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4chan, a popular online forum frequented by young men and gamers, recently experienced a service outage in April 2025. This disruption occurred following similar incidents affecting several other social media platforms in recent months, raising concerns about widespread technical issues. Immediately after the 4chan outage began, users online started to speculate about a potential cyberattack. The question remains: is 4chan still inaccessible, and was it indeed hacked?
Delve into further details about the internet forum below.
What is 4chan?
Launched in 2003 by entrepreneur and internet enthusiast Christopher Poole during his teenage years, 4chan initially served as a platform for enthusiasts to discuss anime and manga. Over time, it transformed into an imageboard where users, including those with far-right viewpoints, have shared contentious content. Moderators have typically removed the majority of inappropriate images and memes that circulated on the platform.
Notably, 4chan’s user base is primarily composed of young males. A particularly controversial episode on the site was “Gamergate” in 2014, marked by male users disseminating a barrage of misogynistic messages and campaigns aimed at women. The fallout from Gamergate led to the creation of 8chan, a separate online platform, although it is not affiliated with 4chan’s ownership.
Reasons Behind the 4chan Downtime
Reports concerning 4chan’s disruption surged, exceeding 1,100, during the evening of April 14, 2025. While reports diminished the next day, the website remained unavailable for numerous users throughout the afternoon of April 15.
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As of this report, 4chan has not publicly disclosed the underlying cause of the website’s outage. However, as many internet users are aware, numerous technology and social media platforms have faced significant disruptions recently. These include Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, as well as X, previously known as Twitter. In March 2025, X’s owner, Elon Musk, attributed his platform’s downtime to a cyberattack.
Speculation of a 4chan Hack
Whether 4chan was subjected to a hacking incident remains unconfirmed, but rumors regarding a potential cyberattack rapidly circulated across social media. On Reddit, one user posted speculation that, while not verified, 4chan’s “source code, usernames, email addresses, and potentially even IP addresses have been compromised.”
4chan has not issued any public statement to address the hacking speculations as of this publication.