It’s likely that there will never be a site like 4chan again. But everything now—from X and YouTube to global politics—seems to carry its toxic legacy.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20250422233152/https://www.wired.com/story/4chan-is-dead-its-toxic-legacy-is-everywhere/
Why won’t it be back in a week? There’s nothing stopping it from coming back.
Most likely lack of resources. The codebase of the site is so old that it needs a complete rebase, which is a time consuming task. Relaunching without fixing the oustanding flaws is not really an option.
It’s been over a week since it went down, that’s a long time for a website to be down, I think the hackers royally fucked them and it’s hilarious.
There’s a supposed message from one of the admins promising it will return
If it does come back it will likely take ages given much of the 20 year old hacked together source leaked. If they simply relaunched as is it would likely go down again in minutes
And other reasons why “security through obscurity” is bullshit.
From the little I’ve seen about it, the code they were using was basically incredibly old and vulnerable, and the cost and effort required to repair it is a lot.
That’s all based on hearsay though.
It’s entirely likely. That site hasn’t changed a bit in over 2 decades. .
While publicly known external security vulnerabilities may have been found and patched over the years, having the source leaked means a look behind the hood at new weaknesses and a field day with exploiting them.
If 4Chan does come back, I think it will look significantly different.