“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Net Watch (ネットwatch, Netto Uotchi) board, or the Watch Board (ヲチ板, Wochi-ita), is a 2channel board that was created on October 30, 1999. It's mainly used to observe “net incidents” (ネット事件, Net Jiken), or internet drama, and organize acts of vigilantism. Due to the board's stalker-like nature, it's said to be good manners to remove the h to prevent linking and don't act on personal grudges.

The board was preceded by the Toshiba Support (東芝サポート) board that was made on July 5, 1999 for the “Toshiba Claimer” case that Amezou couldn't house. It closed on August 14, 1999, but a “Net Watch” board shortly opened on October 30, 1999 to house a broader range of subjects. Around August 25, 2001 to October 7, 2001, the board was closed during 2channel's 2001 shutdown scare.

However, it was able to return in time for the 1ch.tv trainwreck, which goes into why the board's default name is “Nameless @ GoGoGoGo!” (名無しさん＠ゴーゴーゴーゴー!). Back then, net incidents were a hot topic, meaning that the board was once considered to be a flagship board, until it started losing users to blogs and social networking services.

On March 12, 2004, watch threads on /mmosaloon/ were told to move to /net/,¹⁾ so watch threads related to online games were moved to /net/. Today, these threads take up half of the board, but you can still find people aggressive towards blogging sites, other sites, and bulletin boards including the boards hosted on the same site as them. In 2011 and 2014, separate boards were created for Twitter and Bakusai respectively.

• Chiyu Juuni-sai (ちゆ12歳) and Samurai Damashii (侍魂) are a few notable websites that served as a source for information back then. Though, the former is still being updated to this day.
• You would expect people to “observe and collect information on net incidents” on /net/, but one could say that /news4vip/, /news/, /newsplus/ and /ms/ can easily serve the same purpose because the media has changed drastically enough that they can be included in everyday news. However, most of these boards (except /ms/) are unsuitable for long-term discussion.
• Some terms of note are “flaming” (炎上, enjō) and “net locusts” (ネットイナゴ, netto inago).

• Net Watch - The front page of 2channel's /net/ board.
• Net Watch Board on Niconico Encyclopedia
• Net Watch Board on 2channel's Wiki
• Net Watch on Japanese Wikipedia