They're places that provide access to actual human beings though. So many other online communities - especially ones with wide readership - are astroturfed into oblivion.
My take on it is that having to deal mentally with lunatics howling at the moon and screaming about the upcoming Great Replacement is the price you pay for access to actual opinions. That screaming horde is what keeps the astroturfers and consent manufacturers out.
But you only see opinions of people who are willing to tolerate the torrent of abusive posts. You won't see the opinions of the silent majority who see the stupid flamewars and decide they'll spend their time elsewhere.
There's value to be gleaned from /pol/ if you can stand the lunatics. The skychan threads sometimes yield some interesting conjecture.
4chan is currently the best place for realtime ukraine war footage and analysis, in my opinion.
While I don’t particularly deny this
> 4chan is currently the best place for realtime ukraine war footage and analysis
Is most definitely a no.
Oddly enough, Reddit seems to be the best for footage, with Telegram likely coming second.
As for analysis, Twitter without a doubt. Is there a load of absolute horse shit? Of course. If you don’t know how to detour that, you shouldn’t care much in the first place.
The only good thing that has come out of 4chan regarding this war is the cope cage. That is indeed hilarious.
I'm not really sure how to respond to that. It's intrinsically different. It's getting responses from people who don't care what their neighbour thinks about them vs getting responses from people who care in the utmost what their neighbour thinks of them. One is intrinsically likely to be more unfiltered than the other.
If you want to know what sentiment a community actually holds you have to seek out all types of opinions.