ISPs Should Not Police Online Speech – No Matter How Awful It Is

Re:ISPs Should Not Police Online Speech – No Matter How Awfu... by thrwaway1234567 on Wednesday August 30, 2023 @08:03PM (#37330791)

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%

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:ISPs Should Not Police Online Speech – No Matter How Awfu... by yanderekko on Friday September 01, 2023 @11:45AM (#37352279)

>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.

[ Parent | on HN ]