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Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

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Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#31
post #16

Is there precedent for this type of removal? Even sites like the Daily Stormer still exist on Internet Archive, albeit with a login wall.

I think that for sites like this, the best approach would be to archive but not allow access to archives for some arbitrarily long period of time (10 years? 100 years? the point being largely to preserve the contents for the benefit of some hypothetical future scholars of history and culture).

I think it's better if such archived sites are free for all to read, just as the site originally would have been directly on the internet. There's no good reason to hide it.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#33

Can somebody explain the back story? What is Kiwi Farms?

kf was the most accessible and moderated forum for gossip of internet personalities (mostly negative in the same way traditional gossip magazines are typically negative) this recent action seems to be related to their long-running beef with a particularly well-connected transgender, over being the primary location for documentation on questionable activities like shipping hormone replacement drugs to minors

No post body was provided.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#34
post #18
post #9

that's not how an archive should work. but perhaps Internet Archive is not an archive and it doesn't want to be one.

They also honor DCMA requests and robots.txt. That's the way an archive works in the real world.

revoking the public access to dome material is kosher, but removing the material itself is not.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is reliable to non-controversial topics only. Anything controversial is taken over by one side of the argument and only information that confirms that groups bias is allowed on the page.

On articles like that one, the Talk page is a far more realistic view of the subject than the actual page.

I'd be cautious. One of the people editing these articles has extremely high Wikipedia privileges yet has publicly campaigned for the elimination of the site. There is absolutely no neutrality here.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#37
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but there is literally no business in the universe that won't drop you as a customer if you cause them enough trouble.

You'd think that, but historically this has only encouraged niche businesses to crop up catering to that crowd. Look at Epik (or Vultr) for example, businesses that exist solely to counter this kind of threat. Yes, they still reserve the right to remove abusive users, but that's defined by legal statutes and technical limitations rather than 'icky feelings'. Both services have a surprisingly solid track-record servic…

>You'd think that, but historically this has only encouraged niche businesses to crop up catering to that crowd. Look at Epik (or Vultr) for example, businesses that exist solely to counter this kind of threat.

And Cloudflare had no problem hosting Kiwi Farms and Daily Stormer until they crossed a line. Cloudflare's history doesn't exactly paint it as bleeding-heart liberal who can't deal with 'icky feelings.' I'm sure Epik and Vultr have their lines as well, it just happens that none of their customers have crossed it yet.

>To stop KiwiFarms from existing, you need to literally silence the people using it, not just shut down their clearnet website.

Slowing them down is still a valid goal.

>Websites don't harass people, people do.

Guns don't kill people, people do. Except people with guns can kill a lot more people faster. That's why guns are a thing.

Whether or not you want to be a free speech absolutist, you have to concede that the platform and its reach matters. If it didn't, no one would be up in arms about deplatforming. Yes, it's literally and technically true that a website can't harass people, but having a platform meant to organize and facilitate harassment is a force multiplier for the people doing said embarrassment. Without the website, the people couldn't harass as well as they could with it.

And the size, reach and convenience of the network matters in that regard, just as the capacity, rate of fire and caliber of a gun matters, even if it is a person pulling the trigger.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#39
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but there is literally no business in the universe that won't drop you as a customer if you cause them enough trouble.

You'd think that, but historically this has only encouraged niche businesses to crop up catering to that crowd. Look at Epik (or Vultr) for example, businesses that exist solely to counter this kind of threat. Yes, they still reserve the right to remove abusive users, but that's defined by legal statutes and technical limitations rather than 'icky feelings'. Both services have a surprisingly solid track-record servic…

The same Epik that turned down 8chan? https://www.epik.com/blog/epik-draws-line-on-acceptable-use....

At the end of the day, businesses gotta eat. They're not a charity or a benevolent public force. If your user generated content impacts their bottom line, you're gonna get kicked to the curb.

>The endgame for all of these so-called 'abusive platforms' is retreating to I2P/Tor, or another internet-adjacent network

I'm pretty positive Cloudflare and IA do not care about a moral crusade to stop Kiwifarms, and would not care if they went to Tor. Both CDNs are primarily concerned about business risk with hosting content and calls to action that could be found illegal.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#40
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Popular endorsement of harassment to the point of suicide seems like a worse sign, personally. When it comes to threats to freedom of expression, I'm much more concerned about the religious right's abuse of government authority to censor education, ban books, and suppress the vote, than I am about private institutions taking steps to protect human life.

Quoted post unavailable.

Sure, words can't hurt you, but coordinated harassment campaigns can, and, for the mentally feeble, like CWC, words can coax you, over enough time, to act in your worst interests.
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