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Kiwi Farms is down across all domains as DDoS-Guard terminates service

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Re: Kiwi Farms is down across all domains as DDoS-Guard terminates service

#341

The thing is, it's hard to feel bad for kiwifarms. They seem to be one of the worst sites there are. But freedom of speech/expression/opinions aren't about defending those who speech/expression/opinions you like but all of them. Personally, I think the site being shutdown is a good thing. But it's hard to look at the fact a few corporations can remove a website from the internet and think this is good for a free and…

> But freedom of speech/expression/opinions aren't about defending those who speech/expression/opinions you like but all of them.

What if the freedom of speech you are defending is impeding on the right of others to speak freely?

While I agree with the sentiment, that we have to be especially observant how we treat the freedoms of the people whose opinions we dislike, I don't think just defending those and forgetting about the grand picture is in great service of freedom of speech as it stands.

Maybe this is my liberal (?) European bias, but I don't think for example there is much value in definding some extremist political group that goes after some other people whose opinion they don't like. In the worst case, you are defending a group who has a huge chilling effect on the free speech of the other group, by making them afraid of speaking publicly about their cause.

Re: Kiwi Farms is down across all domains as DDoS-Guard terminates service

#342
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are different degrees, sure. And this place has moderation. But what is the line? Be precise and avoid arbitrary definitions. There are threads here where people call for wealthy peoples heads. Did that cross a line? Could we say it about other people?

You're falling for the heap paradox: If you remove a grain of sand from a heap, tell precisely at which grain of sand it stops being a heap. You can't? Therefore it's impossible to tell if something is a heap of sand! QED

That just says "don't use the word 'heap' for anything normative", surely not "let's hope what we think is a heap is universal consensus"? I support the current thing though

Re: Kiwi Farms is down across all domains as DDoS-Guard terminates service

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 people are dead because of that site. What they were doing was a crime. Criminal activity is not is not protected free speech. That's like arguing carding and SIM swapping sites are just expressing their right to free speech and should be protected.

Even if that were true, and I think it's pretty doubtful to just attribute a suicide to some people who made fun of or harassed the deceased, it's a criminal or civil matter. If people on that forum committed a crime, let them face the legal penalties. Why should the website be made persona non grata by Internet companies? How many more are dead from activities on Facebook, Instagram, etc? Why is it that big business…

So how many more are dead from Facebook etc?

Re: Kiwi Farms is down across all domains as DDoS-Guard terminates service

#344

Kiwifarm's owner statement: https://web.archive.org/web/20220905182626/https://poa.st/no... This whole thing is kinda fascinating, if not extremely scary. After learning about the situation from the last couple threads here and going down the rabbit hole of sources, the future of the internet seems pretty sad... If cloudflare doesn't reinstate the website after dealing with said immediate danger they claimed was the…

The site is still up as an onion service. This is more than just cloudflare's DDoS protection at this point, they have no one to support their DNS registration or IP space, as their operator goes into detail here[0]:

>[...]

>Domain Registrar

>Cloudflare was both our application-level DDoS mitigation and our domain registrar. They have given me a way to transfer my domains to another registrar. I do not know what registrar to send it to because I do not have faith in any company.

>DDoS Mitigation

>DDoS-Guard will drop us dropped us while I was writing this post. This meme about Russia being a free country is a joke. The US is a free country, but with no stewards to protect it. Without the US, there is no second best. I did not expect Cloudflare to crumple so quickly and I don't have a Plan C for DDoS mitigation.

>Resource Allocation

>I own IP addresses. Our IP allocation is from APNIC. APNIC is one of the 5 private companies which allocate Internet resources around the world. APNIC happens to be based out of Australia, which recently passed draconian censorship laws. There is an effort to get our RIR to revoke our allocation. This would be unprecedented in the history of the Internet, and considering China is in APNIC's region, an absolutely horrific standard which will echo throughout the upcoming decades. There is a non-zero chance of this happening.

>Hosting

>We have one host and I am looking at two more. It is likely that the host will give up too. The two hosts confident they can handle the Kiwi Farms are probably wrong. DDoS-Guard was confident they could handle the Kiwi Farms and said "bring it on" for less than 24 hours

>[...]

It seems like this guy is getting completely unplugged from the internet infrastructure because every company sees him as a liability. Well, there's always onionbalance for these types I guess.

[0] http://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedz...

Re: Kiwi Farms is down across all domains as DDoS-Guard terminates service

#345

The thing is, it's hard to feel bad for kiwifarms. They seem to be one of the worst sites there are. But freedom of speech/expression/opinions aren't about defending those who speech/expression/opinions you like but all of them. Personally, I think the site being shutdown is a good thing. But it's hard to look at the fact a few corporations can remove a website from the internet and think this is good for a free and…

3 people are dead because of that site. What they were doing was a crime. Criminal activity is not is not protected free speech. That's like arguing carding and SIM swapping sites are just expressing their right to free speech and should be protected.

>3 people are dead because of that site

How many people are dead because of twitter/facebook/tiktok stalking, arguments, etc?

Re: Kiwi Farms is down across all domains as DDoS-Guard terminates service

#346
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you actually browsed them? When this thing hit the front page of HN I checked it out and while they say a lot of nasty stuff about people there I couldn't find an occurrence of organising online or offline harassment. That is the organizing of harassment. That's what it looks like. People are very rarely dumb enough to post "I think we should commit a crime, who's with me" on the Internet. Post enough slurs ab…

This is shifting the goal posts. The original claim was that it posed a direct actionable threat to someone's personal safety. This claim was not substantiated. Now you're shifting it to, "unflattering words are a form of violence."

But he’s right that this is happening. Just because it’s obscure and subtle doesn’t mean it’s wrong. You’re not an idiot, you know that the point of these forums is to generate effects in the world with plausible deniability, the exact kind of deniability you’re supporting here.

Re: Kiwi Farms is down across all domains as DDoS-Guard terminates service

#347
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What doesn’t make sense to me is why is Cloudflare harassed for providing an utility to some bad actors while other traditional providers aren’t? Is Comcast getting any flak for providing internet to the KKK offices? Or their water provider? Is Netflix getting any complains for providing entertainment to terrorists? Or vodafone for mobile connectivity? Why is it different for cloudflare?

I think because some of us look at Internet access or phone service as akin to water or electricity service. You just don't deprive someone of those things. Regarding your Netflix example, I doubt Netflix knows if any particular customer is a terrorist. Having access to a CDN provider isn't in the same "basic rights" league.

>I think because some of us look at Internet access or phone service as akin to water or electricity service. You just don't deprive someone of those things.

I agree that trying to cancel people from being able to enjoy baseline physical necessities is not a line that's being crossed yet, but an attack on utilities may not necessitate this. Let's say Joshua Moon also happened to run a small hobby store in a strip mall. Would going after the utility providers (or landlord) for this store be "fair game" in order to attack KiwiFarms? Why or why not?

Re: Kiwi Farms is down across all domains as DDoS-Guard terminates service

#348

The thing is, it's hard to feel bad for kiwifarms. They seem to be one of the worst sites there are. But freedom of speech/expression/opinions aren't about defending those who speech/expression/opinions you like but all of them. Personally, I think the site being shutdown is a good thing. But it's hard to look at the fact a few corporations can remove a website from the internet and think this is good for a free and…

3 people are dead because of that site. What they were doing was a crime. Criminal activity is not is not protected free speech. That's like arguing carding and SIM swapping sites are just expressing their right to free speech and should be protected.

Do you think any teens have committed suicide due to body dysmorphia from watching TikToks or Instagram?

Re: Kiwi Farms is down across all domains as DDoS-Guard terminates service

#350

The thing is, it's hard to feel bad for kiwifarms. They seem to be one of the worst sites there are. But freedom of speech/expression/opinions aren't about defending those who speech/expression/opinions you like but all of them. Personally, I think the site being shutdown is a good thing. But it's hard to look at the fact a few corporations can remove a website from the internet and think this is good for a free and…

No. You're absolutely wrong here. The issue isn't that "it's hard to look at the fact a few corporations can remove a website from the internet" - that's a dog whistle to try to say Cloudflare is a victim.

Let's be clear about a few things:

Either Cloudflare is a utility, and therefore it acts as one and is regulated as one - or they're not.

Whether or not they are a utility, they want everyone to believe they were coerced in to doing something that's horrible - CENSORSHIP.

Non-rhetorically, is termination because of violation of a company's or utility's terms of service censorship? If you use your phone to call people and harass people non-stop, and dozens of people complain to your phone company, and they terminate you, are they censoring you? Or have you violated their TOS?

The problem here is that Cloudflare wants their cake and wants to eat it, too - they want to say their terms of service can be wildly lax when they're acting as a "utility" and they'll DTRT when legally compelled, but there are plenty of examples where they terminate for significantly less than a violation of their TOS, plus plenty of examples of where they don't terminate even when legally compelled.

They claim they don't host by trying to redefine the definition of hosting. They want us to believe they don't host, and that providing material services which facilitate presence on the Internet is neither hosting nor should in any way be their responsibility.

Their TOS for proxy services is bullshit, because they're basically saying that someone REALLY has to do some criminal shit before Cloudflare will take action. They want a district attorney to convene a jury to indict a John / Jane Doe before they'll do anything. In other words, they want to be a safe haven for any illegal activity that isn't serious enough to warrant that a district attorney to take direct action.

What happens if they become the monopoly they want to become and they're a safe haven for 90% of the illegal activity out there? They make tons of $. You can't block bad sites by IP because they serve all the legitimate sites from the same IPs as the illegal sites. You can't block bad sites by DNS, if they have their way, because DNS-over-https has taken control of that out of our hands.

So any claim of "censorship" is bullshit. Cloudflare wants to be the victim here, when it's their own attempts at manipulating the market that have brought us to where we are.

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