Live data from Hacker News

Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

twitter.com

161–170 of 271 posts

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

was that reputation substantial though?

Yes, yes it was. Kiwifarms users harassed, stalked, and doxxed 3 people (at least) into suicide and ruined many people's lives. How many people has an average site like Hacker News bullied into suicide?

How many has Facebook? Twitter? Back when I was in high school (graduated 2014), three students within my district committed suicide from cyber bullying conducted through these platforms, there wasn't even any bans!

Kiwi-farms seems fairly mundane based on everything I've read about it so far (not that I can even look at the site for myself now). Why is there a double standard here? How the hell did these random twitter users manage to gain the power to pick and choose who gets to be on the internet now?

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> 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 intention…

>Screenshots are not a trustworthy medium.

Sure. That's why it's likely that - again, I don't know how this still bears repeating in this comment chain - IA still has the site archived, just not publicly accessible.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

was that reputation substantial though?

The people driving the effort to deplatform it were verifiably doxxed, harrassed and threatened, often times in real life, through swatting and in-person harrassment. Some of them were children. This isn't even witch-hunt style "newspaper will embellish the story", this was published on the forums by the ones harrassing people. The goal of the forums was to provide a space for doxxers to share info on people they did…

>were verifiably doxxed, harrassed and threatened

Ηic Rhodus hic salta. Show how any of those claims are verifiable.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#164
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't stop Nazis from existing though (or even knowing about, visiting and supporting the site). If we do the same thing with KiwiFarms, we just make it harder to monitor and easier for serial-abusers to collaborate. The majority of KiwiFarms users simply aren't solely enabled by the website existing, either. I simply don't believe in deplatforming, and it disappoints me to see Cloudflare shrug and cave in.

Deplatforming is analogous to quarantining a person with an infectious disease. It works. The FBI can still monitor whatever's left of KF on Tor or Discord.

If you think of beliefs as infectious diseases, you're not respecting the autonomy of other people.

If I need to be prevented from knowing what the monsters say in order to avoid turning into a monster myself, then I promise you, we've lost. The monsters are going to eat us all.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's silly. If Kiwifarms benefits from and wanted this, try telling it to those people on Twitter, or to admins and moderators on Reddit, where even talking about Kiwifarms could get you banned, much less linking to it. If you try to convince them, likely you would get an unbelievable amount of negative online attention sent your way. Ironically the same thing they hate Kiwifarms for.

As an aside, I've noticed a common and extremely effective strategy frequently used by the alt right and other fringe ideological groups (not just in American politics but also in Europe and basically everywhere) is to first stir up a big stinky controversy, wait for the predictable social media overreaction, and then to just withdraw and completely refuse to engage, making their critics look like a bunch of lunatics raving at windmills (because the over-reaction is a hundred times much more public than the controversy), while also keeping the critics on their back foot, always reacting rather than acting on their own terms.

In practice: The abstract entity KiwiFarms takes all the shit, very few of the people actually constituting its membership seem to take much flak; meanwhile its critics look completely unhinged, even though they're absolutely right and KF is incredibly reprehensible, they still do their best to undermine the credibility of their own cause by acting and behaving like a frothing at the mouth lynch mob much more interested in power-tripping and revenge than truth and justice.

The strategy is straight out of Sun Tzu on how to deal with a stronger army, and I haven't really seen any examples of anyone handling it well.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe that being on the Internet Archive is a god-given right and that only a judge should be able to tell IA to delete the work that IA chooses to do on their own? 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.

I do not believe any shithead should be given a pass. My comment was mostly about who decides who is a shithead. If tomorrow someone famous/outreaching enough on twitter/etc. decides that I am a shithead, should google close my account?

If you were to host your own forum, and people began using it to dox trans individuals with the explicit goal of harassing them, how would you react and what action(s), if any, would you take?

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#167
post #93

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

Growing up, my teachers/mentors taught me not to cite Wikipedia directly for any academic/journalistic works, mainly because most people didn't actually check the sources that article writers were using and there's the risk that there's heavy biases one way or the other because - anybody can edit articles.

Looking at the Wikipedia article you linked, I don't see any definitive, authoritative sources of information that directly links KiwiFarms and these horrible events other than random tweets posted by people on the internet.

After looking through 5-6 different sources cited in the bottom of the article, I don't even see any references or screenshots of the actual website used in reporting, just journalists taking what other people are saying as fact.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#168
post #142

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".

>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?

[deleted]

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 intention…

>Screenshots are not a trustworthy medium. Sure. That's why it's likely that - again, I don't know how this still bears repeating in this comment chain - IA still has the site archived, just not publicly accessible.

> I don't know how this still bears repeating in this comment chain - IA still has the site archived, just not publicly accessible.

Because if it isn't publicly accessible it functionally doesn't exist, and what remains is a number of publications of questionable veracity.

Perhaps law enforcement will eventually be able to comb through the data, but there is no guarantee the general public ever will be able to.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#170

Well I guess there is now limited ways for someone to evaluate for themselves on whether KF was posting horrific content without significant moderation. Guess we at least have Taylor Lorenz to tell us exactly what is going on here in a full and unbiased way. Someone here at HN at least posted this link which told more of the story than I have seen anywhere else. Also search the HN archives (for now at least it seems)…

They still have an hidden service online [0], an ipv6 only mirror [1] and they are working on restoring it "as normal" [2]. In any case they stated a backup of the site will be publicly available if they give up [3].

I find interesting they took the archived copy down instead of keeping it publicly available since it was the only way to prove what kiwifarms has done instead of having as only source "trust me bro". Either way I don't think it matters since nobody actually bothered to link or prove any of their claims so I don't think it really changes much.

[0]: http://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedz... [1]: https://kiwifarms.top [2]: https://t.me/kiwifarms/29?embed=1 [3]: https://t.me/kiwifarms/28?embed=1

Post reply on HN