Dvach (Двач), also known as Sosach (Сосач) or Harkach(Kharkach) (Харкач), is a popular Russian bulletin board website that “Vitalik” (Виталик) launched after the fall of Dvach around April 2009. Since September 29, 2010, it has been owned by Nariman Namazov (Нариман Намазов).¹⁾

The original Dvach shut down on January 17, 2009 as “Vikenty” lost interest, so many successors emerged. Around May 2009, “Vitalik” launched a new Dvach at “2-ch.ru” and, despite the nicknames being banned at the time, users called it Dvatirech (Дватиреч) or Tirech (Тиреч). Dvatirech eventually won out in the end as their competitors, Mentach and Nullchan, shut down or couldn't handle the server load.

Unlike the original, Dvatirech was actually moderated, but the Dvatirech era isn't remembered fondly as they struggled with donations, implementing VIP tripcodes at one point, and had Odinchan breathing down their neck. Then on September 29, 2010, “Vitalik” suddenly announced his retirement and he would sell Dvatirech to “Abu”,²⁾ the original nickname given to Nariman Namazov.

Within the following months, the original moderation team was removed, the board lineup was changed, the VIP tripcodes went away, and the classic frames view no longer supported English or Japanese.

In March 2011, Dvatirech adopted a 4chan-like front page, then moved to “2ch.so” on April 1, 2011 and gain the nickname, Sosach (Сосач). On February 4, 2012, Sosach faced a widespread DDoS attack, so users took refuge at Odinchan or the /int/ boards on 4chan and Krautchan until this subsided on February 6, 2012. The next few months were controversial as Sosach began advertising on social media.

The users complaining that VKontakte would steal their memes were in a surprise for Summer 2012 when Sosach advertised itself to the MDK community. This created such a giant shitstorm that harsher rules were enforced on /b/. Before 2012 ended, the new, harsher rules were removed, but permanently came back on April 1, 2013 with “faggotries” allowed on the /fag/ board, but not everything returned.

“We've had a domain in Somalia for a long time, but the local authorities (lolwut, didn't know they were there) took the domain down because of a demotivational poster. I tried to phone them, but it didn't help.”
– Nariman “Abu” Namazov³⁾

On October 13, 2013, the “2ch.so” domain was suspended for violating local Somali internet law,⁴⁾ so they temporarily moved to “2ch.ek” for about a week, before finally settling at the “2ch.hk” domain and be nicknamed Harkach (Харкач). They also brought back donations in the form of paid services, but since the website's been around for a few years and the 4chan Pass exists, nobody really complained.

Afterwards, new categories were created and WebM support was added, but their gradual increase in user activity caused the heavily-modified Wakaba script⁵⁾ to slow down and cause server load issues. At times, CAPTCHA wouldn't load at times, which paralyzed communications, and some were quick to assume that this was a scheme to coerce users into buying VIP Passcodes.

Then on August 2, 2014, the heavily-modified Wakaba script was finally replaced with Makaba, making the website ten times faster.⁶⁾ In addition, users could now attach four files, a new mobile API was introduced, users can favorite and hide threads, and user-created boards were now possible. They also made adopted a new front page, borrowing elements from 8chan, and an official VKontakte page was established.⁷⁾

Out of nowhere, CloudFlare sends an email about their bandwidth use on September 14, 2016,⁸⁾ spiking their $200/mo fee to $3,000/mo which Namazov couldn't afford.⁹⁾ This caused Harkach to go down on September 24, 2016 as they were unable to afford DDoS protection,¹⁰⁾ so some users took refuge in BRchan or Dobrochan. However, two days later, a couple of website mirrors popped up.

The mirrors were incidentally VIP Passcode only until the “2ch.pm” opened and let everyone post again, but Harkach's fate remained uncertain at the time. Then on September 30, 2016, Namazov announced that he accepted help from Mail.ru,¹¹⁾ but created panic as people speculated that the deal had compromised the website's anonymity, forcing a migration to BRchan (which later became Lolifox and died out).

^{Note: This list was retrieved on 2021-10-13. It may have changed since then.}

The website is known by many nicknames to indicate that it is a separate website from the old Dvach that existed from 2006 to 2008 and no longer resembles what it used to be.

• Dvach has a reputation of being a “retard-infested shithole full of teenagers” with the only positive being the fact that you can upload large WebM files that have sound.
  • There is no “spoiler” feature, so assume that most of their boards are “not safe for work” (NSFW).
  • If you have trouble posting, the error will show up in the upper-right corner of the page.
• Nariman Namazov is an ethnic Azerbaijani businessman, so he's allegedly “left-leaning” in the sense that he opposes Russian nationalism, but openly cooperates with authorities.¹²⁾
  • In a Skype conversation with Cloudflare, it was revealed that he set his name to Norman.¹³⁾
  • He has criticized nationalist-affiliated Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, claiming that he stole the @navalny handle on Telegram¹⁴⁾¹⁵⁾ and reportedly considers Navalny a populist.
  • In response to the State Duma adopting a law requiring websites to ban illegal content,¹⁶⁾ framed as a ban on “dissent” in the west,¹⁷⁾ Namazov has critiqued its vague language.¹⁸⁾
  • He'll sometimes add his rare “Abu blessed this post” (Абу благословил этот пост) message.

• Dvach (2ch.hk) (2ch.life) - The front page of Harkach.
  • @ru2ch on Twitter - The official Twitter account, mostly memes.
    • @abunyasha on Twitter - The current owner, Nariman Namazov's Twitter account.
  • @dvachannel on Telegram - The official Telegram account, mostly memes.
    • @ru2ch_news on Telegram - Another official Telegram account, mostly news.
  • Dvach on VKontakte - The official VKontakte account, caused a shitstorm.
• Abuchan on Wikireality
• 2ch.hk on Noobtype Wiki