‘Moot’ steps down as administrator 4chan

Christopher Poole, aka moot, is giving up as administrator of 4chan. It is not clear who will succeed the twenty-something as administrator of the popular forum. It is unclear whether Poole is also selling ownership of 4chan.

In his farewell post on 4chan, ‘moot’ writes that he had recently shifted many responsibilities to a ‘number of trusted volunteers’. “From the user’s perspective, nothing should change,” said Poole. However, it is not clear who will be the new administrator of the popular site; Poole just says a small team will ensure a smooth transition.

According to Poole, who founded 4chan in 2003 as a 15-year-old, 4chan is in good financial shape and the site is fast and reliable thanks to recent server upgrades. Moreover, the community has never been this big, says ‘Moot’. “That foundation will now be put to the test,” said Poole. It’s unclear if Poole is also selling ownership of the site.

Figures Poole released in his farewell post shows that users on 4chan have generated 42 billion page views since 2003. In total, 1 billion unique visitors have made 1.7 billion posts. 1.2 million people visit the site every day, which means more than 2800 terabytes of data traffic per month.

4chan has been in the news a lot in recent years, especially because of /b/-board, where some users posted child porn. The concept of ‘Anonymous’, the unfettered collective of Ddos’ers and hackers, was also largely created on 4chan. Several DDoS attacks were coordinated via the website. Also, the nude photos of celebrities that leaked last year were initially posted on 4chan before moderators removed the posts.