Nanochan

Old Nanochan homepage.

Nanochan was an anonymous imageboard only accessible via Tor, last seen active in November 2022. It had several boards for you to post on, including a /g/ board. In 2021, Nanochan discontinued its long-running /pol/ board for undisclosed reasons.

TLS information

HTTPS was recommended as it allows your browser to use HTTP/2. The SHA256 TLS fingerprint for the current (Sun 20 Feb 2022 09:43:49 AM UTC) v3 address was:

41:E2:7B:BE:85:06:15:B0:B3:AB:CE:D5:38:33:78:7A: E5:B2:7A:79:0E:B1:38:AA:85:1C:95:5B:7F:DC:33:C2

History

Origin

Nanochan was created in October 2018 by a user known as "hakase" and advertised on 8chan /tech/ (first thread, second thread). At that time, the imageboard software was a very small script written in Lua. The codebase was praised by the userbase for being relatively feature-rich and simple in design, while not requiring any JavaScript and being accessible through Tor.

In the subsequent days more is revealed of the reasons behind hakase creating nanochan. It seems that he created it because he was unhappy with 8chan /pol/'s lenient moderation, but even though his focus was on making a politics board few users from 8/pol/ migrated, since many /pol/ users were sceptical of Tor. Instead many come from 8/tech/ attracted by the minimal design. It was also shilled at mewch so maybe some came from there too.

A culture of avatarfagging, the act of marking your posts with an avatar, which is a bannable offense on 4chan, began increasing during May to March of 2019. The 4 prevalent avatarfags were umarufag, asukafag, starfag, lainfag. Asukafag begins gaining infamy due to common thread derailing, hapa propaganda, and attacking other users. He claims to be the one responsible for the "HAPAS ARE SUPERIOR TO WHITES" spam on 8chan that resulted in many boards imposing restrictions on posting from Tor. Hakase refuses to do anything about avatarfagging and /o/ and /k/ get created.

Under sakamoto

In May 2019, hakase announced his retirement, stating he was "no longer interested in hosting this pile of flaming garbage any longer, the software is too shitty and I've made too many irreversible mistakes in moderation and administration". The site was then handed over to its second administrator, who in June 2019 would name himself sakamoto. In August 2019 the deplatforming of 8chan would cause significant spill over, especially from /pol/. The influx of refugees caused low-effort posting and spamming, eventually sakamoto hid /pol/ from public view, but it was still kept accessible with the link.

From September 2019 to end of October 2019 tensions between asukafag and the moderation rose, with asukafag copying threads from 4chan and otherwise spamming Nanochan. He was banned and however the strict enforcement of this ban was difficult. Sometime during November to December, asukafag started a nanochan clone running picochan, nanochang. The site is since dead.

Under endofunctor

In December 2019, sakamoto passed the admin position to endofunctor, then a moderator of the board. Endofunctor rewrote most of the site's code in C++, except for the moderation tools, which were left dependent on the old Lua version. He also promised a Rust rewrite that never got finished, but angered asukafag. Endofunctor claimed to have lost the password to the server with the code leaving the server in a "living dead state" without the ability to make changes. This issue was resolved when Nyanonymous convinced endofunctor to rent a new server and a redirect was set up.

As time passed, endofunctor became less involved with the imageboard he was running. With endofunctor's increasing neglect, the site began experiencing frequent downtime. An issue that would plague the site until its demise was running out of disk space, which could sometimes be corrected by moderators deleting stale files. In May 2020, the moderator Nyanonymous announced he would no longer be enforcing the quality rules on /l/. Although likely a good decision, this set a precedent that moderators could ignore site policies and implement their own. In early June of 2020 /oc/ got created, but activity soon died out. However, it is one of the only boards to have a surviving Youtube video. /watch?v=7XofAvOXMK8

Decline and death

In August 2021, a trial volunteer with limited privileges named hikari was added to the moderation team. He became the site's most active moderator, and began disregarding any rules and moderating as he saw fit. Attempts to correct his behavior resulted in disputes and sometimes revert wars and even deletions of messages by moderators to the absent admin. Eventually, endofunctor would disabled the account until he apologised, which he never did. Hikari returned later under the name of flandre, before being removed again. In November 2021, endofunctor deleted the site's /pol/ board. The reason is unknown, but /pol/ had been subject to an increasing torrent of posts by a user known as "/pol/ schizo" who would samefag threads about killing his enemies' children. Endofunctor would follow this by making extensive changes to the site rules, adding stuff about hate speech, changing the rules into "guidelines," and making the only rule "cancer will be purged."

In May 2022, during an extended downtime, an unknown third party created the site nanochanray with a copy of nanochan's posts up to that point. The site ultimately failed to take off because of overly aggressive moderation, nondisclosure of the source code, and dishonesty with the users, such as maintaining fake moderation logs [2]. It has been speculated, based on the site's moderation policies, that the admin is the same person as the volunteer hikari. When nanochan returned from its downtime, nanochanray was not updated with posts from the old site.

In September 2022, nanochan's moderation functions ceased working, meaning that the efforts of moderators to preserve the site by deleting old files could not continue. The site became increasingly nonfunctional, and was last seen partly operational in November 2022.

Tvol/gvol system

Nanochan's moderation is to note as it was relatively complex. Instead of giving full access to site controls, people were able to apply to be "volunteers" with a PGP key and a name. Volunteers then were able to hide posts and moderators acted on them. Nanochan's moderation log was also publicly viewable, intended to be an audit mechanism.

Rules

These were the Nanochan rules as of Sun 20 Feb 2022 09:43:49 AM UTC:

1. Cancer will be purged.

These were the Nanochan guidelines as of Sun 20 Feb 2022 09:43:49 AM UTC:

1. Child pornography is not permitted. Links to child pornography are not permitted either, and neither are links to websites which contain a significant number of direct links to CP.
2. Flooding is not permitted. We define flooding as posting similar posts more than 3 times per hour, making a thread on a topic for which a thread already exists, or posting in such a way that it significantly changes the composition of a board. Common sense will be utilized.
3. Usage of outside memes such as pepes or wojacks is prohibited. Common sense will be utilized.
4. 3DPD porn is prohibited.

These guidelines apply to all boards on nanochan except /b/ and /l/.

1. Hate towards who people are (such as racism or sexism) or what people are attracted to is prohibited.
2. Discussion of political topics is prohibited. Common sense will be utilized.
3. NSFW thread icons are prohibited.

Individual boards may set their own rules which apply to that board, and boards which do not specify their own rules typically follow the board-specific rules of /l/. However, note that the rules stated above apply to everything done on the website.

External links

• Onion
• Bunker on Endchan (clearnet), admin endorsed [1]
• History of Nanochan (up to 2020) (clearnet)
• Thread advertising nanochan on 8chan
• Second nanochan thread on 8chan
• Database as of 22 Nov 2022

Spinoffs

In nanochan's final years, the site was left in a semi-abandoned state by the last administrator endofunctor, leading to frequent downtime. During this period, multiple spinoff sites were created:

• Lambdaplusjs - Has a /tech/ board, a less active /math/, and miscellaneous blogging threads. Users can create boards, but moderation is decided by the admin and recruited moderators (currently 7 many being former members of Nanochan). Currently active, averaging several hundred PPD^{(July 2023)}. Refer to their wiki page for links and more information.
• Nanochanray - Unofficial nanochan clone with posts copied from the original. Its admin has a documented history of gaslighting users with falsified moderation logs, specifically by rolling back the database to remove posts without adding them to the logs. [2] Numerous wordfilters, including the admin's suspected former moniker "hikari", trigger fake connection errors. Somewhat useful as an archive. Since May 2023, the admin no longer deletes child pornography, instead only allowing the site's trial moderator to hide it. The operator continuously attempts to rewrite history to make his clone appear as the "official" continuation of the original nanochan, including edit warring on this wiki page.

Footnotes

[1] nanon ## Nanochan Administrator, /meta/3770/#post3768: "If the server goes down, I'll be around at the /nc/ board on endchan, or the thread on pigchan." endofunctor # Nanochan Administrator, /l/21579/#post21623: "Remember that there is a third party bunker at http://enxx3byspwsdo446jujc52ucy2pf5urdbhqw3kbsfhlfjwmbpj5smdad.onion/nc/ which I will read if this site goes down." Note that the third-party clone site nanochanray does not endorse the bunker (/othersites.txt on nanoray).

[2] Demonstrable examples can be found on archive.is: shitpost deleted (/b/122092) with nothing in log (/audit.log); in another case, metaposts rolled back (/b/122216). The site now blocks archive.is.

All nanochan posts referenced can be found in copies of its database.