Christopher Poole | |
|---|---|
 Poole in 2012 | |
| Born | 1987 or 1988 (age 36–37) New York City, U.S. |
| Other names | moot |
| Education | Virginia Commonwealth University (no degree) |
| Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, formerGoogle employee |
| Known for | Founder and former head administrator of4chan |
Christopher Poole (born 1987 or 1988), also known online asmoot, is an AmericanInternet entrepreneur anddeveloper. He founded the anonymous English-language imageboard4chan in October 2003, when he was still a teenager; he served as the site's head administrator until January 2015.[1] He also founded the online communityCanvas Networks, active from 2011 to 2014. Poole was hired byGoogle in 2016 to work onGoogle+ and serve as a product manager.[2] He left the company in 2021.[3]
Christopher Poole was born in 1987 or 1988 inNew York City.[4] As a teenager, he was a member of theSomething Awful forum, and frequented the anonymous Japanese textboard2channel and its offshoot2chan.[4] In 2009, he attendedVirginia Commonwealth University for a few semesters before dropping out, and that he was living with his mother while trying to figure out how to monetize 4chan.[5]
Until 2008, when his name was revealed inThe Wall Street Journal,[6] Poole took great lengths to protect his identity, going under the pseudonym of Robert "Bob" Bopkins in real life and as moot online.[7][8] Several journalists, includingLev Grossman ofTime andMonica Hesse ofThe Washington Post, noted that the name "Christopher Poole" could itself be a pseudonym.[9][5]
Poole believes inanonymity on the Internet, and spoke at theTED2010 conference inLong Beach, California, about the value of the concept.[10] In aMIT Technology Review piece entitled "Radical Opacity", Poole was described as being theantithesis ofMark Zuckerberg; while Zuckerberg is outspoken towards his advocacy for a transparent Internet, Poole advocates for a more opaque Internet.[11]
Poole established 4chan on October 1, 2003, using translatedsource code from 2chan, and sought to combine the anime culture on 2chan with the community on Something Awful.[4]
In April 2009, Poole was voted themost influential person of 2008 with 16,794,368 votes by an open Internet poll conducted by Time, beating out the likes ofBarack Obama,Vladimir Putin, andOprah Winfrey.[12] It was soon discovered that the users of the/b/ board had manipulated the results of the poll in Poole's favor.[13] Several tools were developed to achieve this, including a website that would vote for Poole at a rate of about 100 votes per minute, and a program capable of voting for him at a rate of 300 votes per minute.[14] The other entries in the poll were also manipulated; the first letter of each entry in the poll spelled out anacrostic for "Marblecake, also the game", a reference to theIRC chatroom whereProject Chanology was born andThe Game, respectively.[15]
In April 2010, Poole gave testimony in theSarah Palin email hacking trial,United States of America v. David Kernell. As a government witness, he explained the terminology on the site as part of his testimony, including "OP" and "lurker".[16]
In 2010, it was reported that Poole had raised $625,000 to create a new online enterprise,Canvas. Among the site's investors wereMarc Andreessen andJoshua Schachter.[17] Canvas officially launched on January 31, 2011, inbeta, and featured digitally modified images created by users of the site. In contrast to 4chan, users were required to identify themselves usingFacebook Connect.[18] A similar app, called DrawQuest, launched on February 8, 2013.[19]
On January 21, 2014, Poole announced that, effective immediately, Canvas and DrawQuest were shutting down.[20]
On January 21, 2015, Poole stepped down as the head administrator of 4chan.[1] Two days later, he held his final 4chan Q&A.[21] Following his departure from 4chan, he began to turn the site over to three anonymous 4chan moderators while looking for a buyer for the website.[22] On September 21, 2015,Hiroyuki Nishimura, the founder of 2channel, took over as the site's owner.[23]
On March 8, 2016, via a post onTumblr, Poole announced that he had been hired byGoogle in an undisclosed position,[2] a decision that was met with anger from Google employees. Google's hiring of Poole was seen as endorsing the doxxing, harassment, and hate speech perpetrated by 4chan's users.[3][24] In June 2016, Poole became a partner at Google's in-house startup incubator, Area 120. He switched positions again in 2018 when he became a product manager forGoogle Maps.[25] On April 13, 2021, he left Google, after five years at the company.[3]
In November 2012, it was reported that Poole had sent acease and desist letter to the startup moot.it, citing the similarities between the startup's name and his username, moot.[26]
