Tech & Biz

4Chan Members Declare "Porn Day", Attack YouTube

by Jordan Yerman | May 22, 2009 at 08:41 am

5638 views | 3 Recommendations | 6 comments

YouTube, which has enough dodgy video content as it is, was beset by a legion of 4Chan members in a "Porn Day" attack.

Apparently the action was a response to YouTube's policy on removing unlawfully-added copyrighted material. (See yesterday's Truemor)

As YouTube gets 20 hours of video uploaded every minute, it's far faster for users to flood the site with porn than it is for YouTube to find and remove offending material, so YouTube is taking this pretty seriously.

The hackers tagged videos with the names of popular acts, such as Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers, to trick users in to viewing the clips. Many of the videos start out innocently, before fading in to explicit material.

4Chan, for those not already familiar (don't lie to me!), is an imageboard site which began life as a manga forum but grew to involve a wider array of content, and is credited with popularizing stuff like lolcats and rickrolling.

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Jarrett Martineau

at 12:46 on May 22nd, 2009

That's one hell of a Rickroll...

anon27569 (not verified)

at 06:44 on May 24th, 2009

jewtube pwned, lol

Dre . (not verified)

at 07:17 on May 24th, 2009

Since when is someone who uploads a video to Youtube a "hacker"? Not even the video editing they did to trick Youtube can be called a "hack".

Also, Annonymous =/= 4Chan, some just happen to be members of the board.

Alida Antonia Cornelius

at 10:09 on May 24th, 2009

I HATE porno spam and spend time tracking them down and helping to close down their sites. If they didn't spam it, I wouldn't care, but they spam all over the place.

anonymous5567 (not verified)

at 05:33 on June 13th, 2009

we are legion

stop jerking off (not verified)

at 07:35 on July 27th, 2009

I don't get it. Why are those hackers protesting YouTube's policy on removing unlawfully-added copyrighted material? It's their right to do so, and besides, youtube's porno clones (which I don't have to mention) are so proliferate and they could waste their time watching / uploading their obscene materials there until they wanted to. The last thing I want to happen is the materials they use would be accidentally viewed by minors, especially kids who are attempting to view their cherished celebrities.