4chan has a new owner "Hiroyuki Nishimura"

4chan has a new owner "Hiroyuki Nishimura" - Founder of 2channel

Today I'm pleased to announce that Hiroyuki Nishimura, best known as the founder of 2channel, has taken my place as the owner of 4chan.

Hiroyuki is a pioneer in the world of anonymous communities, and can be thought of as the great-grandfather of 4chan. His creation of 2channel in 1999 sparked an era of anonymous-centric web culture in Japan that led to the creation of Futaba Channel, the site that inspired 4chan. None of us would be using 4chan today—or potentially any anonymous image board—if it weren't for him.

I met Hiroyuki in 2011 and we became fast friends, bonding over our shared passion for creating and managing online communities. He is one of few individuals with a deep understanding of what it means to provide a digital home for tens of millions of people for more than a decade. There is nobody more qualified than Hiroyuki to lead 4chan, and I can't think of a person better suited for the task.

4chan sits on the eve of two great milestones—its 2 billionth post and 12th birthday. It has been a great privilege to serve as 4chan's founder and steward for almost twelve years, and I can't wait to see what lays in store under Hiroyuki's experienced leadership.

–moot

also from https://8ch.net/who.html

I read that N.T. Technology sold the user data of 2channel users, is this true?

No. Hiroyuki Nishimura, the previous administrator of 2ch.net, did that. You can read more about Hiroyuki and why he was fired by Jim here:

http://8ch.net/newspaper/res/3.html

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/2ch_Chronicle

Most primary sources are unfortunately in Japanese.

Let's say I am a datamining company. With only the text data on 4chan, I can get a general idea of what a number of people are interested in, but I can't correlate it with other posts to get a sense of "X likes Y, buys Z, holds political position A about topic B" because all posters are anonymous.

Now let's say I have a deal with the site administrator. He allows me to get the text data of all posts along with the IP address... or a hash of the IP address. All of a sudden I can gain access to analytical data on millions of people on a top 1000 site. I can know what people like by location, etc...

Now, a clever person might say, "oh, well you can't tie this to me personally without subpoenaing my ISP to get my IRL info." To this, the answer is, "who says 4chan is the only site they're datamining from?" You ever find yourself searching for a product on one site, and then finding an ad for it on a totally different site? Your 4chan posts will be providing ammunition for targeted advertisements.

Furthermore, because 4chan will be generating profit based on number of posters, the smart thing for a profiteering Hiro would be "get more newfags." Suddenly 4chan becomes filled with cancer all for the sake of a few extra bucks. Hiro did borrow money to buy this site, after all.