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Blocking Kiwifarms

blog.cloudflare.com

171–180 of 1001 posts

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#172
Hope the tech elite who naysay journalism take note that it wasn't the 3 suicides, or the swatting, or the death threats or the stalking or the harassment that compelled Matthew Prince to stop hosting kiwifarms.

It was the heat from negative PR that did it.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#173

There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem. Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current lands…

> There were no good choices for Cloudflare here

100%. To me this isn't really about KF (which clearly sucks and should be offline, but through actual legal processes), this is a matter of, "When does internet infrastructure end and content moderation begin?" As I mentioned in a previous discussion[0], Cloudflare finds itself right at the blurred edge of this line, made more complicated by CF providing both hosting, which is generally seen as content, and DDOS mitigation, which is more ambiguous.

The same people who cheer this decision wouldn't be happy if, say, DNS servers refused to resolve mega.io because it hosts illegal pornography. Or if their ISP started blocking PTP or nyaa.si for copyright infringement. This is to say nothing, of course, of any suspect political interference in internet infrastructure, which we already see around the world[1].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32664488

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/22/pakistans-former-pm-khan-say...

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#174
post #53

Cloudflare can do whatever it wants but I wish they were honest about it. The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense. If anything the owner has been monitoring the thread more proactively and making sure people follow the law. This is included not allowing the creation of new accounts and reminding everyone that their data will be turned over to the authorities should it…

> The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense. I don’t believe you have the same information as cloudflare and assuming good faith I believe them when they say there are legitimate threats to body and person. They have a responsibility to their investors to insure that their brand isn’t used to coordinate violence. Dont just shrug your shoulders while a small group invite…

No post body was provided.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#175
post #53

Cloudflare can do whatever it wants but I wish they were honest about it. The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense. If anything the owner has been monitoring the thread more proactively and making sure people follow the law. This is included not allowing the creation of new accounts and reminding everyone that their data will be turned over to the authorities should it…

100% they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. First you pretend you care about free speech for a week and gesticulate in public. Then you come up with some extraordinary circumstance so it doesn’t seem like it’s the new normal.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#176
I am a free speech absolutist, but I read the Wikipedia page on this site and it seems bad. "Crimes were committed," "People lost their lives" bad. Unjustifiably bad.

That said, is anyone willing to steelman this website? Could this possibly be construed as just a big misunderstanding?

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#178

They muffed it. They were proving to the world how reliable they could be and repairing the damage from the Stormfront debacle, and again they just showed how prone to caving to pressure they can be. What a joke. I will never use CF for anything I want kept online in the face of angry people.

I'm guessing KF members organizing the swatting a US congresswoman (albeit a controversial one) was probably the straw the broke the camel's back. Hard to lobby congress (Which Cloudflare does) when you protect a forum actively swats its members.

No post body was provided.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#180

They muffed it. They were proving to the world how reliable they could be and repairing the damage from the Stormfront debacle, and again they just showed how prone to caving to pressure they can be. What a joke. I will never use CF for anything I want kept online in the face of angry people.

No post body was provided.
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