundraising, advertising, endorsing celebrities to market their products they are doing it not to hurt others but to benefit themselves. The internet is one of the last, but certainly most purist democracies left where the consorted effort of the majority is reflected in the derivations of their work.
Helix

Rules 1 and 2 should be mentioned. For Mediaite’s sake we can hope that Anon might not notice. If we are lucky they will just troll the boards and get Gordon all worked up over anonymous users, or refer to the Mediate posters as their favorite epithet, “newfags”. Skyfets post is rather accurate, they are not necessarily an anti-conservative or anti-liberal force, but are more of a force of nature. Some posters might even describe them as a reactionary force, the way many conservatives are described. Anon should be loosely described as having no loyalty to any one nation state.

For posters not familiar with Rules 1 and 2, LURK MOAR, it’s violation in this article allows Mediate to be a target of Anon for hacking attempts and trolling, or worse. Those interested in learning more could read encyclopedia dramatica or some of the various wiki’s on the chan culture, if you are not easily offended, and have a good firewall. Vandals will occasionally put “items” on some of the links.
Magister

@Helix: I probably only visit the site a couple of times a year, but I’d describe the Anons whom I know in real life as mostly apolitical libertarians. This is not to say that they don’t vote, but their allegiance is to their personal code.
k1oik

4chan’s point of view could be likened to that of the scientists who invented the atom bomb. The ones who would have access to the button do not possess the wisdom to use the power it represents. The internet and everything it brings with it represent the same power. 4chan wants to keep the elected officials humbled enough to remind them who owns things around here. I do, And 4chan does. And the guy across my street does. And the school teacher does, and the guy who works at WalMart does. But the politicians don’t own anything, and as soon as they think so, we remind them once more who really is in charge. The People.

So don’t forget it.

A 32-bit word to the wise is sufficient. In non-geek speak, this would be “we hold these truths to be self-evident.”
Zero

Oh well, let me get this straight… so they’re some kind of Internet Illuminati? Only that the real Illuminati acts manipulating governments and killing betrayers, and the anonymous act trolling and hacking sites? Yeah, I know a friend that got banned from there, and some people who adore that site.. Well, the sites, videos and stuff I see were never attacked or anyhow affected by this random stuff, so, yeah I guess that’s OK. Good look with dominating the internet nonys, zero out.
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Lee Privacy

1) I remember the United states Saying in general “Yeah lets goto war they got nukes” dragging the uk along with them.
2) 2003: Boo no, no war we don’t like it.
3) what’s wrong with being anti-american? I Dis-like america i don’t like how the people think, i think their all stuck up arrogant self loving All talk tits. Now that’s prejudgemental as i have never being and i’m not planning on going. but i know many americans some of them are great to talk too but 80% are what i said above.

4) AT&T would of faced alot more than a DDOS attack, if they blocked 4chan any longer.
http://mydirtyhobbycom.blogspot.com mydirty hobby

Superb website…

[...]always a big fan of linking to bloggers that I love but don’t get a lot of link love from[...]……
http://drew3000.net/2011/02/14/privacy-or-anonymity/ The battle between anonymity and privacy in the WebNets

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