Impact and Activity
In 2008, Leopoldo Godoy of Brazilian TV Globo called Poole's 4chan "the ground zero of Western web culture." In April 2009, Poole was voted the world's most influential person of 2008 by an open Internet poll conducted by Time magazine. The results were questioned even before the poll completed, as automated voting programs and manual ballot stuffing were used to influence the vote. 4chan's interference with the vote seemed increasingly likely, when it was found that reading the first letter of the first 21 candidates in the poll spelled out a phrase containing two 4chan memes: "mARBLECAKE. ALSO, THE GAME."
On September 12, 2009, Poole gave a talk on why 4chan has a reputation as a "Meme Factory" at the Paraflows Symposium in Vienna, Austria, which was part of the Paraflows 09 festival, themed Urban Hacking. In this talk, Poole mainly attributed this to the anonymous system, and to the lack of data retention on the site ("The site has no memory.").
On February 10, 2010, Poole spoke at the TED2010 conference in Long Beach, California. He spoke about the increasing prevalence of persistent user identities and the sharing of personal information on sites like Facebook and Twitter and he also spoke about the value of anonymous posting on sites like 4chan. Fred Leal of the Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo said his inclusion in the conference "indicates that something extraordinary is happening... challenges every Internet convention: it is, alone, the antithesis of Google, social networking sites, and blogs."
In 2010, Poole was reported to have raised $625,000 to create a new online enterprise, Canvas. The website opened on January 31, 2011, and features digitally modified images uploaded by users who are required to self-identify using Facebook Connect.
In April 2010, Poole gave evidence in the trial United States of America v. David Kernell as a government witness. As a witness, Poole explained the terminology used on 4chan to the prosecutor, ranging from "OP" to "lurker." He also explained to the court the nature of the data given to the FBI as part of the search warrant, including how users can be uniquely identified from site audit logs.
In a 2010 interview, Poole discussed his belief in the value of multiple identities, including anonymity, in contrast to the merge of online and real-world identities occurring on Facebook and many other social networking sites.
In November 2012, Poole sent a cease and desist letter to Moot.It, an internet startup.
Read more about this topic: Christopher Poole
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