I don't think attacking and maligning someone else while ignoring the substance of their comment is what HN should promote in their comments.

where are they attacking and maligning the user? they're clearly stating important background information for readers

Sometimes it's a big no-no on HN to comment or point out background information or context and sometimes it's not.

fallacy of assossiation? It's not even a valid misalignment. "Oh they host servers and are in the same seller's circle as other server sellers". Yeah, we were all on Twitter at one point, guess we are all culpable for the terrorism there?

If you're going to make accusations, at least make them sound, let alone factually correct.

Attacking and maligning people is kind of Kiwifarms' whole deal. Plus maybe a bit of stalking thrown in for good measure.

Still not an excuse to do it in kind.

I wouldn't have had to say anything if the above poster disclosed his commercial interest in promoting that particular skewed viewpoint.

That can also describe a lot of "journalism", seems like a potentially problematic place to draw the line.

I found it useful context. I would’ve previously perhaps been curious but if these guys are related to those suicide promotion sites, then I’m happy to set the bozo bit and walk away. Those people operate on the edge of legality and I’m not really that interested in examining the sorites paradox in this context.

We are currently considering HE vs some other providers for interregion cloud to cloud and I was concerned for a second. Not so much now.

What part of the comment was maligning? It was entirely factual.

Absolutely false. We are in no way a 'bulletproof' hoster. You're free to review our IP subnets in use and compare them to actual bulletproof hosting providers. We actively and swiftly remove users engaging in ILLEGAL activity, such as malware, warez, etc.

We're an American based business, registered in Wyoming, and abide by American law. No 'bulletproof hoster' is going to setup shop in America.

Archiving what other people do and say online on and making fun of them on a forum may be mean, but it's not illegal.

With that said, we host many types of clients, including LGBTQ organizations. Privacy and speech is for everyone, that has always been the stance. Our policy is and will remain to be neutral on content, so long as it abides by law.

You host death threats and leaked PII, and the forum owner explicitly encourages his followers to harass specific people he has a personal grudge against. He names entire sections of his forums after his victims and encourages people to post about his victims. You're lying. He's not running a neutral operation and neither are you.

The forum doxes employees of their hosting providers. Even Russian hosters terminated kiwifarms. Russians don't even terminate malware and ddos. You are dishonest to argue that this is about free speech.

Even the EFF acknowledges the activity on your forum is illegal and called on the cops to prosecute. I hope someone sends them that EFF article because it signals that they won't protect kiwifarms when Josh gets the knock on his door.

>the forum owner explicitly encourages his followers to harass specific people he has a personal grudge against

How is that different than what happens on X/Twitter?

Harassment campaigns by Kiwi Farms users are known to have contributed to the suicides of at least three individuals.[15] The Kiwi Farms community considers it a goal to drive its targets to suicide, and has celebrated such deaths with a counter on the website.[22]: 55, 61 They have used social media reporting systems to mass-report posts by harassment targets in which they have expressed suicidal thoughts or intentions, with the goal of reducing the possibility their targets receive help.[22]: 91

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms

>non ironically using wikipedia as source

Wikipedia is essentially useless for anything politically related due to how badly biased it became, one its own founders nowadays says this. Their "authoritative sources" policy pretty much assures whatever CNN and New York Times say is the unquestionable truth.

>using greentext arrows on HN

>upset that Wikipedia accepts mainstream news orgs as valid sources

>mfw

I went down this rabbit hole before, and that wiki page is such a mess of self-referencing articles and recycling outrage in various forms and using one to build on the other. Whatever the original thing is that Kiwifarms did is long lost in this sea of recycled articles, as they're now forever "the site that helped bully and 'contributed' to some people's suicides".

It's sloppy at best, and a coordinated and vindictive smear campaign at worst. And like seriously people, I'm not defending bad things, but we have to have an honest discussion. This is like the website/org equivalent of a "rape accusation", that's never been formally "proven" in a court, yet will follow them forever.

If you went down a rabbit hole and done research, you should have been able to find evidence of such things. And there is a lot of bad stuff they've done that hasn't gotten mentioned by their Wikipedia article.

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 private information about relatives is all allowed. (Which would have no use if they were simply a gossip forum).

But even the rule against interacting with "lolcows" (called "cowtipping") is rarely, if ever, 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%

None of the KF "victims" have been confirmed, and even so, it would be hard to legitimately claim that KF caused their deaths. People just hate that site because it's a gossip forum that exposes a lot of scummy behavior

Meanwhile, people have doxed others on Twitter, blown their heads off on Facebook livestreams, and posted manifestos on 4chan before slaughtering bystanders, yet nobody calls for any of those sites to be taken offline

>You host death threats and leaked PII

These death threats are not true threats and hosting PII is not illegal. Nor is encouraging "harassment" because what's encouraged is not actual criminal harassment. Every victim of a social media mob claims harassment, including Joshua Moon.

>Even the EFF acknowledges the activity on your forum is illegal and called on the cops to prosecute.

Which is a cowardly attempt at playing both sides. By juxtaposing "KiwiFarms users do bad things" with "criminals should be punished", the implication is that those bad things are criminal but the EFF maintains plausible deniability, which is wise since to do otherwise would constitute defamation. The important thing is that criminal activity should be determined through judicial proceedings, not armchair lawyering from midwits who likely think that there are laws against hate speech.

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 even the rule against interacting with "lolcows" (called "cowtipping") is haphazardly enforced. For example, one user tracked down, and had sex with a "lolcow" and even posted photos of this. The admin explicitly said they would allow the content to remain up: https://archive.is/zYnpK#35%

>exploitation of the mentally handicapped for amusement purposes

Edgy, not criminal.

In the posts you link, you can see Null obviously wants to allow basically anything but is still responsive to legal considerations. Maybe he's right and maybe he's wrong about the law. He responds to legal notices that he considers valid, and this has kept him out of real trouble so far.

I think "borderline criminal" is a fair characterization, but I'd point out that lots of sites are "borderline criminal" in the sense that there are often public statements of "we would like to allow this but legally we cannot." It's not that scandalous.

Except, we don't host them? Didn't you hear, Hurricane Electric didn't allow us to host Kiwifarms.

I haven't followed up with our customer to see who their new hosting provider is.

If you believe we're hosting something illegal, I do encourage you to message our abuse department so we can review it and take appropriate action if deemed necessary. I understand you feel strongly about the issue but we run an honest business and have no hesitation to boot people from our network doing things that are unlawful.

That's a great way to get a thread named after me on Kiwifarms, and get all my personal information leaked. Nice try.

How come no one ever posts any links to any of this (or at least archives of said links), whenever this site is discussed? Instead we get DailyDot and Vice articles, or a wikipedia entry quoting those articles, and little else. If the site is such a clear and present danger to public safety, why is the proof to that effect never provided?

Because it's linking to victims dox which would get your account banned on any reasonable website. The homepage is kiwifarms.st currently, and if you're on the fence I would encourage you to check it out for yourself and ask yourself if this is OK, and if a provider should be forced against their will to support this.

and you're not going to address the fact that you're making false accusations against someone for hosting content that they claim to not host? You're not making the best case for yourself here.

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.

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%

> Kiwifarms, now banned, official twitter page said their goal was “exploitation of the mentally handicapped for amusement purposes”. ( Source: https://archive.is/jYp5p ).

I made the mistake of visiting the (archived) page linked to by the second Tweet from that (archived) feed announcing the conviction of someone of interest to them on several criminal counts, and what I read there was nightmare fuel potent enough that if these are the kind of people the site "stalks," I can't say I'm sympathetic. (Seriously, don't read it.)

They just bring up the unsympathetic ones as a defense for what they are doing.

A lot of their targets are more sympathetic. For instance, the moderators have said they are ok with doxxing children: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/DSt5K

The amount of Kiwifarmers astroturfing in these comments is ridiculous.

>Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The question remains, despite the actor. Knowing what you know, what are your thoughts on the subject?

I know nothing of Kiwifarms, except it seems an unsavory place with questionable actors, and a tiny bit about LowEndTalk.

"bulletproof hoster communities like LowEndTalk"

This is a joke, right? lmao

One of Kiwifarms past hosts was seized by the police for being a criminal bulletproof hoster and it made waves in the LowEndTalk community

https://lowendbox.com/blog/polish-bulletproof-host-lolek-hos...

>But, what is clear is right around the time Sprint data center kicked Kiwi Farms off their network (according to Joshua Moon, founder of Kiwi Farms), Lolek Hosted was seized by the FBI