> 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.

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.

As someone who agrees ISPs shouldn't get to be judge, jury, and executioner on censorship, I find it really odd when people go out of their ways to defend absolute cesspits every time the censorship issue comes up.

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.

KF is an irredeemable cesspit but so is Twitter and so is Tumblr, if you know where to look.

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.

This is exactly what I mean.

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.

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

— Commonly attributed to H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

I think that was pithier in your head...

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.

Also the person the quote is attributed had some abhorrent views most people who share them have the good sense to only vaguely alude to through veiled references to Ayn Rand and questionable race science articles. He was not exactly a defender of democracy and equal rights.

I would liken Kiwi Farms to Monsanto. Is Kiwi Farms a cesspit? Parts of it definitely are. But I take umbridge with people being allowed to spread blatant lies about it and both news and alt media happily regurgitating claims that could be easily debunked with a simple fact check.

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.

In their speak, "Is this the hill you want to die on". In other words, if there's something redeemable going on on KF, do you really want to even know? Because then your options are to stick your head out for unsympathetic people, or feeling bad about what's going on.

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?!" I'm not trying to be uncharitable, but that is more or less the core of your argument.

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)?

It's infinitely more dangerous to reduce the world to the kind of logic that underlies implying "if you feel a way about one case of X you must feel the same way about all cases of X ever in every context".

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.

> reduce the world to the kind of logic that underlies implying "if you feel a way about one case of X you must feel the same way about all cases of X ever in every context".

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.

I don't care if they got things wrong on which exact people got stalked. You twisted that into:

> 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.

> I reserve the right to say that's an acceptable mistake of absolutely no consequence to a conversation about censorship.

Acceptable censorship is of no consequence to a conversation about censorship?

Mixing up which person the site was stalking has no relevant effect on the conversation at hand.

It's far from innocent. But they also talk about some things that others aggressively try scrubbing from the internet, which shouldn't be scrubbed from the internet. Cesspits suck, but if a cesspit is the last place you can talk about, say, the criminal indictments of a powerful influencer or moderator, then we have bigger problem than that the place stinks.

"Unlike other sites dedicated to harassing Internet users until they commit suicide, KF is public and has a rule against harassing Internet users until they commit suicide" isn't the defense you think it is.

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.

> KF is public and has a rule against harassing Internet users until they commit suicide

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.

You will have a very hard time convincing folks that KF should not be censored because they aren't as bad as other sites. As someone who doesn't frequent these places, I will concede that you may be right, but the point has sailed over your head and into outer space.

> As someone who doesn't frequent these places, I will concede that you may be right, but the point has sailed over your head and into outer space.

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.

And also, you're not allowed to see for yourself. You must take on faith that KF is pure evil, if you want to look and see if they do anything that should possibly be protected speech, then you're one of them and must be banned too.

Sure. And the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic because it says so in the name.

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.

> Sure. And the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic because it says so in the name.

> 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.

Sure, and telling a provider, even as a group, that continuing to do business with someone you deem undesirable is detrimental to their reputation is also legal. That's not what the EFF takes offense with. The EFF takes offense with a tier 1 ISP cutting off traffic from a provider because some of that traffic goes to KF.

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.

> There are dozens of sites like the Kiwi Farms, many even have "farm" in their name.

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.

> 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 do realize there are other people the site has harassed and killed, right? And afterwards, things just like this took place?

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.

> 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.

We all know that rule essentially just means don't shit where you eat. But keep sharing "public information" here!

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.

Obsessive watching public content could be called "stalking", but is not illegal, or even necessarily immoral.

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.