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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

#891

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare and DDoS-Guard aren’t themselves DDoSing KF, though. They are just turning their backs. If KF wanted their continued protection, they could have stopped stalking and harassing people. But they didn’t, so here we are. And of course I wouldn’t be happy if a website I support were DDoSed. It’s perfectly consistent to celebrate when a murderer gets convicted and be outraged when an innocent person does. There’…

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

#892

I think it’s interesting that so many people see the danger in a Twitter “mob” effectively running Kiwifarms off the public, visible internet, without recognising that Kiwifarms themselves were a mob, with the precise goal of running people (including the recently targeted streamer) off the public visible internet too. The tactics were different, but the goal is effectively the same. The key differences are Kiwifarms…

It's not about who is more worthy of protection. And viewing it that way is incredibly dangerous. It's about what cost you are willing to pay for that protection. Ex: we have a pretty clear innocent until proven guilty justice system. This means there will always be people who are guilty who will not be punished. We can make that less likely by just throwing every suspect into jail. This protects the general public b…

> They are debating about the cost of that protection.

Sure, but the parent post is asking you to also consider the cost of not acting.

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

#893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the specifics, as always. I'm comfortable saying that whatever the line is, KF is firmly on the other side of it.

If you do not have a consistent standard other than something arbitrary and subjective then it is only a matter of time until the line changes again.

Yeah well, such is life.

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

#894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? Thoughts and prayers for this service that has the express purpose of instigating and facilitating targeted abuse, doxxing and other harmful crimes. Get some perspective please.

> this service that has the express purpose of instigating and facilitating targeted abuse Source?

Type the name of the site into a web search engine, click the Wikipedia result, and look at the sources there. It literally would have been less effort for you than copying/pasting my message, adding a caret and posting a question.

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

#895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ability to "deplatform" is also what allows fascist nations to exist and keeps Putin in power today in Russia.

No. In a free society business owners do whatever they want. That includes hosting content that runs counter to government positions, and the right to NOT HOST content they disagree with (for whatever reason, even financial or publicity-related reasons). In Putin's Russia, organizations are forced to carry content they don't agree with, or they are prohibited. That's not an exaggeration. If the government says you mu…

I touched on this somewhere else in the thread, but it is not uncommon for companies to end up in a position where they have so much control over society that they need to be limited in their power, else they just hold too much power and that is not good in the long term.

Something like cloudflare, where their decision to host or not host you can be the difference between being able to be online and not, needs to be regulated as a utility because executives at cloudflare should not have the authority to determine who can and cannot host a website on the internet.

Mob rule is not good, and mob rule will lead to oppression of some form if left alone for long enough.

There is no exception to that rule, it is only a matter of time before it happens.

There should be reasonable restrictions on behavior based on harm, but those restrictions should not be in the hands of mob rule or companies like cloudflare. Those restrictions should be based on rule of law and determined in a courtroom with informed jurors and a fair trial.

There are times where that is excessive, this is not one of them because cloudflare is such an important piece of infrastructure. For a private form? You can delete whatever the heck you want, you should be able to.

Something like cloud flare, however, is more of a utility. Giving it the power to shut people off is giving it too much power.

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

#896

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.

We are not talking just about guns here. We are talking about tools and the importance of applying them properly.

De-platforming are tools just like guns. Applied properly they are a force for good.

In this case, it was used well.

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

#897

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the goal of KF is to de-platform individuals, but merely to discredit them by publishing demeaning information and rumors about them. So they are categorically different: one side is pro-free-speech, and the other side is pro-censorship. "Doxxing" doesn't restrict someone else's free speech. It just discourages them from conducting speech under their public identity. If you ask me, what they ought to do…

> "Doxxing" doesn't restrict someone else's free speech. It just discourages them from conducting speech under their public identity. That is restricting their ability to speak freely - now they have to hide their identity for fear of physical violence!!!

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

#898
post #769
post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're conflating a number of points here. California's State Constitution provides a positive right to speech. The Pruneyard case, concerning protests in an open-air shopping center, was upheld due to the Court deciding that the State Constitution's right to positive free speech does not conflict with the negative right to free speech outlined 1st Amendment under certain conditions (i.e. only using common areas accessible to the general public, not protesting inside storefronts, etc.) While it theoretically applies to other states with positive free speech rights, so far, the Pruneyard case has, in practice, only applied to California. Even then, Pruneyard does not apply when it comes to regulating the time, place, or manner of speech and may be rendered irrelevant for supermarkets. (https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/4th/...). And, as a result of Section 230, I certainly doubt Pruneyard applies to content providers, if it ever had any.

In addition, what the Supreme Court found in HiQ Labs vs LinkedIn in regards to obtaining publicly available information says nothing about pinging a website too death until its offline. We're both quite capable in separating the two.

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

#899

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ability to "deplatform" is also what allows fascist nations to exist and keeps Putin in power today in Russia.

Keeping up KF isn't going to stop Putin.

No, but I feel like the ideology of the person posting this misses the fact that they are on the side of what empowers people like Putin.

Kiwi farms is clearly an issue that needs to be handled, but in my mind to handle it requires you be hesitant, it requires you be reluctant to shut them down because you don't want to step over that line. It means setting up barriers to your authority to shut other people down.

This, what I see here, is a glee for it. It's loarding your power over others, it's enacting revenge.

That is the toxicity I see. Pragmatic handling of speech requires that you sometimes shut down bad actors, but when the people in charge are doing it without concern, or the people driving it or using unchecked forces to do it, that's an issue.

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

#900

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I Keffals broke the law, then that is a matter for law enforcement. It's not the purview of an internet hate mob acting as judge, jury, and executioner. Every defense I've seen of kiwifarms is exactly like yours. Some insinuations about how "distasteful" an individual is, and then an implied "Can you really blame them for going after him/her?"

If Kiwifarms broke the law, then that is a matter for law enforcement. It's not the purview of an internet cartel and hate mob acting as judge, jury, and executioner. Every defense I've seen of censorship is exactly like yours. Some insinuations about how "distasteful" a group is, and then an implied "Can you really blame them for going after it?"

The comparison here is clever, certainly. But the scope matters: KF relentlessly attacks individuals, to the point of suicide. The anti-KF campaign only seeks to take KF offline by making it too expensive for hosting providers.

Nobody is trying to SWAT the guy behind KF. It is a huge, consequential difference.

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