Who knew A Minecraft Movie would make so many waves? Even if 13-year-olds had an inkling, they likely never could have predicted today’s news. The live-action adventure has already fueled both the worst moviegoing trend and best box office weekend of the year. Now, it may go down in history as the very last thing referenced on one of the worst websites to ever grace the internet: 4chan.
This one small aspect of our long national nightmare may be over. The anonymous message board that spurred on such gems as QAnon, mass shootings, flat Earth conspiracies, the manosphere, and a whole lot of white supremacist bullshit appears to have been hacked. The attack seems to have stemmed from a rival forum called Soyjak.party, per Wired, which may have gained access through outdated servers used by 4chan. This morning, the group posted screenshots allegedly showing 4chan’s backend systems, as well moderator usernames and associated email addresses that were supposed to remain private. (Remember, 4chan’s whole thing is anonymity.)
Wired was not able to confirm the legitimacy of the leak, but one of the site’s moderators said they believed the information was real, per a TechCrunch report. If it is, the impact of the leak could be far-reaching. Experts interviewed by Wired predicted that the information could be used by law enforcement or even 4chan’s own base. “There might be some ‘high profile’ users exposed as moderators—traditionally, 4chan users hate them, so they might be targeted,” said University of California, Riverside computer science and engineering professor Emiliano De Cristofaro. “It might be hard or at least painfully slow and costly for 4chan to recover from this, so we might really see the end of 4chan as we know it.”
If that is the case (the site is down as of this writing), its last ever post may be the words “CHICKEN JOCKEY,” as shown in the screenshot, via Splinter, below. Seems a fitting funeral for a hotbed of hate speech that deserved a lot more than popcorn chucked at it.