4chan is down: Hack suspicions grow as commenters turn Downdetector website into an alternate forum

The 4chan website is down and continues not to load for many users, according to Downdetector. (Downdetector is a platform that monitors online services and internet-related issues, and is essentially a crowd-sourced outage-reporting tool.) This outage comes amid unconfirmed reports on social media, including on Reddit, that the internet message board was hacked.

Fast Company has reached out to 4chan for comment and did not hear back immediately.

The outage was first reported on Downdetector at around 9:57 p.m. ET Monday night, and peaked soon after, around 10:12 p.m. ET, when 1,265 users reported the problem. Since then, users have taken to monitoring the platform, turning Downdetector’s comments section into a virtual 4chan chat forum with some 7,464 comments at the time of this reporting.

4chan can best be described as an image board or bulletin board site with a layout similar to Reddit; 4chan is known for controversial, right-wing content, which some critics argue often contains hate speech. Founded in 2003 by then-15-year-old Christopher Poole, it started as a website to share anime and manga among its mostly young male audience, but has been called “a breeding ground for the far right.”

A breach could potentially reveal the identities and opinions of moderators and users, which could be highly compromising, given the nature of the site’s content.

As of this writing, most of the reported problems (71%) had to do with 4chan’s website. Another 24% of users reported problems with the server connection, and another 5% said they could not post.

Outages were registered across the country in a heat map on Downdetector. Here is a list of the cities included:

• Seattle
• Los Angeles
• Phoenix
• San Francisco
• Dallas
• Houston
• Minneapolis
• Chicago
• St. Louis
• Detroit
• Atlanta
• Tampa
• Boston
• New York
• Washington, D.C.

Users also submitted problem reports in Canada: in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Clarification: This story has been updated with the phrase “a layout similar to Reddit” to add context with regard to 4chan’s site design.