4chan is known as the internet’s cesspit, where disturbed individuals let their darkest thoughts flow free.
The forum is one of many harmful content sites not currently being assessed for an age restriction requirement under the looming “social media ban” set for December, because it is not technically social media.
4chan was pulled into the spotlight — in relation to the social media age restrictions for under-16s — by Senator Fatima Payman at a Senate estimates meeting last month, after 4chan reportedly refused to pay a £20,000 fine following a breach of the UK Online Safety Act.
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Despite some confusions about the under-16s social media “ban”, it is far from a cover-all cure for the internet’s ailments.
All it actually sets out to do, at this stage, is delay account activations for young people on a small number of mainstream social media platforms, to curb the impact of dark algorithms on kids.
“I personally believe people should stop complaining about the ban, and start figuring out how they can help,” cyber safety expert and Safe on Social founder Kirra Pendergast told 7NEWS.com.au.
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), Reddit and Kick are the platforms set to change under the first stage of the ban after the latter pair were added to the government list late on Tuesday.
The content hosted on 4chan will be moderated under separate industry codes and standards under the Online Safety Act.
But 4chan’s lawyer, who has long worked at the intersection of free speech and related technology regulation, told 7NEWS.com.au that they are not ones to respond well to censorship.
Byrne & Storm managing partner Preston Byrne told 7NEWS.com.au that while he has not addressed Australia’s e-safety legislation with his US client 4chan, he personally sees the codes and standards as “completely unenforceable in the United States.”
“If your country attempts to enforce it here, you can be sure that Americans will fight your government on it until the sun burns out,” he said.
There is no age restriction technology on 4chan, but netizens who click on a small homepage hyperlink to the 4chan rules are urged not to access the site if they are under 18.
Teen’s ‘incel’ doxxing horror
While 4chan users are anonymous and do not have accounts, the scope for bullying — a key focus for the “ban” — still exists on the platform.
Darla Green* was 15 and attending a NSW school when her personal details, including her home address, were posted on 4chan alongside a fabricated character assassination, and a disturbing call to action: “Go get her.”
“The post claimed that we were in a relationship and that I had cheated on him with his best friend, and none of that was true,” Green told 7NEWS.com.au.
“I got a phone call to my parents’ landline that said ‘your daughter’s a whore’.”
As several messages turned into many more, she began to realise that something bad had happened, but she wouldn’t be sent a link to the 4chan post until some time later.
Before then she would be bombarded on the messaging services commonly used by teens of the time — MSN, and Myspace IM — with abusive anonymous messages “along the lines of ‘you’re a sl*t, f**k you,’ that kind of stuff.”
“It was terrifying,” she said.
Green actually had a fair idea of who had doxxed her on 4chan.
“A fellow student stalked me through most of high school, he was quite jealous and possessive, even though we weren’t in a relationship,” Green said. “We didn’t have the same language for it back then, but he was what we would call an incel now.”
“He was bragging about using 4chan in the hallways where everyone could overhear it.
“Because of his stalking and obsessive behaviour with me, everyone knew it was him, the school knew and couldn’t do anything about it, the police were spoken to but there was nothing they could do about it — there were no consequences whatsoever.
“It wasn’t until after I left high school that I felt like that experience was really behind me.
“I felt nervous about that experience for years afterwards, nervous of retribution from this person, and nervous of this platform that is basically designed for that type of behaviour, and encourages that type of behaviour.”
‘4chan died’
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant summed up 4chan as more of an “image board” than a social media platform when questioned by Payman in the Senate estimates hearing as to why it would not be considered for the “ban”.
More specifically, 4chan is a collection of image boards and comments, hosting relatively immature discussions about everything from Japanese animation, sports, music, memes and kinks to far more more nefarious content.
But there is another reason why eSafety has not yet reached out to 4chan requesting a child safety self-assessment, as it did for Roblox, Reddit, Pinterest and GitHub.
They say “some under-16 users may migrate to other platforms.”
Children barely use the platform anymore, according to eSafety.
“4chan died,” Pendergast told 7NEWS.com.au. “We don’t hear about it much.”
eSafety surveyed more than 2600 children between the age of 10 and 15 about the platforms where they had most recently been exposed to harmful content.
In the top 22 platforms listed in findings, 4chan was nowhere to be seen. YouTube topped the list, followed by TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and then Snapchat.
“Children told us that 75 per cent of this harmful content was encountered on social media. YouTube was the most frequently cited platform in our research with four in 10 children reporting exposure to harmful content there,” the July 2025 report said.
Pendergast discourages others from name-dropping dangerous websites in public discussions to “destabilise the ban” because she said they promote traffic to those very sites.
“As soon as you mention them, kids go looking for them,” she said.
“We need to make sure that there is awareness about these platforms, but we have to make sure that we are not advertising by default. There’s a plethora of them.”
‘God forbid they go to 4chan’
Green understands the sentiment of the ban, and agrees kids need to be protected from online harm, but despite her own experience, she doesn’t actually support “a blanket ban” for such a “complex problem”.
When reminded that the “ban” is actually a delaying of account access, she said the two things are “more or less the same” and summed it up as semantics.
Green also believes kids will “find a way” around the ban, and that user migration will result in them exploring sites “that parents understand even less” and which are less moderated.
“Kids are potentially gonna go to other places to use social media, and god forbid they go to 4chan,” Green said.
When asked about user migration to darker places on the internet, Pendergast said: “They’re already there. If you think they’re not, you’re kidding yourself.”
But Pendergast did say that the ban “is not static” and will expand in response to how the online behaviour of children evolves, and how platforms comply to industry codes and standards.
She said critics of the ban who don’t properly understand it, are not doing anything to help keep children safe.
“Rather than saying, ‘its not going to work, it’s not going to work’, what if we all chipped in to help? Isn’t the whole thing about keeping kids safe online, not about arguing over and politicising it?” she said.
Pendergast has been educating school kids about cyber safety for years and has “seen every trick in the book” when it comes to manoeuvring around internet restrictions, but she said she still sees merit in “doing your best” to protect them.
Education key to ban’s success
The public was only given one day to make submissions to the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, and Green believes the ban was “rushed through”.
The ban is limited by specific conditions outlined in the legislation to define an “age-restricted social media platform”.
One thing Pendergast and Green both agree on is that the ban must be partnered with education, parental responsibility for their own internet literacy and communication between parents and children.
“If (the education) is not gonna happen, then the fact that 4chan is not included in this ban is pretty outrageous,” Green said.
Pendergast added that there needs to a huge shift in the approach from teachers and parents, who she said do not currently take enough personal responsibility for cyber safety education.
She warned parents, some of who have told her “I’ll just set my kid up an account”, that such a choice would make them “responsible for everything that child does.”
“So if your child sends a photo of themselves naked or nearly naked, using your system, are you going to be charged with having child exploitation material transmitted through your account?” she said.
“They forget about these things.”
Pendergast added that the most powerful tool in a caregiver’s kit is learning how to properly educate their kids about online safety and creating safe spaces for kids to speak up.
“No monitoring system in the world is going to replace that skill set,” Pendergast said.
*Darla Green’s real name has been omitted in this story to protect her privacy.
