In the U.S., His Site Has Been Linked to Massacres. In Japan, He’s a Star.

“I think about my current choices and about the future without reference to morals, then take action,” he said in a 2007 interview in Spa, a Japanese magazine. “Normal people have morals, so they’d probably say thinking like mine is strange.”

That outlook seems to have guided Mr. Nishimura in running both 4chan and its Japanese predecessor, 2chan. As described in court records, interviews and dozens of his books and other writings, Mr. Nishimura, 46, followed a playbook for 2chan that seems to have become a template for its successor: Do as little as possible to control the site and rebuff any demands to change it.

He constantly operated at the knife’s edge of the rules, and even as pressure from Japanese society and the courts mounted, he refused to budge, arguing that he was not doing anything illegal.

When interviewers over the years asked about his responsibility for the site, Mr. Nishimura — who, despite his prodigious output, relishes portraying himself as a slacker — repeatedly said that managing 2chan was “boring” or “too much trouble.” If people have a problem with its content, he added, they should ask Parliament to change the law.

Pressed on the issue in 2001, he responded that he had “no feeling of responsibility” for the site’s content, adding that its most active users should make their own rules.

“I provide a space, but I tell people, ‘You all decide what you do inside it.’”

‘Bad Things’

In 2015, when Mr. Nishimura bought 4chan, he did something he has rarely done since: He answered questions about his vision for the site.

It was already one of the internet’s most notorious corners. But if he could make just one change, he told users, it would be for more interesting things to happen there, “even bad things.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/18/business/4chan-hiroyuki-nishimura.html