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Blocking Kiwifarms

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#311

Post by jdasdf »

donohoe wrote: post #71
Icathian wrote: post #40

There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem. Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current lands…

Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech Hate speech and organizing to harass and other IRL hate acts is not ‘free speech’. That was the major point.

Yes it is.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#312

Post by tombert »

Good.

I'm sorry, I'm generally Mr. "Raw raw free speech", but let's not kid ourselves; by all accounts KiwiFarms is (and always has been) a cesspool of horrible people. It's not like 4chan or something, where it might have started with reasonable intentions and just became horrible; KiwiFarms was started for the specific purpose of bullying Chris-Chan, hence why it was initially called Cwcki Farms. KiwiFarms has been implicated in multiple suicides, and countless cases of bullying (and possibly doxing), and Null's response to all of these allegations has been almost entirely ambivalent.

At some point, we have to ask: is this the world we actually want to live it? I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is a moron, but even I think that the doxing and SWATing campaigns against her lead to a really bad world to live in, and that's not even getting into people I actually like.

I'm just some idiot on the internet, but I think that the world is a better place without KiwiFarms.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#313

Post by rejectfinite »

debacle wrote: post #176

I am a free speech absolutist, but I read the Wikipedia page on this site and it seems bad. "Crimes were committed," "People lost their lives" bad. Unjustifiably bad. That said, is anyone willing to steelman this website? Could this possibly be construed as just a big misunderstanding?

>Crimes were committed," "People lost their lives" bad. Unjustifiably bad.

Crimes are committed on Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, Tor, Signal, Telegram everyday. Better take those down too.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#316

Post by etra0 »

Icathian wrote: post #40

There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem. Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current lands…

> Given that they should never be in this position, Cloudflare is choosing between "platforming the bad guys" and "censoring free speech". They have navigated this imperfectly, but have done better than most would, I think.

They chose what's more convenient for them, as a private company, since the stock had a bad response after their previous statement.

They are, after all, a company that has to responds to their shareholders.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#317

Post by nathanaldensr »

tarakat wrote: post #137
serverholic wrote: post #114

The government shouldn't do anything about hate speech. Full stop. Edit: I’d love a definition of hate speech from someone who downvoted me.

But it should do something about how 2-3 giant corporations have become effective arbiters of online speech.

Agreed. There should be (and I thought there was with Section 230) a very, very clear line between being a platform--"dumb pipe"--and a content provider with moderation and censoring capabilities. I agree with others that the law has a lot of catching up to do... but when it does catch up, that doesn't mean it will favor folks demanding censorship of this type of content no matter what.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#318

Post by peanut-walrus »

scythe wrote: post #208
Icathian wrote: post #40

There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem. Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current lands…

>Cloudflare is choosing between "platforming the bad guys" and "censoring free speech". Unless they provide hosting services, this seems a little distorted. Cloudflare is a DDoS protection service, not a platform. For nearly as long as there have been laws, there has been a general understanding that even the worst of us are entitled to the protection of the laws. Even Bill Cosby was entitled to his Fifth Amendment r…

I feel the "not providing hosting services" argument doesn't really hold water. If the content is only accessible over the internet when I connect to Cloudflare, it sure feels like they are providing hosting. Sure, they only provide a proxy ... which is a copy of the content on their servers, which is hosting.

Obviously Cloudflare wouldn't be willing to provide the name of the company doing the actual hosting for very good reasons. However, this makes it impossible to make the hosting provider aware of what they are hosting. I don't think a lot of hosting providers want to willingly host neonazi sites, however when set up behind Cloudflare, it is quite likely they have no idea they are hosting neonazi sites to begin with.

If CF was "just" DDoS protection, it does seem quite reasonable that CF should not be obligated to do any moderation. However, the service they provide comes with quite a bit more: instant production-grade global web hosting (caching) infrastructure and ability to hide your backend infrastructure from the general public.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#319

Post by raxxorraxor »

Icathian wrote: post #40

There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem. Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current lands…

My government should and cannot ever be trusted to moderate hate speech.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#320

Post by _dain_ »

slothsarecool wrote: post #188
ffwszgf wrote: post #53

Cloudflare can do whatever it wants but I wish they were honest about it. The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense. If anything the owner has been monitoring the thread more proactively and making sure people follow the law. This is included not allowing the creation of new accounts and reminding everyone that their data will be turned over to the authorities should it…

Just adding some light to the escalations; there were bomb and shoot threats over the last few days. The userbase on the site upped the tone of their "jokes"/threats after the last blog post and thats what caused the final suspension.

these were obviously (stupidly poor taste) jokes, and they were removed as soon as the site admin was made aware. death threats are against the rules of the site. what exactly makes this so urgent that KF has to be blasted off the internet?
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