I decided to post this after seeing the post the other day about 4chan becoming an hero. As it so happens, this past week has nearly (?) also seen the end of 2ch.hk (a.k.a. dvach, a.ka. kharkach, a.k.a. sosach), the largest Russian language imageboard. It's story is somewhat similar to that of 4chan's, but it's taken an unusual turn.

2ch.hk was opened by an originally anonymous admin known as Abu. The average 2ch user is a weeabo, NEET and virgin, as well as being unwashed, alcoholic, unlikable, antisemitic, racist, homophobic, rude, lazy, Russian, lacking in any feeling of civic or personal responsibility, and just generally autistic. So you can probably imagine how many jimmies were rustled among such a class of people when Abu was eventually revealed to be some sort of Chechen looking Muslim, personally involved in the islamic invasion of Russia.

No longer anonymous, Abu (real name Nariman Namazov) has made a habit of publicly cucking his users by taking their passcode money and doing things like traveling to Japan looking like an ISIS member and fucking white women.

All this was well and good until this September when Abu received a letter from Cloudflare (tl;dr of letter: gib money or get fucked, you dirty commie). Despite finding money for frequent world travels, Abu came up short when it came to funding his site. According to a message to Cloudflare, he could barely afford the ~$400 a month he was spending on his servers plus Cloudflare account. Now Cloudflare was asking for $3000 a month and it looked like the site could be in serious danger of shutting down.

And, on Sep 24, it did.

At first, an alternate site opened for only those with passcodes, and then on Sep 27 the alternative public url 2ch.pm came active. But the future of the site was still very much in doubt. It was during this time that I created this account, /u/allah_save_abu, as a small sign of solidarity with a seemingly doomed man.

And then on Sep 30, Abu posted a message:

Hi, Anon.

All of you are aware of the recent events: DDoS attacks, and claims from Cloudflare about our traffic. It seemed like there was no hope for improvement, that we would need to ask for donations, get rid of some functionality, introduce strict limits, temporary pay walls, and so on, despite the fact that the previous years we had increased the limits, introduced the webm format, which has become popular all over the Runet, and got rid of captcha...

Suddenly, help came from somewhere no one would expect. Everyone knows the jokes about selling the site to Mail.ru, the social network Vdvache [a reference to vkontakte], 2ch.mail.ru, and all that.

And so, we've been sold. Kidding. We weren’t sold.

Anon, everything was bad, but now the solution to our problems has arrived. Support came from an unexpected place, and, as you already understood, from Mail.ru, which by itself is UNEXPECTED, considering our complicated relationship. Yes, they remember those famous raids like the rest of the Runet does.

Mail.ru is a large company with a strong networking infrastructure, which we can now use for free.

They have provided us with use of the network infrastructure of Mail.Ru Group and the help of their specialists, and now we can use their traffic and defense from attack, which is quite something considering how many resources we require.

Anon, that's it. There won't be anymore of my crying face on banners, no temporary paywalls, no reduction in file size limits. At last my hand has been freed and I can focus on the development of Dvach, instead of just treading water.

I will say right away that this is all for free. No one has been sold to anyone. There won't be any limits on content or new rules. Everything will be like before. We will continue to follow the rules of Roskomnadzor and the normal rules of the board.

Now it's official. Mail.ru is a good corporation. :3

You’re probably too stupid, fat and monolingual to know this, but Mail.ru is the biggest company of the Runet, owning 7 of the top 20 most visited sites of the Runet, including social network giant VK (by the way, Mail.ru is owned by this man). The news that a den of degeneracy like 2ch.hk was partnering with a large, mainstream company like Mail.ru brought disbelief, confusion, and anger from many anons, who, among other things, drew a comparison between this and Google buying 4chan. Their sperg rage only increased when the hentai boards mysteriously 404'd, despite promises that content wouldn't change.

Mail.ru confirmed what Abu had posted with a blog post on their site, and a doot doot meme post on their twitter promising to protect everyone from DDoS’s, but only if they posted “thanks mr. mailets.”

The question which everyone had, and which neither Abu or Mail.ru had much of answer to, was “why the fuck would they do that? Like, for free really?” Was this a genuine act of good will to help out a struggling site with second world income and first world expenditures? Maybe just an add for Mail.ru's anti-DDoS abilities? Are Mail.ru's executives high on meme magic? Or perhaps something more sinister? How long will it before anons start getting sent to the gulag for mocking his holiness Putin and praising Russia's foreign enemies? Could such weak, soft handed people be of any use in manual labor? All of this remains to be seen.

In any case, many anons are not interested in waiting around to see what this will mean for them and are ready to move. Many different new locations for the Dvach community have been suggested, probably the most popular being the /rus/ board of the Brazilian site brchan.

I bring this news here to ask you to keep Abu, the little muzzie who could, in your prayers during these trying times when the community he created with the sweat of his back is threatening to leave him and constantly insulting him. Abu is strong, intelligent, generous, caring, handsome, and fair. And, insha'allah, he will lead the anons of Russia in many more raids to come.

P.S. You’re all welcome to go to the new /int/ board where you’ll be told to "idi na khui."

АЛЛАХУ АКБАР))))

СЛАВА УКРАЇНІ, ГЕРОЯМ СЛАВА)))))

КРЫМ НАШ))))))

и т.д. и т.п.