For nearly two decades,>Anonymous origins
Anonymous' origin story begins in the online message forums of 4chan, the anonymous social community website founded in 2003. Even today, posts on 4chan from users who don't specify a username are labeled as written by "Anonymous."
In the website's early days, users often organized group pranks called "raids," flooding chat rooms in games and other online communities to cause disruptions. 4chan began cracking down on the raids after critics accused participants of cyberbullying and posting offensive content.
Those raids formed the basis of Anonymous' operations: a decentralized movement of like-minded online users who would communicate in encrypted chat rooms to plan online disruptions. At first, those plans were largely about cheap entertainment. Eventually, they began to revolve around social or political aims.
