Monitoring Activity in Altchans

Background

On the 14-15 April 2025 (depending on time zone), 4chan went offline following a hack. The hacker was linked to the Soyjak Party (soyjak.st), a competing imageboard that was created in 2020 due to a (justified) dislike of 4chan jannies (janitors), who were accused of banning users and deleting content too quickly, culminating in the locking of the /qa/ board in 2021. The hacker leaked the source code and the email addresses of the jannies. The 4chan admins responded by taking the server offline. On 25 April, 4chan returned after being offline for 10 days (blog post) During the downtime, I was curious to see where 4chan's 22 million users had found refuge. Did they just turn off their computer and go outside, did they spend more time on Reddit, Instagram and X, or did they migrate to one one of the many "altchans" (alternatives to 4chan)? I had a look around the various altchans to see where activity increased the most during 4chan's downtime and also how the numbers changed again after its return. The big table below lists several altchans, looking at their posts per day per board.

What's an imageboard?

It is a bit like a forum but with several important differences:

• Users can (and are encouraged to) upload pictures or videos alongside their posts. The picture doesn't have to add value to the discussion, it can also just be a meme or a reaction image.
• User post anonymously, with no accounts or usernames. This means discussion are both more honest, with people voicing their real opinions on controversial topics (as you don't have a "reputation" to keep) and at the same time it encourages shitfunposting, trolling, pretending to be multiple people and so on.
• There are no likes, there is no karma, and if you ever get banned you just come back with a new IP. This means people feel free to speak their mind and don't need to fear the mods or the opinion of the majority.
• Posts are ephemeral; there are a limited amount of allowed threads on any given board and for each new thread made an old one gets deleted or archived. Often, there are bump limits as well, meaning that after a certain number of posts, a thread won't be bumped to the front page again and will inevitably get archived once enough other threads have been bumped or created; this means even the most popular thread can't live forever.

Terminology: an imageboard is the website (or strictly speaking the forum software), altchans are all those imageboards that are not 4chan, and boards are the "sub-forums" on an imageboard focusing on a certain topic. In each board, people can make threads to which other users can reply (posts). The jannies work for free, deleting posts and asking mods to ban IP addresses of users who break the rules.

Inclusion criteria

1. The columns show a selection of 8 altchans which offer a selection of diverse boards on all kinds of topics; therefore altchans that mostly cover a certain topic don't get their own column. The 8 altchans listed cover at least 14 of the topics that 4chan covers, while the rest cover at most 9 topics. I am monitoring many more altchans (see below for the list) but for them only very active boards are mentioned in the "Other" column at the end of the table.
2. For the "Other" column, the table only shows boards with more than 50 posts per day for on-topic boards and 100 posts per day for off-topic boards such as /b/.
3. Only boards in the English language are included. Therefore, some imageboards like the Japanese 2chan.net (the original inspiration for 4chan), the Russian 9chan, or the Polish Ziemniachan and Karachan are excluded completely. For others, like the Russian Dvach (2ch.hk), the German Kohlchan, or the Finnish Ylilauta, only the English-language /int/ board is considered.
4. Boards shown below must be relevant and matching the selection of 4chan boards in the table below, so many boards on altchans that don't have a 4chan equivalent aren't shown. (e.g. if an altchan has an /ai/ board this is ignored as 4chan doesn't have one).
5. Niche boards are only shown if the "main" topic is also represented. For example, if an altchan only has a programming board, but not a general technology board (both would be covered by 4chan /g/) this programming board is ignored. Or if an altchan only has a KPOP board but not a general music board (like 4chan's /mu/, which includes KPOP discussions), this is ignored. But if the altchan has a /mu/ and /kpop/ board, then I would include both and sum up their posts to compare against 4chan's /mu/ board. Likewise, I have ignored all political boards that are not meant for general politics discussion (normally called /pol/ or similar), so for example anything that is meant for discussion of a specific ideology or political topic is ignored. The biggest example would be 8kun.top's /qresearch/ board. Likewise, anything with a name like /libertarian/ or /marxist/ or /fascist/ is ignored
6. Some altchans like 8chan.moe, 8kun.top or endchan.org allow users to create their own boards, therefore there are hundreds or thousands of boards. Obviously, they can't all be included and most of them are dead anyway. In general, I have ignored any boards with less than 750 posts (as of end of April 2025), and if multiple boards for the same topic exist I sometimes excluded the less active ones.

Data source

1. The preferred method is looking at the number of the latest post at different days and times to calculate the posting frequency for different times.
2. marge.moe, a website which tracks the activity of several altchans.
3. Some altchans publish by-board "post per hour/day" (PPH/PPD) overview. Unfortunately, often only PPH is shown, which is a relatively useless figure as it will fluctuate a lot during a 24h period.
4. As a last resort, (which only applies to Ylilauta where post numbers appear to be global rather than by board), it is possible to manually count the number of threads and replies made in the last x hours and estimate the PPD from there.

Caveats

• Posting activity is always just a snapshot and will fluctuate during different times of the day or might be higher on certain days e.g. weekends.
• Some imageboards have more bots inflating the post count, for example Soyjak.st has a relatively lax captcha and similarly the post count for 8chan.moe's /vg/ board was inflated by spam messages from the same ID until they enabled per post captchas. On the other hand, some imageboards are very strict and even prevent actual users from posting, for example by banning certain countries or not allowing posting from a VPN or Tor, or - in 4chan's case - discouraging posting with timers or requiring email verification to post.
• As mentioned above, some boards on an altchan may not correspond directly to a 4chan board, for example discussion that is covered one 4chan board might be split into multiple smaller boards on altchans (e.g. /a/ becomes several anime-related boards) or, vice versa, multiple 4chan boards can be combined into one board (e.g. /mu/ and /tv/ merged into a /media/ board). The former (several smaller boards) might mean an altchan is less likely to appear in the table below as none of the boards managed to reach the posting threshold (50 PPD) to appear in the "Other" column, even if they would have been active enough when summing up their PPDs; the latter (have a few larger boards with a broader scope) might overstate the actual activity. In most cases I have not bothered to make a true "like-for-like" comparison.

Monitored altchans

I am currently monitoring the activity across 40 imageboards.

Activity of Altchans

Source: eylenburg.github.io
last updated: 2025.05.09

Legend:

So, what's the conclusion?

The 4chan hack and subsequent 10-day downtime in April 2025 significantly disrupted its user base, prompting a temporary migration to various altchans. Data from the pre-hack period, during the downtime, and one and two weeks after 4chan's return reveals notable shifts in posting activity. During the downtime most altchans experienced substantial increases in posts per day (PPD) across multiple boards, absorbing a significant portion of 4chan's displaced users. For instance, Soyjak.st's /soy/ + /qa/ boards surged from 10,225 PPD to 25,375 PPD, and 8chan.moe's various video game boards jumped from 325 PPD to 45,900 PPD and its Vtuber board grew by almost 12,000 PPD. While Soyjak.st and 8chan.moe emerged as primary refuges, niche altchans managed to capture specific communities, such as holotower.org for Vtubers (22,925 PPD), kohlchan.net for /int/ernational discussions (10,750 PPD), Plus4chan.org for comics and Smuglo.li for anime. However, the limited activity on hobby and interest boards across altchans suggests that many of 4chan's boards lack popular alternatives (e.g., /g/, /fit/, /lit/). Some altchans had been positioning themselves as alternatives for specific interests, such as TVch.moe for /tv/, Petrarchan.com for /lit/ or Lainchan.org for /g/, but they only experienced moderate activity during 4chan''s downtime.

One week after 4chan's return, its PPD recovered but did not fully rebound to pre-hack levels. For example, the various video game boards together dropped from 210,075 PPD pre-hack to 165,150 PPD, /pol/ fell from 89,475 PPD to 71,475 PPD, and /biz/ even shrank to less than half of its pre-hack activity. This suggests some users either remained active on altchans or reduced their overall imageboard activity. Many altchans retained somewhat elevated activity compared to pre-hack levels, with Soyjak.st's /soy/ + /qa/ at 13,475 PPD (still above the pre-hack 10,225 PPD) and 8chan.moe's video game boards at 23,450 PPD (down from 45,900 PPD but significantly above the previous 325 PPD). Holotower.org's /hlgg/ board notably increased to 24,100 PPD, surpassing its downtime peak, indicating strong retention for Vtuber discussions (whereas 4chan's /vt/ PPD did not fully recover).

During the second week after 4chan's return, most altchan boards experienced a further decline in posts per day, though some showed resilience or even growth. Notable winners during the second week post-return included Soyjak.st's /soy/ board and Heolkek.cafe's /ot/ board. 4chan's /pol/ board also saw a significant rebound, while the politics boards on altchans declined further. Significant losers included Soyjak.st's /pol/, which plummeted from 5,150 PPD to 525 PPD, and 8chan.moe's video game boards (/v/, /gacha/, /vb/, /vg/), which dropped from 23,450 PPD to 13,100 PPD. Holotower.org's /hlgg/ (Vtubers) also saw a notable decline from 24,100 PPD to 19,450 PPD, though it remained highly active. Many smaller boards across all altchans continued to shrink, often sinking below the 50 PPD threshold and now often barely surpassing their pre-hack PPD. Hobby and interest boards (e.g., /g/, /fit/, /lit/) on altchans remain underdeveloped and are unlikely to reach critical mass anytime soon. Nevertheless, most altchans remain more active than they were before the hack, indicating some retention of users who perhaps discovered these websites during the hack and now continue visiting them once in a while. 4chan's boards, while still recovering 2 weeks after the return, tend to remain below their pre-hack PPDs, suggesting either a permanent loss of some users or at least reduced engagement. For instance, 4chan's video games boards dropped from 210,075 PPD to 169,150 PPD, /vt/ from 64,825 PPD to 32,900 PPD, and /a/ from 33,875 PPD to 26,300 PPD.

While 4chan remains the dominant imageboard, the hack exposed its user base's willingness to explore alternatives - but for the majority of users it also showed a lack of coordination and insufficient knowledge of other imageboards I wonder what would have happened if 4chan had been offline for a month or longer - or forever. Would another imageboard have emerged as the dominant one, would users have split their time across multiple imageboards, would certain niche imageboards have managed to assert themselves for their specific community, or would people just move to Reddit, X or traditional forums?

I hope this table might serve as some sort of starting point for where to shelter in case of another 4chan downtime, or which alternatives to check out today.

I intend to update this table regularly to see the changes over time.