4chan vs Tumblr

https://synergies.substack.com/p/the-4chan-tumblr-war-never-ended

"In 2014, two online communities went to war. The belligerents were fairly niche social media boards: 4chan and Tumblr. While their short-lived conflict amounted to little more than a curious moment in Internet history, I have become convinced that it actually set the stage for everything that has come to pass since: the devolution of American political life into a relentless, grinding, culture war, climaxing with the near-total victory of the right following the reelection of Donald Trump. At the time, neither online community was particularly influential or relevant outside of very-online internet circles, but in the intervening decade, their echos have spread throughout our culture, ultimately subsuming the American left and right and remaking them in their respective images. The American right in the year 2025 essentially has become an extension of 4chan, and it’s politically incorrect subforums /pol and /b. Similarly, the American left has become completely fixated on the brand of quasi-academic intersectional social theory (now called “wokeness”) that first exploded on Tumblr in the early 2010s."

What will come out of Sofie Channel? New cohesion or more partisan strife?

I know the investors in both 4chan and tumblr -- it's the same people. I know the employees. They're very similar.

So much of what happens with the platforms isn't due to the creators -- but due to the audiences that adopt them.

It's in part because the founders don't really think too much about the philosophy or the impact -- but mainly busy themselves with the formulas of maximizing growth.

It's also interesting to hear the founder of 4chan talk about how it came to be:
https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online/

The difference with Sophie Chan is advisory voting with admin at the top. Unlike 4chan or Tumblr, admin can very much influence the direction of the platform, without having to use censorship to do it.

I’m glad you brought up 4chan vs tumblr. Its one of the things that convinced me to do sofiechan. Basically what we see there is that internet forums are actually massively overpowered as political and social platforms, but seem to be quite hard to control. Another aspect is that they are hard to defend. It is easy for bad actors from outside the community to create a lot of chaos and demoralization, and hard for the admin to keep things moving in a productive direction.

So i got thinking, how can the community defend itself against shills and raids, and how can the admin steer the community towards positive or at least strategically coherent uses of their immense energy? The solution i came is with is advisory voting: you have votes, but we take them on advisement and heed them according to how much we like you as a member of the community and how much your votes are good signals of the desired direction. So crowdsourced moderation, but not populist like reddit and therefore also not in need of any special third party class of moderators or jannies to keep a lid on things. Friction between mods and both admin and community are a constant source of jannie drama, so advisory voting kills that bird as well with the same stone.

The result, hopefully, will be a community driven high energy platform with a ton of potential to shape our worldviews and society, but also has a legitimate and coherent governance structure by which it can avoid the worst pitfalls of eg 8chan’s slide into terrorism etc. Hopefully we get the high powered cyber-polis that we’ve always seen glimpses of but has never fully materialized. Seems worth a try at least.