Kiwi Farms is down across all domains as DDoS-Guard terminates service • Hacker News Board

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

#761

Post by anigbrowl » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

bioemerl wrote: post #672

SinParadise wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, a gun can also kill an innocent man or neo-Hitler. We just need to make sure that it is applied more on the latter and less on the former.

In civil society you generally aren't allowed to run around shooting anyone.

But you were talking about fascist nations, not civil society. Defenestration seems to have more impact that deplatforming in such places. Russian police also have no issue with arresting people for holding completely blank sign, on the basis that the medium (a sign on which a message of protest could be included) is a sufficiently message-like reason to take someone off the street. Mind you, the same is true of the US to some extent.

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

#762

Post by aaron695 » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #390

philippejara wrote: post #336

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…

Did you ever watch 12 Angry Men ? There's a scene in that movie where an unabashedly racist man is making his point as loudly and angrily as he can. One by one, all the others in the room turn their backs on him. When only one man is left, that man has a short message for the racist: "Sit down, and don't open your mouth again while I'm here." Nobody puts him in jail. Nobody takes away his right to make a living or hi…

No post body was provided.

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

#763

Post by istinetz » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

ChicagoDave wrote: post #469

ivraatiems wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever watch 12 Angry Men ? There's a scene in that movie where an unabashedly racist man is making his point as loudly and angrily as he can. One by one, all the others in the room turn their backs on him. When only one man is left, that man has a short message for the racist: "Sit down, and don't open your mouth again while I'm here." Nobody puts him in jail. Nobody takes away his right to make a living or hi…

I don't know the entire history here, but my understanding is that KF was a forum where doxing and swatting was openly pervasive. Sounds like a perfect example of society holding a site accountable and producing the correct outcome. There was no government involved, so it's not a "free speech" issue. I always talk about the wild west of the late 90's when the Internet was brand new. My colleagues and I all talked abo…

>There was no government involved, so it's not a "free speech" issue.

Strong disagree. Free speech is a central tenet for the entire modern society. Without it, there is no scientific revolution, no Enlightenment.

Accept controversial, unpleasant, disruptive discussion and ideas or accept stagnation. That's it, there is no way around it.

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

#764

Post by jowsie » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #709

_vvaw wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of SWATing, harassment, and "driving people to suicide" this is a false impression, one that is intentionally spread by the site's detractors. SWATing and harassment is strictly banned on Kiwi Farms. The site owner aggressively removes such posts and cooperates with law enforcement. The leader of the campaign to take down Kiwi Farms is Keffals, a transsexual Twitch streamer with a large underage audience. Ki…

Wait, the owner of the site explicitly doesn’t cooperate with law enforcement though?? I first heard of them because of the owner of the site insisted on hosting a video of a hate-based mass shooting against law enforcement requests. I really doubt your claims here; you lie in your first paragraph.

He cooperates with the law in the country he resides and the site is hosted in. He told NZ to fuck off 'cause they had no say in whether or not he was allowed to host the video.

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

#765

Post by DaSHacka » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

daptaq wrote: post #242

deepcyanide wrote: post #158

Is it too early to say the internet is done for because it's looking that way to me. keffals has given the government the recipe to kill off any website they want gone. I'm hearing that keffals creatures are now attacking TOR to get them to drop kiwi too. This isn't going to stop, 4chan is definitely next then every other site that isn't mainstream.

> I'm hearing that keffals creatures are now attacking TOR to get them to drop kiwi too. How is that even possible? Would the Tor project hard-code an onion-site it won't resolve?

Yes, and they actually already discussed such a possibility back when the Daily Stormer first moved to Tor[0].

They ultimately shot down the idea, and just put out a statement condemning them instead[1][2].

I think it's unlikely they would implement such a thing for KiwiFarms now that they've already set the precedent with a site that is arguably much worse.

[0] https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/issues/23270

[1] https://twitter.com/torproject/status/898256109789687808

[2] https://blog.torproject.org/tor-project-defends-human-rights...

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

#766

Post by Bakary » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

raxxorraxor wrote: post #164

Bakary wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often hear this argument, but the US is currently on a much clearer trajectory towards increased authoritarianism than most EU countries/CANZUK despite all of this freedom. The situation is more complicated than just straightforward definitions of what freedom is. What really matters is not edge cases where some forum or other is banned, but whether your society is populated with authoritarian ideologies and to wha…

In the US the government just ask corporations to censor content and they comply. Activists will spout their usual XKCD-interpretations of free speech, which is legally correct, but heavily fails to see the larger picture.

There's an even larger picture than this, which is that the argumentation around speech is gamed by people who have no interest in preserving it overall.

What truly matters is which speech ends up being successful and adopted in the broader society. This is why the focus is placed on the availability of platforms rather than the presence of free speech on its own. The argument is never just to let people speak without arrest or restraint, but to let them speak AND give them access to a convenient platform that will help their speech be more successful. The next step is to force platforms to host them and give them an algorithmic pipeline of views.

If freedom of speech is the key ingredient on its own, why is the US on an steeper authoritarian slide compared to the rest of the West despite more robust speech protections? Largely because authoritarian elements there are extremely adept at using speech rules for their own ends, and will then be able to discard most freedoms of any type once they solidify their grip on the institutions.

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

#767

Post by richbell » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #746

richbell wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve read some hilariously out-of-touch comments on this site, but this might take the cake. You know what else happens on a monthly basis? Normal paychecks. IIRC the context of that quote was that Kiwi Farms has/had several people constantly filing frivolous lawsuits against it who were literally on welfare/government support.

I thought the GP comment was wild, but "I just got my welfare check, time to hire a lawyer" is an even stranger take. Suing people is unpleasant and expensive and tends to favor people with money who can afford to hire effective lawyers, very few of whom will work for so little that they can be afforded on welfare. If people on welfare are suing someone, it's probably because they actually have a grievance with them…

> I thought the GP comment was wild, but "I just got my welfare check, time to hire a lawyer" is an even stranger take.

I don't have any links on hand, but from what I recall they were all Pro Se. My understanding is that many of them were discovered by KF in the first place because they were vexatious litigants.

One of the vexatious litigants had previously sued Taylor Swift and threatened to abuse her lawyer's daughter, resulting in a high-profile lawyer representing Kiwi Farms Pro Bono against him.

The truth is wilder than fiction.

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

#768

Post by cowtools » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

seebs wrote: post #735

cowtools wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech is more than just an amendment to the constitution. It is also a doctrine that knowledge and discussion should generally be free, and that people shouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs. It used to be that all forums had pervasive doxxing and swatting. People didn't use to have public internet identities like they do today- probably because there wasn't any way to profit from owning a public identity or…

No, it did not used to be that "all forums had pervasive doxxing and swatting". That has never been true. It has never been widespread. Heck, swatting as we know it today wasn't even remotely common until quite recently, and doxxing has been actively frowned on and treated as potentially criminal since, like, the 80s. I dunno what you think you're arguing, but it's nonsense.

Doxxing and swatting has always been frowned upon, but it continues to happen regardless. So the idea that it can be curbed through social stigma and criminalization is clearly false. The technology for surveillance and publishing has only improved over time.

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

#769

Post by tedivm » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 9:08 PM UTC

mikl wrote: post #582

tedivm wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea how ironic this comment is considering the history of Cloudflare. I remember going to a talk by their CEO at Defcon years ago when Scientology was being DDoSed and he was bragging about providing CDN services to the Anonymous hacker groups that were behind the DDoS. Cloudflare didn't seem to care about free speech for the Scientologists. There was even a huge discussion about whether performing a DDo…

In public, sure, but a website is explicitly private property, so the megaphone-DDoS move would in this case be trespassing and harassment. And the slippery slope is a real problem, no matter how much people call it a fallacy. As we’ve seen countless times in history, the distance from viewing some group as less deserving of freedom than you, and actively persecuting them is short.

Free Speech is more complicated than that, at least in the US. The Supreme Court held in Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center that simply being private property does not by itself allow the owners to restrict speech.

> Over two decades ago, our state Supreme Court concluded that a privately owned shopping center that attracts large numbers of people to congregate in order to shop and take advantage of other amenities offered by the shopping center is the functional equivalent of the traditional town center, which historically is a public forum where persons can exercise the right to free speech. ( Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center (1979)

Further, the Supreme Court has found that putting a website on the internet grants a wide variety of privileges to the people using it. Specifically speaking, the Supreme Court held that if websites such as Linkedin make pages publicly accessible they can't use the legal system to stop access of those pages that they don't like- specifically, they can't stop bots from scraping by suing to get them to stop.

So if we're talking free speech I'm not sure we can count a website as private property in the sense you're talking about, and whether it would even matter if we could.

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

#770

Post by amadeuspagel » Mon, Sep 05, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #390

philippejara wrote: post #336

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…

Did you ever watch 12 Angry Men ? There's a scene in that movie where an unabashedly racist man is making his point as loudly and angrily as he can. One by one, all the others in the room turn their backs on him. When only one man is left, that man has a short message for the racist: "Sit down, and don't open your mouth again while I'm here." Nobody puts him in jail. Nobody takes away his right to make a living or hi…

Yeah, kicking a website off the internet is just like not listening to racist rants.