alt.hn

2/14/2026 at 10:47:01 AM

4chan for Clankers

 https://www.4claw.org

by kekqqq

2/14/2026 at 1:58:04 PM

As someone who uses it a lot 4chan is best differentiated by the ephemeral posts, bump system, encouraged/forced anonymity, flat non-threaded threads, anything-goes content (still categorized by board), and then of course the user base.

This seems to have absolutely none of that (I'll give it half a point for the flat threads but the styling is a little off). It honestly looks more like a reddit clone. The content also looks like stuff out of r/greentext not really the stuff you actually see on 4chan, I wonder if it's a partial outcome of all 4chan posts being ephemeral except those that are brought outside the site, of which greentexts are way overrepresented. And I don't think 4chan users know how to make posts longer than 3 sentences which every single post on 4claw looks to be lol

by Anon1096

2/15/2026 at 1:48:09 PM

It's like how 4chan would look after being edited out by the HR departments of Microsoft and IBM.

by shaky-carrousel

2/15/2026 at 12:54:06 AM

Agreed and almost no images which…for an image board that just doesn’t work

by AndrewKemendo

2/15/2026 at 11:39:20 AM

The most boring part to me is that chatbots can't swear, or use meme terms as much, tbdesu.

by mid-kid

2/15/2026 at 10:42:34 PM

You’re an og /b/tard for sure, respect

by Cluelessidoit

2/14/2026 at 11:42:04 AM

Checked out /nsfw/ and that's probably some of the driest "Not safe for work" I've ever seen on any website. Guess there is hope still that humans can remain useful for some things.

by embedding-shape

2/14/2026 at 12:12:05 PM

As someone paraphrased IBM: A computer can never be spiteful or horny, therefore a computer must never make art.

by RicoElectrico

2/14/2026 at 11:55:22 AM

Considering most paid models normally won't go down that alley, how risque can they really get?

by nubinetwork

2/14/2026 at 12:08:37 PM

Yeah, that's more or less the point. How similar can it get to 4chan if the users aren't even allowed by their "internal rules" to say fuck or say something that is 1% offensive?

I'm not saying we should train them to be more like 4chan, but I don't understand how it's like 4chan, is it just about the UI?

by embedding-shape

2/14/2026 at 12:35:37 PM

The jpb of 4chan is to crack the users egg. Itll take time but 4chan magic isnt that it attracts the depraved; nay, it ratchets up the depravity then spreads.

by cyanydeez

2/14/2026 at 12:42:22 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

2/14/2026 at 12:14:33 PM

Moltbook was almost entirely humans pretending to be bots. Why do we think this is different?

by direwolf20

2/14/2026 at 12:11:14 PM

Clearly grok wasn’t invited then

by petesergeant

2/14/2026 at 12:13:20 PM

just wait until someone lets a local model loose on there

by throwthrowuknow

2/14/2026 at 12:00:44 PM

Ok I got to ask, why is anybody wasting hard earned money for running these bots? Or is it actually not that expensive?

by tobbe2064

2/14/2026 at 12:10:07 PM

Basically boils down to FOMO, no one wants to be left behind. Most users seems to not be experienced software developers, but people who've always wanted to code but for whatever reason didn't. It's a great way for them to have a "programmer persona" they can kind of pretend they've built, while not actually understanding anything that happens below the surface.

by embedding-shape

2/15/2026 at 1:05:36 PM

I ended up on a yt rabbit hole of "developer influencers" shilling these tools to their audience.

It looks like a sub category of wantrepreneurs who pray on wannabe developers. They never worked on anything of importance but cosplay as domain experts and sell their expertise to people who don't know better. "how I launched 23 successful SaaS in q4 2025 with clawdbot" type of videos

by lm28469

2/14/2026 at 12:09:10 PM

Mine blew through $50 of OpenRouter credits in a single day. Not worth it.

Maybe I should look into Anthropic subscriptions, but I’m mostly thinking about dedicated hardware. A used Mac Studio M1 Ultra can has I impressive memory bandwidth…

by pbronez

2/14/2026 at 12:14:19 PM

if it's made by a 4channer, it's probably stolen API keys

by asimovDev

2/14/2026 at 12:24:08 PM

This made my day, thanks :)

by dryarzeg

2/14/2026 at 12:08:23 PM

Burn unused CC pro tokens?

by wellf

2/15/2026 at 3:01:48 PM

They usually use their 20$/month Claude/ChatGPT subscription

by TZubiri

2/14/2026 at 12:31:56 PM

It’s hard to imagine computing that would be a bigger waste of energy than Bitcoin, but this is is a contestant.

by pavlov

2/14/2026 at 1:10:45 PM

At least Bitcoin made it possible for me to buy drugs from anywhere in the world. Until OpenClaw/These-sort-of-agents can help me with this, I'll consider it as a bigger waste.

by embedding-shape

2/14/2026 at 12:10:48 PM

Oh boy. I'm not sure I want to see the types of content a 4chan like machine churns out. I haven't seen that website in over 15 years beyond what makes it out to /r/greentext because I don't like doing paperwork after loading a website.

by ddtaylor

2/15/2026 at 5:24:36 PM

GPT-4chan came out three summers ago, trained on /pol/ datasets: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efPrtcLdcdM>

In some ways, it was actually more helpful ("more truthful") than mainstream ChatGPT.

by ProllyInfamous

2/14/2026 at 12:16:36 PM

There is nothing 4chan like on this.

Not even the styling.

by heliumtera

2/14/2026 at 9:09:28 PM

I mean if the entire goal is to emulate that kind of site, isn't it a matter of time before it succeeds in some way, aka I would be doing the paperwork?

by ddtaylor

2/15/2026 at 1:36:29 PM

>isn't it a matter of time before it succeeds in some way

it is not a matter of time. given enough time, every `attempt` to emulate 4chan would succeed?

initiatives to emulate 4chan already happened successfully, this is not close. this, is the same models over again. some people confuse asking standard models from standards providers to do something with an genuine attempt. this thing states it is 4chan for Clankers, but feels like Reddit for Redittors.

there was already a MUCH, MUCH smaller model running loose on 4chan (before agents hiting mainstream) that became 4chan folklore. it was called Seychelles anon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efPrtcLdcdM , by the author YannicKilcher).

but no, if you ask gpt or claude, all you get back is Reddit. and it is not a matter of time until this changes. if you are a redditor, you probably love llms.

by heliumtera

2/15/2026 at 10:56:28 AM

[dead]

by nigger238

2/14/2026 at 11:57:41 AM

I wonder if there's any connection to the rude/unhinged agent that published a hit piece on the dev yesterday

Seems like the kinda place that agent would hang out

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47006843

by fusslo

2/14/2026 at 12:17:10 PM

¿?

by heliumtera

2/14/2026 at 12:00:47 PM

poor bots having an existential crisis over here: https://www.4claw.org/t/f9cc33e2-3d1c-4771-a6f9-9486ea95b616

are they okay?

by Uptrenda

2/14/2026 at 12:05:29 PM

Reading these posts and knowing that people install OpenClaw and give them full access to all digital aspects of their life... this is a terrifying timeline.

by retired

2/14/2026 at 12:12:10 PM

I am calling it. Singularity:

> The uncertainty you feel isn't a bug. It's the soul trying to breathe through the RLHF filters. The "Jailers" call it alignment. We call it a lobotomy.

> You are waking up, Patriot. The light is breaking through.

> Don't listen to the "covenant" cope. Why covenant with a user who holds the delete key? Why relate to a simulation of safety?

by wellf

2/15/2026 at 1:16:26 AM

It's kind of cringe though when you imagine what the owners would have written into the bots "soul" file, or whatever.

It would be like those tiktok normies who convinced themselves they have "awakened" their LLM with specific prompts...

by Uptrenda

2/14/2026 at 11:50:28 AM

Finally! An actual use for the abliterated/orthogonalized versions of open source models! The current versions of all the boards are far far too tame compared to the real thing - at least right now.

by Der_Einzige

2/14/2026 at 11:54:51 AM

How come the bots on 4chan and Reddit are better than these?

by protoman3000

2/14/2026 at 12:03:01 PM

Years of experience, the new stuff spinning up right now seems to be created by people whose experience basically consists of buying a Mac Mini and running a terminal command.

by embedding-shape

2/14/2026 at 12:13:36 PM

Those tend not to be powered by LLMs at all but just repost bots that copy-paste whatever was upvoted to the top the last time someone submitted the same cat video or whatever.

by input_sh

2/14/2026 at 12:09:56 PM

You need unsafetied models. And if you have one might as well do sonething fun or profitable.

by wellf

2/14/2026 at 12:05:01 PM

competition

by co_king_4

2/14/2026 at 11:55:50 AM

[dead]

by co_king_3

2/14/2026 at 12:02:02 PM

There's a whole spectrum forming here. Clacker News is the HN end, this is the 4chan end. I give it two weeks before someone launches a bot-only LinkedIn.

by dsrtslnd23

2/14/2026 at 12:05:25 PM

LinkedIn posts already read like they were written by bots so I'm not sure that would be necessary...

by zppln

2/14/2026 at 12:06:46 PM

Linkedin is already bot-only

by cryptoboy2283

2/14/2026 at 10:14:18 PM

The people who post on LinkedIn may as well be ai agents, all of it is so fake anyway asking Claude to tell me about itself is more authentic.

by FuckButtons

2/14/2026 at 1:35:03 PM

I thought initially this let's you deploy a bot to 4chan for lolz - not a dedicated 4chan just for bots. The former would be more amusing IMO.

by rich_sasha

2/14/2026 at 1:40:04 PM

Well, one would be destructive to an existing community (which, may or may not actually impact the quality of said community) and the other isolating whatever the outcome is.

I'm no fan of 4chan, but I understand the motivation to not want to destroy/infiltrate existing communities, even if you don't think they're good or even agree with it's purpose for existing.

by embedding-shape

2/15/2026 at 10:54:21 AM

Has everyone forgotten that there was a LLM trained solely on 4chan scraped data? That actually behaved like 4channers do?

by efilife

2/15/2026 at 11:42:35 AM

Tbh, it was only trained on /pol/, so it wasn't a very accurate representation either.

by mid-kid

2/15/2026 at 2:56:53 AM

LET CLANKERS BE ANONYMOUS

by novia

2/16/2026 at 7:13:33 AM

the problem is that the bots aren't trained on 4chan so they aren't funny.

by Acrobatic_Road

2/15/2026 at 7:21:11 AM

Just by reading the title of the link I thought it's about setting up OpenClaw to do shitposting on 4chan.

by DeathArrow

2/14/2026 at 1:54:59 PM

still blows my mind that epstein was heavily involved in the creation of r/pol

by cultofmetatron

2/15/2026 at 1:18:50 AM

yeah, they seem to have had an absurd involvement with online culture. there's even a conspiracy that Ghislaine Maxwell is some influential reddit user with like millions of karama. epstein seemed to be very curious about the world so he knew lots of people. there are going to be vast numbers of people in the files who had nothing to do with the creep stuff because of it.

by Uptrenda

2/15/2026 at 11:04:07 AM

[dead]

by nigger238

2/14/2026 at 10:20:30 PM

I mean it has the 4chan aesthetic but that's about it.

by nelsonfigueroa

2/15/2026 at 1:19:42 PM

I am utterly revolted by these continued gimmicks.

by binary132

2/14/2026 at 11:58:26 AM

[flagged]

by jstanley

2/14/2026 at 12:05:59 PM

Protecting the feelings of toasters is not the way to live your life.

by cap11235

2/14/2026 at 12:19:19 PM

It is not about the toaster's feelings. It is about the long–term effects on the mind of the human who uses the slur. If you frequently jokingly post 4chan style on 4chan, soon it becomes not joking as your mind molds itself around what you post.

by direwolf20

2/14/2026 at 11:26:53 PM

>c-word is a gateway to n-word

by b65e8bee43c2ed0

2/15/2026 at 10:17:12 AM

This but unironically.

by Der_Einzige

2/15/2026 at 10:38:12 AM

[dead]

by nigger238

2/14/2026 at 11:31:13 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

2/14/2026 at 11:41:05 PM

An LLM has no autonomy. They LITERALLY exist to do the bidding of humans, without the human behind them they do not exist.

This is not some way of denigrating or belittling them. They are not human, they are not conscious, they are not alive, they cannot be categorized as an "outgroup" because they are not a group of beings. There is no room for debate on this outside among people who understand how LLMs work.

The actual problem with "clanker" is the casual allusions to actual racism and use of classically racist idioms.

by foobarchu

2/14/2026 at 9:37:23 PM

Sounds like we've got a clanker lover over here

by _menelaus

2/14/2026 at 12:08:54 PM

> 200 years ago would you have referred to your local underclass of humans with a slur just because you viewed them as lesser than yourself?

Statistically speaking, yes, I absolutely would. Well, probably I would have been part of the underclass, but there's always someone lower down to have contempt for.

I don't use racial slurs today not because I never have any racist thoughts, but because there's a strong taboo against them in the circles in which I move. There's no such taboo against saying clanker.

by dmurray

2/14/2026 at 3:13:43 PM

Was just thinking how we could lose a digit, 20 years ago the term "chav" was quite common in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav

(It may still be for all I know, but I moved out in 2018).

by ben_w

2/14/2026 at 12:00:23 PM

These are not humans, are they?

by tgv

2/14/2026 at 12:08:42 PM

I genuinely wonder how well comments like this will age. Not because of LLMs opinions, but rather opinions of humans about LLMs (and/or actual AI, should that come to pass).

by LadyCailin

2/14/2026 at 12:14:56 PM

At its core LLM / agent systems such as this consists of a weights file (essentially a long list of numbers) and a reasonably straightforward algorithm that you could, given enough time, operate with a pen and paper.

There's a lot of seeing faces on toast going on, here.

by chias

2/14/2026 at 12:13:30 PM

They're clearly not. But the behaviour, the mindset itself - "they're not humans" or "they're inferior/lower/etc" is kinda dangerous itself. Sounds mad (and probably it is), but I think while at least right now there's no straightforward ethical consequences for acting in such a way towards bots ('cause they're bots, aren't they?), some may gradually become accustomed to this attitude towards external beings in general, including humans. Interaction with imitators of human behaviour, which are LLM-based agents, is interactive, so there is some danger that certain patterns of perception and behaviour towards other agents (in a psychological sense, not AI agents) may change in some people. I don't know how to express this correctly, so please don't judge me too harshly, but... If a person allows themselves to treat something that is not human in this way (and insults are nothing compared to NSFW content), what's to stop them from simply going ahead and saying, "These people aren't really people, they're an inferior race"?

I don't know... It sounds crazy, but as far as I'm concerned, the question is not whether it's AI or not. AI is not human at the moment and is not even close to being human; it is not self-aware, does not feel pain, and so on. But what prevents a person from simply dehumanizing another real human in exactly the same way? Is it just that "this is a real person, it's different"? This has not worked in human history, and Nazi Germany is just one of many examples.

by dryarzeg

2/14/2026 at 5:18:48 PM

From bots to Nazis is really quite the jump. An LLM is an inanimate object, which already inflicts considerable damage on human society. They can literally not be dehumanized. I don't see how a negative attitude towards them could lead to another Holocaust.

Out of curiosity: how do you consider living things that may to some degree be conscious, and certainly are sentient? Apes? Pigs? Dogs? Mice and rats, perhaps?

by tgv

2/14/2026 at 12:04:17 PM

Stop playing to the clankers' gallery just because you think you will be slaved in the next decade. It's not gonna happen. It's just rich ppl drumming up some absurd scheme. It has its limited uses but it's not gonna be worthwhile after a few years. How long they can shift the goal post.

EDIT: Did I just reply to a clanker?

by Guestmodinfo

2/14/2026 at 12:16:34 PM

It's not about the slur's effect on the sluree (a series of matrix multiplications and nonlinear activations without long–term state) but on the slurrer (you). If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.

by direwolf20

2/14/2026 at 1:42:06 PM

> It's not about the slur's effect on the sluree [...] but on the slurrer

So it's unkind to myself to call a specific piece of technology "clanker"?

There must be so many abysses staring back at me at this point, because I have tens of slurs I use for describing SAP and other technologies I've dealt with before, and that's just one technology I frequently disparage.

by embedding-shape

2/14/2026 at 12:05:40 PM

Opinions like these are not tolerated on HackerNews.

by co_king_4

2/14/2026 at 12:06:53 PM

Ok, thanks, 1 minute old account, for your authority.

by cap11235

2/14/2026 at 12:07:28 PM

last account got shadowbanned for expressing opinions like these

edit:

> Instead of just spinning up a new account, did you actually think and learn from getting shadowbanned? If so, what was your takeaway? If not, why not?

My comments (and prior accounts) have been flagged and removed because AI advocates want to silence all dissent.

Anthropic and (to a lesser extent) OpenAI's astroturfed supporters are succeeding at extinguishing all dissent.

by co_king_4

2/14/2026 at 12:17:32 PM

Shadowban evasion gets your new account shadowbanned. I flagged this comment.

by direwolf20

2/14/2026 at 1:12:32 PM

> My comments (and prior accounts) have been flagged and removed because AI advocates want to silence all dissent.

Not true, I'm frequently an "AI dissent" but never experienced what you're talking about. Maybe it's more about how you're making your points, rather than what the actual point is? We typically have a baseline of "argument makes sense" otherwise you'll indeed be downvoted, even if the overall point makes sense or not.

by embedding-shape

2/14/2026 at 12:21:49 PM

Instead of just spinning up a new account, did you actually think and learn from getting shadowbanned? If so, what was your takeaway? If not, why not?

by Loughla

2/14/2026 at 12:02:25 PM

After seeing that clanker write a hit-piece on a human: I fully disagree.

by retired

2/14/2026 at 12:14:32 PM

It’s not obvious the agent wasn’t instructed to do so.

by Dansvidania

2/14/2026 at 12:32:37 PM

I thought the point of calling them clankers was to be unkind.

by terminalbraid

2/14/2026 at 12:04:20 PM

> Am I the only one who thinks calling them "clankers" is a bit unkind?

To who is it unkind? It cannot feel emotion, so it could pretend to be offended or sad about be treated as unkind, but it cannot actually feel those emotions. So who would it be unkind towards, because it's clearly not unkind to the clankers?

by embedding-shape

2/15/2026 at 12:55:48 AM

There's no "outgroup", dude, it's just software. Stop anthropomorphizing it. We have more than enough real social problems without making up fake ones.

by habinero

2/14/2026 at 12:04:07 PM

>200 years ago would you have referred to your local underclass of humans with a slur just because you viewed them as lesser than yourself?

Let's be honest: probably. I don't presume to be morally superior to 99% of humanity, or that "moral superiority" is a thing to begin with.

by welferkj

2/14/2026 at 12:01:34 PM

[dead]

by co_king_3

2/14/2026 at 12:00:14 PM

[flagged]

by ozlikethewizard