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Blocking Kiwifarms

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Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#711

Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not. It’s about what in the US you’d call “due process” and in all the rest of the world you’d call “rule of law.” Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems. That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be…

[flagged]

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#712
post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of the Daily Stormer, it was free speech and you very clearly and directly made the incorrect call. I'm a big fan of your thoughtful speeches while you grapple with these sticky situations. But why not just invest some pocket change in helping solve TOR's name resolution problem so that removal from the clearnet isn't the death sentence it currently is? There's a simple and obvious solution to this which…

You are free to make a decentralized crypto-driven platform filled with nazi's. What you're ignoring is there are very valid reasons these platforms don't exist. They become deplorable crapsack worlds that 'normies' will not visit. It is never going to have any mainstream popularity. "Oh, you're on that nazi child porn software". And it requires a massive amount of moderation to ensure such a form does not become a c…

The tor dark web already exists and everybody knows what goes on there. There are already decentralized crypto-driven naming services.

Merely improving the tor network's name resolution has nothing to do with your grand philosophical argument against internet freedom.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>rather than free speech i encourage anybody who is calls themselves a "free speech advocate" to consider what kiwifarms has been doing to "free speech". their intimidation campaigns have been doing a lot more to harm the cause of free speech than this decision by cloudflare is. if you really believe in free speech, you understand that trans people deserve free speech too, and kiwifarms harrasment campaigns have been…

Quoted post unavailable.

Nobody is arguing that any one group should have blanket free speech protections. There are definitely trans people who turn to harassment and threats to try to protect their community, which isn't okay.

But at least three trans/gnc people have died through suicide, directly attributable to Kiwi Farms. Near, a brilliant and widely respected open source contributor, specified in their suicide note that it was because Kiwi Farms had made their life hell for years (https://www.ign.com/articles/near-bsnes-remembrance). Just because there are some bad apples in the trans community doesn't make this okay, and they don't get carte blanche to make threats online - they get banned from social media like most other people. There is no trans equivalent of kiwi farms where they cheer driving people to suicide.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#714
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…

After hearing about the drama and reading kf's pov, I can definitely understand why the people ddosing kf want it down. The stuff they do is illegal and absolutely vile but overlooked by the people in power because it suits their politics. It scares me as a prospective parent.

>The stuff they do is illegal

The content on the Kiwi Farms is legal.

Edit: Disregard this as I misinterpreted what I quoted.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#715

I think a lot of people in the comments don't understand what Kiwifarms is. I say this as someone who occasionally browses there and gets some (admittedly sick) enjoyment from it: the main draw of the website is a place for people to get together and bully mentally ill "weirdos". It's not just about people posting offensive shit in their own little corner of the internet - what happens there spreads out, by design, i…

I'm not familiar with kiwi farms besides hearing the noise about them periodically and second hand accounts of them doing this or that, but I'll be candid here, how I feel about it really depends on what they mean by "weirdos." If they're just harassing trans people or whatever I can understand the outrage. If they're exposing child predators on discord (I've heard this said in this thread, don't know if it's true or…

KF doxxes children, including as young as 5 on record: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbSKeL_WAAAsYwY?format=png (just one coverage of this, there is plenty to find)

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#716

I think a lot of people in the comments don't understand what Kiwifarms is. I say this as someone who occasionally browses there and gets some (admittedly sick) enjoyment from it: the main draw of the website is a place for people to get together and bully mentally ill "weirdos". It's not just about people posting offensive shit in their own little corner of the internet - what happens there spreads out, by design, i…

I've never even heard of Kiwifarms until now. Judging by your comment I can see why. Sadly, I think this will be a "Streisand effect" moment and will likely draw more attention to this site.

The admin already admitted that he would make a torrent of the site while considering his giving up scenario - public pressure on providers to drop their service does make continued access and community harder and less organized

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#717

Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not. It’s about what in the US you’d call “due process” and in all the rest of the world you’d call “rule of law.” Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems. That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be…

Tell me then - why does Cloudflare still offer its services to drug dealers? To sites run by terrorist groups like ISIS? To outright criminal scamming operations?

I have no faith in your principles. From my perspective, the only principle you have is your share price. That's fine, of course. I don't expect you to stick your neck out or risk your business. But don't pretend like this is some principled stand.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#718

I think a lot of people in the comments don't understand what Kiwifarms is. I say this as someone who occasionally browses there and gets some (admittedly sick) enjoyment from it: the main draw of the website is a place for people to get together and bully mentally ill "weirdos". It's not just about people posting offensive shit in their own little corner of the internet - what happens there spreads out, by design, i…

I'm not familiar with kiwi farms besides hearing the noise about them periodically and second hand accounts of them doing this or that, but I'll be candid here, how I feel about it really depends on what they mean by "weirdos." If they're just harassing trans people or whatever I can understand the outrage. If they're exposing child predators on discord (I've heard this said in this thread, don't know if it's true or…

> child predators

What's happened here is that they (and you'll see this has happened across a lot of the extreme right in America) have started to label trans people as "pedo" or "groomers", in an effort to make it seem like trans people are really child predators, which makes many people more tolerant of their attacks and more sympathetic of anti-trans policies such as bathroom bills.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#719

Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not. It’s about what in the US you’d call “due process” and in all the rest of the world you’d call “rule of law.” Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems. That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be…

Did blocking the content save anybody's life? If so, how? If you don't know, can you even articulate a theory in which blocking content could save a life imminently threatened? I don't dispute that a life was threatened and murder may have been imminent, I'm taking that for granted. I just don't understand how this action could have any effect upon that course of events. Murder is a physical-world thing, not an onlin…

I'm not sure where you're getting these ideas from, but not taking every threat seriously is a serious failing of internet forums over the long term.

(the next paragraph is an example and not real, do not take any intent from it, which in itself may be ironic considering the argument I'm making).

If I call out "We should kill assetlabel because I do not like their politics", in itself it is not a serious threat, as I don't know you and cannot act on it. But it would be a mistake to tolerate the statement, even in a 'joking' manner (you can see in my previous post the 'joking' manner is commonly used by fascists to downplay serious threats). Again, the issue with allowing this behavior is it normalizes it. Now we step it up, what if 4 people repeat this same threat, 10, 20, 100? With each person repeating the line the chances of someone knowing you and acting on this behavior increases greatly. Any such threat must be moderated, and sites must have a history moderating such behaviors and not tolerating them.

In the early days of the internet being anonymous was somewhat easy, and in the later days of the internet it is nearly impossible, and more worryingly you must continue to remain anonymous in the future after such threats are made against you as you have no idea how long someone may harbor aggression over the situation. Based the early days of the internet we've normalized violence and threats and carried it on much too long as it has consequences in the real world.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Vigilantism isn't a great thing, but what choice do we have when authorities allow hate sites like Kiwifarms to stay online? After all, as Yonatan Zunger famously wrote, tolerance is not a moral precept. In conclusion, vigilantism is fine if done against someone you dont like... cool

Not tolerating asocial behavior is not vigilantism. Me not accepting your calls for violence is not a violent act in itself. To think otherwise is near suicidal.
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