HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Did you ever watch 12 Angry Men? There's a scene in that movie where an unabashedly racist man is making his point as loudly and angrily as he can. One by one, all the others in the room turn their backs on him. When only one man is left, that man has a short message for the racist: "Sit down, and don't open your mouth again while I'm here."

Nobody puts him in jail. Nobody takes away his right to make a living or his children or his home. They just send a clear message: Don't bring that sort of thing around here. Don't bring it around us. There's no point in engaging in a dialogue with that person. Sure, you allow them to speak, in that you don't respond to that speech with violence or prosecution. But you don't have to make room for it.

We can't and shouldn't have the government stepping in to say what speech is or is not allowed. And in the United States, we don't. Russia is another matter, but as the post says, the idea that that means every Russian person or company is OK with things this awful is not true.

What that means, though, is that if there are sentiments so odious (and in some cases, literally dangerous, but not illegal) that our free society doesn't think it's appropriate to support a venue for their discussion, it's up to that society writ large, not government, to limit that discussion. There is nothing wrong with fostering a societal sense that there is no room in our world for the kind of shit that Kiwi Farms spewed, even if it is legal. There is nothing wrong with expecting large companies to live up to that standard.

So I don't see this as scary, at all. I see it as a relief. I see it as a free society working the way it's supposed to, with some caveats. (I still don't love how much power large corporate entities have, but not for this reason, exactly.) And I think there are a lot of people out there whose lives are safer because of it.

Edit: For people who haven't seen it, here's the scene I reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXlHKTPfLVA

⬐ mikl

DDoS’ing is quite different from just turning your back on someone. It’s more akin to following someone around with a megaphone and shouting over everything they say so no one can hear them.

Sure, you might celebrate when that’s done to someone you dislike, but a lot less appealing if you imagine it done to a cause you agree with.

⬐ jakelazaroff

Cloudflare and DDoS-Guard aren’t themselves DDoSing KF, though. They are just turning their backs. If KF wanted their continued protection, they could have stopped stalking and harassing people. But they didn’t, so here we are.

And of course I wouldn’t be happy if a website I support were DDoSed. It’s perfectly consistent to celebrate when a murderer gets convicted and be outraged when an innocent person does. There’s a difference between good and bad things!

⬐ OrangeMonkey

I agree - good things are things JakeLazaroff likes and bad things are things he dislikes. Its perfectly acceptable to ddos things he dislikes.

⬐ ranger_danger

did you just assume their gender??

⬐ mikl

No one’s saying they are. But Cloudflare enjoys a virtual monopoly on affordable and reliable DDoS protection, and that is a very unhealthy thing for the open Internet. If you operate an online business and your comptetitors can somehow convince Cloudflare to drop you, they can have you taken offline, permanently, by paying a pittance to have you DDoS'ed.

⬐ jakelazaroff

I don’t think you can fairly call them a monopoly. It took me like three minutes to come up with seven different competitors offering DDoS protection. And that’s just top-of-mind companies, without even doing research into anyone I might not know offhand.

- https://www.fastly.com/products/ddos-mitigation

- https://aws.amazon.com/shield/

- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ddos-protection/ddos-...

- https://www.akamai.com/solutions/security/ddos-protection

- https://cloud.google.com/armor

- https://www.ibm.com/cloud/cloud-internet-services

- https://www.rackspace.com/response/rackspace-ddos-mitigation...

⬐ sigotirandolas

IBM, Rackspace and various other smaller players are just Cloudflare resellers.

⬐ mikl

But how many of these will actually fend of a full-scale DDoS attack on your behalf without sending you a five- or six-digit bill for the trouble afterwards?

Haven’t researched all the options, but there must be some reason that DDoS targets all tend to use Cloudflare.

⬐ mhoad

Probably their continued love of defending the worst parts of the internet that makes them feel at home there.

At some point this is just going to become their entire reputation and good luck renewing all of those enterprise accounts and attracting new staff.

People and organisations generally don’t want to be associated with this and don’t see it as some great moral cause they want to get behind.

⬐ akira2501

Also, DDoS is a crime. Saying racist things isn't. We shouldn't blur the line here.

⬐ borski

Under current First Amendment jurisprudence, hate speech can only be criminalized when it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group.

Kiwi Farms absolutely incited imminent criminal activity (harassment, among other things) and made lots of specific threats against specifically targeted people and groups.

This is a false equivalence.

⬐ dmatech

Inciting harassment might be someone telling everyone to order pizzas and send them to an address. It wouldn't be posting a picture of someone's house with no context. While that might facilitate harassment, it doesn't actually incite it.

⬐ borski

Agreed. And? KF actively encouraged and supported the former.

⬐ not_a_shill

Can you provide any proof for your claims about advocating for imminent criminal activity? Ie something that would pass the Brandenburg test?

⬐ borski

I’m not interested in going to KF again because I don’t want to read all their horrid shit (too much of that the past few days), but you are welcome to, while it is still up on Tor. Moon was a frequent participant, and KF’s stated goal was to abuse and dox and threaten people and their families and their friends until they drive someone to commit suicide.

⬐ not_a_shill

You're not interested because you can't do it. I find it amazing that there's so many anti KF posters, yet not a single person (Cloudflare included) can produce some screenshots or links.

⬐ borski

Have you read through it? I have. I don’t want to do it again.

Sounds like we’re not going to come to a conclusion here, which is fine.

⬐ Akronymus

It is impossible to prove a negative. So the burden of proof is on the accusers, in this case.

⬐ Dylan16807

To some extent, but "I haven't even looked" is a very tepid defense.

⬐ Akronymus

Well, I crawled a LOT of pages when it was up. Havent found any examples.

And as the claims are usually about it being widespread, it should be very easy to provide at least one example.

⬐ akira2501

> when it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group

Aren't these already crimes? Isn't the "hate crime" charge just a way to enhance the sentencing for someone thus convicted? And isn't the original charge required for this enhancement? Thus, mere "hate speech" in and of itself cannot be a crime?

> Kiwi Farms absolutely incited imminent criminal activity

According to you and some twitter threads. I'm not comfortable accepting this prima facie, though.

> This is a false equivalence.

Does Section 230 not apply to Kiwi Farms? Is Kiwi Farms actually guilty of crimes here, or is it specific forum users? If so, why are there no efforts to go after the users but just go directly to banning the entire site?

⬐ borski

1. Yes, those are already crimes. You were making the claim that hate speech is never illegal. I was clarifying that there are caveats that take what would otherwise be free speech and turn them into actual crimes.

2. You don’t have to accept it prima facie. Go read the forums, they’re still up on Tor. Fair warning, I have, and they’re horrid.

3. Not when the mods and owners of KF are engaging in the very same. I do not know if law enforcement is looking into individual users or KF itself, but that’s not what we’re discussing. We are discussing the rights of a private company to not give a platform to a group of people they believe are committing or engaging in potentially criminal activity. CF doesn’t have to prove it. If CF is wrong, KF is welcome to find support elsewhere. Good luck.

⬐ pessimizer

> > incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group

You're being deliberately obtuse here, and when it's this obvious you lose the support of people who would otherwise agree with you. Hate speech is not illegal in the US. If you use hate speech while you're also doing insider trading, then that hate speech would be illegal under the laws of insider trading. It would also be illegal to use hate speech while perjuring yourself, or while giving criminally misleading information about a financial investment.

⬐ borski

Huh? I didn’t say hate speech was illegal. I said hate speech when it progressed to inciting crime was illegal.

(I edited the parent comment to include the word “never” to clarify my position)

⬐ ivraatiems

Companies are not prosecutors of crimes. They're entities acting in a society. The whole point of my comment is that there is already a clear line and by removing Kiwi Farms from circulation this way, rather than by government edict, we are observing it.

⬐ forty

That probably depends a lot of the country. Both are illegal here in France (for racism, if it's insulting or hateful in particular)

⬐ anon291

I think he's talking about free countries not authoritarian ones.

⬐ tsol

If that counts, there are a bunch of reddit subs that are dedicated to hating Muslims, fat people, Indians, the religious(which as a Muslim is just full of casual racism and Muslim hate). No one seems to care. I don't know why we don't get these responses for minority issues. Racism has been a problem on the internet since the beginning and there is never such a push as these issues.

⬐ ivraatiems

I am not saying people should be allowed to DDoS anyone, including Kiwi Farms, from a legality perspective. Illegal things are still illegal.

I am saying that companies which provide protection services shouldn't extend them to Kiwi Farms because they are societally not worth protecting.

⬐ OrangeMonkey

Thats right - the fire departments should just stop protecting the houses of people you dislike so folks can burn them down in peace.

⬐ ivraatiems

Fire departments are government agencies. I don't know how to be clearer about this: Government doesn't get to discriminate based on speech. Private entities do.

⬐ OrangeMonkey

In some places historically and even today, fire stations are private. What we have here is a group of users holding matches and gas - begging a private entity to stop protecting them so they can burn it down.

I think this is a pretty good example but its no surprise some folks get annoyed by it. I would be too if I was called out for being an arsonist.

⬐ KerrAvon

Guess what happens with private fire departments

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39516346

⬐ ivraatiems

But you can't have it both ways. You can think firefighters should be a public entity run for the public good, or you can think firefighters ought to be private entities, and therefore that they should have discretion about who they provide service to. It'd be nonsense to say "they're private, except when they do things I don't like."

In the US, the way we apply this to private corporations is by calling them "utilities" and subjecting them to stringent regulation.

So do you support Cloudflare and other such companies being recognized as public utilities, like phone or electricity? Because that's what you're asking for, and honestly, I might take you up on it, even if this is the price. You just may not like what other regulations they might end up subjected to.

⬐ OrangeMonkey

For what its worth, I disagree with your statements but you are engaging in good faith and I appreciate the back and forth.

Frankly, you are embodying desired HN behavior more than I am.

Cheers.

⬐ OrangeMonkey

If this site and its users were transported back to the 50's, they would be begging ma bell and the baby bells to ban the phone calls of people they dislike. "They are too dangerous!" and "They are harming XXXXXX communities!"

If the alternative to this mob rule is regulation, then yes bring it on.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Voltaire. Today he would be castigated and crucified by well-meaning fools.

⬐ ivraatiems

Did you know that regulators like the FCC frequently apply rules to the communications they regulate?[1] And that they do it based on a public-input formal rulemaking process?[2]

Phone companies are not exempt.[3][4]

You're essentially arguing against free speech as a concept just so that you get the outcome you want. You aren't going to escape from living in a society that sometimes finds things you're OK with objectionable. It's just a matter of who gets to pull the lever.

I don't honestly understand why Kiwi Farms, of all things, is the thing that's worth saving from this... but even if it were something I personally loved, there's not a way to. You can have the government regulate speech, or you can have society regulate it. There's never going to be a perfect free-for-all, and there shouldn't be.

[1] https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-pr... [2] https://www.fcc.gov/about-fcc/rulemaking-process [3] https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/CFR-2012-title47-vol3/CF... [4] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/223

⬐ bombcar

Many hospitals in the US are private entities.

They are absolutely forbidden to refuse emergency care to stabilize, and forbidden to turn away a woman in labor. By law. No matter how private they are, if they are open they must provide care or arrange for it to be provided.

Similar regulations cover many private businesses - only some of which are utilities.

⬐ danShumway

Use whatever word you want, but Cloudflare is not regulated in the same way that a hospital is, and hospitals are not only regulated around who they can refuse service to. Regulations extend to the way that they advertise, which insurance they have to accept, what standards they have to follow in providing service, etc...

Banks are private companies too and they're regulated in regards to who they can turn away as a client. I would hazard a guess that Cloudflare isn't eager to be regulated in the same way that a bank is.

Keep in mind that for both hospitals and banks, the restrictions about what customers they can turn down are not as far-reaching as the 1st Amendment and public service restrictions are. What people are asking for with Cloudflare (don't take down a site's protection unless a court tells you to) is even stricter regulation than what a bank or a hospital has.

Can you think of any private entity where they're not allowed to turn down service to any customer unless they're first ordered to by a judge?

⬐ tedivm

You have no idea how ironic this comment is considering the history of Cloudflare. I remember going to a talk by their CEO at Defcon years ago when Scientology was being DDoSed and he was bragging about providing CDN services to the Anonymous hacker groups that were behind the DDoS. Cloudflare didn't seem to care about free speech for the Scientologists. There was even a huge discussion about whether performing a DDoS was itself a version of free speech or not (this was assuming people were volunteering their computers to join the botnet, as was the case with the scientology protests).

It's funny you mention the megaphone thing too, as that is an example of free speech. People do this regularly. The person with the megaphone has the free speech right to shout over the person next to him- at least in public.

> Sure, you might celebrate when that’s done to someone you dislike, but a lot less appealing if you imagine it done to a cause you agree with.

The slippery slop fallacy is called a fallacy for a reason. What kills me though is that people on this site aren't nearly as upset about Cloudflare taking down Switter and other sex worker websites as they are about Kiwifarms. It makes it hard to take the free speech argument seriously when the people making it only care about it when the sites they visit get taken down.

⬐ philippejara

Not everyone who disagrees with you is implicitly morally corrupt or a member of some interest grooup, I have no clue what switter is and i'm sure many others don't either, kiwifarms has been on the media for the entirety of the last week.

⬐ mikl

In public, sure, but a website is explicitly private property, so the megaphone-DDoS move would in this case be trespassing and harassment.

And the slippery slope is a real problem, no matter how much people call it a fallacy. As we’ve seen countless times in history, the distance from viewing some group as less deserving of freedom than you, and actively persecuting them is short.

⬐ bombcar

Something needs to replace it - the closest is the canary I think - as long as X hasn’t happened I am not threatened. As long as the student I know is doing worse than me hasn’t been put on academic probation, I am fine.

Canaries are everywhere and real.

⬐ paulmd

can you define what "group" might be persecuted if the slippery slope from blocking kiwifarms intensified?

isn't it basically just a bunch of anonymous shell accounts? how can that possibly be a fixed group that could be targeted for persecution? the hypothetical is, itself, ridiculous.

⬐ tedivm

Free Speech is more complicated than that, at least in the US. The Supreme Court held in Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center that simply being private property does not by itself allow the owners to restrict speech.

> Over two decades ago, our state Supreme Court concluded that a privately owned shopping center that attracts large numbers of people to congregate in order to shop and take advantage of other amenities offered by the shopping center is the functional equivalent of the traditional town center, which historically is a public forum where persons can exercise the right to free speech. ( Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center (1979)

Further, the Supreme Court has found that putting a website on the internet grants a wide variety of privileges to the people using it. Specifically speaking, the Supreme Court held that if websites such as Linkedin make pages publicly accessible they can't use the legal system to stop access of those pages that they don't like- specifically, they can't stop bots from scraping by suing to get them to stop.

So if we're talking free speech I'm not sure we can count a website as private property in the sense you're talking about, and whether it would even matter if we could.

⬐ mikl

IANAL, but pretty sure that DDoS attacks don’t count as “free speech” of some sort.

⬐ Dracophoenix

You're conflating a number of points here. California's State Constitution provides a positive right to speech. The Pruneyard case, concerning protests in an open-air shopping center, was upheld due to the Court deciding that the State Constitution's right to positive free speech does not conflict with the negative right to free speech outlined 1st Amendment under certain conditions (i.e. only using common areas accessible to the general public, not protesting inside storefronts, etc.) While it theoretically applies to other states with positive free speech rights, so far, the Pruneyard case has, in practice, only applied to California. Even then, Pruneyard does not apply when it comes to regulating the time, place, or manner of speech and may be rendered irrelevant for supermarkets. (https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/4th/...). And, as a result of Section 230, I certainly doubt Pruneyard applies to content providers, if it ever had any.

In addition, what the Supreme Court found in HiQ Labs vs LinkedIn in regards to obtaining publicly available information says nothing about pinging a website too death until its offline. We're both quite capable in separating the two.

⬐ serf

>Nobody puts him in jail. Nobody takes away his right to make a living or his children or his home. They just send a clear message: Don't bring that sort of thing around here. Don't bring it around us. There's no point in engaging in a dialogue with that person.

the problem with this allegory is that in the movie the 12 jurors are also trying to associate and cooperate due to their need to re-acquire their own freedom. They must work together in order to create a verdict and avoid being held sequestered indefinitely. They turn their back primarily due to a self-interest in escape, alongside the moral implications.

The other problem with that allegory within this comparison is that the '12 angry men' in this scenario are mega-conglomerates that label themselves as public infrastructure yet have no transparency or public accountability like a government entity might in that position.

The burden of transparency and government oversight is supposed to be bundled atop the premise of being or becoming a public infrastructural entity; if not then whatever conglomerate is making private decisions on behalf of the public's interests will continue to make self-important decisions until they reach a point of total corruption and public disservice.

⬐ freeopinion

As if human beings have transparency? Why does that matter? People don't have to explain themselves any more than corporations do. Government entities don't have transparency either. When the FCC or SEC or whoever takes some action, we don't know how may of their employees agree with that action. One administration spend years fashioning the TPP or Paris accords or Iranian agreements and the next administration can pull out a year later.

⬐ dabbledash

I think that would be more analogous to a situation where KF's traffic dwindles to nothing because no one wants to visit.

DDoS is more of a heckler's veto.

⬐ verisimilitudes

What happens when enough people realize coexistence won't be permitted? He made his own forum, and a relentless campaign has conspired to bring it down. We can't have freedom of speech if only one side gets to communicate and also has access to all of the help it could ever need. Without freedom of speech, we eventually won't have peace.

⬐ systemvoltage

I've seen 12 Angry Men it was impressive when I was in highschool, but now it seems like there were a lot of aspects of it which had holes. Protagonists were on the right, but they needed to do more, it isn't super convincing to me.

⬐ ironcurtain

You are projecting a scene from a movie to an unrelated business issue.

⬐ throwoutway

> Sit down, and don't open your mouth again while I'm here.

> Sure, you allow them to speak…

I think I see your point but You have conflicting statements here.

⬐ istinetz

>Sure, you allow them to speak, in that you don't respond to that speech with violence or prosecution. But you don't have to make room for it.

>"Sit down, and don't open your mouth again while I'm here."

so they don't allow him to speak? I don't think you're proving the point you're trying to prove.

>What that means, though, is that if there are sentiments so odious (and in some cases, literally dangerous, but not illegal) that our free society doesn't think it's appropriate to support a venue for their discussion, it's up to that society writ large, not government, to limit that discussion. There is nothing wrong with fostering a societal sense that there is no room in our world for the kind of shit that Kiwi Farms spewed, even if it is legal. There is nothing wrong with expecting large companies to live up to that standard.

300 years ago, the "odious shit that society should limit" would be anything blasphemous. 200 years ago, it would be calls to allow black people in public office. 100 years ago, it would be communism. 80 years ago, it would be gay rights. Can you explain to me exactly who determines which free speech is odious and which isn't, and when did we perfect morality, so that no controversial discussion should be allowed?

⬐ amadeuspagel

Yeah, kicking a website off the internet is just like not listening to racist rants.

⬐ dxuh

People aren't just ignoring Kiwi Farms and letting them know that no one likes them, people are shooting them down (with DDoS attacks). And if they make use of services that are intended to prevent that, people shout these services down until they comply. How is that fundamentally different from what Kiwi Farms was doing itself? If null kills themselves, are you even? Is the anti Kiwi Farms crowd just as bad as Kiwi Farms? Or will it be fine if he was a bad person? What if the people on Kiwi Farms thought the people they were harassing are bad people?

I think this is yet again another example of a group of people thinking that something bad is not bad if it happens to the right people and another group thinking that something bad is bad no matter who does it. I am firmly in the latter group and to me Kiwi Farms and the people that kept harassing Cloudflare all look like bloodthirsty psychopaths with the difference being that the Kiwi Farmers knew they were disgusting and horrible and the others thinking they are brave saviors.

⬐ smsm42

> Nobody puts him in jail. Nobody takes away his right to make a living or his children or his home

We're way, way past that standard. We're way past when ACLU was defending Nazi's right to speak and were proud of it. Nobody would even think about doing this now. In fact, if you defend a "wrong" client as a lawyer, you may lose your whole career now and become unperson among your peers. If you say a wrong thing publicly, your right to make a living will very likely be taken away, and your physical security would be in serious danger. Your home - if you can keep it while being denied income - surely. But in some countries they government also may lock your bank accounts. Hope you don't have a mortgage and have enough cash stashed to pay your utility bills, because otherwise your house is going bye-bye.

As for jail, no, the US is not there yet. Other countries on the West already very much so, so I wonder for how long that one would hold. After all, the government is already talking about a "clear and present danger" from their political opponents - and this is not a random set of words. This is the legal standard that until 1969 was being used to jail people for saying wrong things. So we may be just one SCOTUS ruling away from going back there. Current SCOTUS may not be willing to do it, but judges are retiring, they are mortal, and then there's talk about court packing... The ice is very thin.

⬐ ngetchell

The ACLU would fight for the Nazi marches against the government. These are private companies adjusting their priorities as a result of other people using their free speech rights.

⬐ tsol

This isn't an uncommon view; others have observed that it's becoming unpopular to espouse free speech for all. There's an active pushback against, say, protecting the rights of racists. As an Indian Muslim I don't like what they say, but I realize it's only because of such free speech that people like me can live our lives freely in this country today. There are still a lot of people that hate me and I see it daily on reddit and Twitter.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/aclu-johnn...

⬐ ngetchell

If you own a billboard, should you respond to letters complaining about the content of the advert?

Free speech isn't anywhere in this equation. If these people wanted to go to a park and march, have at it. They can scream their hate as loud as they'd like.

I won't do business with a company that supports those ideas.

⬐ smsm42

Would they? I don't think they would any more. Any recent examples?

> as a result of other people using their free speech rights.

Running a DDoS is really stretching the definition of "using their free speech rights", I think. But firing you from a job or closing your bank account for saying wrong things is "private companies adjusting their priorities" too. I wonder how long you could make a living if you can't use banking services, or phone services, or internet services - all of which are run by private companies? How long it would be before CPS shows at you door to take your children - because private utility companies refused to serve you and it's not safe for them to be there anymore? You can take that "private companies adjusting their priorities" pretty far. If you think in this situation you still have free speech because you can still stand on a public square and yell into the sky - you definition of freedom of speech is flawed, and honestly, pretty useless in practice.

⬐ ngetchell

Nobody is saying the DDoS is free speech. That is a criminal act. The free speech is the people sharing their displeasure with CloudFlare that are using it.

⬐ smsm42

They are not just sharing displeasure. They are also operating the DDoS attacks. Pretending like one exists without the other - nobody can be that naive genuinely.

⬐ ngetchell

"They" is doing a lot of work in your argument.

I won't use CloudFlare if they are internet bodyguards for Nazis. I've registered my displeasure. I did not participate in the DDoS attack.

⬐ smsm42

Maybe you didn't (though I have absolutely no evidence of that) - but people that pushed CloudFlare to drop KF certainly did. And there is evidence that the same people actually planted at least some of the content they used to trigger that decision, too.

It's your choice to shun the providers that support free speech (yes, that means letting people you do not like speak, there was a time once that even ACLU understood that) - but it's not what happened here.

⬐ ngetchell

I suggest you submit your evidence to your local FBI office. Since the pressure was partially on Twitter, they should be able to begin arrests for the DDoS attack.

Real people were swatted by real posts on KiwiFarms. No tears will be spilt if these internet tough guys/gals can't afford their hosting bill and thus close down shop. Another group of keyboard heroes face minor consequences for their disgusting actions.

Your view of free speech isn't workable. You tell others to preemptively hamper their own liberty and free speech so these habitual line steppers can preach intolerance.

What you want is the freedom to speak without consequence. That will never exist, nor should it.

⬐ waffle_ss

> And in the United States, we don't

We don't? Didn't Zuckerberg just admit on Joe Rogan that during the last election all the major media companies were briefed by feds that were was a big "misinformation" news piece incoming, so that when the Hunter Biden laptop story finally dropped, they all censored it, sight unseen? Therefore it seems all the big social media tech companies have no problem with rubberstamping gov't requests for censorship.

They almost made it glaringly obvious when they tried to roll out their Disinformation Governance Board, which fell flat.

⬐ mise_en_place

What it boils down to is that the US intelligence agencies are determining the outcome of our elections. Doesn’t that seem eerily similar to when the Praetorian Guard was determining who would rule Rome? I think we can all see where it leads to.

⬐ KerrAvon

And, as it turned out, the Hunter Biden laptop story was 100% right wing bullshit, so it was the right thing to do. Fancy that!

⬐ richbell

The content was 100% real, though the "I found this laptop and it happened to belong to Hunter Biden" story was obviously a pretense to release content that had been obtained illegaly — likely from a hostile foreign state.

I guess it wouldn't have looked good if Rudy Guliani came out and said "the Kremelin gave me compromising videos of Joe Biden's son".

⬐ deanCommie

Which is what makes it a "misinformation" campaign.

Folks on this site have a childishly simple view on information and propaganda. I've heard many people say if it's true it can't have an agenda. But what you say is just as important as what you DON'T say.

When the Russians hacked both the DNC and the RNC and leaked only the DNC emails to WikiLeaks who gladly posted them (because to be fair Clinton and Obama wanted Assange's head), and used the RNC info to blackmail Republicans, that's a misinformation campaign.

Doesn't matter if all the emails were true.

⬐ waffle_ss

It's far more real than the so-called "Steele dossier" that the media made hay with for years, unsuppressed by the professional-managerial class.

If you're in favor of suppressing your political opponents' speech rights that's fine I guess, just don't lecture me about "our democracy."

⬐ aaron695

None

⬐ bergenty

That’s a movie, not how real life works. In real life, everyone gets riled up and do a lynching.

⬐ ivraatiems

Gets riled up and does a lynching of... the white person?

I'm not following you.

⬐ None

None

⬐ wavefunction

It seems there's a distinct historical lack of lynching of violent racists and bigots. They appear to be the perpetrators of the vast majority of lynchings. Where "lynching" is not the getting rejected by an internet service provider but getting dragged by some violent thugs to be leered at in your final moments as you struggle and choke to death gasping for air for no reason at all.

To equate the two is to insult the rest of us and I, for one, despise being insulted.

⬐ borski

Have you ever been on a jury? That’s pretty much exactly how it works, aside from the fact that overt racists usually don’t make it onto the panel.

⬐ phatfish

Thank you for some sanity. It is seriously worrying that the consensus of the HN community is to let bullies and racists have their own way and just look in the other direction.

Are techies really that scared to stand up to bigots?

⬐ kQq9oHeAz6wLLS

I regret that I have but one upvote to give. Well said.

⬐ ChicagoDave

I don't know the entire history here, but my understanding is that KF was a forum where doxing and swatting was openly pervasive. Sounds like a perfect example of society holding a site accountable and producing the correct outcome.

There was no government involved, so it's not a "free speech" issue.

I always talk about the wild west of the late 90's when the Internet was brand new. My colleagues and I all talked about the myriad sketchy ways we could make money. We chose not to. It's as simple as that. If you want to develop something you think is beneficial to society, don't support bad behavior and certainly not dangerous or illegal behavior.

This idea that a "dangerous idea" should somehow be a protected normality is ridiculous. Society has limits. Get used to it.

⬐ JumpCrisscross

> was no government involved, so it's not a "free speech" issue

Nitpick: it is a free speech issue. It’s just not a First Amendment concern.

Your broader point stands: rights must balance; it’s perfectly fair for the freedom of assembly to peacefully balance someone freedom of speech.

⬐ OrangeMonkey

I agree - you have the right to not go some place where you don't want to be.

You do not have the right to convince a fire department to stop protecting a house so you can burn it down in peace.

To think this situation is anything BUT that is pure hypocrisy.

⬐ JumpCrisscross

> this situation is anything BUT that is pure hypocrisy

Fires kill people. As do bombs. As in bomb threats levied to intimidate someone into not speaking. Nobody is dying because Kiwi Farms is being DDOS’d. If there is a side antithetical to free speech in this discussion, it’s the group threatening to assault people whose speech they disagree with. Not those asking them to take their business elsewhere.

⬐ mazdayasna

Here is an excellent writeup on the forum and the recent drama, that is not actively trying to push an agenda on the situation.

https://defaultfriend.substack.com/p/suicide-by-kiwi-farms

⬐ hnburnsy

Thank you for a varied view of this. Not surprised to see Taylor Lorenz involved in all of this...

>In a profile on her in the Washington Post, written by, oh wow, Taylor Lorenz again, Taylor writes...

⬐ philippejara

Well, doxing by public means seemed to be pretty open and shut yes, but while there are accusations galore of swatting I'm yet to see a single piece of evidence of them being to blame for it, and on paper they actively prohibit illegal things of that sort, for whatever that's worth. Hell the obvious false flag on the congresswomen straight up saying it was a specific user on the forum should be enough to cast suspicions on all these accusations as far as I'm concerned and at least expect some proof, some archive, something.

⬐ burnte

> I don't know the entire history here, but my understanding is that KF was a forum where doxing and swatting was openly pervasive. Sounds like a perfect example of society holding a site accountable and producing the correct outcome.

Because it IS just that. This is the logical and proper consequence for freedom of speech. You speak, others get to react in their own way that does not HARM you but they are not obligated to HELP you speak.

⬐ istinetz

>There was no government involved, so it's not a "free speech" issue.

Strong disagree. Free speech is a central tenet for the entire modern society. Without it, there is no scientific revolution, no Enlightenment.

Accept controversial, unpleasant, disruptive discussion and ideas or accept stagnation. That's it, there is no way around it.

⬐ ryan_lane

I, and others, are using our speech to convince others that this forum shouldn't have a platform on the internet. Should you accept my speech? Should you accept CF's form of speech (which is to not help amplify harmful speech)?

Free speech isn't just the ability to say things, but also the ability to not say something, and to not help share something. Action (and inaction) is a form of speech.

⬐ _vvaw

In terms of SWATing, harassment, and "driving people to suicide" this is a false impression, one that is intentionally spread by the site's detractors. SWATing and harassment is strictly banned on Kiwi Farms. The site owner aggressively removes such posts and cooperates with law enforcement.

The leader of the campaign to take down Kiwi Farms is Keffals, a transsexual Twitch streamer with a large underage audience. Kiwi Farms has documented Keffals’ sexualized interactions with underage members of her community, as well as her history in porn and online interactions with several open pedophiles. Some believe this is why she wants the site nuked.

See archived copy of the Kiwi Farms thread for documentation of Keffals' encouragement of doxing and SWATing, sexual grooming of minors on the “Catboy Ranch” Discord server, and her website which instructs minors on how to secretly obtain and self-dose cross-sex hormones behind parents’ backs:

https://archive.ph/HY4hK

The sketchy online pharmacy Keffals’ DIY HRT Directory promotes sells cross-sex hormones marketed to children, with holofoil anime lolita box art and labels that say “keep away from parents”:

https://archive.ph/zZMRp

The medical consequences of a confused child self-dosing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones outside parental and medical supervision can be sterilizing, irreversible, and lifelong. Keffals promotes the DIY HRT Directory on Twitter and Twitch to a huge audience of underaged viewers.

None of these details about Keffals were mentioned in WaPo or NBC accounts of this story. It is incredibly dismaying to see Keffals doing this to children, well-documented and for the most part out in the open, and realize that no one in the news media cares.

===

EDIT: In response to a comment below...

KF's owner refused the New Zealand's government command to remove Brenton Tarrant's manifesto and shooting video. This demand was not backed up by American law. He cooperates with law enforcement requests for information on criminal threats and illegal material posted to Kiwi Farms.

⬐ ChicagoDave

Got five kids. If any of them were trans, I'd support them connecting with whatever community they could find. Some people were born into the wrong body and most kids know it immediately. The dysphoria can happen early. I'm sure there are some kids that make mistakes and try hormone therapy because they think it will make them feel better. The list of reasons they might do this are long and many are related to abuse or depression.

How about we stop labeling people pedophiles and support people (even kids) finding their truth.

I'd also firmly believe all transgender adults would be _horrified_ by any type of abuse. You're going to find an outlier in there as with any statistic. But like 99.9999% of all transgender adults come from a position of empathy and support. To assume otherwise is you just pushing your idea of morality on other people.

Of course if you simply refuse to believe in the idea that someone could be gay or bi or trans (and be certain of it at a young age), that's an entirely different conversation. Kids know who they are. We're supposed to guide them. Not oppress them.

⬐ BlargMcLarg

>You're going to find an outlier in there as with any statistic.

That's the point of GP, which you are completely talking around. The news is actively avoiding talking about one asserted dark outlier, a groomer who happens to be transgender, while talking about another asserted dark outlier, a site which is accused of proactively doxing and swatting individuals.

>and most kids know it immediately

Plenty of kids do not know and stay in the grey zone well until post-puberty, at which point they either regret not going for it, or are happy to have gone through puberty. Vice versa, there are plenty of "transtrenders" and kids who regret going through HRT treatments.

If we're going to admit there's fuzziness to this, we also have to admit society can very much push the boundary too far and cause regret. That's before we consider this isn't a simple linear space. Now add to that a few individuals willingly taking advantage of that fuzziness.

This isn't a war on trans people or on trans kids. Stop turning it into one.

⬐ _vvaw

It is not the same as being gay or bi. Exploring those identities is 100% reversible. Puberty blockers permanently stunt a child's physical development. Injected artificial hormones cause permanent, dangerous, and potentially sterilizing changes to a child's body.

Children cannot consent to sterilizing medical procedures. Doctors are prohibited by law from performing tubal ligations on all women under 18, and most won’t do it on women under 30. Despite this, children can and are getting testicles, ovaries, and uteri removed because they self-identify as trans. Children cannot consent to the surgical removal of healthy reproductive organs.

Up to 90% of self-identified trans youth desist post-puberty. Completing puberty is the cure for their confusion, a confusion most human beings experience in adolescence. Puberty blockers obstruct this process. This finding is extensively replicated across numerous large-n studies.

The rise of radically-affirming care for trans youth has led to an increasing cohort of "destransitioners," people who realized transition for them was a mistake. Many are now speaking out against the medicalization of non-gender conforming youth, and against clinicians who ignored co-morbid conditions such as autism, mentall illness, sexual abuse, and other trauma when diagnosing their dysphoria.

The medical science on trans youth is evolving rapidly. The UK, Sweden, and Finland just severely curtailed use of puberty blockers and hormones on minors due to the clear risks of harm (brain swelling, autoimmune conditions, blood clots, unknown effects on the brain during critical developmental windows) and unclear evidence of benefit. They also found that clinicians in both countries were rushing kids onto blockers and hormones with minimal and sloppy psychological evaluations. See the UK National Health Service's Cass Review for an overview.

I expect the US to follow suit in curtailing such practices eventually, once our current political fever breaks and the evidence remains. In the meantime, Keffals continues to aid and abet the distribution of controlled, life-altering drugs to underage children without any medical supervision whatsoever. This criminally reckless and destructive to childrens' bodies.

⬐ deanCommie

I'm on mobile but almost every point you made is either a lie or a massive exaggeration.

Transitioning requires a massive amount of support and steps and children are NOT being rushed into irreversible medical procedures. This is a scare mongering tactic of the alt-right and has no bearing on reality.

⬐ _vvaw

It's true that transition used to be more strictly paced and psychologically supervised. For children especially, this is no longer true. The governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom have formally investigated and documented the phenomena I described. The same phenomena are now visible across the US. The evidence is ample and verifiable. Here is the UK National Health Service's Cass Review:

https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/0...

Some highlights:

>Within the Dutch Approach, children and young people with neurodiversity and/or complex mental health problems are routinely given therapeutic support in advance of, or when considered appropriate, instead of early hormone intervention. Whereas criteria to have accessed therapeutic support prior to starting hormone blocking treatment do not appear to be integral to the current NHS process.

>Evidence on the appropriate management of children and young people with gender incongruence and dysphoria is inconclusive both nationally and internationally.

>If pubertal sex hormones are essential to these brain maturation processes, this raises a secondary question of whether there is a critical time window for the processes to take place, or whether catch up is possible when oestrogen or testosterone is introduced later.

Here's a documentary by the Swedish public broadcaster with English subtitles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJGAoNbHYzk

Evidence of "gender-affirming hysterectomies" performed on US patients as young as 16:

https://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Abstract/2017/05001/Hy...

Article which summarizes trans kid desistance research (which got its author, journalist Jesse Singal, a wave of death threats and suicide-baiting DMs from trans activists):

https://www.thecut.com/2016/07/whats-missing-from-the-conver...

Detransitioned 17-year-old girl Chloe Cole testimonies to the California state legislators:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzgohkz22Fg

⬐ DanBC

> Here is the UK National Health Service's Cass Review:

Not NHS. It's not a great sign of accuracy if you're getting this wrong.

And the Cass review calls for an expansion of provision of gender affirming care for children, which is why we're moving from a single clinic to multiple clinics.

⬐ _vvaw

The study was commissioned by the NHS and led by Dr. Hilary Cass, past president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/npc-c...

It shut Tavistock, highlighted diagnostic overshadowing of co-morbind conditions such as abuse, trauma, and autism, found gross evidentiary gaps in the medical arguments for puberty blockers and youth HRT, and recommended the curtailment of medical youth transition. The move to multiple clinics is one part trans activists highlight while ignoring the rest.

⬐ DanBC

The study is an independent report. The Royal Colleges are not part of the NHS.

> It shut Tavistock

All the anti-trans activists think this is some brilliant "gotcha" moment, but they don't appear to know that most trans people hated Tavistock and were calling for services to be removed from Tavi.

Cass isn't doing what anti-trans campaigners wanted, she's doing what trans people want remove services from Tavi, and create a bunch of new centres across England. Access is going to be greatly increased.

Keep spinning it how you like, this is an unambiguous win for trans people and their allies.

⬐ tsimionescu

Have you looked at the thread? She is not being called a pedophile because of recommending HRT to kids, she is being accused of being a pedophile because of alleged sexualized online interactions with minors (of course, the site is wrongly referring to her as "he" and sometimes by her deadname - these are in no way nice people). Those mostly seem to amount to using sexualized terms in response to a minor's comments, but to me nothing seemed like significantly different from swearing with sexual terms around (not at) a minor, which I wouldn't deem as sexually charged. She is also being accused of running what seems to have been a fetishistic community that minors engaged in, but the evidence there is far too flimsy to know if there is any merit to that.

Promoting the use of off-the-shelf HRT to children without any kind of parental or medical supervision is a completely separate issue. It's much clearer she engages in this than in the possible pedophilia, as she has repeatedly proclaimed that she is proud of doing it. But I think this is also an extremely serious issue, and one much more likely to leave children with life-long medical issues than some vulgar language.

⬐ mise_en_place

> How about we stop labeling people pedophiles and support people (even kids) finding their truth.

There’s something extremely unsettling about this sentence.

⬐ ChicagoDave

Just because someone is transgender, doesn't make them a pedophile, which you know damn well was my point.

⬐ SamoyedFurFluff

Wait, the owner of the site explicitly doesn’t cooperate with law enforcement though?? I first heard of them because of the owner of the site insisted on hosting a video of a hate-based mass shooting against law enforcement requests.

I really doubt your claims here; you lie in your first paragraph.

⬐ jowsie

He cooperates with the law in the country he resides and the site is hosted in. He told NZ to fuck off 'cause they had no say in whether or not he was allowed to host the video.

⬐ _dain_

with US law enforcement, for actual criminal activity. null told the new zealand police to get lost when they ordered him to take down the video of the mosque shooting; rightly so.

⬐ philippejara

He seems to explicitly cooperate with US law enforcement[0], what you're referring to is the new zealand government trying to get them not only to take down the chirstchurch shooting video but also give them the IP of everyone that posted it so they can prosecute them. The only jurisdiction that matters to him is the US, so i'd assume that's where the servers and the company is located.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220707041302/https://kiwifarms...

⬐ philippejara

another one, seems like there was a git with some transparency stuff, its down unfortunately :https://web.archive.org/web/20220801104812/https://kiwifarms...

⬐ philippejara

update to those reading later, the links don't work for the twitter people decided to take down the archives from the wayback machine...

the same links from archive.md: https://archive.md/c8hXj https://archive.md/cgWAJ

⬐ KerrAvon

(a) There is no independent verification of those claims against Keffals

(b) It’s irrelevant — this is about kiwifarms behavior, not Keffals

⬐ _vvaw

> (a) There is no independent verification of those claims against Keffals

There absolutely is. The DIY HRT Directory website is live right now, as are Keffals' tweets and Twitch clips promoting it. The sexual tweets directed at minors are archived on archive.ph, as are Keffals' doxing of the KF owner's mom and Keffal's calls for SWAting and doxing. The "Catboy Ranch" screenshots and Kiwi Farms investigation prompted Keffals to wipe the server. It's impossible to save Discord content on third-party archival services, but tweets between Discord users from that period buttress the allegations.

⬐ not_a_shill

I sleep better knowing that everyone involved is a degenerate and random normal people aren't getting doxxed and having their life ruined. I would definitely be on Keffals side if I didn't know who she was.

⬐ richbell

> There is no independent verification of those claims against Keffals

What would independent verification look like? I browsed the archived thread and it seems like the vast majority of claims have accompanying Twitter and archive links.

⬐ byyll

> I don't know the entire history here, but my understanding is that KF was a forum where doxing and swatting was openly pervasive.

That's the issue. You are getting your understanding for the situation from one side as the other is being actively censored.

> There was no government involved, so it's not a "free speech" issue.

(US) government or laws have nothing to do with free speech.

> don't support bad behavior and certainly not dangerous

"bad" and "dangerous" are broad and extremely, extremely subjective terms.

⬐ Cyberdog

> I don't know the entire history here, but my understanding is that KF was a forum where doxing and swatting was openly pervasive.

Doxxing, sometimes; swatting, no. Posting plans for any sort of real-life harassment on KF will get you mocked by other users and possibly banned.

⬐ agentdrtran

> Doxxing, sometimes; swatting, no. Posting plans for any sort of real-life harassment on KF will get you mocked by other users and possibly banned.

then why does it happen all the time?

⬐ philippejara

does it? the majority of swatting I know of were on twitch streamers, mostly non-political and I've only heard about kiwifarms being responsible for swatting in the last week...

⬐ Cyberdog

Why does swatting happen all the time? I don't know, but all it takes to be done effectively is a single idiot with a spoofed phone number and possibly a voice changer/TTS program. It's not like there really needs to be a whole forum to plan that sort of thing out.

⬐ None

None

⬐ karlshea

?

https://www.businessinsider.com/kiwi-farms-trans-activists-m...

⬐ Cyberdog

The media is lying to you. Think about this for a moment: If you were going to SWAT someone, an activity with severe legal consequences, would you call up the police and say, "Hello, my name is X from Y, and I'm going to commit federal crime Z?" That would be a pants-on-head stupid thing to do.

Now say you were a troublemaker that wanted to arouse suspicion on person X from Y. Then you might do that. This is called false-flagging and it's an incredibly common thing to do. Fortunately law enforcement has slightly better critical thinking skills than the media and knows better than to take that sort of thing at face value.

Again: The media is lying to you. They are always lying to you, even when they don't know that they're lying to you.

⬐ felixgallo

don't be ridiculous. You could go to that forum and any number of other forums, and see a plethora of examples of doxxing, brigading, targeting, encouragement, and celebration of swatting. That's not 'the media' lying to you, that's simple direct observable fact.

⬐ Cyberdog

"Any number of other forums" is not the topic of discussion here. If you can find any posts on Kiwi Farms which encouraged or celebrated swatting and were not ridiculed by other users and/or deleted by mods, please do so. Since this is so common, this should be an easy task, right?

⬐ felixgallo

I'm thankfully having trouble going there today, but I'll note that (a) you narrowed the topic to only swatting and gosh I wonder why that is, and also (b) that posts celebrating swatting are somehow mitigated by being 'ridiculed by other users' is an intriguingly contortionist theory.

⬐ Cyberdog

Doxxing (in the sense of collecting and sharing personal but almost always legally accessible information about a person) was already ceded as something that happens on KF far up thread.

⬐ ryan_lane

People get banned for posting about swatting, but one of the primary reasons people dox others is to be able to harass them in real life. If someone is doxed you can swat them without needing to coordinate anything, or brag about it on a forum. Folks in the forum can see the person posting about getting swatted, then all laugh at that person.

Folks being harassed by KF get swatted after being doxed. It's pretty easy to make the conclusion that they're being swatted because they've been doxed on KF.

⬐ jakelazaroff

You know the site was public when it was still up, right? Look at the evidence Keffals collected, for example: https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1560375267721363456

⬐ Cyberdog

Oh, yes, well, I know I said you couldn't trust Business Insider, but if no less a credible and unbiased authority as Keffals says something, then I must humbly stand corrected.

⬐ jakelazaroff

That link is full of screenshots of Kiwi Farms. Where exactly are the goalposts here?

⬐ Cyberdog

The goalposts are a post on KF which advocates violence or doxing, was not mocked or deleted, and is still currently on KF - so screenshots of posts taken before they were mocked and/or deleted do not count (and it's quite possible any such screenshots in Keffals' possession were posted by Keffals or another affiliate and then snapped before they were mocked and/or deleted anyway).

Again, if this is such frequent behavior, you should be able to fire up a Tor browser, go to the site, and drop several links to such posts right now.

⬐ croon

Make a snapchat like site where only terrorists post, and posts are erased after 2 hours. No harm no foul, since nothing is permanent?

⬐ Cyberdog

Not sure where you're going with this since KF doesn't work this way.

⬐ croon

Your argument was that since bad posts were eventually removed, the site itself was not advocating those things, sidestepping the issue of which people are drawn there and what the main use of the site is.

⬐ jakelazaroff

I see — the goalposts don’t exist. If there’s an eyewitness account, they could be lying. If there’s a screenshot of a deleted post, it could be fabricated. If it’s an active post, well, how do we know it’s not a fake post by someone trying to make Kiwi Farms look bad?

⬐ philippejara

Can you link to where there was evidence of said swatting? the one folder specifically named "toronto swatting info" has literally nothing regarding swatting, just regarding a dox.

You even have in the document made by herself people explicitly being against it, to the point of saying people who do it should kill themselves[0].

[0]:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Lt1qmYCFKonDaIVe7yvkZQnBc0m...

⬐ philippejara

hi jakelazaroff i'm afraid i'm unable to reply to you, maybe due to thread depth, the reply button is hidden.

Just a heads up, you need to share the images from the google drive thru the elipses to link them, as it stands all those links go to the folders.

> Here’s the ominous disclaimer “I disavow any actions taken with this information in advance” in a post doxxing Keffals where she was eventually swatted.

If we are to assume that posting a dox is evidence for swatting sure, but if we don't that is not more ominous than anything else that could've been said.

>Here’s someone being glib about “inconvenient but polite visits from law enforcement”: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/1rwQ_3hMKm...

I assume this is violent threat #24[0]? this was after the swatting happened and is referring to the statement from the police[1] that clarified they just knocked on the door to come in and were let in, and didn't really deadname her in the manner that was claimed, contrary to her recollection of events. I quote the statement from the police department: " Officers did not conduct what is sometimes referred to as a “dynamic entry” into Ms. Sorrenti’s residence. Rather, they knocked on the door, announced themselves as police officers, and occupants answered. Any attempt by uninvolved third parties to suggest otherwise is inaccurate and irresponsible. "

It wasn't being glib about it from my point of view

All others by your description, just show people there being nasty, which seems to be par for the curse, but nothing pointing towards doing the swatting.

[0]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vgqW69SZn-yfjrLQKBnJ8XudEA4... [1]: https://www.londonpolice.ca/en/news/statement-from-police-ch...

⬐ jakelazaroff

Here’s the ominous disclaimer “I disavow any actions taken with this information in advance” in a post doxxing Keffals where she was eventually swatted: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/1rwQ_3hMKm...

Here’s someone doxxing and saying to “just send him a Doordash”: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/1rwQ_3hMKm...

Here’s someone being glib about “inconvenient but polite visits from law enforcement”: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/1rwQ_3hMKm...

Here’s someone saying he’d have “danced for joy” if London cops had shot Keffals: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/1rwQ_3hMKm...

Is this person talking about swatting in general, or specifically by Kiwi Farms? https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/1rwQ_3hMKm...

More lamenting the SWAT officers didn’t kill Keffals: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/1rwQ_3hMKm...

⬐ philippejara

Just a heads up, you need to share the images from the google drive thru the elipses in the top right of the picture to link them, as it stands all those links go to the folders.

> Here’s the ominous disclaimer “I disavow any actions taken with this information in advance” in a post doxxing Keffals where she was eventually swatted.

If we are to assume that posting a dox is evidence for swatting sure, but if we don't that is not more ominous than anything else that could've been said.

>Here’s someone being glib about “inconvenient but polite visits from law enforcement”: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/1rwQ_3hMKm...

I assume this is violent threat #24[0]? this was after the swatting happened and is referring to the statement from the police[1] that clarified they just knocked on the door to come in and were let in, and didn't really deadname her in the manner that was claimed, contrary to her recollection of events. I quote the statement from the police department: " Officers did not conduct what is sometimes referred to as a “dynamic entry” into Ms. Sorrenti’s residence. Rather, they knocked on the door, announced themselves as police officers, and occupants answered. Any attempt by uninvolved third parties to suggest otherwise is inaccurate and irresponsible. "

It wasn't being glib about it from my point of view

All others by your description, just show people there being nasty, which seems to be par for the curse, but nothing pointing towards doing the swatting.

[0]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vgqW69SZn-yfjrLQKBnJ8XudEA4... [1]: https://www.londonpolice.ca/en/news/statement-from-police-ch...

⬐ wickedsickeune

What is the motive of the lie? To shut down Kiwi Farms?

⬐ BlargMcLarg

<MrKrabs>Money.</MrKrabs>

They aren't actively lying or even putting in effort to lie for the sake of it. They just aren't putting in the effort to uncover the truth and explaining things beyond outrage bait. A few clickbait articles help generate clicks among a majority crowd that doesn't even know what KF is, and will have forgotten by tomorrow. They just care about the clicks.

Which leads to millions of half-truths which are far more complicated in depth, but most people aren't going through the effort to criticize what they read. They just want the quick drama to talk about and go on with their day.

Anyone who's read a magazine intended for the opposite gender can tell most of the articles regarding their own gender is largely bogus half-truths missing nuance. It's no different in most other spaces, but it's not as obvious when you don't have expertise on the matter yourself.

⬐ cuteboy19

Some proof would be nice. This is just conjecture. Maybe you are lying

⬐ Cyberdog

I have no proof that the person who called the police and said they are not AltisticRight from the Kiwi Farms was not really AltisticRight from the Kiwi Farms.

But again, use a little critical thinking. Most of the time people do not gleefully name themselves after they have committed a major crime.

⬐ latexr

> But again, use a little critical thinking. Most of the time people do not gleefully name themselves after they have committed a major crime.

Do a web search for “dumb criminals” and you might want to revisit that thought. “America's Dumbest Criminals”¹ had enough content to run for over one hundred episodes in four seasons over two decades years ago.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Dumbest_Criminals

⬐ vintermann

One who did not impress with critical thinking skills, was swatting victim (and notorious US right-wing politician) Marjorie Taylor Greene. The person phoning in false reports on them literally did this, as transparently as possible. Via KnowYourMeme:

> According to a police report obtained by the Daily Dot, a caller tipped the police to inform them that a man had been shot five times in a bathtub in Greene's home. Police arrived at Greene's home and confirmed no such incident had occurred. The tipper then called the police department again and, using a computer-generated voice, explained the motive for their false tip was their opposition to Greene's stances on transgender youth's rights. They also stated they were a Kiwi Farms user and said their username was AltisticRight, an admin on the site.

And Marjorie Taylor Greene actually believed that the tipper told the truth and supported the deplatforming of the site. So much for the "politically incorrect" being any better on this sort of thing.

⬐ Cyberdog

MTG is a boomer who probably doesn't understand the internet and its culture any deeper than what it takes to launch the Netflix app on an iPad. She believed what she was told. I'm sure at least 80% of politicians on any side of the aisle would have believed the same thing.

I expect HN posters to be a little more savvy, though.

⬐ grzm

> MTG is a boomer

Are you using this as a pejorative or as a descriptor? If the latter, what's your definition of "boomer"? She was born in 1974.

⬐ Cyberdog

"Boomer" is internet slang for a (usually, but not necessarily, older) person with little awareness of the internet and its culture. It doesn't have any strong connection to proper baby boomers. The opposite would be a "zoomer" - a young person who is unaware of older internet culture or perhaps just culture in general. A Facebook person who doesn't know what Fortnite is would be a boomer; a TikTok kid who doesn't know what the dancing baby meme is or who Michael Jackson is would be a zoomer.

⬐ grzm

So, the former.

⬐ croon

The important part isn't whether she believed it was true, but whether she supported the deplatforming, being of the shouting from primetime cable news about "being silenced" group.

⬐ jameslars

One thing I haven't figured out in all the replies defending KF is WHY "making fun of weirdos" requires knowing & posting their address & phone number and keeping tabs on their physical location.

This seems like a pretty easy line to draw to start to show they're serious about keeping things "look but don't touch." Allowing doxxing seems akin to "won't someone rid me of the meddlesome priest" territory.

⬐ Cyberdog

In my personal opinion, it's a figurative memento mori (I said FIGURATIVE) to some people who get a little full of themselves and think they're untouchable, and may in fact be consistently proven right by greater society as in Keffals' case (remember this person just earned around $100,000 Canadian in a GoFundMe campaign in one week). It's a reminder that this person, too, is human and is living a messy life on Earth just like the rest of us.

⬐ charcircuit

>KF was a forum where doxing and swatting was openly pervasive

Doxing, as in compiling public information about people on the internet did happen, but the forums were not about swatting and doing so is against the spirit and the rules of the forums. That said if someone was swatted it is fair game for that event to be documented on the forums.

>There was no government involved, so it's not a "free speech" issue.

The concept of free speech has nothing to do with a government. Yes, in America the 1st amendment protects freedom of speech, but companies can protect freedom of speech too. In the case of the internet where most of it is privately owned it will require the companies and individuals to protect freedom of speech to have freedom of speech on the internet.

⬐ sonofhans

> Doxing, as in compiling public information about people on the internet did happen, but …

There’s no “but” here. This is a common talking point defending this forum — “at least they didn’t explicitly do something worse” — but doxxing is unethical and illegal. Period. This forum encouraged, enabled, and glorified it.

> the forums were not about swatting and doing so is against the spirit and the rules of the forums. That said if someone was swatted it is fair game for that event to be documented on the forums.

This is bullshit designed to evade responsibility with a wink and a nod. The forum provides the means and glorifies the result, but believes that its hands are clean because they don’t explicitly setup a SWAT autodialer.

> In the case of the internet where most of it is privately owned it will require the companies and individuals to protect freedom of speech to have freedom of speech on the internet.

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

⬐ charcircuit

>There’s no “but” here

There is because I wrote it there. But is used to show contrast. I was contrasting how there was doxing and there wasn't swatting.

>doxxing is unethical and illegal

It may be unethical to you, but it is ethical to me. Doxxing is not illegal in the United States.

>This forum encouraged, enabled, and glorified it.

I see the documentation and preservation as a good thing. Not everyone has to share the same opinion as me. People who don't want to see this stuff can not visit the site.

>This is bullshit designed to evade responsibility with a wink and a nod

It doesn't glorify it anymore than wikipedia glorifies the historical events it has articles about.

>The forum provides the means

That doesn't mean the forum should be responsible. If Is someone googles a person's name and their address shows up does that mean Google is responsible for the person being swatted? In my opinion, no it isn't.

>glorifies the result

The forum can't control how people respond to the event. No one is forcing people to commented negatively or positively or even at all about it. Even without the Kiwi Farms it would likely be talked about somewhere else.

>they don’t explicitly setup a SWAT autodialer

They don't implicitly do this either. The community in general doesn't swat people. Yes, I'm sure you can find some exception, but I don't believe a community should be killed just because there are some bad people who claim to be a part of it in it.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

A link isn't an argument. Are you trying to say that free speech is bad and that we should censor people to avoid the subset of acceptable speech from changing? I personally am pro free speech and anti censorship so we disagree on these things if that was what you were trying to say.

⬐ _dain_

> I don't know the entire history here, but my understanding is that KF was a forum where doxing and swatting was openly pervasive. Sounds like a perfect example of society holding a site accountable and producing the correct outcome.

your understanding is wrong, the swatting incidents were done by others and blamed on KF. as for "accountability" -- when will keffals and friends be held accountable for selling illegal DIY hormones to confused and vulnerable minors? or for running the "catboy ranch" discord group for grooming minors? KF documents these facts, giving accountability, but for some reason it's not welcome.

this is precisely part of why free speech is so important -- when you censor someone, they aren't able to defend themselves against lies, and the other side can just continue to make shit up, justifying even more censorship in a self-perpetuating cycle.

⬐ ce4

You got that wrong. No one was censored by CF, because you dont need CF to have an internet appearance. If anything, it's the DDoS attacks that are censoring KF. But in the end it just got more expensive for KF to speak.

⬐ _dain_

CF outright blocked the KF domain, they didn't just rescind DDoS protection.

and deliberately not protecting a paying customer as they are attacked by DDoSing criminals is just censorship by another name. it's a critical piece of infrastructure; large sites just can't survive on the modern internet without it. it's like if the police and fire services announced they wouldn't protect a specific house from roving packs of arsonists.

⬐ ce4

Well, no, that's not how it works. They stopped business with KF by not forwarding traffic to the protected/secret origin anymore, thats how reverse proxies work. The owner of the domain is free to update their DNS records and point it to another CDN or even the unprotected origin

⬐ e2le

> CF outright blocked the KF domain

They might be referring to CF also being the domain registrar for KF.

⬐ cowtools

Free speech is more than just an amendment to the constitution. It is also a doctrine that knowledge and discussion should generally be free, and that people shouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs.

It used to be that all forums had pervasive doxxing and swatting. People didn't use to have public internet identities like they do today- probably because there wasn't any way to profit from owning a public identity or from harvesting the data of others. Maybe people don't remember that since reddit (and others) ate up all the small forums and made them advertiser friendly.

One of these "sketchy ways to make money" is to abuse the networks with DDoS attacks and racketeering- on either the protection side (CloudFlare, etc.) or the offensive side (botnets, etc.)

⬐ threatofrain

From a policy perspective I find it extremely problematic to say that CloudFlare is an essential part of modern free speech. If we say that free speech is shouting from a publicly funded street corner, that's one thing. But it's quite another to say that free speech requires expensive engineers, infrastructure, and energy expenditure, all funded by an American business.

If we want public squares, why then do we not pay for it with public money? Furthermore, is it not incredibly problematic that private companies are such an important pillar of free speech in an international context? Is CloudFlare essential for German free speech?

And most importantly, what about the freedom of association as a moral principle? How does an individual's freedom to speak weigh against another's capacity to say "leave me alone?" At the extreme, we might see that in a small town, if enough people disassociate from you then freedom of speech is no longer the top issue. The top issue becomes whether you can even live. So which of these ideal rights are most weighty, and how ought they interact with other rights?

What determines that freedom of association is subordinate to the freedom of speech in an X society?

On a more technical question, what is stopping Kiwi Farms from gathering on the many private forums which exist around the world? There's 4chan, Reddit, TruthSocial, or Facebook. CloudFlare was not a host in this context, it was a DDOS protection service, which is indirectly a wallet protection service. Who will be DDOS'ing Facebook's wallet?

⬐ seebs

No, it did not used to be that "all forums had pervasive doxxing and swatting". That has never been true. It has never been widespread. Heck, swatting as we know it today wasn't even remotely common until quite recently, and doxxing has been actively frowned on and treated as potentially criminal since, like, the 80s.

I dunno what you think you're arguing, but it's nonsense.

⬐ cowtools

Doxxing and swatting has always been frowned upon, but it continues to happen regardless. So the idea that it can be curbed through social stigma and criminalization is clearly false. The technology for surveillance and publishing has only improved over time.

⬐ Volundr

I mean murder continues despite social stigma and criminalization. Unless you are suggesting we legalize murder I'm not seeing your point here.

⬐ cowtools

The difference is that murder is not prone to sybil attacks. You could literally mass-automate doxxing and swatting if you wanted to. Like imagine that you just had a bot that just scraped PII from a website, purchased phone numbers off the DN, and then used text-to-speech to call in a bomb threat. You can conduct this attack anonymously from the other side of the globe.

In order to murder someone you would physically have to visit them and try not to get killed yourself. Anyone can defend against murder, but literally no one can defend against swatting. There is literally nothing you can do to legally prevent yourself from being swatted.

⬐ Volundr

I honestly don't get what you are saying here. Because you can physically do something to prevent being murdered it's sensible to have laws against murder, but because you can't physically defend against swatting we should just accept it as part of our society?

I don't think that's what you are trying to say, but I can't put together what you are.

⬐ WickyNilliams

> It used to be that all forums had pervasive doxxing and swatting.

There is no way this is true. I have been a member of countless forums over the decades, and have never seen or experienced this. Anecdotal of course. But for such a substantial claim as you have made, a source is necessary. Though I suspect there is none.

⬐ MandieD

"It used to be that all forums had pervasive doxxing and swatting..."

What kind of hell-forums were you using in the late 90s?! I never saw anything like that going on in the forums I was using back in my early days of internetting, though to be fair, I was mostly on classical music, historical fiction, and parrot-keeping forums, which tend to attract people outside the bored young male demographic, but I was also a regular Slashdot reader, where things sometimes got nasty, but I don't remember a swatting incident, or much in the way of doxxing.

⬐ burnte

> Free speech is more than just an amendment to the constitution. It is also a doctrine that knowledge and discussion should generally be free, and that people shouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs.

Should be persecuted BY THE GOVERNMENT. At no point has any nation held that all people should be able to say whatever they want at any time with zero repercussions from anywhere. You can yell in a crowded theater, and they can kick you out. If you yell "fire" and cause a panic, you're arrested for the panic, not the fact you spoke, but for the fact you put people in potential danger. But if you only yell some racial slur, for example, no one will arrest you for the slur, but you can be asked to leave the theater and never return because that's private property.

Freedom of speech is not and has never been freedom from consequences.

⬐ LudwigNagasena

What is “the government” in a democracy?

⬐ burnte

The government apparatus, as only that has the power to fine you, jail you, etc.

⬐ LudwigNagasena

Ok, and how is being fined by a government materially different from being intimated and canceled by a mob?

And why would the approaches to them be different if, presumably, both represent the people?

⬐ burnte

Most people are fairly aware that context matters. What's illegal in one context is perfectly legal in another. These are two very different contexts.

⬐ byyll

> Freedom of speech is not and has never been freedom from consequences.

So the freedom of speech of the group of people on twitter is not freedom from the consequence of "doxxing".

⬐ burnte

> So the freedom of speech of the group of people on twitter is not freedom from the consequence of "doxxing".

No one is ever free of consequences with respect to free speech. I can march around a college town with a tiki torch yelling racist bullshit, and if I make the news and get fired, that's just how it goes. Don't say anything on twitter you wouldn't otherwise say in public to strangers.

⬐ richbell

> If you yell "fire" and cause a panic, you're arrested for the panic, not the fact you spoke, but for the fact you put people in potential danger.

This analogy was created in an attempt to outlaw people speaking against the draft. My understanding is that it was overturned and is no longer considered a relevant example on the test of free speech.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_t...

⬐ foldr

I don’t think that’s relevant. The point is just that you really can’t shout ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre and use a free speech defense to escape responsibility for your actions. Various other scenarios may or may not have been found to be legally analogous to this one by various courts. Nonetheless, the example still serves to illustrate the limits of free speech.

To put it another way, Brandenburg v. Ohio didn’t find that it actually is ok to shout ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre. Rather, it found that a particular instance of speech wasn’t analogous to that example.

⬐ richbell

It is relevant if the courts later overturned the decision and it is now considered free speech.

I get your point, it's just a bad example given the historical baggage.

⬐ foldr

AFAIK the courts did not find this. After all, they were not considering the case of someone who shouted ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre. If someone actually did this and people died as a result (e.g. in a stampede), it seems highly unlikely that a free speech defense could be used.

⬐ Dylan16807

> It is relevant if the courts later overturned the decision and it is now considered free speech.

Since "it" is the draft stuff, not shouting fire, it's only mildly sometimes relevant.

⬐ semiquaver

The analogy itself is dicta: part of the decision’s explanation and commentary; not a statement of law or binding precedent. Therefore not something that can be overturned in the subsequent case.

⬐ andsoitis

> people shouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs

Who is being persecuted? For which beliefs? And how are they being persecuted?

⬐ cowtools

No one in this specific situation is being persecuted for their beliefs:

The coordinator of the DDoS attack (Who I am apparently not allowed to say the name of or my comment will be instantly flagged after posting) is being persecuted for their shady history and actions, which includes being a prostitute and sponsoring the (paralegal?) distribution of transgender hormones to minors.

The KiwiForum is being persecuted for the gossip and personal information that they have been (re-)publishing on the previously mentioned person. As well as some threats like swatting which have allegedly been attributed to them.

Both sides employ a public figurehead who abuses their para-social relationship with their supporters to extract donations from them. So in this sense, the "persecution complex" is an artificial mechanism whereby they drum up support.

⬐ andsoitis

Ah ok, if nobody is being persecuted here, then I don’t understand why you insinuated it.

⬐ masklinn

> Free speech is more than just an amendment to the constitution. It is also a doctrine that knowledge and discussion should generally be free, and that people shouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs.

"Generally" is an important word here. So is "should". That speech "should generally" be free does not mean all speech is always acceptable.

As the saying goes, your freedom to act ends where my nose begins. When a site is used to organize and synchronise harassment for months, to the at least tacit allowance and at most open encouragement of the site's management, it is way beyond where noses begin.

> It used to be that all forums had pervasive doxxing and swatting.

That is a level of nonsense and whataboutism I've rarely seen.

⬐ cowtools

I would prefer you to directly prove that KF is deserving of being censored rather than just merely arguing that "freedom of speech merely applies to gov. censorship". Even if CF is within their ability to censor KF, I think it's immoral for them to do so on the basis of freedom-of-speech as a doctrine, which I believe in myself. What speech does KF publish that is unacceptable? Are they terrorists telling people how to build weapons of mass destruction in their basement, or are they merely publishing gossip on some internet celebrities?

I don't see what justifies this level of censorship on the infrastructure-level. It sets a bad precedent for the internet.

Note that I don't see this as some sort of partisan thing. If it was instead some sort of leftist forum doxxing right wing internet celebrities I would also take issue with cloudflare taking them down. I chiefly oppose the arbitrary bureaucratic control of the internet.

>That is a level of nonsense and whataboutism I've rarely seen.

You are ignorant then. This is simply the nature of the internet ten, maybe twenty years ago. I myself have been doxxed many times under several pseudonyms, and I learned to move on and establish a new identity while pracicing better opsec, and I was able to do this in a low-severity environment. The current environment of most of the internet is high-risk and high-severity.

It used to be that parents would tell their children never to share their identity online, never to meet up with randoms on the internet, etc. This is obviously no longer the case. People have no regard for privacy anymore. Extortion, identity theft, etc. is rampant and I listen to people on HN make apology for it because they have no sense of personal responsibility.

Everyone has just given up on the noble vision of the internet as a liberating, democratic force.

⬐ kelseyfrog

We all know where this line of dialog goes. Someone posts the thing and then you or someone else responds with, "it's clearly a joke," a "one off," "doesn't speak for all of KF," "not a regular user," "not affiliated with KF," "doesn't actually cause harm," or any other response.

Sorry but the pro-KF well has been poisoned - ironically by KF users and supporters themselves. It's an absolute self punch in the face. Why don't you describe what your evidentiary level of acceptibility is first and then we provide the evidence?

I'm asking because, honestly, I don't think it exists. I dont think any level of evidence would be satisfactory. Happy to be proven wrong though.

⬐ Volundr

> You are ignorant then. This is simply the nature of the internet ten, maybe twenty years ago.

Then I am too. I've been on the internet for longer than that, and I certainly don't recall this being the norm. It's possible it was in the corners you frequented, but not the ones I did. But unless you have some data that speaks to this being the norm across the internet and my experience being the exception all we have is anecdotes and mine cancels yours.

⬐ jakelazaroff

> Even if CF is within their ability to censor KF, I think it's immoral for them to do so on the basis of freedom-of-speech as a doctrine, which I believe in myself. What speech does KF publish that is unacceptable?

Cloudflare isn’t censoring Kiwi Farms, but I’ll answer your question anyway. Kiwi Farms is a space for people to collaborate on the intimidation of others. It is an inherently anti–free speech project. It causes people to be afraid to post publicly online, for fear of malicious people stalking them. It causes people to avoid talking about the abuse, for fear of being targeted themselves. At worst, it caused people to take their own lives to escape the harassment — the ultimate in silencing someone else.

The free speech rights of Kiwi Farms’ victims are no less important than its users. Its removal from the Internet is a net win for freedom of speech.

⬐ cowtools

>Cloudflare isn’t censoring Kiwi Farms

It is not really CF, so much as it's the collective action of many internet monopolies. The content they are hosting is legal to the extent of US law, and no one is allowing them to host it.

>It causes people to be afraid to post publicly online, for fear of malicious people stalking them

When someone is publishing their personal information online, is it really stalking to republish that information? It is almost impossible to prevent such a thing from occuring. Either an individual is a public figure or a private figure. If someone (say, a politician or celebrity) chooses to become a public figure, then they should be held under the scrutiny of the public eye and they should be held accountable for their actions. If someone is a private figure, they should be responsible for securing their own privacy on the internet.

I think what we have on the current internet is a situation where a lot of internet celebrities (including KF's own operator) want all of the benefits of being a para-social public figure with none of the responsibilities of maintaining a public image that stands up to scrutiny.

In the case of the NES emulator developer who allegedly committed suicide, the KF had not published this person's actual real-life identity. They could have merely started a new pseudonym, or operated more privately under the current pseudonym, or ignored the KF altogether. The so-called "harrasement" and "doxxing" of this person is completely inconsequential to their actual life outside of the internet. You would not infer any more information on this guy from his KF "dox" as you would infer from almost any pseudo-anonymous furry on any social media website. But instead, this figure tried to leverage their own suicide threat to take down the kiwifarms website and extort them by offering money in exchange for their article to be taken down. In the end, their suicide remains completely unconfirmed apart from a single, unbacked testimonial.

⬐ stonogo

So anyone who is an ARIN representative deserves harassment? Anyone who holds an FCC license? Anyone who owns any land? All three of these effectively put your name and address into public knowledge. Your definition of "public figure" needs work, because at the moment it's frankly ridiculous.

⬐ MandieD

The GP's attitude is why a lot of people are afraid of trying amateur radio: when you apply for a license in the US, your address is published. It doesn't have to be your home address and can be a post box, but you do have to be able to receive mail there.

When you apply for your license in Germany, you can elect to not have your home and secondary station addresses published. While looking up potential callsigns for my application, I noticed that about half of the female-looking names chose not to publish their addresses.

I wonder how many women and other vulnerable people are staying away from amateur radio in the US because they can't take the risk of publicly revealing any sort of address they can receive mail at.

⬐ jakelazaroff

You’re misrepresenting what happened. Keffals didn’t post the address of the hotel she stayed at after being swatted, for example. Kiwi Farms found it from the bedsheets in the picture she posted [0]. That is stalking. Then they sent her pizzas at that hotel, which is harassment.

[0] https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1560065956923297793

⬐ bastardoperator

The first amendment is designed to protect people from government. That's it. It's beyond clear in its text. Courts have ruled time and time again finding speech that harms people is most certainly not protected. We have laws that deal with slander, libel, harassment, and speech that does not pass the clear and present danger clause does meet the criteria for "free" speech.

I don't understand how anyone can look at the first amendment text and believe anything else. The only people that think they should be allowed to say whatever they want and face no repercussion are people that simply do not understand the first amendment.

⬐ nemo44x

Of course but it’s about promoting a culture of free speech. It’s important. And of course that doesn’t mean absolute. If speech is being used to create an imminent threat then it should be limited during that time. But hurt feelings, feeling “unsafe”, being insulted, being offended, blasphemy, etc. are not reasons to limit the culture of free speech. It creates more harm long term than it solves.

Of course different communities that moderate can choose what that means to them. But there is a bad precedent when global bans are implemented, especially when it’s arbitrary. This appeal to authority, like begging a lordship is not the right direction.

What happens when inevitably the authority is not someone we agree with? Precedent has been set. We encoded into law free speech for this reason. We’d be wise to promote it as cultural value too.

⬐ byyll

(US) Law has nothing to do with free speech.

⬐ cowtools

I believe that free speech, as a doctrine, is an intrinsic good. It is that simple.

I think the late Aaron Swartz describes my stance on free speech as a doctrine and moral principle: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/becausewecan

The status of the law has no influence on my stance on morality. Legality neither sufficient nor necessary for morality. The existence of slavery was once legal, was that sufficient to make it moral? It is obviously the case that the law is backed by moral principles and not the other way around, and that we should lead ourselves chiefly by moral principles and not legal ones.

⬐ Volundr

People have the freedom to say awful things. That's part of free speech. But shunning then for saying these awful things is also part of my free speech. Calling on others to shun them for saying these awful things is also part of my free speech. You cannot have free speech without also allowing people to be ostracized (even in organized campaigns) for how they use it.

⬐ cowtools

Sure, but the internet's centralized nature breaks this dynamic because the "public square" is being privatized. Imagine if you couldn't print political flyers without active participation from the paper company, or if you couldn't host meetups without the wholesale endorsement of the phone company.

What we are seeing is not a shunning by society at large. What we're seeing is a fight between two radical (and generally unhinged) groups of individuals on the internet.

The real problem is that these technical problems devolve into bureaucratic social problems due to the design of the internet. If there is a silver lining here, it's that more people will be encouraged to learn about censorship-resistant networks like Tor.

I think a return to voluntary communication on a peer-to-peer basis may one day return sanity to the network, because direct-messaging retains much of the IRL social characteristics you've described.

⬐ shadowgovt

You can't print political flyers without a press. Freedom of the press has never implied everyone is owed access to someone else's press or other services.

There are very narrowly tailored prior restraint on the freedom of association in the US, and outside of those companies have wide latitude. The New York Times is not obligated to donate column inches to the KKK, for example.

> I think a return to voluntary communication on a peer-to-peer basis

That's what we have now; the issue I believe you appear to have is you're not a peer. Most of us never were; how many actually ran their own ISP back in the day or actually entered into a traffic peering agreement?

⬐ dmatech

That's why society is dependent on large companies staying in their lane. If a hospital decides to refuse service to bad people because the world would be better if they died, we'd obviously condemn that. The same is true of some utilities, but general businesses can shun people.

Cloudflare tried to stay in its lane, but it was dragged out of it by the Twitter mob.

⬐ noasaservice

> Cloudflare tried to stay in its lane, but it was dragged out of it by the Twitter mob.

That's bullshit. Cloudflare removed the sex worker-friendly social media network Switter over NO complaints or likewise.

Cloudflare seems eagerly anti-sexwork and pro nazi. Except when the whole internet comes out and says "NO".

Cloudflare can play pretend that it's some "core functionality" of the internet, but their core business is "safeguarding booters to DDoS sites" while they provide the DDoS cover as a business racket. One might even describe it as "organized"

⬐ dmatech

FOSTA/SESTA was a poorly-conceived law that created a lot of potential liability for the ostensible goal of reducing sex trafficking. Pretty much all sex work is potentially sex trafficking, so any corporate lawyer will tell management to stay as far away from that as possible.

The USA cannot criminalize being a "Nazi" because freedom of political affiliation and political expression is a core right. The USA went through political inquisitions in past decades to root out communism among US citizens, and nobody looks back on that with approval.

As an aside, "Nazi" has devolved into a completely meaningless term, so I'd prefer something a bit more specific.

⬐ detaro

I wouldn't call the passing of SESTA/FOSTA "no complaints or likewise". In that specific instance, you can very much put the blame on lawmakers being more anti-sexwork than anti-nazis, if you want to frame it that way.

⬐ noasaservice

Threats of violence/death is illegal.

SWATTING is illegal, either by name, or by "false reporting".

But no, naturally when some transgender person's name/address/family's addresses/ phone #'s are published it's just for 'completely innocent reasons', aside the "get the lolcow to commit suicide kekekek ni*er".

(as a note, the response to CF banning them did exactly that towards Matthew Prince, with every possible epithet, and then death threats towards him. Real nice bunch there.)

Yep, completely innocent.

⬐ detaro

I don't think I've claimed that these things aren't illegal or that KF is innocent, so please don't suggest I did. thanks.

Cloudflare clearly doesn't care about illegal things their users do unless it becomes a risk or too inconvenient to them. Content on KF might be illegal, but hosting KF with such content is generally not, which is why they could point to Section 230 and stick their fingers in their ears.

Whereas SESTA turned Switter into a massive legal risk for them, because it removed that protection. I bet if a SESTA-style law existed against KFs content Cloudflare would have kicked them off very quickly. And in reverse I think there is a good chance that if SESTA hadn't passed, CF would still host Switter.

(And just to be clear, SESTA is a terrible law, and trying to "fix" CFs attitude by making more such laws is not worth it. But clearly lawmakers decided kicking sexworkers of the internet was more important/worth it than kicking places like KF off the internet when making it)

⬐ Volundr

> Imagine if you couldn't print political flyers without active participation from the paper company, or if you couldn't host meetups without the wholesale endorsement of the phone company.

Except, Cloudflare isn't required to run a website. If you are printing 100s or even 1000s of flyers your home printer might be fine. If you are printing millions your probably going to need to make a significant investment or work with a professional printer. The same is true for Cloudflare in this scenario. It doesn't enable running the site, it just helps scale it for cheaper. If the professional printers/cloudflare's of the world decide to shun you, yeah you'll have a harder time getting your message out, but I see that as a feature, not a bug. If I shun someone I don't want someone else handing them a megaphone to scream in my ear.

⬐ Dalewyn

>Except, Cloudflare isn't required to run a website.

A sizable CDN, which Cloudflare is one example of, is practically required to serve a website seeing any significant traffic in this day and age.

And therein lies the problem.

The internet was founded on a philosophy of decentralization, the fucking thing was designed to withstand all the destructive forces of a nuclear war. If one part of the network is damaged or otherwise inaccessible, the rest of the network will route around the damage to reestablish connections.

But that's not the state of the internet today. The internet today is heavily centralized around a small handful of key players. Cloudflare is one such player. Without the blessings of such players, you have no ability to access or do anything on the internet.

For now the vast majority of people receive and enjoy the blessings and thus aren't compelled to do anything about this fucking gigantic elephant in the room. But those blessings aren't guaranteed, and the fact we must rely on such frivolous blessings is by itself preposterous.

>If you are printing millions your probably going to need to make a significant investment or work with a professional printer.

What we're seeing here is a professional printer refusing services because he doesn't like what's being printed, with no basis on legality which is the only grounds upon which any business may refuse to render services.

Anyone who claims to support free speech shouldn't be happy about any of this turn of events. You don't spread free speech by censoring speech, the results are quite the opposite every single time and these will all add up to come crashing down eventually.

And especially to those celebrating or ecstatic this happened: Be careful what you wish for, because when your turn to get cancelled comes up, nobody might be around to help you.

The whole point of free speech is to protect and guarantee the expression of disagreeable speech, because nobody's going to censor speech they like or agree with.

⬐ Dylan16807

A sizable CDN is not required to run a website with significant traffic.

Cloudflare plays a critical role here because of DDoS and not any of the legitimate load.

⬐ Volundr

> What we're seeing here is a professional printer refusing services because he doesn't like what's being printed, with no basis on legality which is the only grounds upon which any business may refuse to render services.

A business can in general refuse to do business with anyone for any reason. There are certain federal restrictions, namely religion, race, gender etc, but outside that refusing to do business with someone is an inherent part of free speech. Advocating for requiring a company to do business with someone they don't want to is advocating against free speech

⬐ account42

> Advocating for requiring a company to do business with someone they don't want to is advocating against free speech

Only if you accept that corporations should have the same rights as people. To me that makes no sense once the get to a certain scale.

⬐ curtainsforus

It's not a problem if one print shop declines to print your flyer; it is a problem if there's only three print shops in the world.

⬐ Dalewyn

>Advocating for requiring a company to do business with someone they don't want to is advocating against free speech

Yes, quite so, and in fact I agree that Cloudflare has a right to do or not do business as they please.

The real, fundamental problem is that the internet has become too centralized, such that a few entities can direct the rest with impunity.

However, I think we can agree that fixing the centralization of the internet at this point is a fool's errand.

I recall recently about a story of how a father got kicked out by Google for uploading some pictures to his Google account. Fundamentally, KF getting kicked out by Cloudflare is the same thing: Customers getting kicked out by companies because of disagreeable content; companies which are effectively gatekeepers to the internet at large.

So the next best way, in the interim, to keep the internet working in some fashion, is to have businesses like Cloudflare not kick customers out simply for saying or having disagreeable things.

With great powers come great responsibilities, as the saying goes.

⬐ bastardoperator

You believe I should be able to engage in hate speech and harass people and that CF has an obligation to help me in that endeavor? Bruh...

⬐ jhanschoo

> believe that free speech, as a doctrine, is an intrinsic good.

I don't believe so. For example, hate speech and verbal abuse against a mentally vulnerable person, privately communicated, with only the intent to harm that person is clearly morally bad. It then follows that if we can identify exactly when this occurs and limit it without further externalities, then that would be morally good.

Another example: there is a fire, and you give firefighters misinformation with the intent to prevent people from being saved. That is a moral bad, externalities notwithstanding, and it is a moral good if we could prevent exactly such acts.

If you accept these, then the discussion is no longer that free speech is always good, but that what forms of speech in what contexts are acceptable, and what limits on enforcement on free speech is acceptable. I suppose that most people accept these, as opposed to having an absolute stance as yours, and people with varied experiences have different positions on this complicated issue, hence the constant conversation and reappraisal.

I watched the famous movie 12 Angry Men for the first time recently (I think it holds up well today, BTW).

There is a scene where a man goes on a racist tirade. Instead of engaging in argument or ignoring him, they stand up and turn their backs.

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXlHKTPfLVA

This is much like the disapproving glare mentioned, but what's the online equivalent?

I play a few online games but not much multiplayer. Public voice chat made it a much less enjoyable experience. You can mute people of course. But as far as I know, they don't get told. What if each time it happened it popped up a message "4 people have muted you today", "3 out of 8 teammates have muted you"? It could be a useful feedback mechanism.

⬐ mjklin

There was a remake of that movie made in the 90s with Tony Danza, a different take but also worth watching. In that movie the racist tirade is made by a non-white juror who is stopped by the grandfatherly German juror in a calm tone: “You just shut your filthy mouth and don’t open it again.”

⬐ watwut

1 person muted you however am bring retaliation toward assumed 1 person.

As in, muting is "safe" in the sense that aggressive person is not getting information and thus can't treat your mute as you being hostile. And abusive people would see mute as unfair hostility and would retaliate.

⬐ hnick

The assumption is that you can't see who muted you etc, which is already standard.

Those sort of people will get aggressive anyway when someone doesn't reply to their jabs. So you could use that to argue against any sort of mute feature in the first place.

The line has to be drawn somewhere and I think too many assume silence is assent, because many players are reluctant to speak up for fear of being targeted and this makes people feel that they have support for what they say. So have the game do it instead.

⬐ watwut

If I antagonized one or two people, I can guess who muted me. That us what I mean.

So while this would work in general "annoying to everybidy" case, it would be bad for those who are singled out target.

⬐ holler

that’s an interesting idea.. the analog to real life would be if someone turned around and walked away, effectively muting your speech to their ears. I’m working on a new public chat app sqwok.im, actively thinking about these issues, and may consider this, thank you

⬐ sideshowb

It needn't be active muting either. What if some sort of engagement metric were shown e.g. Votes divided by views (or some more sophisticated variant thereof)?

⬐ thinkingemote

It's also social pressure on the others to also mute / turn their backs and join in.

That's more difficult online for non engagement.

⬐ anonymousab

Negative feedback and dislike features can reduce engagement or drive people away, so social media platforms are incentivized to avoid such mechanisms.

⬐ pjc50

Yes, but that is what needs to happen: reduction of negative engagement.

⬐ sideshowb

Yes but if you're doing it by driving people away you want to get rid of trolls not those engaging in good faith.

⬐ hnick

And I think they're just chasing local maxima. Over the long term, they devolve and people leave.

⬐ sbarre

This is a very important observation.. It parallels the real-world chase of short-term profits in business, and short-term "points" in politics.

If the major platforms took a longer view of their communities, and asked themselves how do you build the _best_ community, not the _biggest_ community, we might all be better off..

But then their stockholders wouldn't be better off, so it hasn't happened.

That said, now with businesses and advertisers (the actual customers of social networks - because the users sure aren't) starting to pull ad dollars, we may see some of this change? One can hope..