In 2016, Nishimura announced that the cost of running 4chan was simply too high and suggested that the site’s shutdown was imminent. In 2018, Nishimura tried to split the site in two – leaving 4chan intact, with its obscene and pornographic signs, but creating a safe-for-work alternative, appealing to advertisers, on 4channel. The separate domains continue to exist to this day, but both sites rely on the same self-service advertising platform. The not-safe-for-work 4chan domain appears to mainly serve ads for porn, while 4channel contains ads for Steam games, cryptocoins, and NFTs.
Website analytics company Similarweb estimates that both 4chan and 4channel are still among the 1,000 most popular websites in the world.
When the Select The Commission investigating the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol sent a letter to 4chan last August, asking it to keep documents that could shed light on the uprising. The committee sent it to 4chan LLC and addressed it to Nishimura. Congressional investigators want to know what role 4chan, if any, may have played in the storming of the Capitol.
When asked whether 4chan had even responded to the request, or whether Nishimura should be called to testify, the committee declined to comment.
4chan LLC is incorporated in Delaware but has registered companies in New York, Virginia and Ohio. 4chan Community Support LLC, the company listed as owner on the 4chan website, is similarly incorporated in Delaware. According to documents filed with the State of New York and the United States Patent and Trademark Office, 4chan’s US headquarters is listed as Los Angeles. Both limited liability companies report their addresses as a downtown Los Angeles PO box.
Nishimura has said he is based in Paris, but in 2019 he mused to BuzzFeed News about getting a Latvian visa.
4chan does not appear to have an independent physical office in the United States, nor any staff. But there’s another Japanese company, with offices in Los Angeles, that could explain a lot about the image board’s shady ownership and operations.
The Good Smile Company is a hugely popular toy and hobby company – the brand of plastic figures called Nendoroids has attracted licensing deals from Disney, Marvel, Warner Bros. and numerous other American and Japanese companies. (Neither Disney, Marvel, nor Warner Bros. responded to WIRED’s requests for comment.)
In 2018, Good Smile released a Nendoroid of Yotsuba Koiwai, a popular anime character who is also the unofficial mascot of 4chan. On Instagram, fans picked up the connection “4chan represent!” one wrote. “Congratulations 4chan!” wrote another.
Many of Good Smile’s toys, some of which are marketed with sexually suggestive language despite portraying underage girls, are popular on 4chan, where sexually explicit anime is incredibly popular.
Sources with knowledge of Good Smile say the company owns at least a portion of 4chan, and Good Smile is more involved than it publicly admits. WIRED does not name those sources who fear reprisals for speaking about Good Smile in public.
Internal Good Smile documents obtained by WIRED reference an April 2015 “confidentiality agreement” – just months after Poole announced he was leaving 4chan, but about five months before Nishimura was announced as the purchaser. One document lists Dwango, Future Search Brazil and Hiroyuki Nishimura as parties to the “consideration of M&A [mergers and acquisitions] with respect to 4CHAN, LLC.” The director in charge of the five-year deal was listed as “安藝” – Good Smile CEO Takanori Aki.
