They documented Keffals’ child grooming and drug trafficking when no one else would, for one. The ‘body count’ talking point is questionable. The three deaths

They documented Keffals’ child grooming and drug trafficking when no one else would, for one. The ‘body count’ talking point is questionable. The three deaths of which I am aware are people who all had severe preexisting mental health issues and made very bad decisions online (defrauding others, sending death threats, being horrible to other people). Kiwi Farms documented these behaviors, which these people didn’t like. Talking about someone’s bad behavior is not illegal and should not be prohibited. I don’t condone things like mass-flagging someone’s Facebook page or other forms of actual online harassment. Such actions are in any case against Kiwi Farms site rules. And if this is your standard, what of Twitter? What of Facebook? They have body counts too, much higher than Kiwi Farms’. Former North Carolina professor Mike Adams shot himself after his firing for a racially insensitive tweet, or in the language of KF’s Wikipedia page, “was driven to suicide after endless harassment and trolls’ use of rumors got him fired.” Game developer Alec Holowka committed suicide after accusations of sexism on social media. Academic Peter Newborn took his own life after accusations of anti-Semitism were followed by a Twitter pile-on (Newborn was Jewish). These deaths are tragic but ultimately not Twitter’s fault. Twitter users in these cases likely didn’t even break the Terms of Service, which are far more restrictive on Twitter than on Kiwi Farms’. Sites like Kiwi Farms and large parts of Twitter are essentially tabloids for niche Internet microcelebrities. Like tabloids, they often seem grossly intrusive into people’s personal lives. They also occasionally do societally-valuable muckraking. Either way they’re not illegal, and the best solution for their targets is to ignore them and not give them any attention. Investigating, documenting, and talking about someone online is not harassment. Actual harassment should be addressed through legal and platform-specific means.