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Large corporations policing free speech is a horrible trend that often enough goes absolutely wrong and the only way to prevent censoring content inappropriatel
by dxuh 4y ago
Large corporations policing free speech is a horrible trend that often enough goes absolutely wrong and the only way to prevent censoring content inappropriately is to not censor anything at all. There are laws and courts that judge over what content should stay online and it should stay their responsibility. If we give that up, we replace democracy with a technocracy, that already showed us plenty of times is not something we want. If it means that a website like Kiwi farms has to stay up, then that's what it takes. A twitter mob should never have the power to take any website offline. I doubt anyone in their right mind would lay their trust into every Twitter mob. It's just luck that this mob is in line with your opinions, but others might not.
- pjc50 4y agoThis means that the KF mob can take people offline.
- ajvs 4y agoWhat do you mean by that exactly?
- agentdrtran 4y agoThey have a track record of brutal, lengthy harassment that has already pushed at least one person to take their own life after years of abuse.
- banannaise 4y agoPer wikipedia, the actual number is three. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms#Suicides_of_harassment_targets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms#Suicides_of_harassm...
- noptd 4y agoI wonder how that number compares to other forums and social media sites. Seems odd to me that everyone is hyper-fixating on that site, as tasteless as it may be, when much larger ones are given a pass.
- leesalminen 4y agoMobs always attack the weakest link. KF is not widely known- if it were canceled basically nobody would care.
- banannaise 4y agoI think there are two key reasons: 1. KiwiFarms was explicitly created for essentially that purpose 2. It's far more extreme. Part of the reason it exists is because people on these larger sites (notably, 2000s-era SomethingAwful) were getting progressively more concerned and uncomfortable with the behavior. Sure, it's a concern in other places, but there are checks there. KiwiFarms has none of those checks because the behavior is the intended use of the site. So, sure, you could go after some of these other places, but KF sounds like a very good starting point.
- squeaky-clean 4y agoTwitter mobs can drive people to get fired, websites or companies to shut down... But KF literally drives people to suicide or calls in fake situations to get a SWAT team to ambush a home and in the hopes they shoot the people they are harassing. People are worried more about ending a website than they are worried about ending actual lives.
- ta1235414335 4y ago
- phillipcarter 4y agoYou can use Google, you know.
- yanderekko 4y ago>But KF literally drives people to suicide or calls in fake situations to get a SWAT team to ambush a home and in the hopes they shoot the people they are harassing. Are you actually implying that Twitter mobs haven't done all of these things too? This is obviously wrong.
- schleck8 4y agoSo we should keep up Kiwifarms because something similar has happened on Twitter? Is that the logic? Instead of removing one of the evils let's keep them both up because fairness or something like that?
- yanderekko 4y agoThe logic is that we shouldn't use some sort of "one drop" thinking to characterize a platform as broadly evil based on its worst users.
- pjc50 4y agoThe problem here is that KF does not have "substantial noninfringing uses", it's all harassment even if most of it is non-fatal.
- phillipcarter 4y ago> Large corporations policing free speech Let me stop you right there. This is not a free speech issue. Please be precise with your terminology.
- wyager 4y ago"Free speech" for normal people means "the practical freedom to speak freely", not whatever nitpicking legalistic definition I infer you're using.
- phillipcarter 4y agoI don't think you know that this is what it means, nor do I think you know what "normal people" entails.
- psyc 4y agoAnd let me get you out the way so gp doesn't get sidetracked. Nobody needs pedantry when the subject under discussion is existentially important, and every normal person already knows what the problem is.
- phillipcarter 4y agoFirstly, this is not existentially important aside for the people whose lives are ruined (and will continue to be ruined) by Kiwi Farms. Secondly, "every normal person already knows..." doesn't mean anything, because (a) you don't get to declare what normal is, and (b) you don't know that.
- xdennis 4y ago> This is not a free speech issue. Please be precise with your terminology. Let me take a stab in the dark: you think "free speech" refers only to the United States' First Amendment, and not a universal principle, which: * according to Wikipedia, is "a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction" * or, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is the "freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- immibis 4y agoIt's not true that there is nothing in between censoring everything and censoring nothing.