141–150 of 271 posts
Even with that aside, this is a lot of data, which, as an example, can be used in research about psychology. I'm never a fan of throwing data away, it's not like we have too much of it.
Kiwifarms was a archive of the horrible behavior of the terminally online. If you're wondering why it was attacked with such vitriol, Google "bathtub hrt".
I found a blog post and several reddit posts talking about it, but I still have no idea what it is. Is it literally made in a bathtub?
I hope in 10 years we could compare the state of the internet with today and see what else has slowly became the norm. It feels like we are moving toward a tech tyranny bit by bit. Every day we wake up and things are change a very little bit and we assume this is how it has always been or it is supposed to be. Note that I do not defend any ill action that anyone on KF has done. What I am trying to point out is how th…
Tangential question: When the Wayback machine retroactively excludes a site's content – e.g. a site owner adds a robots.txt that specifies exclusion — the data isn't deleted, right? Just flagged to prevent being found in search again. In other words, if exclusion of KF turns out to be an unnecessary or unwanted (or if researchers want to study the KF data in the future), it's just flipping the flag, right? Here's an…
Even spam stays in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
was that reputation substantial though?
Yes. I provided a link you can click on, but you can also go to the Kiwi Farms Wikipedia page that catalogs victims killed and nearly killed by Kiwi Farms harassment campaigns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
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…
What I don't understand is why this is done by private corporations instead of the government. Stalking is a crime, harassment is a crime, SWAT-ing is a crime. I don't want to live in a society where law enforcement is left to big tech vigilantism. There's a reason that governments are granted a monopoly on violence, they have democratic legitimacy and accountability that other entities do not.
Because law enforcement (at least in the US) is woefully bad at their jobs and don't care. I have first-hand experience with this when I had a close friend who was being harrassed by someone local (we knew who it was) and LEO refused to lift a finger. I've talked about it multiple times before on HN [0][1][2][3] but even with this guy graduating to physical actions (keying the friend's car, following/stalking them) the police did nothing.
So if our only options are "Have the police do nothing" or "Have a private corp decide to not do business with a company anymore" then I know which one I'm picking, which one will actually help reduce harm. Even if they spin up under a new name they will lose users along the way. Deplatforming works.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32521976
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31610876
Can somebody explain the back story? What is Kiwi Farms?
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Long version:
Kiwifarms is a site dedicated to discussing the affairs of famous people. Often, this goes as far as public records searches and weird internet sleuthing to find addresses and other such information that is usually considered private. The odd thing about kiwifarms is that it is organized so that individuals have a single thread, which is essentially a record of all the past information and rumors on that person in one convenient place.
There are disputed reports about Kiwifarms being instrumental in the harassment of 3 individuals to the point of them committing suicide, and people on kiwifarms have taken pictures outside of people's houses, etc. Lots of creepy behavior. Threats of violence have also appeared on the site, but are against its ToS and the owner of kiwifarms claims that they get moderated pretty quickly - whether they do is up for debate. It's mostly a center for sharing creepy levels of information and bitching about famous people, particularly when those people do weird things. Critics of kiwifarms believe that they are a center of information gathering (and thus coordination) for harassers.
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One notable individual, who uses the online handle "Keffals," did not like the content of their KF thread. Keffals is a transformation who has engaged in some behavior that is at best borderline, including sending hormones to kids without their parents knowing and running a discord server ("the catboy ranch") that involved prurient contact with minors. Keffals has also done several embarrassing things online, such as producing pornography and participating in internet drama.
Keffals was served with a search warrant recently, presumably regarding the former activities. At least one armed officer came to their house, but no guns were drawn, and Keffals' devices were seized. After the search warrant was served, Keffals erroneously claimed that someone from Kiwifarms had swatted them (and later walked back the claim), and then said that they were being threatened to the point of running from Canada (weirdly to countries with no extradition treaty), and started a campaign to get the site taken down. A gofundme was put up, also.
In response, people on Kiwifarms stepped up the creepiness, finding the hotel that Keffals was staying at in Ireland based on one picture of the bedsheets, ordering pizzas to the hotel, taking pictures outside the hotel, etc. Keffals later went to some other location, and I believe is not posting pictures any more.
During this time, several bomb threats and threats of violence against Keffals and the people who support Keffals also appeared on their kiwifarms thread. Also, people from kiwifarms tried to get the gofundme taken down.
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IMO the whole situation looks really bad for everyone involved. Two groups of internet trolls went to war. One side had a lot of institutional/media backing.
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I'm okay with removing someone from the internet if their business is to harass and dox people.
Absolutely. When there is a due process and it is done with the accordance of law that we are all supposed to abide. Not by unilateral decision of a tech CEO/Staff.
If you're a shithead in a club, you get kicked out. If you're a shithead with your family, you get kicked out. If you're a shithead on the internet, you also get kicked out.
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By removing records of KF, we cannot prove the acts done on KF. You know, evidence, the thing you need to know if something is true or not. Or the thing you need to prosecute people civilly (or criminally). If I wanted to rightfully go after users of KF, or KF itself, how exactly do you intend to do that when all records are destroyed. "The guberment will handle it" - they're not, and haven't for years. The only just…
>By removing records of KF, we cannot prove the acts done on KF. You're ignoring (what was that about "intellectual dishonesty"?) the part where this is likely still archived by them, just not publicly accessible. You're also forgetting the countless screenshots and other documentation that exists of KF from prior controversial incidents.
Screenshots are not a trustworthy medium. Many of the articles published about Kiwi Farms contain significant factual errors and rarely cite sources for the claims they do make.
For example, the CBC recently published an article claiming that the Christchurch shooter "revealed his intentions (on Kiwi Farms) hours before carrying out the attack".
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/kiwi-farms-online-forum-1.6565...
If you read articles from 2019 it was claimed that the gunman posted on 8chan shortly before the massacre. The claim that he posted on Kiwi Farms hours before is completely new and unsubstantiated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
By claiming censorship, it's implied that they deserve a platform, and to not have that taken away from them. You can't censor someone without a platform.
IA isn't a "platform". Claiming censorship does not mean deserving of a platform. Reality is they already have a platform, and will continue to do so, now in even more anonymous methods. Preventing users from being held responsible. The best that could have been done is if CF continued to proxy it, and answered discovery and court orders, that way users could be unmasked and prosecuted. But now they got away free.