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.
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.