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Blocking Kiwifarms

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#611

Post by smsm42 »

notatoad wrote: post #451
eastdakota wrote: post #391

Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not. It’s about what in the US you’d call “due process” and in all the rest of the world you’d call “rule of law.” Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems. That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be…

>rather than free speech i encourage anybody who is calls themselves a "free speech advocate" to consider what kiwifarms has been doing to "free speech". their intimidation campaigns have been doing a lot more to harm the cause of free speech than this decision by cloudflare is. if you really believe in free speech, you understand that trans people deserve free speech too, and kiwifarms harrasment campaigns have been…

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Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#612

Post by [deleted] »

eastdakota wrote: post #391

Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not. It’s about what in the US you’d call “due process” and in all the rest of the world you’d call “rule of law.” Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems. That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be…

[deleted]

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#613

Post by yew »

password4321 wrote: post #557

Anyone willing to stick their neck out with a HN-undeletable prediction of who'll be the target of the next pressure campaign? (which of course wasn't the reason for blocking...) The rumblings I'm detecting now seem to be related to misinformation.

Ovarit took part in the harassment campaign, so hopefully they go next. Don't know if Cloudflare hosts them though.

Edit:

And 4chan is always bigger but more diffuse. Hard to say who's more of a pest.

Edit edit:

I think the important lesson here is that direct targeting of fascist employees and ex-employees of enablers is very much a live tactic. It worked, it works, it will continue to work.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#614

Post by [deleted] »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #578

> This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare's role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with. "We'll keep doing it of course, even after we said we wouldn't do it any more." After all, it's been all of 3 days since they wrote, > Just as the telephone company doesn't terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have conclud…

[deleted]

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#615

Post by cowtools »

atemerev wrote: post #586
kypro wrote: post #530

It always starts as a one off, "this was a special circumstance" type thing. I feel like I've read this post thousand times before at this point. I remember when it "just Alex Jones" getting deplatformed from social media. And it had to be done - he was just too dangerous! But then it expanded to a few more people, and from there a few more. And within the span of just a few years Twitter had gone from Alex Jones to…

Twitter has the right to ban anyone for violating their ToS, including the (thankfully, ex) president of the United States. I don’t see any problem with that. You don’t have a _right_ to a space to promote your ideas from a private company, this is not how free speech works. And no, the right to ban someone does not translate to an obligation.

What's regrettable isn't that twitter bans an ex-president, what's regrettable is that we've allowed corporations to capture the public square on the internet to the extent that they can de-facto ban the ex-president from discussion.

Where does twitter get all of its money from? Not directly from users, but instead from ads. They are not directly beholden to the interests of their customers but instead other corporations.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#616

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

eastdakota wrote: post #469
philippejara wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, can we know what was this great threat then that suddenly made you change your position in just a few days? Furthermore, do you believe that someone who is issuing a threat on a public platform is going to not act it out because you took it away? If anything it just sounds like it would make them even more incensed to do it, just makes absolutely no sense to frame it as some immediacy issue.

Yes, as noted in the post if you read to the end, I am very concerned about that.

Excellent; since you're concerned about it, it should be quite easy to provide that evidence, right? Personally, I would settle for quotes with private information redacted (usually I'd ask for archive.org copies or such, but in the case of doxxing I agree that's not ideal).

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#619

Post by Uptrenda »

Typical weasel word announcement from a big company bending over backwards to satisfy the prevailing voices of a political narrative. This has nothing to do with 'free speech' or 'due process'. It is about ensuring a brand stays appealing. I say this because they weren't specific about the credibility of any 'threats' made. They invented an enemy and then used it to justify suppressing Kiwifarms --as a whole--. Very convenient since it allows them to dismiss ignoring their supposed values while satisfying the legions of mad people who want them to act a certain way.

I also want to point out that Kiwifarms is not an organization. As far as I'm aware: they are a simple, public forum. This means that talking about what 'Kiwifarms' has done is misleading since it only applies to what some users are posting. It would be like saying Facebook are terrorists because sometimes terrorist groups try to use the site for propaganda and recruiting. You need to differentiate between the actions of a user/s and the site. In the case of Facebook they are allowed to stay up and remove offending content on the basis that this is the nature of public communities. This is actually standard practice for websites who may also receive copyrighted material. Otherwise someone could easily take down a website by posting copyrighted material.

If there really was a 'life threatening situation' Kiwifarms should have been allowed to handle this themselves. By either removing the content or taking whatever action they felt necessary. But Cloudflare didn't do this. They provide a service that fundamentally undermines the integrity of the Internet. Makes it less resilient. And now the hens have come home to roast: they are dictating how others should run their sites. Eat a massive bag of dicks, cloudflare.

Re: Blocking Kiwifarms

#620

Post by UtopiaPunk »

Woah. I personally wish that Cloudflare had taken action sooner, but I understood the position. I disagreed with it, because as a free and private entity, Cloudflare can choose to serve whoever they wish (so long as they do not discriminate against legally "protected classes"), and as such, I'd prefer to see them refuse a customer that blatantly courts hate speech, but I understood their commitment to free speech.

This decision seems hard. Crime prevention forces should have stepped in already to protect people. But cops protect and serve capital, not people, so the police response will be weak and ineffective until capital becomes upset. Like Cloudflare, I'm also not comfortable with decisions of public safety being handled by corporations, but the police aren't interested, so here we are.

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