Flash Report: Claims of 4chan’s Death Were Greatly Exaggerated
4chan was compromised and went offline for 10 days, it has since returned as of April 25, 2025, with similar levels of activity.
TLDR:
4chan went offline for 10 days in mid-April after a reported hack compromised the site. At the time, many researchers and reporters wondered whether 4chan would return, or if it would manage to attract major traffic again if it did. An analysis by Open Measures determined that both those questions can be confidently answered “yes.”
Context
4chan, an anonymous imageboard platform known for its users’ aggressive behavior and far-right politics, went dark on April 15 amid claims that it had been hacked by users of a rival imageboard.1 In addition to knocking the platform offline for 10 consecutive days, the breach also appeared to expose personal information about some of 4chan’s previously anonymous moderators.2
In the months before the breach, Open Measures was recording upwards of 550,000 posts per day on 4chan. On April 15, that number fell to zero when the site went offline and remained there until it returned on April 25. With these figures in mind, Open Measures examined the last six months of our 4chan data to assess whether user activity on the platform had returned to high levels since the mid-April hack.
4chan’s Rebound
In the wake of the hack, some reporters and researchers expressed skepticism that 4chan would ever return to its prior stature in online discourse, assuming it came back online at all.3 On April 25, the platform reemerged and has since reclaimed its position near the epicenter of toxic online discourse.4
The first day 4chan came back online, Open Measures recorded that users shared over 230,000 posts. On the next, they shared over 450,000. The number of daily posts gradually increased over the next month, and by May 28, we found that the site was again seeing more than 550,000 posts per day—amounts similar to those in our dataset before the April hacking incident.
What We’re Watching
Open Measures’ analysis illustrates that 4chan users maintained a resilient community, returning to the platform as soon as they were able. Early speculation that the site would struggle to return to its prior stature proved unwarranted and potentially under-indexed its users’ commitment to the platform. Today, 4chan users have resumed posting hundreds of thousands of posts on the platform per day, just as they had before the April security breach.
The platform’s users have also reaffirmed their role as a source of online harms. Since the offline period, its users have been at the center of a separate data breach involving stolen material from the Tea app,5 which sought to provide women with a safe way of sharing information about potentially dangerous romantic partners.
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Satter, R. (2025, April 15). Notorious internet messageboard 4chan has been hacked, posts claim | reuters. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/notorious-internet-messageboard-4chan-has-been-hacked-posts-claim-2025-04-15/
Newman, M. B. L. H. (2025, April 15). Suspected 4chan hack could expose longtime, Anonymous Admins. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/2025-4chan-hack-admin-leak/
Broderick, R. (2025, April 22). 4chan is dead. its toxic legacy is everywhere. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/4chan-is-dead-its-toxic-legacy-is-everywhere/
Collier, K., & Yang, A. (2025, July 29). Tea app hacked: 13,000 photos leaked after 4chan call to action. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tea-app-hacked-13000-photos-leaked-4chan-call-action-rcna221139
Ibid.