in my mind, the chronology was that 4chan had a board called /news/ which was shutdown because it was a community for racists. Then Poole publicly and in-person confronted the owner of Encyclopedia Dramatica, accusing her of censorship for deleting racism. He realized it looked hypocritical that he also shut down a board, so he says it wasn’t the racism itself he opposed, but that the racism was off-topic to a news board, so he created a politics board where racism wouldn’t be off-topic.
Pretty sure this is accurate. TBH I wouldn’t be surprised if this had more to do with Nikolic, the other person in these emails. Used to be a tech advisor for Bill Gates and seems to have already known Moot. They meet up and he launches /pol/ a few days later.
in my mind, the chronology was that 4chan had a board called /news/ which was shutdown because it was a community for racists. Then Poole publicly and in-person confronted the owner of Encyclopedia Dramatica, accusing her of censorship for deleting racism. He realized it looked hypocritical that he also shut down a board, so he says it wasn’t the racism itself he opposed, but that the racism was off-topic to a news board, so he created a politics board where racism wouldn’t be off-topic.
Please point out if any part of this is wrong.
Pretty sure this is accurate. TBH I wouldn’t be surprised if this had more to do with Nikolic, the other person in these emails. Used to be a tech advisor for Bill Gates and seems to have already known Moot. They meet up and he launches /pol/ a few days later.
Yeah IIRC this tracks. I know /pol/ was created for containment, but it obviously didn’t work because more racists flocked to the site.
It gave them critical mass to reinforce each other.