It sounded interesting so I clicked through to the actual 'Canvas' website. I am a little disappointed to see that the site is set up to require facebook for requesting invites.

It seems like we are getting closer and closer to facebook being our single online "ID Card" and I'm more than a little afraid of that. I don't think facebook is evil, though I know some people do, I just think they have a more caviler attitude towards privacy than I'd like. I hope we end up with a more open / distributed way to authenticate and identify ourselves...

Maybe open ID could catch on if facebook became an open ID provider?

In this case it might be possible that he just doesn't want /b/ to turn it into a giant ocean of puke right from the beginning.

Most of the people on /b/ who would be a problem have facebook trolling accounts, anyway.

Ironically, last year moot gave a talk at TED last year that made very much the same argument: we're moving toward a system of persistent identity online, and everyone seems to be okay with that when they probably should be regarding it with more caution.

Here's a link to the video:

http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for...

I have no clue wtf moot is thinking with this. Apart from anonymity, the whole approach of piggybacking on facebook and using an invite-based membership system seems completely antithetical to the uniquely open and no barriers to entry nature of his well-known imageboard.

I think that was the point.

There's a time and place for anonymity and it's called 4chan.

You will especially understand this move of his if you listen to his TED talk and some other things that he has said/written over the years. Namely that anonymity brings with it complete and utter nonmonetizability ... from what I've heard he has [some] porn advertisers avoiding him because of 4chan's reputation and their not wanting to be associated with such a website. (just imagine what some more reputable advertisers think)

Well, this is a topic I feel very strongly about, and in some ways there is a bizarre circularity to discussing this on HN for me. I'll try to provide some context. I started out BBSing as a kid in the 80s, usenetting in the 90s, and I felt post '00 that the dominance of the www seemed to be fragmenting and destroying the feeling of specialness that digital communities possessed. Discovering 4chan in 2005 triggered a flash of recognition, a sense of "aha! this is where the creative spirit of Ye Olde Nettes is!" I've always thought the absence of personal ego and freedom of expression of 4chan at its best represents a higher ideal than voting-based communities, and paradoxically enables richer self-expression than the banalities of myspace and facebook. For years I held myself aloof from other online communities, reading them, but always reserving my participation for 4chan. Last year I finally broke down, and my very first contribution to HN discussion was to vent my frustration with the idea of making facebook accounts a prerequisite to the use of other sites!

tl; dr - Long time 4chan user finally compromises his internet ideals to join HN just to complain about sites piggybacking on Facebook. A few months later, moot makes use of his new site dependent on Facebook.

Canv.as is still anonymous. You just have to log in via Facebook.

More than that, the wording on their signup page suggests that this is only in effect during the beta. It seems a reasonable way to keep people from spamming accounts, particularly given the association with 4chan.

During the beta period we are using Facebook Connect to validate users and handle invitations. Canvas will not display your photo or information anywhere on the site and we will only store your email address.

It's still different, as a 4chan user myself I know for a fact I wouldn't get up to the same antics if the site had my email on record.

Yeah, but... that's kinda the point, right?

If moot wanted to make another /b/, he'd just add on another board, like he did recently with /soc/.

4chan has been heavily moderated as of late. Successful trolling, any mention of any news article, any picture of people who appear characteristically Jewish or Muslim, any racist imagery, or using the word "jew" will now reliably result in a ban.

Edit: Many rules that have existed for years but were never enforced are now being enforced. Extremely off-topic posting or posting NSFW imagery along with an on-topic reply will also get you banned.

It's been a week or two since I've been on /b/... is this just happening, or did it happen out of the blue?

Maybe Snacks is back?

That looks awful, it looks like 4chan but trying to appeal to the facebook crowd. Where did the 625k go?

Ahh, more and more I see that PG's dictum really does hold true:

If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, you waited too long to launch.

http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html

You say that like it's a bad idea. Look at the success Cheezburger has had appealing to the "facebook crowd" with 4chan memes.

"The Facebook crowd" is...everybody.

-- except me

Congratulations, you are a very special snowflake, in a bucket of fairly non-moneytizable snowflakes.

s/everybody/the overwhelming majority/

Im learning vim and understood your syntax. Bravo

As someone who runs a more grown-up anonymous discussion site, I was worried about Canvas as a competitor. Now not so much - it's mostly just an enhanced UI to /b.

Canv.as feels like a silly use of something the http://aviary.com API could have powered. Disappointed after all the hype.

Anyone have a beta invite?

I think it's really impressive - the design is fantastic, especially for a startup whose site just launch.

I, too, think Facebook is a bottleneck to keep the tossers out, but I hope Poole/moot finds another way to throttle abuse and trolls eventually.

so .. am i right in saying that it's a SFW + a more PC version of 4chan with a few elements similar to say, buzzfeed.com ?

"Where do games begin? In the anarchy of paidia, we play without rules and without limits. It is amusing, creative and chaotic, but it is also short lived, as when the natural play of a toy becomes formalised, it becomes a game." http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2005/12/the_anarchy...

"...games range along a continuum between two modes: ludus, 'the taste for gratuitous difficulty,' and paidia, 'the power of improvisation and joy.'" http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/20/101220fa_fact_...

It's probably less of being valuable to society and more of finally monetizing the culture he helped create.

Telling someone that what they choose to work on is not of value is very condescending.