9 ms·

It's not actually commendable to host content for white supremacists and transphobes. Free speech may be deserving of protection, but white supremacists using t

• tekla 4y ago
  "I support free speech except the things that I don't like"
  • wussboy 4y ago
    Free speech is a good, but it is not the highest good. We do not need to throw civil society away because it might infringe on free speech.
    • HereIGoAgain 4y ago
      Civil society is a good, but it is not the highest good. We do not need to throw free speech away because it might infringe on civility. Especially when it's out and away from public and attention minding it's own business.
      • wussboy 4y ago
        I don't understand what you're getting at. Are you saying that, if we could choose, we should choose free speech over civil society?
  • rhinoceraptor 4y ago
    The site in question is one of the most notorious doxxing and harassment forums, linked to multiple suicides of their victims over the years. I'm not sure what principled political speech you think is being protected here.
    • throwawayacc2 4y ago
      Transparency in a society is extremely important. It is a fundamental right to gather and publish information bringing to the publics attention harmful, disturbing and potentially illegal behavior. What principled political speech should be protected you ask? My answer is investigative journalism. If you believe investigative journalism should exist and plays an important function in society, you should have no problem with outlets doing that.
      • rhinoceraptor 4y ago
        Harassing, doxxing, and swatting random people on social media is not investigative journalism.
        • convery 4y ago
          Guess we should take down traditional media as well then when they dox LibsOfTiktok and other creators so that the Twitter mob can harass and SWAT them, since they can't hide behind 'journalism'. Or does it only apply to the bad guys?
          • rhinoceraptor 4y ago
            It's a pretty big false equivalence to say revealing the name of a prominent psuedonymous account linked to doxxing, harassment and bomb threats is remotely the same as what KF or Libs of TikTok do.
      • ladyattis 4y ago
        How exactly is Kiwi Farms helping with this when the vast majority of their forum threads are like "LOL tr--ns talking about X." Seriously, just go skim their site, tell me exactly where they fulfill this function?
      • autoexec 4y ago
        KF is not "investigative journalism." It's just a site where people gather to point and laugh at mentally ill people with a web presence. Anything they dig up on someone is in service to that singular goal. There's no reason to pretend that they do what they do for any other reason. Clouflare shouldn't be shutting down websites because of their content, but making fun of mentally ill people is not "an important function in society".
  • Pxtl 4y ago
    Free speech does not cover defamation.
    • fjordelectro 4y ago
      Sounds like something for the courts to handle and not cloudflare. https://casetext.com/case/scott-v-moon-1 https://casetext.com/case/scott-v-moon-1
      • Pxtl 4y ago
        You could say that about a lot of things that are normally covered by abuse policies. For example, we expect hosts to remove content that violate copyright, why is copyright more worthy of protection at the corporate level than defamation?
        • howdyfolks 4y ago
          Because society created laws in that way?
        • nradov 4y ago
          The DMCA specifically requires hosts to remove content upon an allegation of copyright infringement. There is no law requiring hosts to remove defamatory content (without a specific court order). Congress has deemed copyright protection more worthy of protection at the corporate level than defamation. If you are unhappy with that situation then you should contact your members of Congress.
    • cowtools 4y ago
    • cowtools 4y ago
      Interesting. I typed up a comment that mentioned the name of the person co-ordonating the DDoS campaign, and I got instantly flagged. Test.
    • subsistence234 4y ago
  • sealeck 4y ago
    I broadly support free speech, but not hate speech.
    • subsistence234 4y ago
      "Hate speech" is ill-defined, basically it's just "speech that people with enough power don't like." and what that is can changes at any time. Many people more intelligent than you (and me) have spent many decades thinking about this issue. E.g. if you can show in court that KF is defaming someone, you can go after them, or if you can show they're involved in other illegal activities. But "I don't like some of the things they're saying on their own forum" is NOT a valid reason.
    • from 4y ago
      The Soviet equivalent of this is saying you support free speech but not for capitalists.
  • banannaise 4y ago
    The Daily Stormer is a Nazi website dedicated to promoting genocide and organizing people who support genocide. That's not "things that I don't like" unless your argument is that we shouldn't actually do anything about genocide until the genocide has been done.
• throwrqX 4y ago
  If they are doing anything illegal (like coordinating terrorist attacks) we luckily have law enforcement agencies with lots of power to address that.
  • pjc50 4y ago
    Ironically law enforcement are part of the problem: if you want someone murdered over the internet in the US, by far the easiest way is to make a bogus phone call to the police. Doesn't work all the time but it's pretty risk free for the perpetrator.
    • vorpalhex 4y ago
      Unarmed police shootings are amazingly rare on a yearly basis.
      • judge2020 4y ago
        And yet there are compilation videos of streamers being swatted on stream[0]. If someone has an address, all it takes are some anonymous calling techniques / a burner phone to traumatize the occupants by calling in a fake hostage situation or something of that caliber. 0: https://youtu.be/coa7tP54kDY?t=6 https://youtu.be/coa7tP54kDY?t=6
        • umvi 4y ago
          what % of the videos in the compilation involve an "unarmed police shooting" vs. a "swatting"? The original assertion by GP was that actually dying at the hands of police during such an event is extremely rare, an assertion that your link does not seem to refute.
        • staringback 4y ago
          Are these people getting shot and killed on their stream? This is not related to the topic.
          • 4y ago
• yanderekko 4y ago
  >Free speech may be deserving of protection, but white supremacists using the internet to coordinate real-world activities (such as terrorist attacks) doesn't actually qualify as "free speech" deserving protection against "authoritarians and individuals wanting to rip each other down". Then I'm sure these activists will have no trouble moving proving their arguments in a courtroom, which is the proper space for such an assertion to be adjudicated.
  • systemvoltage 4y ago
    Agreed, we have a justice system based on what we agreed as a society. The rule of law. If you want to prohibit speech to white supremacists, fine, let’s pass a law and if it doesn’t hold constitutional muster, go ahead convince everyone to amend the constitution. But since our founding fathers made this process difficult on purpose, let’s take a different approach: that’s what social justice is. It is anti-democratic mob lunacy where corporations and governments are playing a proxy authoritarian game.
    • robert_foss 4y ago
      I do believe hate speech is illegal already. Certainly online harassment leading to someone committing suicide is. KF is a platform that facilitates these activities.
      • yanderekko 4y ago
        >Certainly online harassment leading to someone committing suicide is. Documenting people's lives is not harassment.
        • robert_foss 4y ago
          It most definitely can be. To have all of your privacy taken away from you.
        • paulmd 4y ago
          Which jurisdiction are you speaking about? Do you have legal qualifications to dispense this advice? The US is rather unique in their absolutist view of free speech and other countries don't work the same way. Generally, for example, this would be a violation of UK law.
• vorpalhex 4y ago
  Stopping terrorist attacks is also how the NSA vindicates spying on every internet user. It's up there with "think of the kids!". It's an excuse though - and people will extend "terrorist attacks" to include non-violent protests when it suits them.
  • sealeck 4y ago
    Except this isn't a "we should record everyone's interactions to stop terrorism" it's "we should stop hosting propaganda for terrorists, especially when that cessation doesn't harm others (dropping hosting for their website does't impair other people's liberties, whereas spying on everyone's messages would)"
    • subsistence234 4y ago
      In a courtroom you wouldn't get away with absurd hyperbole like this. It would hurt your case more than help. No wonder the activists want to avoid court and rule through social media where hyperventilating emotional blackmail is pretty effective.
    • vorpalhex 4y ago
      It harms everyone. It harms yourself. Either free speech is absolute or we can suppress the speech of anyone we don't like. At some point society will dislike you.
• hecatoncheires 4y ago
  • aniforprez 4y ago
    White supremacists are not fighting for the right of white people to exist or advocating for anything. They would just as easily readily throw a gay or trans white person under the bus. They are terrorist groups that fester through spreading conspiracies about other races and peoples and want nothing less than ethnic cleansing That said, it's commendable that Cloudflare hosts them while making sure to donate to an equivalent cause to offset the grime. I don't really want them to be a censorship authority
    • sealeck 4y ago
      > That said, it's commendable that Cloudflare hosts them while making sure to donate to an equivalent cause to offset the grime. I _think_ they are/were providing these services free of charge.
    • hecatoncheires 4y ago
      You seem to be operating under a definition of "white supremacy" that is at least 5 years out of date. You see "whiteness" is an illness that uniquely afflicts white people, and causes them to act in their group's self-interest (which is only bad for white people as we all know). Unless you fight against this urge by being actively "anti-racist," i.e. agitating for the benefit of non-white people, then you are a white supremacist (because by simply existing as a passive not-racist white person, you are supporting the white supremacist superstructure). > terrorist groups that fester through spreading conspiracies about other races and peoples and want nothing less than ethnic cleansing Given the above definition who exactly is spreading conspiracies about races and agitating for ethnic cleansing? Who is inculcating white children with self-hatred? Spend 10 minutes on TikTok listening to POCs talk about "palm-handed" people, "mayo demons," colonizers etc. with billions of views and the support of academic, media and corporate orthodoxy, and compare that to some basement dwellers at Stormfront most people have never heard of. Should TikTok be banned?
  • 4y ago
• ndiddy 4y ago
  I'm glad that Cloudflare didn't bow to the pressure here. I don't want to live in a world where people can extrajudicially boot a site off the internet by running a social media campaign for a few days to get their DDoS protection removed and then paying criminals to DDoS the site.
  • sealeck 4y ago
• DantesKite 4y ago
  I don't believe that's a power a company like Cloudflare should hold, instead delineating it to the justice system to weed and parse out.