While Poole may be the only one (or one of the few) people getting checks from 4chan.org, he doesn't have full responsibility for the operation of the site. The site is managed by many volunteer members; "janitors." I think there is something to be said here about the power of an authentic internet community whose participants are willing to work for no compensation, to further its dictator's interests. And that discussion probably involves entertainment value, as well as an apparent sense of equality.
The question is always to what degree others are contributing to a website so it is still run by a "single" person. In most cases there might be a person checking in on the servers on a regular basis that is paid through the hosting fee, etc.
Plus there are not dictatorships on the internet. People vote with their feet and are, especially on an anonymous site such as 4chan not locked in, like they are with Facebook profile/networks.
If there were something describable as dictatorships on the internet, I would argue that it is those sites that try to impose their own values and judgments on their members, and not 4chan (and to a minor degree reddit), which (in most parts) only rule is to avoid completely illegal themes.
I see your point, however, unlike a platform such as Reddit, the available categories under which you may post content are decided upon or terminated by Poole. There is an implicit democracy, where contributing content constitutes endorsement of the platform, but I think you will find that many decisions Poole has made on behalf of 4chan were unpopular. I'm not suggesting that truly democratic internet communities even exist, but 4chan is much farther from that ideal than Reddit. But what 4chan has is _privacy_.
> I'm not suggesting that truly democratic internet communities even exist, but 4chan is much farther from that ideal than Reddit.
I disagree. 4chan is if anything more democratic than most sites even if it is a sort of semi-anarchic mob rule version of democracy.
The first thing I'd like to counter is the idea that the available categories are determined by the 4chan admins and by moot in particular. It is true that he's the one who makes new boards to talk about specific subjects but that doesn't mean that if there isn't a board it doesn't get talked about, generally it'll happen in whatever board has the most users interested in that subject, and if it becomes a problem or starts taking over the board there will be a general purpose board spun off for that subject in particular. Examples of this (in the positive "lots of people are talking about this and need a space) are /tg/ which spun off from warhammer wednesday on /b/ and /lit/ and /toy/ were both spun off from recurring topics on /tg/. Less positive examples include /soc/ and /adv/ which were supposed to clean up /r9k/ and /mlp/ because pony threads were a huge problem on /co/.
I think the problem here is that Reddit's (and HN's for that matter) "democracy" function is explicitly part of the site whilst 4chan's is hidden and based on the whims of the audience.
IIRC the janitors have very few powers, similar to forum moderators on most forums. I suppose you could claim the admins are helping, but personally, I'd only consider people who directly work on the site's backend/frontend management and development, not unpaid community managers.
Janitors do have very few powers. Yet it turns out to be an awful lot of work to moderate a site as open and popular as 4chan.org. Without janitors, you can be sure that the site would consist of predominantly spam & child porn, and probably couldn't continue to exist, for reasons legal or otherwise. But you're right; creatively speaking, the entity is "run" by Poole and probably a handful of contractors.
Well, you could say the same of any forum. I volunteer as a moderator on a rather large forum, it's not quite as large as 4chan but it's among the largest on the internet... It's a lot of work, but we're not the ones running the site itself, we're just volunteers who help out with community moderation. And the work is spread among a lot of volunteers.
