we all draw the line in different places, but I think most would agree that some subset of user-submitted content is purely abusive. if the only recourse available to the victim requires identifying every individual poster, it's effectively impossible to stop.
imo some sort of safe harbor mechanism is a reasonable compromise. we can't expect the host to prevent every single instance of abusive content, but we should require them to make some kind of reasonable effort.
You just hand wave all the difficult things away with the weasel words, but the majority of the population, in reality, in no way agree on the actual definition of any of the things you're referring to. Not what constitutes abusive content, nor what should be done with it, or whether anything even should be done with it.
yes, I'm being intentionally vague about "abusive content", because that's not really what I want to debate here. revenge porn might be a good example though. what fraction of people do you think would be okay with having their privately-shared nudes posted over and over with no practical recourse or mechanism for slowing it down? no one I know in real life would accept that.
I'd say Kiwifarms has failed to make that kind of reasonable effort.
There is a good faith moderation clause in part of section 230, but I'm not sure how it has been enforced in the past or if it is similar to what you are thinking of.
And if well-connected geeks can massage their online profiles, call in favours from unelected moderators, hide pertinent facts about themselves... what's to stop all manner of awful behaviour from being covered up? What's to stop petty business owners from destroying their rivals?
I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want." I don't know why the average person is so enthusiastic about the idea of getting taken for a ride by huge corporations.
It's especially humorous when you see those same people claiming that talking out the other side of their mouth about the danger of fascists.
"Perception is reality".
- Lee Atwater (GOP Consultant)
> I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want."
A lot of people (many of them smart) don't realize that there is a distinction between the first amendment and the general principle of free speech, which precedes the first amendment.
Keffals, mentioned in the article, is close associates with and supported by Deviant Ollam and his wife Tarah, who was a senior director at Splunk and Symantec and is a fellow at Council on Foreign Relations.
As someone familiar with all three, this is extremely disappointing to hear about.
I have a lot of respect for Deviant, I can only hope he isn't very close to Keffals, or at the least isn't aware of the sheer number of scummy things they have done.
That's a big part of why these reputation-erasing, behind-closed-door censorship networks exist to begin with.
One of infosec's biggest twitter cancel-brigade queens was also the most prolific troll in GNAA and had a long, public history of grooming underage males but everyone looks the other way and celebrates her accomplishments. She literally got a job on Biden's campaign and yet barely anyone talks about it.
Maybe, and while most are definitely quite progressive, I would hope most of them (including Deviant) do what they truly believe is the right thing. He has since deleted all his posts relating him to Keffals, so it's possible he just didn't realize how deep the rabbit hole went and has since chosen to cut off ties.
> She literally got a job on Biden's campaign and yet barely anyone talks about it.
Do you have a source for this?
I'm not talking about Keffals here. What I am talking about was reported in a newspaper but is common knowledge to longtime NYC2600 folks.
https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-164-the-torture...
https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-165-the-torture...
Oh, and the real Torswats allegedly turned out to be a California teenager: https://www.wired.com/story/torswats-swatting-arrest/
Not in the wake of other less visible creators voicing literally the exact same concerns. Not the doxxing campaigns, not the Catboy Ranch stuff and not the DIY hormone website stuff.
I get it. He's a very busy guy...but if you're going to engage in activism you need to be extra guarded about who your associations are with.
Keep that in mind when discussing how kiwifarms relates to the open internet that Null allows a lot of questionable things. A few examples:
He's fine with stolen credit card and social security numbers being posted to the forum: https://archive.fo/rOKai
He's admitted that the rules against harassment are only enforced if it embarrasses him: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/GXIFB
He's openly asked his users to harass people: https://archive.fo/WMrvv
He's admitted that he created secret forums where users could plan harassment campaigns, while he turned a blind eye to it: https://archive.fo/rOKai
The farms exists to shame degeneracy. It started as CWC farms to track the behavior of Chris-chan, of course it's going to be a crazy place. This does not mean they don't deserve access to the backbone of the Internet. You're making moral judgements about who gets to practice legal speech.
The owner is fine with revenge porn being posted, and this has gotten him blocked by some hosts. He's also said he won't ban users who commit illegal acts.
I'm anti-harassment and not in favor of revenge porn. Not really relevant to this discussion, where my position is simply that the law is the law, the government's job is to enforce the law, and companies should be out to make money, not make pretend laws and enforce them via silent agreements.
IIRC, there are laws against sharing revenge porn in 48 states. They don't require you to be the person it was originally shared to: https://cybercivilrights.org/nonconsensual-distribution-of-i...
>Also, harassment is illegal in some cases, but talking on a public forum generally doesn't qualify. If the parties talked about it publicly and then committed it, that's their problem.
If the example of Null asking his users to harass someone doesn't count, then at what point can something be considered organized harassment?
Another example is the user "Not Based and Redpilled" hacking the game developer of Yandere Simulator. Other users were egging him on and giving suggestions on how to misuse the hacked account. Null was aware of it and described it as a violation of federal law, but didn't punish the hacker. In fact the only user who was punished was someone who criticized the hack: https://archive.is/dr0MR#10%
> If the example of Null asking his users to harass someone doesn't count, then at what point can something be considered organized harassment?
If he asked them to, and those specific users committed illegal harassment in the manner he requested, that would be organized harassment.
From "W. Va. Code §61-8-28a: Nonconsensual disclosure of private intimate images; definitions; and penalties."
There is nothing in the law that says it only bans illicit recordings (like creepshot videos). If you share a video that someone took of themself, you can be be prosecuted under it.
But yes, there is this clause in the law:
>(e) Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose liability on the provider of an interactive computer service as defined by 47 U.S.C. §230(f)(2), an information service as defined by 47 U.S.C. §153(24), or telecommunications service as defined by 47 U.S.C. §153(53), for content provided by another person.
I think this is more of a legal issue regarding selective enforcement and Section 230. He has a good lawyer and always wins his cases, maybe don't be so quick to claim he is being wreckless or breaking laws.
He's only won cases against Melinda Scott.
>He's fine with stolen credit card and social security numbers being posted to the forum: https://archive.fo/rOKai
That is from last year. But I accidentally posted the wrong archive link in that example. Here is the correct one: https://archive.is/0fOcS
This is from late last year: https://archive.is/pha8Q#75% He admits he won't ban users who break the law.
https://kiwifarms.st/threads/liz-fong-jones-elliot-william-f...
Is there anything in that thread that you would consider to be good reason for an Internet backbone company to do everything in their power to censor the entire site? And not even with a court order or anything like that, but merely at the request of the subject of the thread.
Her Social security number was posted on KF, and this is something that came up in her leaked complaint emails.
Also it's interesting how this provider isn't attempting to do the same for Doxbin, which is the source of this dox:
https://doxbin.com/upload/LizTheGrey
This indicates that it's not really about the SSN (which isn't even visible publicly on the KF thread), it's just a convenient excuse for censoring free speech that Fong-Jones and his helpers don't like.
In other words, an open internet. Doxxing is not illegal if your intent is not considered harassment or threatening (if it's just for "public shame" or ridicule, that's allowed). If the website or Josh's conduct WAS so illegal, it would have been dealt with already. You're whining at the wrong person, or perhaps, pissing into the wrong wind.
He continues to be sued every couple of months at least, by lots of angry people who were upset at things that were posted, whether by him or others, and he has won against them every single time. I think Melinda alone has sued him like six times, and always lost.
Also your archive links are crimeflared and the opposite of open.
He also allows revenge porn (wich is illegal to distribute in most of the usa), as I have mentioned elsewhere. He's also refused to ban hackers before, and instead chose to punish someone criticizing them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40396348
>He continues to be sued every couple of months at least, by lots of angry people who were upset at things that were posted, whether by him or others, and he has won against them every single time. I think Melinda alone has sued him like six times, and always lost.
He's only been sued by 3 people in total. 2 of them have ongoing lawsuits against him. All of them are pro-se litigants and are not the sharpest tools in the shed. Melinda is the only person he's won against so far. He didn't win because of the merits of his case, he won because the other side wasn't capable of arguing theirs.
It was relatively recently, in the last few weeks if I recall.
No "I'm sorry for leading everyone on this whole time" or "RIP Byuu" because the guy's a sociopath concerned mainly about the reputation of himself and his site. But even raging sociopaths don't deserve null-routing.
It wouldn't be farfetched to assume hes acting in bad faith or deceptive, because null has acted that way in the past: https://old.reddit.com/r/keffals/comments/1bkp9my/proof_kf_h...
How things are supposed to be and how they actually are are not always the same thing. This person is speculating, perhaps without knowing it.
> At the time the Kiwi Farms deplatforming was starting to show cracks in the Internet backbones, the EFF even launched a petititon website called “Protect the Stack”, dedicated to trying to preserve the neutrality of the Internet. They have never contacted the Kiwi Farms directly to learn about where the stack is in danger, and as a result they have accomplished nothing! Despite the size, prestige, and financial support of the EFF, Protect the Stack has accomplished nothing!
He's admitted that the rules against harassing lolcows on his forum are more like "Don't embarass me".
He's had secret forums where users engaged in harassment.
There's at least one occasion where he's explicitly and publically tried to get his users to harass people: https://archive.fo/WMrvv
If you go on twitter and look at the profiles of registrars like namecheap, you'll often see them stating they will drop service to websites which are accused of being scams, spam or otherwise malicious.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police...
Courts and judges seem slow and fuddy-duddy, but they're conducted in public, and you have legal avenues of appeal. Unregulated private businesses can do whatever the fuck they like, and that includes just fucking with you because of personal vendettas. Private businesses that fuck with arbitrary people aren't worthy of being a nation's internet backbone. That behaviour needs reigned in, and common carrier status needs to apply.
That said, Josh is a piece of shit. He's been trying to maintain the PR line that his forum didn't kill Byuu; they didn't, but they double down and claim Byuu isn't even dead. He's had evidence for over a year that Byuu died exactly as claimed, and he didn't bother publishing it and correcting the public record because it made his site look bad. He's normally so eager to publish the truth of awful internet behaviour, but he's silent on his own site's dirty deeds. What else is he hiding?