Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive • Hacker News Board

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#181

Post by HereIGoAgain » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

helf wrote: post #110

Amazes me the number of people who cry foul when something like this occurs. “Waaa censorship! This is evil! The internet is collapsing! Omg!” 1. Archive.org probably has just disallowed access. Not outright purged. 2. Shit drops off the internet literally every day 3. It’s a site full of edgelord incels who have a history of being complete pieces of shit 4. This isn’t a precursor to some horrible dystopian future of…

This isn't "shit dropping" off of the net.. This was the result of a true harassment campaign that finally resulted in a faux appeal to danger to literally force a completely legal site offline via illegal DDoS attack. (The stated goal of the media cheered campaign) And now an attempt to erase it's history.

You're right that it isn't a precursor to some horrible dystopian future of corporate control.. because it is actually that already! The internet is now broken. Another level of infrastructure (now basic network infrastructure) is open to tantrumers, PR etc veto!

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#182

Post by manuelabeledo » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

caeril wrote: post #179

jjulius wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Probably the same actions taken on antifa forums that are used to dox Trump-voting boomers with the explicit goal of harassing them: nothing. IA is not being "bad", here. They're just being inconsistent. Either doxing/harassment is casus belli to scrub content, or it's not.

> Probably the same actions taken on antifa forums that are used to dox Trump-voting boomers with the explicit goal of harassing them: nothing.

We do know that Kiwifarms was doxing people, but I would like to see proof of these "antifa forums", please.

"Antifa" has become such an umbrella term, it's almost mythological at this point.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#183

Post by _9xrb » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

bastawhiz wrote: post #177

hnburnsy wrote: post #49

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)…

Is it ethical to keep snapshots of pages doxing people? Or dumps of bank account numbers? There's no way to both preserve that content publicly and also protect the victims.

There were no dumps of bank account numbers. As far as I saw, Kiwi Farms users posted only publicly-available info about thread subjects. In my opinion, certain categories of public yet personally-identifying information should be covered by US law in a way similar to HIPAA. However, that is not currently the case.

Also, info like someone's phone number and home address are only a click away once you have their full name and approximate age/geographic location, at least for people haven't taken extraordinary steps to limit discoverability on Spokeo or White Pages. People post full names and locations to Twitter all the time. They call it "unmasking" when it's someone the ruling consensus dislikes, while they know the info will be used to look up the "dox." This is not Twitter or Kiwi Farms' fault. It is the result of flaws in our legal system which allow sites like Spokeo and White pages to operate.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#184

Post by HereIGoAgain » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

firstSpeaker wrote: post #96

manuelabeledo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no process to be had here though. Harassing is and always was against the site rules (as is interacting at all really) and "doxxing" (let alone post publicly available info) isn't illegal.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#185

Post by a_shovel » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #142

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #56

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?

From what I've seen, that does seem to be the accusation. I don't think it's actually possible to make hormones in a bathtub.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#186

Post by HereIGoAgain » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

jjulius wrote: post #166

firstSpeaker wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't understand the point of your example because that isn't what is happening here. Harassing is against the rules and will get you banned.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#187

Post by phpisthebest » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 2:47 PM UTC

firstSpeaker wrote: post #154

ohgodplsno wrote: post #148

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?

>>>decides that I am a shithead, should google close my account?

Google (and facebook, twitter, paypal, etc) does that with regularity today, every once in awhile someone with reach in the tech community has it happen to them, some programmer or researcher, etc and it makes the news here but political commentators are banned every day off google sites because some one with enough influence on twitter targeted them for being a "shithead" in their view.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#188

Post by jjulius » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

HereIGoAgain wrote: post #184

firstSpeaker wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no process to be had here though. Harassing is and always was against the site rules (as is interacting at all really) and "doxxing" (let alone post publicly available info) isn't illegal.

Ah, right, I almost forgot - if a thing's legal then there are never any negative ramifications that come from it and everything's sunshine and roses!

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#189

Post by HereIGoAgain » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

Cr4shMyCar wrote: post #124

firstSpeaker wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the problem though. Legal gears move slowly, and you know that Kiwifarms would've kept destroying people's lives and driving people to suicide until they got shut down. I would've preferred actual legal action rather than companies dropping KF because they're bad for business, but the end goal of getting them shut down is the same.

Who's lives and what deaths? Most of the (3) people claimed to have died, didn't claim anything of the sort. (in fact the one that activists like to bring up most, who is actually dead, literally blamed the mental health system and being made homeless the day before) The one person who did blame them seems to have died without leaving any proof for official records of both the Japanese or American governments. Just the word of a friend and a former (as in even before death) employer.

What legal actions could anybody went after? They don't allow illegal activities and don't even allow interaction from the site. Even talking about it is banned. Why do you think so many attempts to take them down have failed. They follow the law and openly work with it if something illegal does happen... Including the FBI.

Re: Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive

#190

Post by a_shovel » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

usednet wrote: post #118

flying-sheep wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That may be obvious to you. Have you tried asking some of the people documented there what they think about the site's culture, and how well it discourages harassment against them?