Tell HN: Sites like Kiwifarms are destroying free speech

But the fat is that organizing criminal activities is a criminal activity! Having a whole platform where there is rampant, blessed-by-the-mods organized crime is not something acceptable. Even if you give credence to the idea that this activity is not representative of the platform as a whole, it is responsibility of the platform to prevent crime being harbored there, just like in any other business.

Morals and ethics are a complex thing, impossible to "solve" in a perfect way, and both restriction and freedom have their costs and benefits for everyone. Maybe instead of understanding this events as the demise of freedom, we could understand them better as a way to learn --as a society-- how to manage this balance properly.

These problems are all being collated together, but they are not of equal strength. Things that cause physical harm, such as SWAT'ing, are obviously illegal and I doubt you would get any kind of support from anybody here for these actions.

Problems such as doxxing are more ethical, and they can result in physical harm in extreme cases. But their main goal is mental distress.

Then you have harassment, which is where I think free speech comes in. You have the right to speak, and others by extension have the right to reply. If you are speaking in public places on hotly contended topics, you will likely find opposition. The market place of ideas can only work if this is possible.

Bare in mind also that the internet public space is not the same as the public space down the road. On the internet, not only are you battling with local ideological differences, you're also battling with people from fundamentally conflicting cultures. If you want a meaningful discussion about local ideology (i.e. trans people living in Western Countries), I would suggest to go somewhere that includes only local people.

> I no longer feel like I can speak up, for fear of illegal reprisals. Why should they be allowed to infringe on my rights? Why should I have to hide?

You shouldn't and this is of course a problem with KiwiFarms, one I think even the owner agrees with.

Again, though, whilst dealing with an international community, your idea of 'illegal' doesn't carry. In some Countries, for being trans, the punishment is death. Some of the people you will interact with in these international communities believe this entirely and want to see this globally adopted.

Thanks to the invention of the internet and many years of global immigration, some of these people now even live next door. When we lost social uniformity, we also lost safety and increased social tensions.

> Cloudflair's decision to stop doing business with kiwifarms is a step towards free speech, not away.

I would like to see KiwiFarms do better to clean up their act. At the very least, threats of violence or actions that encourage violence (doxxing, SWAT'ing, etc) seems like a good place to start.

I don't think wiping them off the internet is to the way to go. For example, big tech worked together to remove Parler (for apparently organizing Jan 6, although it later transpired that it was actually organized on Facebook and Twitter), and all these people migrated to other platforms, which are now even more resilient.

(On a different note, I remember all Parler accounts got doxxed, and this was widely celebrated. Where was their right to speak and safety? I created an account there years ago just to see what it was about, and it was just as boring as Twitter.)