LONG BEACH, CA—TED 2010. Christopher Poole is not a name known by many, but Poole's handle is certainly (in)famous: moot is the founder of 4chan, the largest, most raucous, alternately hilarious and serious online community in the English-speaking world. Whether it's battling Scientology or, more recently, Australian censorship practices, 4chan often leaps from its quotidian base of humor and porn to causes that reach far beyond the community. It's not difficult to understand why moot is speaking at TED, despite the fact that most TEDsters would be freaked out by most of the content on 4chan's boards. Indeed, TED curator Chris Anderson said he wasn't sure he could recommend everyone at TED visit the site. But it wasn't content that moot was here to address, it was a principle: that anonymity is a good thing, and that everyone shouldn't be in such a hurry to lose it.

As a featured speaker during the "Provocation" session, the 21 year-old took the stage after an awkward introduction. He revealed that the site produces 700,000 posts in a day, from 7 million unique users. The originator of Rickrolling and LOLcats, 4chan is "raw" and "unfiltered." One of its community-generated rules is, "If it exists, there is porn of it. No Exceptions." (This brought a hearty laugh from the attendees.) In all, the talk was a very modest recap of 4chan's contributions to the Internet's meme pool.

While moot spent most of the session just explaining what 4chan is, he did devote some time to its battles. The story of Dusty the Cat changed the tone of the talk quickly. moot described how, in only 48 hours, the community tracked down a man who had posted videos of cat abuse. The man was arrested, and moot used the story to illustrate how digital communities can do more than make funny pictures of cats. His tale drew an ovation.

In the closing minutes, moot's purpose for speaking became clear: he insisted that anonymity is a good thing, yet we're all giving it up voluntarily. He wasn't talking about the NSA or tech policy or anything like that. Rather, he said sites like 4chan may go the way of the dinosaur because people are choosing to join social networking sites and persistent identity services. One of the 'Net's greatest strengths is disappearing as a result, but moot claimed that sites like 4chan show that a lot of good can come of anonymity, too. He seemed puzzled as to why everyone wants their identity tied to so much of what they say and do online. Do people hold back? Do they censor themselves? The power of being able to say or post whatever you want is undeniably strong, but moot didn't speak to the dangers of anonymity.

In a brief question and answer exchange between moot and TED's Chris Anderson, moot said that money wasn't the goal of creating 4chan. "The commercial picture is that there really isn't one," he said. More laughs, mostly uneasy, and I was left with a sense that many people in the room did not understand. I did, because like 4chan, Ars was started not to make money, but to service a community. Whether or not 4chan has a real commercial future isn't clear, moot said, but he was going back to school and hoped to apply all he has learned from 4chan to some future venture.

When asked what his parents thought about 4chan, he said that initially they had "pained, awkward conversations" about his creation. He said that these days his parents are able to appreciate it because they don't understand it. I'd imagine few do.