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Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

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111–120 of 271 posts

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#111
post #66

What's the endgame here? Because the site's not going anywhere and everything that's happened has only emboldened their user base. There's likely to be unintended consequences too with even less scrupulous and accountable operators popping up to offer their services to sites like Kiwi Farms. They're not going to have any shortage of customers going forward.

The endgame appears to be the complete elimination of KF and all copies of it. They might claim that its mere existence psychologically harms marginalized people, but it seems that their real goal is more about power. You get a ton of clout by both appearing as a marginalized person under attack as well as winning victories over enemies. Right now, Keffals and another person are fighting over who gets to take credit…

The goal seems to be to erase all mention of any bad behavior on the part of the people campaigning against kiwifarms. Possibly to erase evidence of criminal activity.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#112
post #15

This is ridiculous and has been a cascade of awful precedents for the Internet. This is legitimately an extremely bad sign of what's to come for the Internet's future.

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.

No post body was provided.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#113
post #63
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.

How many times have people been ridiculed to the point of suicide by their peers on Facebook, Twitter, etc? Should those sites be taken offline too?

If the idea is to take down sites where doxxing and harassment occur, these should be the first targets.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A website was bullied off the internet because it showcased the horrible activities of horrible people. I'm far more concerned that a handful of Twitter users can memoryhole an entire community.

You say that as if the people running KF didn’t know what the site was for. And a publicly known reason for that website’s existence is because bullies need a place to coordinate harassment. Having the power to shut that place and therefore behavior down but choosing not to means they were complicit. Deplatforming works, the influx of new bullies shrinks when you make their place less public.

The removal in question is an archive. A read-only snapshot cannot be used to coordinate anything. But it can be used to view the documentation they have collected.

Therefore it would seem that this particular removal is motivated by erasing the documentation and performing a cover up.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The endgame appears to be the complete elimination of KF and all copies of it. They might claim that its mere existence psychologically harms marginalized people, but it seems that their real goal is more about power. You get a ton of clout by both appearing as a marginalized person under attack as well as winning victories over enemies. Right now, Keffals and another person are fighting over who gets to take credit…

The goal seems to be to erase all mention of any bad behavior on the part of the people campaigning against kiwifarms. Possibly to erase evidence of criminal activity.

If there's evidence of criminal activity on Keffals (or others) part, the police would have it. KF having a copy doesn't serve any legal benefit. And if the evidence is credible enough, then the police will charge and arrest her, and the evidence will be released during the trial.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#116
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels deeply disingenuous to claim that all KF is doing is "cataloging someone's online life" while refusing to talk about constant SWAT-ing, the cheering of their victims committing suicide, and the constant IRL harassment they organize against their victims. After Byuu, the emulator dev of bsnes, higan and more was harassed into suicide [1], harassment almost exclusively organized on KF, I've lost patience for w…

The problem is you’re not solving anything with these antics. KF still exists and will continue to exist. It’s just book burning for the sake of feeling better with absolutely nothing to show for it. In this case not even the satisfaction of seeing a burned book. People desperately want the world to be different, and it isn’t. It isn’t, and it won’t change massively within your singular life. So you can grandstand an…

Not only still online, but now their previous actions have been covered up for them! One could argue IA is pro-kf, why else would an archive intentionally destroy evidence?

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#117
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is you’re not solving anything with these antics. KF still exists and will continue to exist. It’s just book burning for the sake of feeling better with absolutely nothing to show for it. In this case not even the satisfaction of seeing a burned book. People desperately want the world to be different, and it isn’t. It isn’t, and it won’t change massively within your singular life. So you can grandstand an…

The idea that we must provide a platform for people to actively organize harassment campaigns designed to kill people in order to avoid "tyranny" is beyond absurd.

Nobody said that.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A website was bullied off the internet because it showcased the horrible activities of horrible people. I'm far more concerned that a handful of Twitter users can memoryhole an entire community.

You say that as if the people running KF didn’t know what the site was for. And a publicly known reason for that website’s existence is because bullies need a place to coordinate harassment. Having the power to shut that place and therefore behavior down but choosing not to means they were complicit. Deplatforming works, the influx of new bullies shrinks when you make their place less public.

That was unequivocally not a publicly known reason. There were thousands upon thousands of “lolcows” documented in kiwifarms and the sites culture strongly emphasized not “disturbing the grazing lolcows” or “taking things IRL.” That much was obvious for me as somebody who only visited the site a few times a year out of curiosity.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#119
post #66

What's the endgame here? Because the site's not going anywhere and everything that's happened has only emboldened their user base. There's likely to be unintended consequences too with even less scrupulous and accountable operators popping up to offer their services to sites like Kiwi Farms. They're not going to have any shortage of customers going forward.

But the site is going anywhere; it's going lots of places, in fact. They can't find a host that will both accept them and can handle the DDoS, so they've been bouncing around between domains and hosts. This is the kind of instability that destroys online communities, which in this case is good.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, the reason there's such a controversy in the first place is that they've gotten far more attention than they wanted. This sort of activity is only possible while skulking in obscurity. Damnatio memoriae is devastating to a public figure, but it is doing KiwiFarms a huge favor. It lets them scurry away under some new rock and keep going under a new name. The worst thing you could do is probably just shine…

Evidence KF has tried to stay obscure?

Well there can't be evidence one way or the other now that they're off the wayback machine.

Although it does enhance my point, which is that Kiwi Farms benefits from this.

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