https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms#Christchurch_mosque...
edit: By the way, for all those people ripping on the ACLU and saying "they lost their way" below, they're actively defending 230 against claims of online-terrorism-by-proxy.
https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/section-230-is-this-th...
Do you genuinely not see a problem with the New Zealand police ordering websites to remove content they dislike and hand over user information about anyone who so much as discussed it? Christchurch was a horrific act of terrorism; thst doesn't make attempting punish people for hosting or discussing content related to it justified.
People really should stop trying to be the mutaween of the internet. It's getting tiresome.
The reason the world has moved on from calling it "child porn" is
- because the world has generally moved on from thinking consensual pornography is always morally indefensible
- because consensual pornography is generally legal
- and so because "porn" doesn't truly describe what is happening
It's not a euphemism. It's a clarification. A minority of pornography with adults involves abuse. But _all_ of the material you think should not be "euphemistically" called CSAM intrinsically involves abuse.
That is what is depicted, that is what has taken place to produce the material. It puts front and centre that this is abuse, categorically and by definition, not 'porn'.
The material being harmful and produced via abuse doesn't remove it from that definition, in the same way that rape isn't removed from the definition of "sex"
Regardless, calling it CSAM puts the abuse aspect front and centre, and puts it in a separate category to that, it avoids euphemism rather than adding to it.
This is a nonsensical interpretation.
It's just like "ISIS". Every organization had an opinion on whether to call it "ISIL" or "the so-called Islamic State" or "Daesh", but the fact is everyone not making a press release just called it "ISIS". Nobody thought that that name was endorsing their self-claimed statehood, and nobody thinks "child porn" somehow justifies it. But using constantly-changing ("CSAI", "CSEM") jargon just confuses anyone not in the know and makes the topic harder to search
_All_ revenge porn involves abuse, but that's still the common term. It's still porn, in the same way that rape is still sex
Because it was normal porn when it was made, and the abuse is external to the actual content.
Oh dear. This is appallingly misinformed.
CG-CSAM also covers photoshop editing, I think.
As I say, this term appears to be used in the past broadly to include the kind of 3D animations that appear in conventional porn adverts, and also to face-swap and other Photoshop-type edits.
All I can say is that prosecutions in the UK for example have often mentioned such material alongside conventionally shared material.
I don't think I've read about any prosecutions where fake material was the only material justifying prosecution. But I could have missed that.
I have absolutely no interest in getting into the rest of the argument, which is tedious and IMO kind of obvious on many grounds.
Which is more mild? “Sexual abuse material”, or “pornography”?
Anyway, the point of bringing up CSAM or child pornography is to point out that you don’t think it’s bad idea to allow “the New Zealand police ordering websites to remove content they dislike and hand over user information about anyone who so much as discussed it” in every context. In some cases you (or if not you, then at least the vast majority of society) thinks it’s appropriate.
So, now we know that there is line, and it’s a matter of discussing as a society where that line should be. I happen to agree that we should keep the government very far away from regulating speech, as much as possible, but I don’t view your argument as the best way of getting there.
Children cannot defend themselves. Adults can. No one is particularly interested if this fine line escapes you. The line exists, no one is interested in changing it (other than pedophiles, of course), and the proletariat would quite like it if the bourgeoisie could leave us the hell alone, thank you very much.
Also, allow me to clarify one point: I don't have an argument. I have a class interest. I am not interested in convincing you one way or another. If arguments actually worked to protect our rights then we wouldn't have to go through this merry-go-round of nonsense every few years. I am stating quite simply that the proletariat has certain rights and attempting to infringe upon the same as the bourgeoisie has done for the last decade is a sure-fire way to result in the same being subject to boycott and ruin... and if you don't think that is the case then ask Budweiser how they're doing at their next quarterly earnings report.
My only message is for bourgeoisie who may be reading: If you value your profits then maybe you should consider leaving your customers the hell alone, because the incident with Budweiser shows that customers incensed with your manipulations can and will stop doing business with you. No one is exempt from this fact, including ISPs, NSPs, payment processors, or other intermediaries who perhaps justifiably think that they are untouchable.
Lest there be any room for doubt: KiwiFarms has been under assault for the better part of a year and change... and now we're talking about it on Hacker News. This story is being talked about here and now because some people have had enough of this nonsense. Maybe everyone should take a break... pause, reflect... and ask whether trying to manipulate their customers to their own financial ruin is really something they want to pursue to the bitter end.
This is part of him exalting capitalism for laying the groundwork that he believed would make socialism possible. E.g. later:
> The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
So this notion of making an argument that it is about class couched in left wing terms does not change that by that same left wing thinking, this process is progressive. Not by intent, but firstly because bigotry and hate is bad for business, as your yourself point out when you talk of Budweiser boycott (ironically mostly benefiting a more progressive company), and so while some short term losses will be had by people pushing to hard too fast, the regressive parts of the working classes will not just be left to its own, but will be battered over and over by both the bourgeoisie and the progressive parts of the working classes, because bigotry and hate is bad not just for business but also for people.
Class warfare predates Marx by roughly two thousand years (if not longer). I am not interested in what he has to say on the matter. It was sufficiently described by greeks, along with where it ultimately leads, as the Kyklos or Anacyclosis.
> So this notion of making an argument that it is about class couched in left wing terms does not change that by that same left wing thinking,
Class warfare is not a left wing concept. The left and right wing are a result of class warfare, which predates Marx and the rest of his gang of thieves masquerading as revolutionaries.
TL;DR I don't care about your bourgeoisie rhetoric of who said what. The proletariat has an absolute right to freely speak its mind without your interference. Deal with it.
It's also fascinating that you favour the idea of cycles, as in that case trying to fight the bourgeoisie is an inherently lost cause and you'd be better off trying to become part of it.
But in any case, the major point was that while you may be free to speak your mind, so are others, and they are also free to choose to not want to associate with people who want to spread hate and bigotry, and you're facing a losing battle. Doubly so if you believe in social cycles (an utterly idiotic concept to buy into today given the amount of change since it was conceived), in which case you're doomed to keeping losing this battle forever.
In any case: Marx is irrelevant, these people are on the wrong side of history, as is anyone who sides with them. Have fun screaming at a wall.
Because business is a two-way transaction. This sounds like an argument in favor of HE's position. If their owner finds KiwiFarms' behavior reprehensible, They're not obligated to do business with it.
Yes.
> Because business is a two-way transaction. This sounds like an argument in favor of HE's position.
Only because you are deliberately mischaracterizing it. No man has the right to void a contract without just cause, nor interfere in the contractual relations of others. When Hurricane Electric unilaterally decides that someone downstream of them has violated their terms of service that is precisely what they have done. Furthermore, someone holding themselves out as a business does not have the right to arbitrarily refuse service to anyone... that much has been made abundantly clear over as many decades of the struggle for civil rights.
Put simply: customers can freely choose not to do business with you. You, however, generally do not get to choose who your customers are. Green is green. This is the system you and yours have designed, and you are free to choke on it.
Sorry, but with respect: you misunderstand the Civil Rights Act and its peer legislature.
CRA and its peers carved out specific categories in which service, if provided at all, must be provided, more or less centered on intrinsic properties that do not impact or reflect the content of one's character. That carve-out is as exceptions to the default common law sense that any company may choose to refrain from doing business at any time. That's the bedrock and we make exceptions.
A cop was recently refused service at a bakery because they have a no open weapons policy (https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4174109-san-francis...). "No shirts, no shoes, no service" is pretty bog-standard recognized restaurant boilerplate. In most states, bartenders can kick out someone who's dressed like a Nazi. And in HE's case, their terms of service refuse use of their services for illegal activity. In their opinion (and this could, perhaps, be tested in a court of law), this includes providing service to a company that is allowing illegal activity through its network and looking the other way ("data laundring," if you will).
You're right that green is green, and that generally serves as a practical counterweight for abuse of this privilege. But the privilege stands, and if a company decides the money isn't worth the loss to reputation or anything else they value, they may, with few carefully-carved exceptions, leave it on the table.
It's a high hill to climb to justify why we should stud these ground rules with an additional civil rights exception for the likes of KF. What societal benefit? Because it's pretty easy to see the content of their character, and their state of being isn't intrinsic to them and inextricable from their character ("just stop being cyberbullies").
Well then you ought to love the Kiwi Farms because they have helped expose numerous zoophiles and producers of animal abuse imagery.
I believe I said "you" and not "people". I'm not sure I would call documenting something online "crude vigilatiasm", but maybe that's just me.
You're upset that Kiwi Farms picks on people that produces animal abuse imagery? Or are you saying "they don't do that at all"?
The latter is easily verifiable, you can find many instances of people and sites referencing their collection of evidence. Eg: https://twitter.com/HopefulGracidea/status/15665032263456604...
If you don't like it, don't read it. It's really that simple.
If there's a thread on the site about you, this isn't an option.
It's against the rules to engage in or encourage any harassing and threatening behavior, this is strictly and specifically forbidden: https://kiwifarms.st/help/removing-content/
Anyone who even has a passing familiarity with the site knows this is complete bull.
Anyone targeted by them gets hit with a nonstop torrent of direct abuse for months or years. They'll target family, friends, jobs, and it's not limited to online.
It's why (1) dox is encouraged and (2) they publish dox on the clearnet, to enable exactly this sort behavior.
If they were just a "gossip" site, there's no need to host dox.
You don't remember LiveLeak and Saddam Hussein's execution being leaked all over the internet?
Trying to solve that problem through attempts to quell public discourse and dictate limits of conversation are misguided and self destructive. Its a race to the bottom as a byproduct of short term power politics. Its not like western actors arent also doing it, strategy of tension in Italy for example. Having a bogey man can be quite beneficial.
There being a communication channel with reduced moderation is hardly the root cause. I would argue its quite the contrary, the heavier you get involved in controlling discourse, the easier it becomes to saw tension.
edit: As an example
>Russia dumping its Neonazis (who happened to kill Kremlin-hostile journalists) into the Ukraine
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/02/15/def...
>In an interview published by Azov’s online podcast in May 2015, Korotkih fawned over the Islamic State, and compared the Azov Regiment to the group.
>“I can’t accept ISIS ideology but they’re awesome in what they do. I enjoy their movies very much. I drool over what’s going on in the territories they control”, Korotkih proclaimed during the interview (00:32:45 into the interview), in which he also characterized ISIS as “heroes of that time.”
You might know him as the head of paramilitary training of the NSO in Ross Kemps visit to Moscow. With the NSO likely being part of the same Vladislav Surkov project as BORN. https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/russian-neonazi-ilya-go...
Sergei Korotkikh and the NSO and FSB https://www.ft.com/content/21553438-fcda-11df-ae2d-00144feab...
The amount of attention KiwiFarms gets is ridiculously outsized for what it is: a fairly small forum with a bunch of mean-spirited people telling mean-spirited "jokes". It's a very odd target for all these free speech issues.
What's your list of things to block that are higher up the list?
- Countries that commit crimes against humanity but those should be fully physically blockaded rather than just blocking their internet.
- ISP's and ISP resellers that aid and abet watering holes, phishing sites, scams, etc... and probably also entire countries that refuse to lift a finger to stop scam call centers should be globally BGP filtered .
The argument in the article is suggesting that blocking something so bad they will not defend it nor do they even want to look like they are defending it should not be done because of the slippery slope, meanwhile you've leapt straight to partitioning the internet cutting off billions of people.
That it is. It would be in place about a day if even that long. Their government would go round up all the scam center scammers as they already know who and where they all are and the block would be lifted assuming it even managed to escalate to that point.
1) They clearly are able to tolerate being locked out of the internet at least in limited fashion, this is regularly being used to control domestic protests.: https://internetshutdowns.in/
2) If an external party imposes a constraint on a nationalistic government the govt can use this external attack to help bind their country together.
I will also let you know that many neutral countries receive our internet through some of those you imply by your statement. You would cut significant chunks of mostly poor population off the internet. We have some connectivity through other countries, but it will be back to the dial-up days for at least 5-10 years until more fiber is laid out.
I used to think this as well and even offered suggestions on HN for countries that were being blocked. In hindsight I feel that may have been a sub-optimal decision on my part. They need to first communicate with one another in their nation and find a way to rise up above the tyranny. The outside world will do little help with this. Physical blockades will make them desperate and force hard decisions and sacrifice. Every nation has to go through these awful growing pains. But ripping off that bandage is a big topic for another thread I think.
This is misguided, naive, and even arrogant. Instead of playing the group identity game and anthropomorphizing lawnmowers, imagining what someone must do, you need to understand how totalitarian systems work, there's no "government" and "people" as separate entities to clash, and no "dictators" either. There is simply no "they" to communicate to one another, and there's no communication/organization possible, as the system removes any means for doing that. Paradoxically, any totalitarian system is decentralized and stuck in the local optimum.
Totalitarian systems are perfectly in balance while being isolated, and in fact always move towards self-isolation - take imperial Japan, USSR, or any other similar society. When your goals are the same as those systems', you should take a long look at what you're doing. It's often said that "Jeans brought USSR down", meaning the cultural influence of outside world. Discarding that is just stupid, it's the most fundamental leverage you have at your disposal.
You could make a credible argument that the US is on that list too.
I think there should be some sort of due process. I don’t trust people blocking some site I’ve never heard of without notice, a hearing, and an impartial tribunal.
"They don't know anything about it" but somehow they support creating rules that apply to no other site.
But you can have democracy without it. In fact you can have democracy with lot of other characteristics that seem weird today, like randomly chosen representatives, slavery, exile etc. It's largely orthogonal.
If Whole Foods doesn't have to hold a public tribunal to ban someone from their store, then ISPs don't, either.
I count at least 9 similar comments made by you in this thread alone. I don't even know how someone can spam a thread with 9 comments without being throttled.
@dang - please have a look at this spam? This is an important discussion to be had and having this kind of inflammatory stuff is not productive.
The site is probably one of the only sources of actual gang stalking on the planet, and when it isn't stalking and harassing people on an industrial scale, it also moonlights as a suicide factory. The psychopaths that run and participate on the site are proud of their body count.
There are dozens of sites like the Kiwi Farms, many even have "farm" in their name. Unlike many of those sites, Kiwi Farms has rules against contacting people and all of their boards are public.
There are also completely unaffiliated sites such as Doxbin, which were responsible for a large amount of the harassment and doxing against Keffals. There's a tweet (xeet?) somewhere where she acknowledged that she knew Kiwi Farms wasn't actually responsible, but didn't care.
Kiwi Farms is an irredeemable cesspit by every measure I can see, and accepting that makes your argument stronger. Trying to act like it's an innocent place, or this place is ok because you're familiar with 100 even worse places just makes you look unreasonable. All it serves to do is muddy the waters between being anti-censorship and being pro-cesspit, and I'm not the former.
There's no difference between what progressives do freely on Twitter/Tumblr and what Farmers do. KF worst actions are only possible because they amplify their harassment of targets by using "woke" optics on twitter to draw corporate backing and media attention against their victims.
The conversation is anti-censorship, and your hill to die on is the place named after the person they were trying to bully is just like the place where if you dig across the 450 million monthly users you'll find bad actors.
At the end of the day you're just elevating a sideshow above the actual anti-censorship argument at the cost of the former, but honestly it's not much sweat of my back. At the end of the day censorship is just the next net neutrality: sideshows based on the most useless cases of its risks burn all the oxygen in the room, no action against it taken, and the world moves on.
— Commonly attributed to H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The defense he's speaking of isn't in saying the scoundrel isn't a scoundrel, it's against the oppressor. That's why he still called them scoundrels.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike it, but many people do not know the first thing about it, only the evil caricature that has pervaded popular culture. Because people think it's an irredeemable evil, they uncritically accept any claim of wrongdoing made against it, and refuse to listen to any facts refuting their existing beliefs about it. It also gets blamed for things that other completely unaffiliated groups have done, because it's well known.
Was Monsanto a bad company? You could probably make a compelling argument that it was. However, many of the oft repeated claims like them suing people for seeds or driving farmers to suicide are misleading at best or patently false.
I don't want to "defend" anyone; I just want to have an accurate understanding of the truth, insofar that's possible. It bothers me so much misinformation is being spread about this and I think this is also harmful overall for many reasons.
This was, IMHO, also the problem with Stallman: yes, Stallman was/is not good and should have stepped down a million years ago (in my opinion, anyway), but no, he's not a transphobic sexist nonce and most of those claims are complete bollocks. But hey, who's going to defend an asshole like Stallman? Especially when a significant section of his more fanatical fanbase is so ... unpleasant (in my experience, anyway)?
If someone bad mouths a cesspit by mixing up which stalking cases they're involved with, when said place was literally founded and named around stalking someone... I reserve the right to say that's an acceptable mistake of absolutely no consequence to a conversation about censorship.
I also reserve the right to do say so without unilaterally declaring that it's ok to make up facts about anyone in existence the moment said they're deemed to have done something wrong. That's the kind of nuance in thinking we aim to instill in children from a very young age.
I never said any such thing or made any such argument.
The disagreement is about which events have occurred at all, and it's not about "mixing up" minor details.
> But this is a very dangerous argument you're making: "who cares if people are making up complete nonsense about them, they're bad anyway?!"
So either that's the argument that you're making... or you genuinely believe that it's dangerous to say a place is a cesspit "just" because they stalked a lot of people (and drove a brilliant person to suicide, then celebrated)
Also, for posterity:
- If you're not a stalker and someone says you stalked someone: that's making things up.
- If you're named after the first guy you stalked, and you've stalked so often there are academic papers written on it, if people mis-attribute a stalking to you: that's a mix-up.
Acceptable censorship is of no consequence to a conversation about censorship?
It's perfectly reasonable to push against censorship, but KF being censored isn't a reason to portray them in any sort of favorable light.
You're putting words into my mouth. Kiwi Farms has rules against harassment and bans anyone who does.
There is a long history of communities organized specifically to troll people in real life (Something Awful, Sons of Kojima, The Idea Guys, etc.) Kiwi Farms is explicitly not that. Do people say mean and hateful things on it? Sure. But I've yet to see any actual examples of these alleged harassment campaigns, which should be easy to find considering that the side is open.
I disagree.
The entire impetus behind getting Kiwi Farms removed from Cloudflare, having their domains revoked, having their phone numbers and registered agents cancel service, attempting to blackhole them from the Internet, etc. is that they are literally the worst website, so there is no need to feel bad or give them a fair "trial".
If such outrage can be wielded to completely deplatform Kiwi Farms extrajudicially, it sets a terrifying precedent for the future.
I've personally seen the doxxing threads before and throughout the entire Keffals drama that got KF banned from so many platforms and services. There are videos out there of people going through those threads. The threads were pages upon pages long and KF regulars actively participated in them and cheered on the doxxing attempts.
Trying to whitewash Kiwi Farms as just a site people go to have fun is pathetic. Especially to do so in a place like HN where people likely are aware enough of online drama to be able to call you out on this.
> I've personally seen the doxxing threads before and throughout the entire Keffals drama that got KF banned from so many platforms and services.
The thing is, that isn't what this is about. Doxing is completely legal[0]. That's why people are making up grandiose claims such as "Kiwi Farms exists solely to bully trans people into suicide".
[0] not defending the act in any way or saying that I like it. It's just how things are.
I haven't seen the claim you speak of but I have seen the claim that Kiwi Farms has a history of doxing trans people for no stated purpose other than to implicitly condone harassing and bullying them into suicide. The doxing against Keffals led to multiple instances of targeted harassment offline and KF members positively responded to this while continuing to support the doxing.
If a book club mostly meets to discuss recent NYT bestsellers but occasionally serves to organize bank heists, it's entirely fair to describe it as seemingly solely existing to do bank heists because there are plenty of other book clubs that don't do this and this is its distinguishing trait.
I'm aware. The OP is talking about KF.
> There are also completely unaffiliated sites such as Doxbin, which were responsible for a large amount of the harassment and doxing against Keffals. There's a tweet (xeet?) somewhere where she acknowledged that she knew Kiwi Farms wasn't actually responsible, but didn't care.
I have no idea who Keffals is or why you'd think I'd care.
Keffals is one of the people responsible for the chain of events leading to what is happening. If you aren't familiar with the context and don't care to learn about it, what is the purpose of commenting?
You seem obsessed with this Keffals person, it looks a bit unhealthy to me. Look beyond your obsession at the other people who were affected by these psychopaths.
I'm not sure how mentioning a person directly relevant to the linked article in a single comment counts as being "obsessed".
> You do realize there are other people the site has harassed and killed, right? And afterwards, things just like this took place?
Allegedly. I have yet to find a claim that stands up to scrutiny as sites either link to news stories repeating unsubstantiated claims made by someone (alongside factual errors like that the owner of Kiwi Farms lives with his mother, or that he is wanted by law enforcement) or provide no sources whatsoever.
If Josh wants to obscure the purpose of his website behind legal technicalities, he can do that. Doesn't change the purpose of the website.
The suicide claims have been debunked a million times already, and the claims don't hold up to even the most casual of scrutiny if one bothers to actually look at it in detail (there was a good article on this which went in great depth, but I can't find it right now; but the tl;dr is "saying mean things about someone does not constitute driving them to suicide").
Do I think Kiwi Farms is bad? Yes. But "they're bad" doesn't mean everything that's said about them is true. People post fake screenshots of JK Rowling too, or make up ridiculous thinks about Richard Stallman like him being transphobic, or falsely claim 4chan users literally try to murder them over the name of a project.
Post-truth doesn't apply only to Donald Trump and other people you don't like.
When the KFers want to appear harmless, they say they're a "gossip" forum. They're not.
The site unleashes a massive torrent of hate and abuse on their targets.
They specifically pick victims who are young and vulnerable, and then torment them relentlessly because they think it's funny.
That is true, but that is only part of the story. If that was all, the website would not be so notorious.
Kiwifarms, now banned, official twitter page said their goal was “exploitation of the mentally handicapped for amusement purposes”. ( Source: https://archive.is/jYp5p ).
I think Kiwifarms is (borderline) criminal. Null, the admin of the site, outright said he was ok with users posting stolen financial information, such as Social Security Numbers and Credit cards. Source: https://archive.is/0fOcS . There are many examples of private financial information being posted on the site.
I would describe them as operating with a paper thin layer of "plausible" deniability. Officially you aren't allowed to harass or interact with the targets. But posting their home address, stolen passwords, phone numbers, and information about relatives is all allowed. Obviously, if they didn't want their targets harassed, they wouldn't post that.
But even the rule against interacting with "lolcows" (called "cowtipping") is haphazardly enforced. For example, one user had sex with a "lolcow" and posted photos. The admin explicitly said they would allow the content to remain up: https://archive.is/zYnpK#35%
I could probably post many other examples.
Creating means to create holes in the public discourse is utterly reckless as you have no means to tell how big they have become. And no means to address them. You just punched your eyes out because you didnt like the sight of something. The potential to create human misery with this is hard to overstate when people blatantly ignore the consequences. This is a nobody is going to hear you scream type of threat. Its also not a novel risk, we know how horrible attempts to dictate public discourse went in the totalitarian systems of the past. Not because of some evilness, but systemic inertia and no longer functioning breaks. Without the ability to communicate, we are screwed.
I think we agree on this. Which is why I'm in favor of giving no online quarter to KiwiFarms, a notorious site for organizing mobs.
KF supporters and users are free to say whatever they want in their own forums. The freedom of speech has never implied an obligation for people to listen. And freedom of the press does imply a freedom to refrain from serving as a conduit for someone else's message, as does freedom of association.
Nothing of what KF is doing or saying obligates anyone to provide them the tools to do or say it. They're as free as everyone else; they can print their own leaflets and stand on their own soapboxes. They don't have the right to obligate HE to facilitate them, directly or by proxy.
Thats exactly what is no longer the case. We just created the method to even prevent self hosting.
Networks always imply at least two parties. What they don't have the privilege of is access to a carrier willing to devote their privately-owned bandwidth to transceiving the message.
The fact you're publishing a paper doesn't imply that paperboys will carry it for free. Or that they'll even take your money to carry it.
Now, the notion they can self-publish (via mail) and self-host (via BBS) does rely on common-carrier protections (and mail anonymity). One can make the case (as EFF does) that by extrapolation we should give the same general-use protections to the Internet.
I'm not inclined to agree-by-extrapolation. The Internet is far more powerful and far harder to regulate. I think the burden is on those who think it should be a common-carrier system to justify why that's societally beneficial (over the status quo of "it's a federated network of peers, with service provision balanced between people's freedom to carry or not carry traffic and the incentives to get paid to carry").
The law in the state they operate _literally defines_ it as a common carrier system.
That's the basis of the case being argued here (that the ISPs blocking is literally unlawful due to the common carrier legislation which prevails in the state in which they're operating.)
But from a mechanical standpoint that is an interesting fact and I'll be intrigued to see how HE defends itself here, should the regulators choose to step in.
(They may not. The text of the law says HE may not drop lawful traffic. To a cursory read, it's unclear if that means they can't drop lawful traffic bundled with unlawful traffic, i.e. if criminals start slipping criminal activity into lawful activity, is the whole channel drop-worthy?)
>I think the burden is on those who think it should be a common-carrier system to justify why that's societally beneficial
Thats a really easy way out of having to address how this isnt going to end in a totalitarian echo chamber. Unfortunately just ignoring it and feeling right isnt a promising strategy.
And if nobody will host them, it's not a totalitarian echo chamber, it's just "the people's will."
There is some risk of cleaving along ideological lines (so you end up with, like, "corporate Internet" and "KF-friendly internet").
I expect that process is currently in progress and I'm not convinced it's a bad thing. Maybe putting everyone on the planet on a flat communications plane was never an experiment that was going to succeed. Maybe we have countries and individual and collective ideologies for a reason.
Thats framing that doesnt change the end result. There wont be any cleaving but anything differing from dominant doctrine no longer available. With no regard for who determines that other then the currently loudest screaming mob. That describes a totalitarian society in which truth has lost all meaning because people favor signaling despite knowing better.
I find it highly irresponsible to push for defacto censorship with a complete disregard for very clear threat, namely the power to censor not only getting abused but being by its very nature uncontrollable. Especially in this form. Nobody being able to even describe how this could function without ending in tragedy means its likely impossible. Which should surprise nobody.
edit: China described it as the peoples will as well if i am not mistaken. Which meant having a set ratio of the population that had to confess their reactionary thoughts in front of a screaming mob before being thrown into Gulags.
And that's the rub. If we don't trust the owners of the machinery to decide how it is used, what's the proposed alternative?
If we pass laws to tie the hands of corporations on who's data they must carry, then we've taken the cudgel away from the Hurricane Electics of the world and given it to the Richard Blumenthals.
I trust corporations about as far as I can throw them, but I trust them more to decide what bits are on the wire than I trust governments.
Just wanting this to work is not a valid strategy. You can and should know better.
That looks a lot closer to totalitarianism than "KF has to keep changing who it works with because individual companies think they're not a good client."
The difference here is that its impossible to push society into a censored echo chamber through banning censorship. You cant create the dangerous blind spots this way that are at the core of totalitarian risks.
You really should read up on totalitarianism. Your definition is quite distorted and you hit a lot of the marks when ignoring consequences in favor of frames. I can recommend Meerloos Rape of the Mind.
I fundamentally don't see it that way. It's a useful tool to promote good governance. It's a constraint upon the government's right to build an echo chamber around the leadership, which is comfortable for leadership but eventually leads a government to topple for failure to address the needs of the people.
The natural right that exists in the absence of a Bill of Rights is freedom of association - you can say what you want, and someone can tell you to piss off and go away for your trouble. They can also ignore you. And they are definitely not obligated to echo you, nor to do business with those who listen to you. That's the natural order you're alluding to by suggesting I'm saying the Bill of Rights is "just laws."
> The difference here is that its impossible to push society into a censored echo chamber through banning censorship
a) government bans censorship
b) people can say whatever they want
c) people use that liberty to conspire to commit crimes
d) the commission of those crimes, at scale, overwhelms the state's ability to enforce
e) totalitarians exploit this arrangement to depose the previous emasculated government and install their own... Which includes establishing rules to disrupt conspiracy to commit crimes so they are not themselves deposed.
f) society is now a censored echo chamber
The US does not currently protect freedom of speech to the level you're describing. No large functional government does.
There is no evidence such blanket, wide-open protection is actually a virtue for a functional government or society.
It cant work. Those blind spots cant be detected, managed or compensated for. They are like a metastasizing cancer.
That blind spot is at the core of totalitarian regimes. Group think sets in and suddenly your farmers are told to plant the crops closer together to utilize the proletarian solidarity between the plants. Anyone who doesnt gets gulaged and the rest starves.
Its worth mentioning that my local constitution has a clause that simplified means anyone trying to get the society to e) can be shot by anyone. How ever much of a paper tiger this is, having had two murderous totalitarian regimes in the last 100 years its generally considered a good idea.
That you have to rely on a extremely thin argument like it probably being necessary to uphold the rule of law should have you reflect. You are arguing with an abstract model of what ought to happen according to your favorite ought-to-be model while i am telling you what will happen if you dont prevent it. We have seen it times and times again, if you dont try something different the results will replicate. Acting in denial of reality is totalitarian. Thats how we got all those mass graves. They werent created by evil caricatures but stupid people caught up in a drunk fever and Zugzwang with disabled breaks.
Even if that's true, I don't think you've made the case that allowing them room in the newspapers to coordinate doesn't just give them the opportunity to amass like-minded supporters and overthrow society faster. Forcing the opinions of fringe groups into privately owned newspapers, for example, gives them an air of legitimacy that they don't have if the same information is printed on self-published pamphlets that they're handing out on a street corner.
You are also claiming that you are arguing concrete scenarios and I'm arguing abstractions. I'm unaware of any government overthrows that occurred because some people were unable to use the internet due to their past use of it being so heinous that nobody wants to do business with them, and I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened; internet is too young.
I gave you are very direct example for a totalitarian echo chamber becoming murderous. The Soviet and Chinese famines. The officially dictated story became beyond critic and millions died as a result. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
I also mentioned Dallaires pleas to the UN for access to radio equipment to be allowed to air a counter narrative to the genocidal government aligned ones. Something he addressed special weight to in his "Shaking hands with the devil". Which should say a lot about its importance.
>If I understand you correctly, you appear to be making the argument that if we kick certain groups off the public communications fora, they will meet in secret and become an unseen force that overthrows society.
No, quite the opposite. Trying to ban people you dont like from communicating will result in a totalitarian echo chamber. Thats a slope and you willfully ignore the need for breaks. That quickly turns murderous. Because determining what should and shouldnt be censored and its second and third order effects is an infinitely complex problem that you cant address with intention alone. And will quickly be exploited for monetary/ personal / political / tribal profit. Trying to control discourse is a slope and by making self hosting impossible you are destroying the possibility to erect warning lights. You are willfully heading for a cliff.
Your error stems from being focused on the who of the story and at the same time ignoring practical limits. I am telling you if you are at the point in which communication is restricted enough, there will soon bee armed men and horror if your only safeguards are good intentions. There is a causal relationship, power becomes uncontrollable and slip from your hands as the official story and reality collide more and more and you become incapacitated by it. You trying to solve this with feeling competent enough and more armed men / state control is how that always works. Those are usually the same people who drag you off into camps. After all, you ignored safe use in favor of feeling good about the story and somebody like Stalin or Hitler doesnt mind taking over. The German justice system is a great example, many judges just continued to do their job with their career spanning Weimar, the third Reich and West/East Germany.
Even if you are delusional enough to think that your totalitarian echochamber will be the first one able to overrule reality, people will reliably react and that reaction being unguided as well can easily turn fascist. It was already visible with the various stay behind organizations throughout Europe that were intended as a safeguard against a totalitarian power grab. Or with the KPD as a major topic for NSDAP election run up. This isnt a matter of tribalism but one of guaranteed conflict and atrocities. There is no acceptable or safe version of totalitarianism, its by its very nature corrupt, self destructive and brings out the worst in people. Even if "your side" ends up on top, it will be a distorted, corrupt and dysfunctional monster. Or do you think there are many fans of Göring even among Nazis? Large parts of the admiralty of the soviet pacific fleet dying in an overloaded smuggler plane is another good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Pushkin_Tu-104_crash
Coupled with a healthy democracy, it if anything makes it harder for a zeitgeist opinion to become entrenched permanently in leadership when the nation's thought is composed of separate tribal opinions.
The EFF is advocating government saying who must and may not peer. Currently, corporations may say. The status quo is diffusion of power, not concentration.
That distinction you hope for does not exist. We arent talking about your frame of digital neighbors but an end to self hosting. How ever nice your story sounds isnt more important then its predictable consequences.
Authoritarian means with righteous sounding justifications safeguarded by only good intentions and an assumption of competence arent safeguards against totalitarianism, its its description. You cant create an authoritarian entity where you just keep the mean people away from the wheel. Thats how almost all totalitarians describe their perspective, including when some of my older relatives can be believed my great grand parents with NSDAP membership cards. You are making the exact same argument. By insisting on how competent, well intentioned and justified you are, you verifying this assumption. You acknowledge that you are unable to recognize that that isnt enough. Which means less and less people are going to tell you this. Because its really dangerous, on an individual and a societal level.https://sproutsschools.com/bonhoeffers-theory-of-stupidity/
When the acoustic breaks are gone the kinetic ones will need to be engaged. Thats not a bug, they have to, there is genocide and existential risk waiting at the bottom of the slope and you dont have the ability, let alone intention, to break yourself. Which is really bad as its a very safe indicator that stuff is soon to become horrific. With anyone who tried the acoustic breaks unable to engage the kinetic ones. Which means fewer and fewer will even try communicating this. We cant allow that to happen. There is no way totalitarianism isnt going to end horribly. If we loose the ability to communicate we are collectively done for.
The only thing your intention influences here is your feelings about yourself. Which when coupled with an echo chamber gets you the typical righteous totalitarian fever that allows ignoring the costs and risks in favor of the nicely painted frame. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
Please listen to the panicky sounding German, what ever you think you are trying to do here, do it without destroying the acoustic breaks. You not liking the sound they make doesnt mean we can do without them.
What you are arguing for leads to totalitarianism. Here's how:
* We decide as a society that private peering decisions are unacceptable and the government must regulate them. It starts innocent enough; we pass a law that says if you try to de-peer for reasons of your corporate policy were no law was broken, as is the case here, you can't.
* In so doing, we've now opened the floodgates on government, not private corporations and organizations, controlling the shape of the internet
* A subsequent government comes along and, since they already have the authority to regulate peering, passes the law that you must de-peer from sites that encourage cyberbullying. Nobody bats an eye because the government already regulates peering. The key difference here is that since this is now government policy not the policy of a private institution, citizens don't have somewhere else to turn; KF can't find a new host. Their speech has been actually criminalized.
Now we are on the slope with no breaks. Subsequent governments pass laws that you have to de-peer from sites that tolerate racism. The tolerate discussion of self-harm. That tolerate criticism of public health policy. That tolerate criticism of public policy in general. That tolerate criticism of the government. That tolerate criticism of politicians. And now all the gunpowder is piled in the corner waiting for a match.
The power to force a shape to the network is a double edged sword, and I trust it far more in the hands of private actors than in the hands of the government. Even if, in the hands of private actors, It can lead to tribalism and balkanization of the network. Forcing people to carry a message they don't agree with is every bit as totalitarian as forcing people into silence.
I choose what you frame as might lead to totalitarianism over being in totalitarianism any day of the week. The moment it becomes practically impossible to self host you are very likely to be on the slope with no way to tell how much further till mass graves. That likely will be the case if Josh ends up at the point at which Kiwifarms cant be turned back on again. Thats why people reference them as a canary. They are among the first that you can expect the wave to hit.
Communication channels cant be closed. If this form of mob controlled free-market censorship (or any form ) is here to stay much much harder to censor means of communication will start popping up to keep the kinetic breaks from engaging. Which will get a lot more disgusting then kiwifarms due to tribalistic reactions and people weaponizing the moderation burden, which will speed up the conflict cycle and the race to the bottom even more. Its still not optional. Thats what i meant when i said reactions quickly turn fascist. Making sure that it doesnt is an almost impossible task if you are far enough down the cycle but.
And once that authority is vested in the government, the government shall use it as those in control of the government deem fit. I trust a world where HE can misbehave but there's always another service provider down the pike a lot more than I trust one where the government's dictating who may be compelled to peer; the government, given enough time, always rolls around to being composed of people who de-peer me. Or you. And when they're calling the shots, there isn't a HE competitor down the pipe to turn to.
You keep saying "impossible to host." It's not. KF can still host; they must continue to seek out the coalition of providers that will work with them, the subset of the collective network willing to hear them. It's a big world and they're out there. But it's a vanishingly small group for no other reason than what KiwiFarms does and what they represent. Sometimes, people are all in agreement that something's wrong because it is.
> If this form of mob controlled free-market censorship (or any form ) is here to stay much much harder to censor means of communication will start popping up to keep the kinetic breaks from engaging
That's hardly an argument against the status quo; better point-to-point security benefits the people against oppressive governments. If this provides incentive to build it, good.
> What ever you are doing or trying to do, cutting communication channels can not be the likely outcome.
I used to subscribe to this fallacy. It turns out, cutting communication can be extremely healthy. The government owes everyone a platform for practical reasons. Individuals? They cut ties all the time. Always have. Sometimes someone just sucks, y'know?
The problem is that we now are at the point at which it becomes a practical end to self hosting. Not because everyone is convinced and one of the good guys now but because the power structure that is in place. That dissonance to your intention is where the risk comes from and what i am trying to warn you about. You are describing a mechanism of making communication impossible through applying pressure.
Thats less my object of concern then your willingness to overlook the risks doing this poses by focusing on intention over outcome . While tbh i do take offense to attempting the first, the later is where the giant danger is at. You are doing something that fits the definition of totalitarianism and with it you are faced with its risks. Not safeguarding against them means its extremely improbable that you end anywhere but in a dysfunction nightmare. Which means that weapon able to end self hosting will get into the wrong hands reliably which has good chances result in a quite horrific echo chamber. Which in all likelihood means i will be able to use the downtime between work through extermination sessions in the reeducation camp to argue that being sorry unfortunately has similar impact on reality as the initial good intention. But maybe we can then figure out how we prevent yet another repeat after the new regime hopefully burned itself to the ground.
I am hard pressed to not compare the whole situation to an overconfident and careless cave diver getting lost predictably. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRarNBAG6HY The idiot is fine, but the nature of the way we interact with the world means we get less and less direct feedback from the dysfunctional paths people take. After all, they are quite the downer. Which results in a drastic underestimation of the risks some aspects of reality pose.
> If this provides incentive to build it, good.
Leaving out the very obvious risk of it not being feasible, i am not willing to overlook the risk of creating something that has the potential to create quite a horrific future and very direct and individual harm. As well as the very predictable reactions. The only promise accelerationism can make is misery. Unguided reactions are not a viable plan and failures arent predictable or necessarily timely. That might be the path towards a proper dystopia.
Either way, its still further escalation in a tribalistic struggle that brings out the worst in people. I dont want to end up in an extreme and disfigured opposition to a caricature either.
>Sometimes someone just sucks, y'know?
You are free to do so already. And a bit off topic, good decision for your mental health. But this isnt about the value that person offers but your ability to communicate vanishing completely. Picture finding a manual reading "To easily revert from catastrophic failure ■■■■■■■■■". That very likely happened to some apparatchik with a case of emergency contact never having existed after the last purge. The second and third order effects always bite you. And the utterly horrific stuff that can happen when a powerful apparatus capsules human misery and censors the reports about it can be seen in stuff like the soviet cannibal island. Or any other big atrocity throughout time.
In the end even feudal kings had jesters around to not drift off into a parallel reality. Reality isnt less important then peace of mind. Willfully ignoring this is really hard to frame as good intentioned.
Everyone. That's a huge group.
The easiest way to test your hypothesis that this scenario leads to totalitarianism is to check if KF is still reachable right now. And... Yes, yes it is, via tor. HE chose not to work with them but they're only one corporation. KF has allies. And the government can't force it offline because the choice to peer / provide service or not is a per-company choice in this dimension, not a government regulation.
Contrast with your proposed scenario, where we hand the government the right to regulate peering and, two government changes-of-hands later, KF (and various other services) are forced off with the teeth of legal enforcement behind it. If the government starts sending company owners to jail for hosting KF, how many fewer potential peering partners will be out there to support them? And not just them, but whoever that government deems unworthy?
You're arguing for government control over personal / corporation control and somehow claiming the alternative is totalitarianism. I disagree, and I don't think we're going to come to terms. So I'm taking this opportunity to exercise my own liberty to end this conversation.
And no government will force me to continue it.
With no safety checks to remain this way. Intent doesnt overrule outcome. And tor isnt a sufficient safeguard.
1. Run your own server, because you've been pressured out existing sites. 2. Run your own data center, because you've been pressured out of existing data centers. 3. Run your own ISP, because that's the only way you can get connectivity. 4. Run your own payment processor, because you can't get a bank to serve you. 5. Run your own government, because you can't just start up your own bank. 6. ??? 7. Profit? Wait, I think that started when you took control of the government.
If you run infrastructure, not a destination, then you should be a common carrier. Because freedom of speech is more than just the First Amendment. It's not just the government can't tell you what not to say (that's just the 1A). It's not just the ability to speak, but also the ability to be heard. Because for infrastructure, only loons would believe that you actually are responsible for the speech that you care across your lines.
Being able to sleep at night. I don't think we should assume company owners don't have their own opinion on KF and are willing to risk potential consequences on their conscience.