Christopher Poole

How do you justify rallying against the lack of anonymity that Facebook provides and then requiring it for your next project?

I think it's important to understand the difference between advocating for anonymous contribution, and a pro-anonymity-is-the-only-way!!!!! zealot. (I'm the former!)

I want the public to understand the importance of having the option to contribute anonymously. At SXSW, I focused on anonymous authenticity, and the creativity that anonymity allows for. The ability to fail quietly without having that failure associated with your name/identity allows for more experimentation and limit pushing. People also contribute in a totally raw, unfiltered way, that I'd argue is more authentic than real-ID.

That said, there are times where you do want to know who that other person is, and where real-ID is preferable. A good example is news websites and YouTube, where the comment quality is often terrible. Facebook rolled out their Comments product recently, and TechCruch, which has had a lot of trouble in the past keeping comments on track, adopted it and and it radically improved their comment quality.

So to sum it up: There isn't one way of doing anything. I'm not saying everywhere online should be anonymous, nor do I think everywhere should use read-ID. I just want options! And for people to understand how valuable anonymity can be, and why it's worth protecting.

PS: As we've said before, Facebook Connect on Canvas is temporary. We're only planning to use it for the private beta period, and hope to see you on the site once we're out of beta. Thanks for bearing with us!

Not entirely, but there isn't much that fazes me at this point.

None. It's just me, a volunteer part-time developer, and a handful of volunteer moderators and janitors. The volunteers all do an incredible job, and don't get nearly enough credit for their hard work. Hats off to them!

Have you ever used your status to try to pick up women? If so, did those women turn out to have penises?

Haha no. I don't go out much and rarely drink/don't visit bars. I'm not sure where else people meet women?

has anyone ever recognised you on the street?

Yes, it happens regularly, depending on where I walk. Areas with lots of college students/young people can be a minefield, so I tend to avoid them.

do you actually feel like you 'connect' with the memes (ie do you feel like you're part of the 4chan community), or do you find them not funny and insignificant?

Absolutely. I've been using 4chan daily for seven and a half years—the humor and culture definitely resonates with me.

oh and do you ever post in 4chan as an anon?

Of course! I've had to more and more over the years, since a single post by me can derail a thread in an instant.

How have you gotten away with hosting a site that consistently has child pornography posted on it? Have there been serious attempts to shut it down?

How is the site monitored - do you forward illegal material and IP info to the FBI?

4chan gets almost one million posts per day, hundreds of thousands of which are images. As with any large UGC site a very, very small percentage of these posts end up being contraband or questionable content. We have a team of volunteers who do an excellent job removing prohibited content, including CP, which is then automatically reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's CyberTipline.

NCMEC acts as a clearing house and forwards reports to the appropriate law enforcement. This is how all major ISPs and online service providers do it. Here's the law.

Has anyone gotten arrested for posting illegal content?

Yes. Anyone who posts illegal content on 4chan is an idiot.

Hahahahaha.

I've met Mark a couple times, and we've messaged before. Every interaction has been positive. I don't agree with everything Facebook does or his stance on identity, but he's a nice and extremely smart guy who believes in what he's doing.

On the day it was founded, 4chan was posted to the anime sub-forum of Something Awful and so many of the first users from from there, but the site itself is 100% based on a Japanese site called Futaba Channel, or 2chan.net.

Futaba Channel is in turn based on 2channel (2ch.net), which is a huge text BBS that's inspired a lot of the anonymous and otaku culture in Japan.

I had the opportunity to meet 2channel's founder, Hiroyuki Nishimura at SXSW Interactive this year, and it was a real treat. Here's a profile on him from Wired: link

His name is Seymour :)