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/
It didn’t have any algorithm for popularity. It was newest first, posts bumped threads to the top, and posts got deleted very quickly when they fell beyond the maximum length. That’s how I remember it working, anyway.
Yes, that’s right.
What I was mostly referring to was
The controversial threads get more posts, so usually they get bumped to the top over and over until the hit the post cap. Being on top also attracts more posts, but seemingly the easiest way to get a newly created thread to succeed and attract posts is by posting something controversial first.
For example if I wanted to talk about Morrowind, and I think that overall most users there like Morrowind, I’d be more likely to have a successful thread/discussion by making a first post that was something like “I can’t believe I fell for the meme that this was actually a good game”. I’ll get more intial responses of people disagreeing with me, and that will help the thread get started. After that the discussion can move on to other things about the game.