Winning the sympathy of young Japanese who feel oppressed by their country’s rigid rules, Hiroyuki Nishimura has become hugely famous in Japan, a celebrated entrepreneur, author, and commentator so ubiquitous that people simply call him Hiroyuki.
In some two dozen books and hundreds of magazine columns, he has encouraged fans to be more selfish, to no longer care about other people’s opinions, to work less, and to manipulate the system.
Originally famous for his role in developing popular internet sites, he has become a national anti-hero by expressing his opposing views. But there’s one thing Nishimura, 46, isn’t so eager to tackle: his ownership of 4chan, the anonymous online message board.
His candor about almost everything else, however, offers a glimpse into his operation of a site that has emerged as a conduit for some of the most noxious ideas on the internet.
“I think about my decisions now and about the future without reference to morality, and then I take action,” said Nishimura, in a 2007 interview in Spa, a Japanese magazine.
“Normal people have morals, so they will probably say that a way of thinking like mine is strange.”
That perspective seems to have guided him at 4chan and its Japanese predecessor, 2channel. As described in court documents, interviews and his writings, Nishimura followed a manual for 2channel that appears to have become a template for his successor: do as little as possible to control the site and reject any demands to change it.
Since Nishimura took the reins, 4chan users have spawned the QAnon movement, spread conspiracies about anti-Covid vaccines and the 2020 US election, and helped radicalize mass shooters.
Nishimura has said that it merely satisfies a demand for media where people can exercise their freedom of expression.
Nishimura created 2channel, an anonymous message board, in 1999 while a student at the University of Central Arkansas. By May 2000, the portal had already become infamous, after a user posted a cryptic message about an urban truck in southern Japan and then kidnapped it, stabbing three people and killing one.
The episode captivated Japan. New users flooded the site, and Nishimura found himself unapologetically explaining his hobby to a nation just assimilating to the internet. “We do not live in a utopia,” he told the Japanese magazine Flash in 2002.
The site blossomed into a powerhouse of free and eccentric cyberculture. While most users talked about hobbies or complained about work, others threatened to kill and spawned conspiracy theories.
As Nishimura raked in as much as $100,000 a month from the site, he also became adept at dodging its costs. By his own account, he was sued more than 100 times over postings.
However, in 2013, he lost control of 2channel in a dispute with a friend.
About two years later, Nishimura acquired 4chan from an American named Christopher Poole. The site had been the birthplace of some of the earliest internet memes like Rickroll and LOLcats.
It had a darker side, however, spawning Gamergate — a campaign of harassment that flooded women in the video game industry with threats — and the misogynistic culture of incel, or involuntary celibacy.
By 2014, Poole was eager to sell. Unlike Poole, Nishimura has rarely answered questions about 4chan. Its ownership is hidden behind a corporate veil, and it is managed by anonymous moderators bound to silence by confidentiality agreements.
In a report on a massacre last spring at a Buffalo supermarket, the New York Attorney General noted that 4chan “operates outside of the efforts of other online platforms to curb hate speech and graphic content that contributes to the hate cycle.” white supremacist violence.
In a manifesto posted to 4chan, the shooter wrote that he had been radicalized by white supremacist conspiracy theories he had first seen there. He said he was inspired by a 4chan video of the 2019 massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand.
While other sites made it more difficult to post such content, 4chan pretty much sat idly by, the report stated.
By: BEN DOOLEY and HISAKO UENO
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6532879, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-01-16 21:30:07
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