12chan was a controversial bulletin board that was established by “k0w” in the aftermath of /b/-day, existing from September 2006 to January 2010. Historically, it had a reputation of being an infamous hub of illicit content and child pornography, thus why it became a taboo subject.

Following the /b/-day debacle, “k0w” establishes 12chan at “12chan.org” with the Trevorchan (Kusaba) script on September 28, 2006.¹⁾ Due to bandwidth issues, 12chan was password-protected around July 5, 2007, forcing potential users to visit their IRC channel for a valid combination,²⁾ then their hard drive ended up dying which forced them to start over, as their backup was 'too old', on January 29, 2008.³⁾

They would upgrade to a new server at “85.17.145.35” on April 12, 2008⁴⁾ and temporarily borrowed the free “12chan.crabdance.com” on April 24, 2008.⁵⁾ At some point, it went down,⁶⁾ returned to “12chan.org”, then started over on November 30, 2008.⁷⁾ However, their domain registrar Gandi would seize the “12chan.org” domain, forcing them back to “12chan.crabdance.com” on January 9, 2009.⁸⁾

According to a felony indictment regarding the distribution of child pornography, it seems that 12chan would manage to regain control of their “12chan.org” domain for an additional year until January 8, 2010,⁹⁾ which aligns with the approximate time of death around January 11, 2010.¹⁰⁾ Obviously, there is no going back after that, but it was rumored that 12chan redirected to Reddit, which still had /r/jailbait.

• The aforementioned felony indictment¹¹⁾¹²⁾ saw a guilty plea on May 11, 2011 and it was believed to result in a 15-year prison sentence,¹³⁾ suggesting a release around 2026, but recent updates revealed that he was actually released from FCI Seagoville on June 28, 2023.¹⁴⁾
• Keep in mind that people might joke about '12chan' and not know of this website. In their head, they're just going “4chan + 8chan = 12chan”, which sounds like “1 evil + 2 evil = 3 evil” to them.

• AnonIB

• 12chan [Archive] - The front page of 12chan, archived March 6, 2009.
• 12chan on Wikichan - An older wiki article, stops at mid-2008.