Martin Shkreli, super villain pharmaceutical exec and well-known Wu-Tang fan, is apparently interested in saving the notorious image sharing site 4chan from going under.
Mr Shkreli was under the spotlight in 2015 when he raised the price of a parasite drug from $13 to $750 per pill. He was also charged with securities fraud. Now, he’s offering to bailout 4chan founder Hiroyuki Nisimura, who recently announced that his site has become too expensive to run.
"We had tried to keep 4chan as is. But I failed. I am sincerely sorry," Mr Nishimura said in a statement. "Some notice there are no more middle ads and bottom ads on 4chan. Ads don't work well. So we reduced advertisement servers cost. 4chan can't afford infrastructure costs, network fee, servers cost, CDN, and etc."
4chan is completely unregulated by moderators and notorious for hosting racist, sexist, and homophobic content driven by its users.
On Sunday, Mr Shkreli offered to join the website’s board of directors, and Mr Nisimura tweeted in response to a direct message sent by the former big pharma exec. “I have replied your DM,” he wrote. “Thank you for supporting 4chan.”
However, Mr Nisimura says that he hasn’t yet received a formal offer from Mr Shkreli. “We have not received [Shkreli’s] offer yet,” he told Gizmodo. “So it’s not serious. I think.”
