4chan has been hacked by a rival website called "SoyjakParty". A user on SoyjakParty posted a screenshot in which they appeard to have access to admin panels. Many things were revealed in the hack, most notably being the IP address and email of each moderator/janny on 4chan, and what board they were assigned to. It was also revealed that jannies have their own private board (/j/) where they can talk to each other. There are also private ban reasons. One user was banned for calling people "jews" and "faggots" too many times, but they were told that they were banned for unrelated reasons. Private IRC messages were leaked, the 4chan source code was leaked, and 4chan went down.
All of this happened because 4chan was running extremely outdated software. It seemed as if the software had not been updated since moot (the creator of 4chan) sold 4chan to the new owner. As of right now, 4chan is still down. 4chan has commented about the situation on Twitter, stating that it will take time to get 4chan up and running again.
4chan is obviously a fed honeypot. It has been that way for years. I think 4chan will come back online very soon, and people will continue to use it. Do not use 4chan. Not only is it a fed honeypot, but it also has several other issues. Many people complain about the fact that they've been unfairly banned. 4chan does not allow you to use a VPN/proxy to post on their website. Many posts on 4chan are written by AI/LLMs. There's a super long cooldown to post on 4chan if you don't verify your email or purchase a 4chan pass. Any 4chan board that allows pornography is riddled with complete degeneracy, which I guess makes sense.
Some have pointed out the fact that you need to provide your government ID to 4chan administrators to become a mod/janny. After doing some research, I believe this is because 4chan once unknowingly allowed minors to become jannies, so they require people to send their ID to an admin to become a janny to prevent minors from becoming jannies. Regardless, why would you want to become a janny on 4chan of all places? Why would you want to be a janny in general? Do you not have a job/hobby?
4chan was probably a lot better before moot sold it. I say "probably" because I never used the site until long after moot had sold 4chan. I rarely ever visit 4chan in the first place, but after this hack, I see no reason to continue using it. I hope to see other imageboards/forums to grow, but normies are cattle and they prefer social media sites that spy on them and sell their data.