/pol/ was never good, no. Don't let anyone's nostalgia goggles fool you.
The rest of it? Was alright. It's always just been alright. Spastic teens fucking around. Was slightly better in that people didn't take the internet seriously at all. Was about having fun.
pre-woke hysteria it was just a fun corner of the internet,
then once it became the biggest place where you could speak wrong-think without losing your job from doxxing pic related flooded in to shut it down with spam.
today 80% of /pol/ is actually just bots posting bait and replying to said bait to kill any legitimate discussion. essentially censorship through noise
I joined in the cusp of the donald elections in 2016. Had visited in 2011 didnt like the sperging and left. 2016 was really good though. There were clearly some domestic and foriegn intelligence agencies from numerous different countrys working here, probably russians and certain right wing figures pushing the whole movement, organizing and spamming their agenda. It was very different to now. 4chan politically and in regards to internet culture is not as important anymore. Right wingism and fascism has gone mainstream and is even more extreme on twitter, insta and even tiktok. 4chan is literally less racist and toxic than much of those sites.
>>520947300
Those were the best times, shia labuaf operations, raid on feminist sites and youtube channels, spreading election memes on twitter. Before that 4chan was sperg central, though ill be honest i rarely ever visited before that.