> and is responsible for multiple suicides.

I've suffered some cases of extreme, acute depression in my life, and I was lucky that I had some support that prevented my depression from killing me.

That said, I'm really uncomfortable with the language that somebody else can be, as you put it, "responsible" for someone's suicide. One of the things that is really driven home in therapy for depression (that is, after you're no longer in a suicidal state) is that you alone are responsible for your actions; you're not merely at the whim of your circumstances.

The harassment from Kiwifarms is/was reprehensible, but harassment alone, at that level, is enough to draw a social and legal response without pretending they are responsible for someone else's suicide.

With all due respect, that may be true in most cases and a good message to receive for most people in therapy, but it's not true in all cases. As has been shown time and time again, humans are very receptive to propaganda and brain washing, and there's only so much harassment a person can take. A "regular" person might need to hear that the world doesn't have an agenda against you, that you're responsible for your actions, and if there's something about your life that you don't like you can take action to change it. But if there's an actual campaign against you, that advice no longer holds, and eventually that kind of harassment can definitively drive somebody to suicide. The only time I've heard of Kiwi Farms before today was when Near committed suicide. There's plenty written about the tragic event, but you can start with their goodby thread on Twitter: https://twitter.com/near_koukai/status/1408940057235312640?s...

If a US national dies in Japan, the Japanese authorities report that information to the US authorities. The state department publishes a list of all deaths of US expats living abroad, and there are no deaths anywhere close to the date when Near/Byuu allegedly committed suicide:

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...

Literally the only evidence that has been provided of his death is the statement of one of his friends and a photograph of a personalized urn. No obituaries, no police reports, etc.

The numbers provided by both countries are inconsistent with each other, and half of 2021 has no reported suicide in the State Department data. Please stop spreading this conspiracy theory based on statistics not being entirely consistent with the story, if they aren't even consistent with themselves.

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1565311737553100800

Near is almost certainly not dead. There is no evidence of his death, he’s been seen alive by fellow foreign devs active in SE Asia and interacting with Hector’s Asahi Linux streams and Hector’s VTuber accounts, and he did not appear on any canonical government (Japanese or US) death lists.

I'm not sure that "this person only faked their suicide to escape harassment" really absolves Kiwifarms of much...

Near was dealing with way more than KF. He wanted his thread deleted because it documented him absconding with thousands of dollars of donor money and dozens of rare games he was supposed to return or donate after archiving. He further engaged in rather aggressive behavior with other developers in the emulation community. His thread had actually been dead for nearly a year when he suddenly emailed Josh asking for it to be deleted (which he offered six figures). He threatened suicide when Josh gave the email to his lawyer and asked whether or not said approach by Byuu/Near was legal. Funnily enough the email and the resulting spike in activity on his thread was actually precipitated by a few posts on here about him.

Again, my stance is as follows: KF is filled with despicable behavior and people. However we absolutely must be accurate and precise when it comes to what happens there and why certain people would rather the site not exist.

> he’s been seen alive by fellow foreign devs active in SE Asia and interacting with Hector’s Asahi Linux streams and Hector’s VTuber accounts

Source please?

Lifetime of depression and multiple suicide attempts as well. If I ever do it, it'll be because I suffered my whole life, not because of the most recent thing that happened the week before.

The standard shouldn't be whether someone is struggling with mental health.

It's whether or not that person would be alive today if it weren't for this targeted violence

As someone pointed out below people have been found liable for (at a minimum)contributing to someone's suicide.

Victims have specifically wrote this in a suicide note. And these sick people follow up on their deceased FB profiles commenting and basically bragging about what they've done.

So first of all, "violence" has a definition. We can't keep expanding the definition in order to justify actual violence in retaliation.

You can be found partly liable for someone's suicide if you've encouraged or groomed someone to commit suicide. Saying mean things to them does not constitute such an action.

We can all talk about how reprehensible kiwifarms is, that it encourages reprehensible behavior, that we would not want to spend time with many of the people there in our lives, that we would disown our children for participating there, etc. But we have to put a stop to this push to take every opportunity to increase the scope of retaliation. We can't change the scope of what violence is or who is responsible for a suicide just because we find their behavior reprehensible and want revenge, not if we want to live in a just society.

> if you've encouraged or groomed someone

This is literally what they do though. They harass them with the message that they will never stop until they do it. It's not just random bullying that then pushes people over the edge. It's commands that you need to commit suicide. It's calling your family and workplace and telling them you've committed suicide. The "joke" there being that not only do you initially shock the family, but when your target does commit suicide, the family doesn't believe the real call.

Really? Users of the site have actually done this? Do you have any info on instances of this happening? I've always thought it was online "harassment" which is easy to avoid.

I think the definition of violence is a fair discussion. I think it has shifted a bit. To me words that cause physical harm is violence.

Words can't cause physical harm though. Only actions can.

Yes they can. People harm themselves all the time because of words.

People harm themselves. that's the action. thats the violence.

I can go online and say manga sucks. Somewhere, some kid is going to get very, very angry. He/she might even do something very irrational.

People who wish to equate words with violence do so solely to justify responding to words with violence. The goal here is to make it acceptable to kill you for what you say.

You have to admit there is a very significant difference between going online and saying manga sucks and participating in an organized and targeted harassment of a particular person.

I know why you are making that analogy: you are seeking to find a simple demarcation between physical violence and words. But it's clear in both the law and regular life that words and violence are highly intertwined and difficult to separate. This is why courts and trials exist. One person shooting another person is a simple fact. But what if the other person told them they were going to kill them? What if the other person had subjected them to years of physical abuse? What if the other person had subjected them to years of emotional abuse? None of these erase the act of the shooting, but they do contextualize it and change the law's assessment of what needs to happen.

It's also a big stretch to think that most people who equate words with violence are trying to justify doing violence. They are trying to foreground that words do indeed cause violence: either by inciting other people to physical violence or, as the GP has said, people do violence to themselves. Peoples' bodies do have harmful stress responses to being repeatedly berated and placed in an environment of emotional adversity. Those who place people in those situations are culpable, even if they did not put hands on those people.

It's not a stretch at all. They want to punish words as if they were violence, i.e. put people in prison, send armed men to arrest them forcibly, etc. That's at the very least. This is openly stated, "some words should be illegal" is 1000% a sanction on violence against people for the words they speak.

In your examples, you get it right at the end: we seek to contextualize actions and use peoples words as evidence of context. It is the context of the acts that matter, not the words said.

Right, and zoomers would probably broadly agree with that, but almost everyone else doesn't, so it's very contentious. "Sticks and stones" liberals still basically control the world, at least until we start dying off in 30 years or so.

It's a lie. Saying words are violence is an attempt to make it so, not an observation.

People who say that are trying to use their words to force you to not have the right to use your words.

I'm not a zoomer.

I don't think it's as lopsided as you think. I think HN has a very strong, and fairly rigid, view on free speech.

And I think a much larger % than you imply see a grey area that is causing real, physical IRL harm.

It's hard to write down what I'm talking about. But it's pretty easy to see it.

Bullying has always caused physical harm. Both the kinetic type of pushing and this transitive type we are talking about.

There is some recent precedent for criminal responsibility for someone else's suicide: the (in)famous case of Conrad Roy and Michelle Carter. She was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging him to commit suicide over texts and phone calls.

> is that you alone are responsible for your actions; you're not merely at the whim of your circumstances.

It's not a choice when strangers online begin sending your embarrassing personal info to your family and friends, begin harassing your friends and show up in person to terrorize you.

Imagine if when you were suicidal, random strangers threatened the person supporting you until they told you they couldn't help you anymore because of them.

> The honest truth is, I've been bullied, ridiculed, and humiliated my entire life. From my earliest grade school memories to now. It's always hurt me deeply enough that I can't describe it in words. I could only just tolerate it with heavy depression when it was 4chan.

> But Kiwi Farms has made the harassment orders of magnitude worse. It's escalated from attacking me for being autistic, to attacking and doxing my friends, and trying to suicide bait another, just to get a reaction from me. I lost one of my best friends to this. I feel responsible

> I can't handle this anymore. I have tried everything. I have taken every medication available. I have tried multiple therapists. I have tried closing myself off from the world. It doesn't help at all. Every night I am filled with panic attacks and dread and worry

-Byuu

So you admit you had support. What about the people who don't?

The site and the person who host it (there is no legal entity involved here - just a person) have not done anything other than facilitating speech, which is heavily legally protected. The users of the site have done a lot, though.

The proper action would be to go after the users who do bad things, and bury the site operator in subpoenas to find these bad actors.

He's been taken to court around 7 times. It's almost as if he didn't break the law, and people just think he must of because it be so nasty!

This is the same argument made by anti-free speech people defending companies that censor/deplatform.

Something can be legal and wrong. Sometimes the law is out of date with reality.

I don't want that to be a quasi-unilateral judgement.

Also, one question. Suppose we do change the laws, and Kiwi Farms continues to operate within those new laws. Will that be enough, do you think? Because the US would have to outlaw dead naming and misgendering for it to be enough for the activists.

Privacy protections should apply regardless of whether it's a megacorporation or a disorganized group of independent actors.

Most of the individuals targeted by Kiwifarms are not running for office, or own prominent businesses. They are for the most part unemployed nobodies who live at home. I don't see any public interest in naming these people.

Still really unclear what law is being broken in that case. Unless you're proposing new speech-curtailing legislation. They're Intenet-famous. They're of interest to forever-onlines. This one in particular is of interest to women and parents who've so far resisted brainwashing.

Perhaps the reason that they haven't been taken down by the US legal system is because none of what they do is illegal by US law.

Yes, that is the problem that I was describing.

Facilitating/organizing mass harassment of mentally ill people should be against the law.

Contact your congresscreatures.

> The site has been engaging in mass harassment for years and is responsible for multiple suicides

> Speculation about the ‘trigger’ or cause of a suicide can oversimplify the issue and should be avoided. Suicide is extremely complex and most of the time there is no single event or factor that leads someone to take their own life.

https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/media-guidelines...

The fact that Kiwifarms have won every suit against them is an example of the legal systems failings. Organizing mass harassment should be illegal.

It shouldn't be up to harassed individuals to seek justice, prosecutors should be able to go after them. If the issue is with the law itself, the government needs to effectively legislate.

>The fact that Kiwifarms have won every suit against them is an example of the legal systems failings.

Is this "I don't like the rulings of the court." or "The rulings of the court fly in utter defiance of legal evidence presented."?

Because if it is the former, you are the actual part of the real problem.

Winning in court every single time is a pretty strong argument that they aren't breaking the law even if they are disagreeable.

Kiwifarms legal opponents aren't celebrities, or politicians, or even ordinary people. They are some of the most vulnerable individuals in society. If I had to be sued by somebody I would pick someone living with severe mental health issues every single time.

I'm not arguing that the court should ignore the law and rule otherwise, I'm arguing that the law itself should be changed.

Something can be both legal and ethically wrong. You can apply your same reasoning to Cloudflare's censorship of Kiwifarms: nothing Cloudflare did in this case was illegal, so what is your issue with it?

This is simply not accurate. There are countless threads on politicians, media personalities, business people and others.

Just because the site started with Chris Chan (an individual with his own issues) doesn’t mean that similar individuals are the site’s only purview.

>I'm not arguing that the court should ignore the law and rule otherwise, I'm arguing that the law itself should be changed.

So long as you're arguing that instead of "tHe CoUrTs ArE nAzIs", then I have nothing else to add because I'm in full agreement with your sentiment concerning law.

>nothing Cloudflare did in this case was illegal, so what is your issue with it?

Of course; Cloudflare has a right to freedom of association and fundamentally I support whatever they choose to do, legally speaking.

However, there is a consequential problem in that the internet is becoming more and more centralized by the day and Cloudflare access is one of those facets.

Generally speaking, if you're a big website you either need Cloudflare or your own CDN to distribute the load and ward off hostile entities.

Consequently, Cloudflare is able to dictate a significant portion of the discourse on the internet by simply allowing or blocking their services. This wouldn't be a big deal if the internet was decentralized like it should be, but it isn't so the internet can't route around such nonsense anymore.

> The fact that they were found not guilty of crimes is proof that they're guilty of crimes as well as that the legal system is complicit.

The site exists to document the lives of and poke fun at some of the most vulnerable people in society. Even if explicit calls for illegal actions are banned, being featured on Kiwifarms is like having a target painted on your back. Their efforts to violate these individuals privacy and pry into every aspect of their lives is just incredibly immoral.

If Kiwifarms users can't see that what they are doing already is unethical, why should anyone believe that they truly think these other illegal actions are wrong? They just know not to talk about it out loud because then you will actually get in trouble with the law.

The only reason the site has been able to get away with it for so long is because they are targeting vulnerable people who are least well equipped to legally defend themselves.

As I already explained, those more extreme individuals plan these actions in more covert locations - smaller forums, subreddits, image boards, discord, telegram groups, etc. There are no rules banning such behaviour in these places. The owner and mods of KF actively not only delete such content but repeatedly remind people of the prohibition. They also actively report users who violate US law and fully cooperated with any legal demands brought by State and Federal law enforcement. Josh has even banned mods who disagreed or facilitated such behaviour outside the forums.

So kf is a target finding service. The nasty work is done "elsewhere", just like a good terrorists organization - keep the wetwork in small cells while the political arm directs them in plausibly deniable ways.

Not sure how you think this makes it ethical.

You and others keep citing "deleted within hours" as evidence of the site admins doing something to address the problem, when the horse has already left the barn. People who participate in those activities almost certainly have email or mobile alerts set up and have long since copied the victim's information.

I'd say it's evidence of conspiring to delete evidence before victims and law enforcement can act, particularly if the threads are completely deleted, as opposed to being locked and moved to a mod-only area so the posts are preserved for law enforcement action.

Are there any automated filters that detect personal information, filters that are trivial to employ?

Are the users who post doxxing/violence threads banned?

What is the purpose of the forum in the first place? Answer: to harass and doxx trans people.

I wonder how [redacted] would feel if people knew he was defending a site that exists solely to harass trans people.

You can't bring in someone's personal details like that in an HN thread, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. I've redacted them now.

It's pretty shocking that you'd have done this in a comment right after asking whether users who post doxxing threads are banned. The answer on HN, btw, is yes—although if an account has a lot of history on the site, as yours does, we tend not to ban on first offence.

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32729939 for more about this.

Do you have sources for Byuu/Near spotted alive? First I’ve heard of it.

That’s from two personal friends who are both extremely active in the emulation scene. Feel free to discount it - when the site’s back up, I’ll grab the screens of users in Hector’s streams that use the same exact eccentric writing style Byuu/Near did. (Archive.ph is too stale to have it.)

He should be on this list: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra... But there’s nothing.

https://jp.usembassy.gov/services/death-of-a-u-s-citizen/ Nobody was ever able to get any of the documentation listed on this page from the Japanese side, even family, and the Japanese continually report they have no record of the death. There are also no “blotter” style documents in Japan or the USA documenting his death.

I’m willing to be proven wrong - and accept others will not believe what is hearsay to them - but as someone who has been involved in emulation for years my Bayesian prior is extremely, strongly on the side of him being alive.

>Nobody was ever able to get any of the documentation listed on this page from the Japanese side, even family

Do you mean the allegedly-deceased person's family has been unable to confirm their death with the government? This seems like a significant fact I have not seen reported. Do you have a link for this claim?

> when the site’s back up, I’ll grab the screens of users in Hector’s streams that use the same exact eccentric writing style Byuu/Near did.

That's more than a bit creepy. Please reconsider the lengths you're willing to go to to win this internet argument.

You are oddly well-informed on the subject of trans people who are victims of organized doxxing and harassment.

Why is that, [redacted]?

You can't bring in someone's personal details like that in an HN thread, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. I've redacted them now.

You did this repeatedly, which is a serious abuse. I'm not going to ban you for it because this entire thread was so hellish, but please don't do anything like this again.

Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? You've been breaking the rules badly, unfortunately—not just in this thread. We've had to ask you this several times.