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Blocking Kiwifarms

• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• bitwize 4y ago
  The network interprets hate as noise and filters it out.
  • 0cVlTeIATBs 4y ago
    The original quote will likely be the more accurate one.
  • krapp 4y ago
• serverholic 4y ago
  The government shouldn't do anything about hate speech. Full stop. Edit: I’d love a definition of hate speech from someone who downvoted me.
  • tarakat 4y ago
    But it should do something about how 2-3 giant corporations have become effective arbiters of online speech.
    • nathanaldensr 4y ago
      Agreed. There should be (and I thought there was with Section 230) a very, very clear line between being a platform--"dumb pipe"--and a content provider with moderation and censoring capabilities. I agree with others that the law has a lot of catching up to do... but when it does catch up, that doesn't mean it will favor folks demanding censorship of this type of content no matter what.
      • roywiggins 4y ago
        > I thought there was with Section 230 You were misinformed. https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
  • Taniwha 4y ago
    Which government? surely each country gets to choose for itself - the US 1st amendment is only a US law, it doesn't apply world-wide - the internet however is a world-wide entity and once a company like CF, or Google etc gets big enough it needs to obey the law everywhere
    • serverholic 4y ago
      Every government. No government should be in the business of policing hate speech.
      • Taniwha 4y ago
        Surely that is for my country to decide for itself - we're a democracy - you don't get a say here any more than I get a say in what the US does
        • serverholic 4y ago
          I don’t believe democratically voted tyranny is valid
          • Taniwha 4y ago
            I'm sorry you don't believe in democracy - I will avoid your country
            • serverholic 4y ago
              What if a democracy voted to reinstate slavery? Is that valid?
              • Taniwha 4y ago
                I would continue to avoid your racist country
  • brazzy 4y ago
    It absolutely should. Full stop.
    • serverholic 4y ago
      What is hate speech?
      • brazzy 4y ago
        The German criminal code has a pretty good definition; good in the sense that it is limited. It applies to speech that fulfills 4 criteria: * It happens in public * it is capable of disturbing the public peace * it attacks an entire segment of the population * by inciting hatred, insulting, defaming or calling for violence or arbitrary measures against them. You'll have a hard time explaining what the value is in allowing speech that fulfulls all of the above.
        • anotherrandom 4y ago
          Because all of the above criteria is subjective? The US Supreme Court has repeatedly denied the constitutionality of hate speech laws throughout history on the grounds of this and it violating the concept of free speech
        • serverholic 4y ago
          That doesn’t really solve the problem though because “inciting hatred” is subjective. For example, there are people who would say that anyone who disagrees with the fat acceptance movement is guilty of “inciting hatred” against fat people. Yet I would argue that we need to leave the door open to these kinds of uncomfortable conversations. Otherwise, people will be afraid to speak their minds because they don’t know if they’ve crossed the line. Edit: Also, how do you define “capable of disturbing the public peace”?
          • brazzy 4y ago
            > That doesn’t really solve the problem though because “inciting hatred” is subjective. Lots of laws are subjective to some degree (And the degree here is really not very high here), that is absolutely normal and not problematic. For example, in order to decide whether someone was acting negligent, something called the "reasonable person standard" is used in US jurisprudence. > For example, there are people who would say that anyone who disagrees with the fat acceptance movement is guilty of “inciting hatred” against fat people. That is a silly strawman. Because it really doesn't matter what some unspecified "people" on the internet say on Twitter. What matters is what a judge says after carefuly consideration of the specific circumstances and possibly precedence cases, and possibly other judges on appeal. > Yet I would argue that we need to leave the door open to these kinds of uncomfortable conversations. Otherwise, people will be afraid to speak their minds because they don’t know if they’ve crossed the line. The line is not nearly as blurry as you make it out to be, nor is it difficult to stay well away from it. > Also, how do you define “capable of disturbing the public peace”? "public peace" has been defined in case law and commentaries as the peaceful coexistence of the population, free of fear of violence or lawlessness. "capable of" (geeignet) is a recurring term in German jurisprudence and means that an action is realistically fit to achieve something, considering the concrete circumstances of the case.
• djfobbz 4y ago
  • wahnfrieden 4y ago
    You're sharing EPOCH NEWS content, really? The QAnon / Falun Gong cult rag?
    • djfobbz 4y ago
      Do you understand that regardless of the publication, documents obtained via FOIA request and recorded into the court docket are about as solid of a proof as it comes? Please go ahead and entice me on how these documents relate to your "QAnon/Falun Gong" theory.
      • wahnfrieden 4y ago
        lol dude
• useranonweed 4y ago
• heintzsight 4y ago
  Liberty is the right to be wrong, not to do wrong.
• nintendo1889 4y ago
  Cloudflare are pure evil. Their business will never a vendor of mine.
• crazytalk 4y ago
• _vvaw 4y ago
  • happycube 4y ago
    I read the beginning as "the commercial threat to Cloudflare from continuing to host Kiwifarms." That said, they should've done it a while ago.
  • bombcar 4y ago
  • darth_avocado 4y ago
    Kiwi Farms is internet trolls taken to extreme. The harassment doesn’t stay in the virtual world. https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1565797220531814406 https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/15657972205318144...
    • _vvaw 4y ago
      • terminatornet 4y ago
        • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
          • terminatornet 4y ago
            good
            • bobsmooth 4y ago
              And this is why I'm never letting my kids use the internet.
• bumbum260 4y ago
• subsuboptimal 4y ago
  • TeeMassive 4y ago
    Why?
    • bumbum260 4y ago
    • gumby 4y ago
      Used for meatspace attacks on people they didn't like. It had transitioned to the "sticks and stones" stage.
      • TeeMassive 4y ago
        What is your evidence for that?
        • gumby 4y ago
          For example: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/cloudflare-kiwi-farms-keffals-anti-trans-rcna44834 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/cloudflare-kiwi-farms-... https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1565797220531814406 https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/15657972205318144...
          • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    • subsuboptimal 4y ago
      Kiwifarms is a site that is implicated in several deaths, several swattings, and had knowingly hosted videos of, for example, the Christchurch shooting. It is a hotbed for stochastic terrorism. It should be welcome to exist online, but Cloudflare providing it protection undermines Cloudflare's own reputation.
• FullyFunctional 4y ago
  > We have never been their hosting provider That is simply not how it works. The bits came from Cloudflare.
  • imglorp 4y ago
    How is hosting == CDN?
    • jeremyjh 4y ago
      Well, they store content from the website, and send it over their network to consumers in response to requests.
  • bumbum260 4y ago
    they never were hosting dude
  • CircleSpokes 4y ago
    That is not how it works both technically and legally. Providing a reverse proxy is not the same as hosting the content.
    • stefan_ 4y ago
      They are a cache, not some load balancer. To anyone visiting their site, the difference is immaterial (otherwise, why would it even matter).
      • CircleSpokes 4y ago
        In this case cloudflare was the ddos protection via reverse proxy. That is different from directly hosting the website. No backend servers in this case were ever hosted on clodflare's network.
        • stefan_ 4y ago
          You are still talking about proxies. You misunderstand what Cloudflare was providing, and you are instead talking about "backend servers hosted on clodflare's network" as if that was ever their offer.
• alexb_ 4y ago
  >Kiwifarms itself will most likely find other infrastructure that allows them to come back online, as the Daily Stormer and 8chan did themselves after we terminated them. And, even if they don't, the individuals that used the site to increasingly terrorize will feel even more isolated and attacked and may lash out further. There is real risk that by taking this action today we may have further heightened the emergency. Yeah no shit, of course this is going to happen. It's clearly just a way to save face from Cloudflare - though they definitely needed to do it as this problem was never going to go away for them if they didn't. The entire point of the internet is to be uncensorable, and that's not going to change with them dropping KiwiFarms. As terrible of a website as it is, it's just going to come back up with a provider that has even lower moral standards than Cloudflare.
  • bitwize 4y ago
    • erpart 4y ago
    • google234123 4y ago
      • barry-cotter 4y ago
        “Lives are on the line” is at least more original than “Think of the children”.
        • nathanaldensr 4y ago
          Hardly. They are both designed to evoke an ultimate position of unassailable moral superiority. No discourse, dissent, or discussion is permitted with such obvious moral correctness.
      • savryn 4y ago
• balentio 4y ago
• oh_really_A 4y ago
• BgSpnnrs 4y ago
  What the hell is this travesty. Now any old nobody can kill a site by larping drama on fucking twitter. You should all think about the people dying in dictatorships before you give up a free and open Internet over some paedophile using twitter clout to ban a gossip forum
  • smcl 4y ago
    This wasn't "larping drama" - KF members went to pretty severe lengths to not just dox people but to show up at their houses and SWAT them etc.
    • balentio 4y ago
      That is a law enforcement warrant matter--not a cloudflare policing matter.
      • smcl 4y ago
        Looks like CloudFlare decided it was a PR matter, and decided they'd rather not do business with them. Oh well!
        • balentio 4y ago
          • smcl 4y ago
            You’re deflecting and at the same time declaring yourself on the side of KiwiFarms. Fair enough, but I don’t think you realise how laws around discrimination work in the USA, you may want to look that up (hint just put “protected class” into Google, that’ll get ya started)
            • balentio 4y ago
              I understand law enforcement which is not on the side of anyone inherently other than ideally justice. You, apparently, are not. I suggest you look up "due process" to get a jump start on some crucial points.
• orf 4y ago
  Pretty crazy turnaround. I really liked the pretty clear and reasoned abuse policy[1] they put out recently, and I don't envy the position they are in. On one hand, yes, this specific site is terrible. But they are trying very hard to not become the arbiters of what is terrible and what isn't terrible, and I respect them for that. It's not an easy line to take, and other companies like Google and Facebook have not made that same choice to stay neutral. > Some argue that we should terminate these services to content we find reprehensible so that others can launch attacks to knock it offline. That is the equivalent argument in the physical world that the fire department shouldn't respond to fires in the homes of people who do not possess sufficient moral character 1. https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-approach/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a...
  • raverbashing 4y ago
    I'm thinking someone got a reality check from a lawyer and got cold feet real quick.
  • phillipcarter 4y ago
    I genuinely believe that it's entirely possible to be seen as very neutral and also just ban nazi sites, troll farms, etc. because you choose not to do business with them.
    • seneca 4y ago
      > also just ban nazi sites, troll farms, etc. because you choose not to do business with them. This is literally the opposite of neutral. I don't get this constant need for mental gymnastics. Just say you believe in censorship.
      • subsuboptimal 4y ago
        There can be limits on speech and free speech. There are many places where we've agreed there should be limits on speech, for instance it's illegal to lie under oath, or to threaten someone with physical harm, or to falsely advertise. It's not black and white.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Test0129 4y ago
  • smcl 4y ago
    I don't think you quite understand how awful Kiwi Farms is
    • Test0129 4y ago
      • brighamyoung 4y ago
        Not even about racism and white nationalism?
        • ThaDuke 4y ago
      • schleck8 4y ago
        Then speak for yourself and don't equate your disinterest to any moral standard.
    • Minor49er 4y ago
      They repost what other people say online. It's truly disgusting
      • smcl 4y ago
        Do they not also dox people? That actually is pretty disgusting
        • rejectfinite 4y ago
          >pretty disgusting Sure but is it dangerous? A threat to life? Do these sites need to be offline too? https://www.lifewire.com/free-people-search-sites-the-best-on-the-web-3482274 https://www.lifewire.com/free-people-search-sites-the-best-o...
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Icathian 4y ago
  There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem. Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current landscape. Given that they should never be in this position, Cloudflare is choosing between "platforming the bad guys" and "censoring free speech". They have navigated this imperfectly, but have done better than most would, I think. I truly hope that those unsatisfied with this outcome (which I suspect will be literally everybody) can take this as an opportunity to go help pressure their respective governments to figure out what the hell should be done, systematically, about hate speech on the internet. It's only 25 years overdue at this point.
  • _2d30 4y ago
    “Moderators of free speech” - an interesting idea.
    • Pxtl 4y ago
      Of course. That's what courts are in the USA -- they determine which speech is protected as free speech, and which is not (eg defamation, fraud, perjury, copyright infringement, threats, etc). But as CF has noted, the wheels of justice are too slow for the speed of internet, so they had to act proactively. Copyright holders already noted the problem and got the DMCA made to make an internet-speed version of copyright enforcement. The remaining laws governing speech have a lot of catching up to do.
      • subsistence234 4y ago
        It's not about speed. It's that in courts of law there's something called "due process" -- important safeguards designed to prevent injustice, e.g. the right of the accused to defend himself or herself. The court of public opinion runs on emotion, with a loud enough megaphone accusers don't need to prove anything, and publicly traded companies are slaves to bad PR.
• serf 4y ago
  >The policy we articulated last Wednesday remains our policy. >have our cake and eat it too. I don't get this corporate reverse speak. They literally went against the policies stated on Wednesday and then plainly say "But this violation of that policy doesn't reflect on our policies overall." I get that Kiwifarms is hated, that doesn't make black turn to white and up turn to down. Cloudflare reneged on everything they said Wednesday, there isn't two ways about it. They are self-stated as 'internet infrastructure', and this is definitely a censorship tactic. It looks like it's time for a government to step in with over-sight, since they want to be an infrastructure player.
  • MBCook 4y ago
    As I remember the policy they posted had exceptions for sites that were dangerous/etc. I think what they did today is completely consistent. What I DON’T get is why they didn’t think the site was dangerous last week. When I read their policy it seems to clearly state they wouldn’t work with a group like kiwifarms, and yet they posted a whole post explaining why they were. I agree it’s a flip-flop, I guess I see it from the other side.
    • dangrossman 4y ago
      They listed that exception for their hosting services, while saying there would be no such exception when it comes to security services. https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-approach/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a...
    • spamizbad 4y ago
      • Karunamon 4y ago
        Correction: someone who claimed to be associated with KF swatted a member of Congress. The username mentioned (which I will not quote here) denied all responsibility on the site. Surely we're not taking artificially voiced 911 calls from VoIP numbers at face value here are we?
• anigbrowl 4y ago
  We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign. Oh, guess it's those one of those Cloudflare Coincidences (tm).
  • boole1854 4y ago
    The word "directly" is doing a lot of work here.
    • braingenious 4y ago
      Load-bearing “directly”
    • pseudalopex 4y ago
      Directly didn't imply anything they didn't say explicitly. They blamed the anti KF campaign for KF members escalating.
      • BryantD 4y ago
        I’m depressingly amused by that. If you’re a free speech absolutist to the point where you’re unwilling to draw a line between Kiwifarms attacks and the real world consequences, surely you shouldn’t blame the anti-KF campaign for the way KF reacted? The problem here is that Cloudflare didn’t want to contemplate the possibility that the words on Kiwifarms might be stifling to the free speech of their targets. Which, of course, they were, just as the anti-KF campaign made KF unhappier and more aggressive. Words have real physical consequences. Often they’re predictable.
• Cyberdog 4y ago
  They muffed it. They were proving to the world how reliable they could be and repairing the damage from the Stormfront debacle, and again they just showed how prone to caving to pressure they can be. What a joke. I will never use CF for anything I want kept online in the face of angry people.
  • spamizbad 4y ago
    I'm guessing KF members organizing the swatting a US congresswoman (albeit a controversial one) was probably the straw the broke the camel's back. Hard to lobby congress (Which Cloudflare does) when you protect a forum actively swats its members.
    • Helloworldboy 4y ago
    • Cyberdog 4y ago
      Prove your accusation, please. That the person that made that call not only said they were KF, but a certain user from KF and gave their account name, should be evidence to anyone who thinks about it for two seconds that that was almost certainly a false flag.
      • dillondoyle 4y ago
        Ok then if that's the standard where's our evidence.
    • redballoon6 4y ago
      Ah, yes. When the caller helpfully told the police he was a kiwifarms user. Because that's what swatters usually do...
    • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    • atdrummond 4y ago
• donkarma 4y ago
• 71bw 4y ago
• ffwszgf 4y ago
  Cloudflare can do whatever it wants but I wish they were honest about it. The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense. If anything the owner has been monitoring the thread more proactively and making sure people follow the law. This is included not allowing the creation of new accounts and reminding everyone that their data will be turned over to the authorities should it be requested. The only thing that picked up steam in the last two weeks is the campaign to drop Cloudflare and the media attention on the situation. That’s why they caved in. It got big enough to reach Bloomberg/wsj/congress. Just be honest about it.
  • altcognito 4y ago
    > The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense. I don’t believe you have the same information as cloudflare and assuming good faith I believe them when they say there are legitimate threats to body and person. They have a responsibility to their investors to insure that their brand isn’t used to coordinate violence. Dont just shrug your shoulders while a small group invites violence because “that’s just too bad” We all have a responsibility to discern what is valuable speech and what is corrosive. Mentally ill people exist, and they are more than happy to use these forums, and they are often used in these forums as tools.
    • Handytinge 4y ago
      > We all have a responsibility to discern what is valuable speech and what is corrosive. That's not the internet I signed up for, and I don't agree with or support it. Very sad state of affairs.
    • digitaLandscape 4y ago
    • trasz 4y ago
    • wyager 4y ago
      > I don’t believe you have the same information as cloudflare Yes he does - the activity of KF posters is public. The amount of bullshitting going on here is insane. People are just making things up wholesale.
• 345435345435 4y ago
• nilsbunger 4y ago
  Seems to me it would be better for Cloudflare to keep serving Kiwifarms, and cooperate with government requests for access logs / etc. Then at least our law enforcement would have data to help with finding threat actors.
  • jacooper 4y ago
    they did, but law enforcement were simply too slow. > However, as the pressure campaign escalated, so did the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site. Feeling attacked, users of the site became even more aggressive. Over the last two weeks, we have proactively reached out to law enforcement in multiple jurisdictions highlighting what we believe are potential criminal acts and imminent threats to human life that were posted to the site. > Legal process > While law enforcement in these areas are working to investigate what we and others reported, unfortunately the process is moving more slowly than the escalating risk
    • rejectfinite 4y ago
      >law enforcement were simply too slow "too slow" According to whom? Cloudflare? What would be an appropriate time for Cloudflare for law enforcement to respond? And to what threats? You say "simply" but these are not simple questions. Cloudflare can shut off service to anyone, sure, but in any other industry there would be some termination notice, right? Unless its something like terrorism, where LAW ENFORCEMENT sets the boundary, not the private company.
      • kevingadd 4y ago
        The obligation for a termination notice, time to cure any violations of terms, etc is something that would be in a contract you agree to. A service provider is able to have terms that allow them to cut you off instantly if they decide to put that in their terms - apparently, CloudFlare has terms like that. Would I want my ISP or CDN to cut me off without notice? No. Do we know they actually cut KF off without notice? Also no - it's possible this is after they gave KF's operator time to respond. But also, I wouldn't operate a site like KiwiFarms, so I'm not terribly concerned about my CDN cutting me off for the same reason. If it became more of a widespread pattern with CF I would understand their customers getting nervous.
• phillipcarter 4y ago
  Boy, this sure would have been a lot easier if they just dropped Kiwi Farms with little fanfare the instant it was clear they were using CF. I bet they'd have been able to even keep the perception that they're a super neutral platform, too.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • Copenjin 4y ago
    EXACTLY, it would have fixed the issue instantly, they could have done it years ago as soon as they discovered the existence of kiwifarms. Don't they care about reputational damage? Who cares about some obscure forums for weirdos.
• cosmodisk 4y ago
  Never heard of kiwifarms before but after having a quick read on it, I don't see any reasons why any provider of any sorts would deal with them. Not sure how screwed up in their heads people need to be to engage in this kind of shit.
  • Cyberdog 4y ago
  • Sansos 4y ago
  • bakugo 4y ago
  • Nahtnah 4y ago
    Surprised at the number of people on here arguing against this because of 'censorship' who by their own words pretty clearly frequent the site...
    • smcl 4y ago
      I think those who are arguing against it either don't know quite how extreme KiwiFarms is, or strongly agree with the hatred, doxing and SWATting of minorities and vulnerable people that their members do.
      • Nahtnah 4y ago
        I suppose you're right, and a bunch of them seem to be throwaways, or perhaps people who only made an account to defend their site (I'm basically on a throwaway too). Sad they fell into the same persecution complex thing people seem to get trapped in... like you're really defending the site where they welcomed the Christchurch shooter's manifesto? You really think you're doing something? That's what you want to fight for?
        • 4y ago
• micromacrofoot 4y ago
  I don’t think it matters if you’re the host (ethically) if you’re responsible for facilitating access.
• Takeitalldown 4y ago
  So I assume 4Chan will go down to right? Since one of there users actually showed up to Keffals house? Right, they had IRL stalking deaththreat posted to there site?
• kache_ 4y ago
• dougp1399 4y ago
• sroghorhgr 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• thepasswordis 4y ago
  • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  • KerrAvon 4y ago
    You’re OK with Kiwifarms killing this person and several others and being proud of it. Maybe you aren’t as ignorant as you claim? https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/o91umv/rip_byuunear_creator_of_higan_tw_suicide/ https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/o91umv/rip_byu...
    • thepasswordis 4y ago
      Did I say that? No. I said I was surprised to learn the other half of this story, and that the behavior of the specific people behind the campaign to have them removed is horrifying.
    • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    • Acrobatic_Road 4y ago
      • a_shovel 4y ago
        They stated they would commit suicide, a major news outlet and people close to the victim stated they committed suicide, and they haven't been heard from since then.
        • Acrobatic_Road 4y ago
          So why isn't he on this list? https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/while-abroad/death-abroad1/death-statistics.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra... Ultimately all the sources go back to one dude: Hector Martin, who blocks people who asks him questions.
• ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  This is probably a worst case scenario for Cloudflare here. I'm generally in favor of them and I agree with their abuse policy they posted the other day. But now twice Cloudflare has posted they won't moderate content, and then two days later done... exactly that while posting that they don't like doing it. For folks concerned about abusive and harmful internet behavior, Prince has made it clear he doesn't feel responsible to take action and will avoid doing so as much as possible. And for folks concerned about free speech and censorship, Prince has made it clear he can be pushed around with enough pressure (regardless what the post says, it's how it will be read). Cloudflare could've arguably taken either position with some level of righteousness, but by essentially caving to both, he proves himself to neither.
• oinwoinfoiw 4y ago
• Spergy999 4y ago
• 00s_enthusiast 4y ago
• prvc 4y ago
  >We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign. Haven't been following this story, but it seems they haven't considered that whatever antagonists the site has could have posted the putatively objectionable content there themselves, due to the website's nature as a forum for user-generated content. Furthermore, the article throughout seems to suffer from the "anthropomorphic fallacy", in failing to acknowledge that it is speaking about a web service rather than person, and falsely attributing to it emotions and intentions.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• devwastaken 4y ago
  Cloudflare would do better to simply stop making posts every time they do something. Every other company bans users every day and have learned to stop talking about it. Or the inverse. Regardless of what cloudflare does, right or wrong, there will be mobs of people responding negatively and positively to it. People love drama. If their policy was "we'll ban anyone we want for whatever reason." I'd respect that more because that's the truth. Further troubling is how this is over what they believe to be illigal conduct. It may very well be, but now they're creating a precedent that they are capable of detecting and stopping it themselves outside the justice system. This also doesn't stop kiwifarms or it's organizers. If there's illigal conduct, or even civil discovery, CF has to give up those details. All stopping Ddos support does is allows kiwifarms to receive Ddos. No doubt they'll eventually take to tor and that doesn't have a good physical address to serve warrants to.
  • humanistbot 4y ago
    So transparency is bad?
    • devwastaken 4y ago
      With the amount of illigal content on the net, CF is not making blog posts every time they stop service. They're doing it in this case because kiwifarms is popular. And now it's causing dozens of posts stirring drama and steering users towards it. The justifications are also weak, and put CF in a bad light because they believe themselves to be justice. A simple "we don't like what they're doing so we won't service it" is an honest answer.
  • debacle 4y ago
    I adore Cloudflare for making this post. It shows they have a true commitment to taking freedom of expression about as far as they can.
  • nazgulsenpai 4y ago
    Their transparency actually makes me sympathetic to the weight of the decisions they're making. Their acknowledgement that it could make things worse is also very honest and refreshing. I hope they continue making these posts especially since they control such a massive percentage of internet infrastructure.
• hombre_fatal 4y ago
  > We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign. Given their principled stand just two days ago, this sounds like a pretty weak "haha we totally don't cave to pressure, it's just coincidence, so don't think pressure campaigns work on us!" Has Cloudflare proactively blocked any websites without a pressure campaign?
  • kevingadd 4y ago
    https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xk78x/switter-down-cloudflare-banned-sex-workers-sesta-fosta https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xk78x/switter-down-cloudfla... among others "Cloudflare has been made aware that your site is in violation of our published Terms of Service. Pursuant to our published policy, Cloudflare will terminate service to your website. Cloudflare will terminate your service for switter{.}at by disabling our authoritative DNS."
• ThaDuke 4y ago
• Zerkes 4y ago
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• Ekaros 4y ago
• scythe 4y ago
  >However, the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site and specific, targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours to the point that we believe there is an unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life unlike we have previously seen from Kiwifarms or any other customer before. If this is true, couldn't they be a little more descriptive? What happened in the last 48 hours that hasn't been happening for the last eight years?
  • rejectfinite 4y ago
    I dont get this either. No, I do, they are being vauge on purpouse. Atleast with Kiwifarms, they had screenshots and archive.is links to everything a person has said. Cloudflare only has vauge language. If there was bad content on the site, report it to the mods/admins. Facebook hosted the Christchurch livestream. Better kill FB next.
• OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
• worldofmatthew 4y ago
  Cloudflare bans websites for unproven claims but is perfectly happy to provide protection for ddos-for-hire websites that so happen to help their bottom line by generating a reason for people to use DDOS protection for which Cloudflare is one of very few options that does not have a fixed limit. Cloudflare has to be in bed with the US government, otherwise it would have been shutdown for ignoring illegal activity (ddos-for-hire) that's been reported to them (aka ignoring complaints is meant to remove your S.230 protection).
  • croes 4y ago
    Kiwifarms and unproven claims? I don't think so
    • voidpointercast 4y ago
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • Copenjin 4y ago
    What's unproven? The site is there for everyone to read, cmon. But yes, let's block the other stuff too, 100% agree.
• SirPatrickMoore 4y ago
• trasz 4y ago
• wyager 4y ago
  > Feeling attacked, users of the site became even more aggressive. Over the last two weeks, we have proactively reached out to law enforcement in multiple jurisdictions highlighting what we believe are potential criminal acts and imminent threats to human life What are they talking about? From what I've seen, this is somewhere between grossly exaggerated and completely fictional. Did they see someone post the "300 confirmed kills" copypasta and think it was serious?
  • rubyist5eva 4y ago
    Yeah this a pretty bold claim with absolutely zero evidence, pretty disgusting.
• SirPatrickMoore 4y ago
• ericzawo 4y ago
  Hope the tech elite who naysay journalism take note that it wasn't the 3 suicides, or the swatting, or the death threats or the stalking or the harassment that compelled Matthew Prince to stop hosting kiwifarms. It was the heat from negative PR that did it.
  • Vecr 4y ago
    I agree that what you are saying is literally correct, but I don't think it's really a good thing that it's this obvious. They should have either caved much earlier, not at all.
  • jimbob45 4y ago
    It was the heat from negative PR that did it. The heat, they were clearly prepared to weather. However, if one or many of their high-profile clients threatened to pull out, that would have been very difficult to sell to their investors as a good thing.
• debacle 4y ago
  I am a free speech absolutist, but I read the Wikipedia page on this site and it seems bad. "Crimes were committed," "People lost their lives" bad. Unjustifiably bad. That said, is anyone willing to steelman this website? Could this possibly be construed as just a big misunderstanding?
  • anotherrandom 4y ago
    And Cloudflare provides services to terrorist groups, does that make Cloudflare responsible for the actions of the terrorist groups? If yes, Cloudflare is also responsible for death (and more of them) and should be shut down, if no then Kiwifarms is not responsible for death.
  • wyager 4y ago
  • subsuboptimal 4y ago
  • phantom_of_cato 4y ago
    > I am a free speech absolutist, but Then you are not a freedom speech absolutist (which is fine, and not completely unreasonable).
  • Acrobatic_Road 4y ago
    The wikipedia page is not honest and completely locked down.
    • JYellensFuckboy 4y ago
      Anecdotally, I've noticed an uptick in biased Wikipedia editing platforming questionable claims as facts. It's a bit concerning.
    • NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
      Wikipedia isn't trustworthy for anything political or controversial: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/ <-written by one of the founders of it
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• ShowsAlone 4y ago
• hkt 4y ago
  Not working with fascists (yes, really) makes me much happier about cloudflare. They have their problems but they're not totally amoral.
  • HereIGoAgain 4y ago
    Where are the fascist here again?
    • NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
      The people censoring/deplatforming/cancelling others.
      • hkt 4y ago
        Actually, the fascists are the ones terrorising minorities - as Hitler and Mussolini's brownshirts once did. Cloudflare not allowing them to organise those activities, which include "swatting" people and hacking their accounts, is entirely reasonable. Terror and organised crime aren't protected speech anywhere. Not even America is that crazy.
        • NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
          Fascism is the union of government and corporate power. It has nothing to do with who they target.
  • xisukar 4y ago
    >Not working with fascists (yes, really) makes me much happier about cloudflare. This is beyond comical.
• LessimiGoats 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• unethical_ban 4y ago
  • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    The Keffals thread documents her insanely misogynist tweets and inappropriate interactions with minors. It's plainly clear why she wanted KF deplatformed.
  • ksynwa 4y ago
    What the hell are you talking about exactly?
• wubbert 4y ago
• bastawhiz 4y ago
  One thing I wish CF would address is their hand-waving about what "security services" actually means. Based on the original post from Wednesday, this seems to include caching services (though it is only mentioned once in the post). Despite saying they're not the host, providing caching services is effectively hosting. Consider, for instance, the "always online" feature, which literally makes sure your site stays online even when your hosting is down. Yes, caching is also (in some ways) a security service, in that "security" can mean protection from resource utilization attacks. But that very feature also necessarily makes the cache the source for the content in the overwhelming majority of cases. It doesn't irk me that Cloudflare provides security services to kiwifarms. I don't think, for instance, McAfee should withhold virus protection from 8chan, or clinics withholding vaccines from people they're ideologically opposed to. But it does irk me that they essentially provide hosting but wiggle out of the repercussions of providing hosting through some corporate doublespeak. It's one thing to have morals, but it's another thing to use loopholes in your own morals to (try to) avoid the consequences of those morals.
  • benatkin 4y ago
    They're type of caching is definitely hosting, to the point that I would argue that it's not (just) caching. They're providing the HTTP servers that serve the client requests. IMO they're both hosts that work together. Want to prove that the downstream server is the real host and isn't just part of the hosting? Okay, point the DNS directly to the downstream server.
• michaelwww 4y ago
  • Zealotux 4y ago
    When private companies start having so much power they can literally make or break voices from being heard at all, this argument of "private companies are private therefore they do what they want" becomes much harder to defend. I'm eager to "educate" myself about how this kind of things, truly.
    • michaelwww 4y ago
      Then work to get some laws passed outlining what private companies can and cannot do in the new internet age. Until there are legal guidelines, they are free to use their own discretion. If "Big Tech" doesn't want your content, you're free to set up your own server. https://www.google.com/search?q=free+speech+censorship+first+amendment+private+corporations https://www.google.com/search?q=free+speech+censorship+first...
      • Vecr 4y ago
        KF has their own server, own ISP/router boxes, own IPs, and their own colo hardware. The issue is that it's not that expensive on an absolute level (hundreds of dollars to take them out for a day) to just saturate their gigabit downlink. You get another gigabit downlink, they saturate that too. Ten gigabits, a bit harder, but still pretty easy. You need to have hundreds of gitabits of downlink on standby (at least, I assume Google has terabits of downlink and clever load balancing). That's not something even a well resourced city newspaper could set up at their headquarters without digging major fiber interconnects and hooking up to fiber lines going to the couple closest internet exchanges. Edit: this assumes some level of BGP filtering and monitoring of what IPs send you packets, you really need cooperation from your upstream providers and your own BGP router to even survive this much.
        • michaelwww 4y ago
          I don't know anything about KF but they sound like a vigilante group and people are responding to them with vigilante tactics. The internet has some flaws that people take advantage of and I support ongoing research to mitigate these. The internet still seems like the Wild West in some ways.
• ShowsAlone 4y ago
  [dead]
• shiado 4y ago
  DDoS-Guard it is.
  • bitwize 4y ago
    They were going to zero when they decided to ignore/defy #DropKiwiFarms, my dude. They did what they did to salvage their business.
• Nekhrimah 4y ago
  I've only recently learned of this site, and being a NZer, with the name Kiwi in the title I assumed some sort of connection to NZ. But it looks like there isn't? It's American based, and when the NZ govt made a request related to the Christchurch mosque massacre, the admin told them to pound sand. So, why is it called Kiwifarms?
  • TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
    It's a corruption of the old name of the site, which is a reference to another site, which is named after the first and possibly most famous victim of that community's stalking. See the History section of its Wikipedia article. It has nothing to do with New Zealand or kiwis, indeed.
• rejectfinite 4y ago
  Cloudflare is a private busniess and can refute service ofc, but should the owner not get some notice of the termination to move to another service in time?
  • hammyhavoc 4y ago
    You mean coverage in mainstream media outlets and the angry mob wasn't enough of a canary in the coalmine for their non-biz? Literally, they just point their domain at new DNS. It takes seconds. Who is going to want to do biz with KF?
    • Vecr 4y ago
      Actually I think Cloudflare holds the DNS names for the .net name, as well as possibly others. The reason I think this is because they are DNSSEC validated, and the .ru name does not have DNSSEC.
  • convery 4y ago
    The operator posted this on Telegram: "Cloudflare's decision to block the site was done without any discussion. The message I've received is a vague suspension notice. The message from Matthew Prince is unclear. If there is any threat to life on the site, I have received no communication from any law enforcement."
  • kevingadd 4y ago
    If you want a termination notice you should work with a hosting provider that guarantees one in their terms. I wouldn't be surprised if most providers have special clauses that entitle them to cut you off instantly, though. There are probably cases where law enforcement would demand that they do it anyway.
    • rejectfinite 4y ago
      >There are probably cases where law enforcement would demand that they do it anyway Yes but here Cloudflare claims that law enforcement was "too slow"
• hammyhavoc 4y ago
• rejectfinite 4y ago
  Where are these "escalations" and "agressive" contents? Why was law enforcement "too slow" and who judges what is an appropriate time frame for law enforcement? Does Cloudflare?
• ssizn 4y ago
  • no_time 4y ago
    Well put. This is what you get when all the major players in the IT space are based in the US/W EU. All I can say is let's hope other countries like Russia step up their game so not every major internet entity is beholden to people who think it's okay to ruin kids lives with hormone injections.
• antics 4y ago
  I think the "neutrality" framing is pretty interesting, because this basically confirms that the CF policy is not actually ideological, but instead a direct reflection of what they think the worst-case scenarios are. Broadly, to the left, the worst-case scenario is that this policy terminates with a part 2 of Black's _IBM and the Holocaust_. That is: a scenario where eventually the public _believes_ the company to be materially responsible for a terrible outcome, even if it was legal at the time. They think these harms are both on the table and imminent, and they are willing to deplatform KF/Stormfront/_etc_. as a result. I think CF believes this is not plausible, and is instead worried about a worst-case scenario where (I'm guessing) an audience like Trump voters are not allowed to host websites. I think this issues is unlikely to make real progress until both camps can find a way to talk about these material outcomes, and get aligned on which are plausible.
• throwaway932022 4y ago
  The admin of kiwifarms has posted the following in response: >I am so full of hate for this situation. I try to write down my thoughts and I find myself unable to focus on one thing I hate the most. The person committing crimes to frame my community, or the sex pest who groom little boys, or the journalists who outright lie, or the corporate cowardice responsibility for the fragile state of the Internet. >It is all so rotten and unsalvageable. Each of these problems complement the other, in a strange and disjointed way, where trying to explain how they tie together is just exhausting. Multiple evils with their own completely independent and selfish objectives - each coincidentally involve wanting to stop people from talking to each other freely as they have been able to for the last 20 years. ----- Here is an archive and a screenshot of the message: https://archive.ph/vTnBj https://archive.ph/vTnBj https://i.imgur.com/EsgkAJT.png https://i.imgur.com/EsgkAJT.png
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • throwaway932022 4y ago
  • jacooper 4y ago
    Says the man who told the NZ police that their country is a shit hole because they asked him for details about the Christchurch terrorist, and he confirmed the he reposted the video and the "manifesto" of the terrorist. https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/owner-of-christchurch-shooting-linked-website-calls-nz-a-s-hole-country-20190319-p515e6.html https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/owner-of-christchurch-s...
    • throwaway932022 4y ago
      There are two sides, the other is: 1. Christchurch terrorist had no known account on the site so there was no information to give. 2. That Oceanic law enforcement were trying to arrest anybody who so clips of the shooting video or materials related to the shooting under the same laws as child porn.
    • 4y ago
• stealthygeek 4y ago
• OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  I hope we can all join hands and say "DDOS'ing is a crime and we all hope that the FBI finds people participating in DDOS attacks and put them in jail." That shouldn't be controversial right?
  • AgentME 4y ago
    An exclusive focus on getting legal repercussions for the people who acted against KF and not any focus on legal repercussions for KF is some false neutrality.
    • bobsmooth 4y ago
      KF has been sued multiple times and won every case.
  • a_shovel 4y ago
  • creeble 4y ago
    Neither should it be controversial for Cloudflare to stop providing support for DDoS-for-hire sites, right?
  • uabstraction 4y ago
• namelessoracle 4y ago
  The people who pushed for this have a list of the next sites they are going to get taken down. In particular any place TERFs have discussions. I give it 2 years and they will be successful.
  • smcl 4y ago
    They really don't. Keffals, who has been spearheading this effort, has effectively been the target of hate from this one site which has stalked her across two continents. As far as I can tell she just wants to be able to live a normal life without worrying that taking a picture or posting a tweet could be used by this organized mob to figure out where she is and fuck with her life. It's worth noting that she's based in the UK where it is really mainstream to be a TERF, it's the default position in most tabloids and magazines and plenty of TERF columnists get a lot of column inches to complain to their hearts' content. The likely next Prime Minister recently shouted "A woman is a woman" to screams of delight from a crowd - TERFs are not an oppressed, downtrodden minority there.
    • _vvaw 4y ago
      Keffals decided to leave North America after one SWATing of unknown attacker provenance. Josh Moon, owner of Kiwi Farms, has been SWATed numerous times (as have been many larger Twitch streamers) and even had trans activists show up at his house with weapons.
      • convery 4y ago
        What's interesting about their SWATing is that the police took them in for questioning and confiscated their phone and hard-drives. Can anyone think of a single SWATing where the police showed up, noticed that there was no hostage/slaughter, and started collecting evidence / detained the victim? A victim that then raised $100K to flee the country and 'go into hiding' while Tweeting about their current location, planned future locations (never going back to the country that detained them though for some reason)..
        • 4y ago
• phantom_of_cato 4y ago
  > The policy we articulated last Wednesday remains our policy. We continue to believe that the best way to relegate cyberattacks to the dustbin of history is to give everyone the tools to prevent them. This is just doublespeak. No matter the merits of this decision, clearly this not the policy they advertised they have on Wednesday.
• ShowsAlone 4y ago
  Here are the relevant archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20220827161740/https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1406740880975876103#m https://web.archive.org/web/20220827161740/https://twitter.c... https://web.archive.org/web/20220824040635/https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1529190103725355008 https://web.archive.org/web/20220824040635/https://twitter.c... HRT and under 18 comments where Keffals admits this. https://web.archive.org/web/20220823162144/https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1541238183039569920?s=21&t=YltVM40PLv91EZeWk5qYxA https://web.archive.org/web/20220823162144/https://twitter.c...
• angelbreakfree 4y ago
  This is a bit unsettling, I thought that the emergency threat was moderated off the site (as mentionned by the main [1]). I know that place is horrendous, but it feels like CF blocked it because of the media attention instead of the threat itself. There is plenty of content online that actively partakes in stochastic terrorism as well as direct threats that are serviced by Cloudflare. The question of what makes content worth dropping, without the involvement of law enforcement, from such low level infrastructure services is a scary prospect, especially when you consider the issues that current internet has[2]. The moment they caved in, Cloudflare stopped being a simple infrastructure provider, and we can be sure that there will be actors, big and small, that will pull levers to make this happen again. The silver lining is that a hateful forum will probably cease to operate for good. [1] - https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566158393391423489 https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566158393391423489 [2] - https://secushare.org/broken-internet https://secushare.org/broken-internet
• gobdob 4y ago
  Give it 5 years. The internet will be divided along political lines and private companies will decide who's political message is true, and what is legal and not.
• eyelidlessness 4y ago
  The only thing that bothers me about this decision is the fact that they made a wrong-headed announcement of principle that calls the decision into question. Free speech absolutism which extends beyond legal protection, and which demands private organizations and individuals to materially protect and service all speech is hopelessly naive. Volunteering to do it is past the point of absurdity. By engaging in that absurdity, they undermined the credibility of their motives making this decision today. They knew there’s a red line, and if at least two adults were in a room before the previous statement was issued it would be almost impossible to believe that they hadn’t discussed that red line. That knowledge should have guided them against making any statement at all, because even clarifying their red lines would create perverse incentives. I don’t begrudge Cloudflare their principles, nor their decision to deviate from them in the face of reality. I also don’t doubt their motives as written in both statements, though I think they may wildly underestimate how much trust and good will that requires… and how little reason they have to assume it’s present. I do personally wish they’d reached this decision sooner, as a non-binary person who could certainly be targeted by KF campaigns. But I have a strong free expression instinct too, and a set of privileges of my own which sometimes delay my recognition of real present danger that I don’t experience directly. If any Cloudflare staff is reading this comment: you made the right decision. Please try to use caution when such a decision is potentially on the horizon but hasn’t yet been made. Just as real human lives are at stake when you provide (or don’t provide) services to any particular customer, real human lives are at stake when you damage your credibility making that decision.
• yamrzou 4y ago
  > Hard cases make bad law. This is a hard case and we would caution anyone from seeing it as setting precedent. OK, but you should be clear about the definition of hard cases. What exactly constitutes "an emergency threat to human life"? Hypothetical example: Suppose you're providing DDOS protection for a website belonging to country X, that acts against the interests of your country. War erupts between the two countries, and the website plays an important role in the information warfare by propagating fake news. Would that constitute an emergency threat to human life since it helps perpetuate the war?
• stealthygeek 4y ago
• OneOff1864 4y ago
  I find this sad, and perhaps this comment will die amongst the rest, but there really is a misunderstanding on what KiwiFarms is/was. The website was one created by a lunatic who wanted to say whatever he wanted amongst other people who felt the same. A true free speech advocate, who abided by every law the US has regarding content moderation but did nothing additional. The bulk of KiwiFarm users were not Nazis, they were just people. Everyone is a bit fucked, and some people like being able to say anything about odd people on the internet. The downside to that, is you will get genuinely harmful or crazy people who take it too far. But that's nothing new, Facebook has hosted live massacres, snapchat is a vector for nude stealing and distribution, Pornhub hosted child or underage porn and probably still does. The point is, KiwiFarms wasn't the issue, it was the small minority causing huge problems as they always do. What will change now that it's gone? Nothing. You'll still have the same people who take it too far, you'll still have the regular people who just want to be able to talk without having to care how other people feel, you'll still have the oddities on the internet, they'll just disperse somewhere else. No issues have been fixed, no problems addressed, but everyone will pat themselves on the back and feel good. Another pillar of the internet gone, and we'll see what is the next to go. KiwiFarms going down changes nothing, but the act of it being taken down by such a formerly neutral, and vital part of internet infrastructure is a terrible precedent. When everything is political, when everything is responsible for everything else, then only the most milktoast, party-line response will be allowed, and since politics is pendulum shaped, everyone celebrating this now will unfortunately reap the rewards when it swings again.
• Acrobatic_Road 4y ago
  They aren't giving us any details. Nothing really changed over the last two weeks. My guess is somebody is using suicide threats as leverage here.
  • HereIGoAgain 4y ago
• phantom_of_cato 4y ago
  A timely reminder for all of us that "half the internet has a single point of failure called Cloudflare". [1] [1]: https://easydns.com/blog/2020/07/20/turns-out-half-the-internet-has-a-single-point-of-failure-called-cloudflare/ https://easydns.com/blog/2020/07/20/turns-out-half-the-inter...
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• AtNightWeCode 4y ago
  I spend 30 mins on kw (through archive.org). It is a very pathetic forum with low value. I don't have any problems with cf disabling them. Free speech does not include assistance from others. An edge service having problems about edgelords. Almost poetic.
  • stealthygeek 4y ago
  • rejectfinite 4y ago
    >It is a very pathetic forum with low value If they paid the bills to Cloudflare what is the issue? Should Cloudflare decide what sites have value to stay online?
• tombert 4y ago
  Good. I'm sorry, I'm generally Mr. "Raw raw free speech", but let's not kid ourselves; by all accounts KiwiFarms is (and always has been) a cesspool of horrible people. It's not like 4chan or something, where it might have started with reasonable intentions and just became horrible; KiwiFarms was started for the specific purpose of bullying Chris-Chan, hence why it was initially called Cwcki Farms. KiwiFarms has been implicated in multiple suicides, and countless cases of bullying (and possibly doxing), and Null's response to all of these allegations has been almost entirely ambivalent. At some point, we have to ask: is this the world we actually want to live it? I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is a moron, but even I think that the doxing and SWATing campaigns against her lead to a really bad world to live in, and that's not even getting into people I actually like. I'm just some idiot on the internet, but I think that the world is a better place without KiwiFarms.
  • testtest1239 4y ago
    Didn’t the swat call announce they were a kf user? Seems a little odd. Moreover, are home addresses of congress people public info? It seems like a lot of people were fine with posting the addresses of Supreme Court members.
    • tombert 4y ago
      I don’t think Whataboutisms are a good arguing tactic. I am against the doxing of anyone, even if I don’t like them. Hence why I mentioned that I think MTG is a moron, but I’m still against her being doxxed. I couldn’t find anything about home addresses of congresspeople being public. I am not a lawyer, but I would be very surprised if that was public info. I could be wrong.
    • ajross 4y ago
      > It seems like a lot of people were fine with posting the addresses of Supreme Court members. Even if you think that kind of protest is a step too far (I do), you surely agree that there's a fundamental difference between peaceful protest at the home of a public figure (which is quite clearly what happened) and the practice of SWATing, which even in its least dangerous form is a perjurious accusation of a serious crime.
• convery 4y ago
  Wow, there sure is a lot of flagged/dead comments here that mentions some inconvenient info..
  • donkarma 4y ago
    • convery 4y ago
  • noodles_nomore 4y ago
    Remember that you can vouch for comments via their direct link (in the time stamp).
    • convery 4y ago
      Thank you, didn't know that you had to use the direct link. Thought they just removed that feature a while ago =P
• jmconfuzeus 4y ago
  Just learned about this site thanks to Cloudflare. Crazy world.
• learn-forever 4y ago
  possibly better to keep quiet about high-minded principles one doesn't actually hold
• cft 4y ago
  Well I run a service with 100 million registered users and this is why we don't use Cloudflare. We use VeriSign BGP DDoS mitigation which is more expensive than Cloudflare (about 27k per year with our traffic) but i don't have the luxury of losing the business on a Saturday afternoon on a whim of an anonymous Cloudflare censor, their lawyer or even his Majesty Matthew Prince Himself making a preemptive liability decision on behalf of my own business. I know that Google takes those deplatforming decisions with ease, because they have billions of users but with Cloudflare's much more finite enterprise userbase, I would be careful to aspire to Google's heavy handed approach: for Cloudflare's customers, real money and real jobs are at stake.
  • guywithahat 4y ago
    I sort of have the same thought. Cloudflare isn't really public facing so they don't have the same pressure to ban people, and any time you start banning sites you risk scaring off business. I don't have a large website, but I do have my own project/personal sites and with those I specifically use hosts that have a reputation for high uptimes even in the face of censorship (like Epik domains or terrahost) It seems especially weird too considering how they just made a blog post promising not to do this (https://archive.ph/gJXgF https://archive.ph/gJXgF), and then not only did it but used broad, over the top language which sounds, if I'm honest, a bit disingenuous. Like if someone's life is in imminent danger, you shouldn't be playing games on the internet you should be calling the cops
  • hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
    I don’t know about you but I’m more likely to pay money to a company that deplatforms content appropriately over one that does not.
    • rubyist5eva 4y ago
      Appropriate to you. Politics is a pendulum, and it won’t be pretty when it swings back.
      • hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
• Nahuala 4y ago
  Good.
• coffeeblack 4y ago
  So we have privatised the legislative and police on the internet? What that means we shall see in ten years or so. Why are crimes committed on KF not stopped “the old fashioned way”, ie rule of law and the court system?
  • RealUser69 4y ago
    1. What crimes? 2. Has the owner of the site ever allowed illegal content or behaviour on the website?
    • coffeeblack 4y ago
      I don’t know, but since everybody here seems to favour the censorship, I assumed that some crimes were being committed. If nobody even broke the law, then what’s this all about?
      • byyll 4y ago
        Hurt feelings of a twitter mob that could harm Cloudflare's bottom line/image.
• yew 4y ago
  Good. Now that we've finally established that Cloudflare isn't impotent after all, it's time to go down the list. No more faux "conversations." This isn't the only site they already know they need to drop.
• deepcyanide 4y ago
• ShowsAlone 4y ago
  Lastly here is proof that another individual unaffiliated with KF was the one that left the note outside of the apartment- https://archive.ph/ksqln https://archive.ph/ksqln https://archive.ph/MCGFB https://archive.ph/MCGFB
• philippejara 4y ago
  And, just like that, the internet lost one of its most staunch defenders. I don't care for KF nor did I used to care about 8chan or stormfront, but it just shows that all the grandstanding from Matthew Prince was for show all along. and the worst of all? its fro nothing, the people doing whatever they were being accused of, which i'm still trying to piece together, are just gonna be in discords or the nth-chan that shows up to host it. Well I hope he enjoys suddenly having his huge customers from saudi arabia or whatever else start calling things worrysome and prey on that weakness.
  • dymk 4y ago
    I imagine you have never been the target of a KF abuse campaign.
    • rejectfinite 4y ago
      "Everything I dont like should be instantly disconnected"
      • wahnfrieden 4y ago
        doxxing communities don't need a platform. plenty of service terms disallow doxxing
      • dymk 4y ago
        You’re saying this about literal nazis
    • phendrenad2 4y ago
      But how does blocking KF change this? It's not like the doxxers are going to stop once their favorite website goes away.
      • dymk 4y ago
        Sure it does. If you make it more expensive (in terms of money, or time, or effort) for bad actors to be bad actors, you end up with fewer bad actors, because they'll just go do something else with their lives. That's the ethos of all security and defense. The expectation isn't perfection.
• stjohnswarts 4y ago
  I think as a private company they made the right decision. At some point you have to just make a call and cut out the cancer.
• lettergram 4y ago
  > However, as the pressure campaign escalated, so did the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site. Feeling attacked, users of the site became even more aggressive. Over the last two weeks, we have proactively reached out to law enforcement in multiple jurisdictions highlighting what we believe are potential criminal acts and imminent threats to human life that were posted to the site. I’m sorry, but what? Few thoughts: 1. Couldn’t people be joining Kiwifarms and acting aggressive to get it banned? 2. Why is cloudflare reporting anything to police? That’s effectively implying they are regularly reviewing content… which is weird if your providing DDoS protection. The main issue I take is that cloudflare isn’t hosting the content… it’s providing protection from DDoS. So kiwifarms is literally having their security turned on them. That is imo a breach of contract. It’s one thing to just drop them as a customer it’s another to: > Visitors to any of the Kiwifarms sites that use any of Cloudflare's services will see a Cloudflare block page and a link to this post. You’re hijacking their website and saying “read our content” instead.
  • encryptluks2 4y ago
    > That is imo a breach of contract Point me to the breach you believe exists. > You’re hijacking their website and saying “read our content” instead. They have their domain pointed to their servers. As soon as HateFarms points their DNS elsewhere people will no longer get that message.
    • lettergram 4y ago
      TOS: “We may at our sole discretion suspend or terminate your access to the Websites and/or Online Services at any time, with or without notice for any reason or no reason at all. We also reserve the right to modify or discontinue the Websites and/or Online Services at any time (including, without limitation, by limiting or discontinuing certain features of the Websites and/or Online Services) without notice to you. We will have no liability whatsoever on account of any change to the Websites and/or Online Services or any suspension or termination of your access to or use of the Websites and/or Online Services.” It’s clear they can cancel service; it’s not clear from the cloudflare TOS they can redirect you to their own content. That doesn’t mean a judge would necessarily rule in kiwifarms favor or anything, but it seems obvious to me litigation could work sue to ambiguity. Further, cloudflare could open itself to a lawsuit from police. If they already notified law enforcement then they are probably interfering in an investigation by letting the world know AND shutting down the source of said investigation.
• verisimilitudes 4y ago
• Akranejames 4y ago
• JamesAkrane 4y ago
• intunderflow 4y ago
  Meta, but: Hoping the moderators on HN are doing good this evening as I can't begin to imagine the amount of sock-puppetry they're dealing with right now
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • dillondoyle 4y ago
    They should ban green accounts on anything that relates to gender, queerness, harassment, discrimination, race, etc. Basically non-tech things that stir up a lot of gross opinions masked behind sock puppets and throwaway accounts. HN is becoming painful for me to read. Just so much hate, which is especially disconcerting to see it on a forum like this one. Which is supposed to be a place for smart discussion.
• lario9 4y ago
  As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
  • schleck8 4y ago
    > Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. Isn't Kiwifarms the site which uses their so-called 'lolcows' to 'milk entertainment'? Sounds like a prime example of people dreaming themselves masters.
• RedReality 4y ago
• DanAtC 4y ago
  I don't understand where the myth of a "free" Internet comes from. Since privatization in 1993, you've always been held to _someone's_ terms of service. Even if you become your own ISP--get an ASN, IP space, a place to rack equipment--you still have to find someone to peer with, and if you bring enough heat you'll find yourself dropped. Not to mention DNS which is subject to the laws of the country of registrar; plenty of pirate sites have had their domains have been seized by the US gov't.
  • quickthrower2 4y ago
    By that definition nothing at all is free.
  • phendrenad2 4y ago
    There's a difference between literal freedom and de facto freedom. If there's an abandoned factory that kids like to graffiti, is it free for their grafitti use? It de facto is. If the owner puts a security guard there, then it is no longer de facto free.
• OneOff1864 4y ago
• miragecraft 4y ago
  I don't get it, Cloudflare is not the court, nor is it a monopoly. It's not some tragic Greek hero holding the line for freedom of speech. It's just a business, and business can decide to not provide service to assholes, just like your local restaurant. It already decided it won't provide hosting service to the despicables, but somehow the security service is vital to freedom of speech? I don't buy it. It's all about their legal exposure, and it looks like the heat's too much this time.
  • bandwidth 4y ago
    The other agenda is also pleasing shareholders and ensuring PR / damage control is mitigated at all costs. Their stock price has been falling since Thursday after all.
  • philippejara 4y ago
    If Matthew Prince didn't style himself as the tragic Greek hero holding the line for freedom of speech then yes, most of this disappointment would not have happened. People are mostly not claiming they have no right to drop them, or an obligation to keep them up, but claiming one thing and then 3 days later buckling under pressure is extremely disappointing. Especially when the underlying implication is that the website would hopefully be taken down by actually illicit means, those being DDOS attacks.
• garaetjjte 4y ago
  This has nothing to do with Kiwifarms, it's just same story all over again. It happened before and I bet it will happen again. 1. Some awful website uses Cloudflare. 2. Something ignites outrage that Cloudflare is protecting that awful website. 3. Cloudflare initially refuses to take it down, arguing that they are neutral infrastructure providers. 4. Twitter-amplified outrage keeps growing 5. Cloudflare caves in and kicks that site off, posting about that this is only due to very recent emergency (which is nonsense, they serviced these sites for years and nothing materially changed). 6. ??? 7. No profit, go back to step 1. My prediction: because they cannot stick to their stance, every cycle makes it more probable that next attempt will succeed, until nobody will believe in infrastructure provider interpretation and they will be forced to estabilish some moderation.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• Hellwichya 4y ago
• eastdakota 4y ago
  Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not. It’s about what in the US you’d call “due process” and in all the rest of the world you’d call “rule of law.” Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems. That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be the ones making that call, and no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat. Encourage you when these issues arise to think of them in the rule of law context, rather than free speech, in order to have a more robust conversation with frameworks that have an appeal and applicability across nearly every nation and government.
  • Icathian 4y ago
    I think this better encapsulates what I was going for with my comment. For whatever it's worth, I strongly agree.
  • yomkippur 4y ago
  • _vvaw 4y ago
    What was the actual threat? Was it posted on Kiwi Farms, or transmitted via another channel?
    • dmix 4y ago
      +1, what was the thing that changed today vs a week ago? If this is going to eventually become precedent (despite what is said this is now the new basis from which other decisions are made) other site owners and future one’s should have an idea of what exactly wasn’t dealt with. Cloudflare’s reach is extensive and becoming a critical part the internet so there’s plenty at stake here. The lack of transparency by Google, Facebook, etc is the worst part of this whole top-level internet moderation trend.
      • lupire 4y ago
• steele 4y ago
  Their threshold for victim count and severity of organized crime hosted on their platform is way too high
• lucasisapedo 4y ago
• lucasisapedo 4y ago
• alfor 4y ago
  What is kiwifarm? It think it should be the first paragraph.
  • convery 4y ago
    LibsOfTiktok-esque forum that laughs at people being silly on the internet. Just archiving publicly available information.
    • drewbug01 4y ago
      > Just archiving publicly available information …as part of coordinated, targeted harassment campaigns with the ultimate goal of forcing the targeted individuals to kill themselves. I don’t know if you think calling it “just archiving publicly available information” is clever or something, but it’s incredibly transparent.
      • NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
  • a_shovel 4y ago
    > Kiwi Farms, formerly known as CWCki Forums, is an American Internet forum dedicated to the discussion of online figures and communities it deems "lolcows" (people who can be "milked for laughs"). The targets of threads are often subject to doxing and other forms of organized group trolling, harassment, and stalking, including real-life harassment by users. Harassment stemming from Kiwi Farms has been implicated in the suicides of three people targeted by users of the site. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
• just_an_opinion 4y ago
  Unless law enforcement was actively telling you to do this, you really dropped ther ball. So people post info they find via a Google search. Them not posting it on Kiwifarms isn't going to make the information any less readily available. Pulling screens of random users posting threats is disingenuous. Other users actively discourage such activities constantly. This all started because people wanted to laugh at someone being ridiculous on Twitter, but then they kept digging and found more and more deplorable stuff. The only reason the campaign to drop the farms exists is to cover up the activities a narcissist openly talked about on social media. The site is no more dangerous or racist than Jaime Cochran was.
• yieldcrv 4y ago
  I feel like I'm missing something so what exactly happened on Kiwifarms website in response to the deplatforming campaign on Twitter? how could Cloudflare write that entire justification without giving an example to someone that wasn't following the drama? To me it looks like Cloudflare arbitrarily took someone down specifically after writing that they wouldn't, in the same blog entry.
  • rejectfinite 4y ago
    >so what exactly happened on Kiwifarms website in response to the deplatforming campaign on Twitter? We dont know. Being that Kiwifarms is an open forum, and I assume Cloudflare has computers, they could show us the proof, but it is actually in their best interest not to. Now anyone can make their own fantasy what "dangerous content" is.
• BrainVirus 4y ago
  I just love how the pro-censorship crowd here is faking moderation and exasperated reasonableness, while the rest of us know full well how this game is played. We see it on literally all major social media platforms right now. It started (roughly) with banning Alex Jones and a few others. Why would you be opposed to banning of that screaming crazy person, right? Fast forward just a few years, it's now impossible to use use social media to coherently discuss any major issues affecting our society if you don't mince words and don't subscribe to orthodoxy de jour. And the worst part is the smug, obnoxious gaslighting about it all that happens all the time. "Twitter doesn't delete content for political purposes. wink wink" Hunter Biden laptop story? Unity 2020? Suspension of people like Jordan Peterson? James Lindsey? Hundreds of other high-profile accounts. Probably tens of thousand of lower profile accounts. "It's not censorship of it's a private company. node nod" https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-biden-admin-held-weekly-censorship-meetings-with-social-media-giants-to-suppress-covid-and-vaccine-speech https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-biden-admin-held-week... https://nypost.com/2022/08/28/fbi-put-the-hunter-biden-story-right-in-facebooks-lap/ https://nypost.com/2022/08/28/fbi-put-the-hunter-biden-story... "We're just doing commons sense stuff. Like following science." https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-quietly-dropped-covid-censorship-rules/ https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-quietly-dropped-covid-cens... Etc, etc. All these cliche arguments have been revealed to be entirely in bad faith, so I have absolutely no reason to trust people here who are now claiming that they want some sort of "reasonable" policy from infrastructure providers. It has been demonstrated time and time again that people who don't oppose deplatforming on principle are actually fine with it whenever it suits them.
  • nathanaldensr 4y ago
    And by doing so, they are proving the very value and necessity of free speech; they're unwittingly making their opponents' arguments for them.
  • neonsunset 4y ago
    There are two parts of the issue at hand: 1. By denying people the opportunity to voice and discuss their disagreements in a civil manner by means of deplatforming, targeted harassment (cancel culture) and other forms of witch hunting, it pushes them to participate in platforms and groups they otherwise would never associate with. Think prohibition act and what it did to the ABV of the drinks people were consuming; 2. Every crisis that doesn't outright kill a particular system or group of people either forces it to evolve or develop maladaptive mitigations. Regular social networks are a good example of the latter, becoming completely unusable and losing the very value they used to deliver. Eventually, this might encompass services like CloudFlare, the walled (or not so) gardens that Android and iOS are built upon, etc. However, the incentives stay - it seems the amount of people who are simply unable to voice their mild opinion that does not conform to the blind and hypocritical fit of praise to shtick of the day is reaching critical mass. Maybe we'll finally see the technology start moving back towards decentralization, which was the initial premise of the Internet, but now with very solid theory and research behind Tor, I2P and other networks/protocols yet to be invented. I don't mind that we all will be paying for hosting a little (more), as long as it kills the current adtech and puritan conformity-driven everything riddled with perverse incentives and absolute centralization of control.
• justacomment100 4y ago
• Hellwichya 4y ago
• c3534l 4y ago
  I have to wonder if everyone calling this site a cess pool has actually visited it. It was, in general, more civil and better moderated than, say, Twitter or Reddit which regularly generate a circlejerk of hatred and violent rhetoric. The subject matter may be distasteful, but the website was not at all what you everyone seems to be making it out to be.
  • ripley12 4y ago
    Are you for real? It takes 30s on KF to realize that the whole purpose is harassment. It has entire subforums targeting individuals. The quality of the moderation is not the issue here.
• miki123211 4y ago
  The problem with cases like this one is that they really show the inadequacy of the geographic government model in the age of the internet. If a Czech citizen, currently living in Slovakia, doxxx a British person resident in Canada on a site hosted in the Maldives and managed by a Japanese citizen, protected by a German server owned by an American security company, which government has the right to order the content to be taken down?
  • gjvnq 4y ago
    In my view, the order of jurisdiction preference goes: 1) Country of the victim's residency. 2) Country of the agressor's residency. 3) Country where the web site is legally headquartered. 4) Country where the web site administrators are residing. 5) Country where the physical servers are. 6) Any other country that somehow can claim some reasonable connection to the case. Of course, the ideal thing would be to setup some sort of world-wide ECHR to sort out any jurisdictional issues and perhaps even rule in some cases.
  • rntksi 4y ago
    All of the above countries, including countries not mentioned in your example, have the right to order the content to be taken down, following their own country's regulations. "Taking down content" can range from blocking the site from being accessible from inside the country, to organising measures together with other countries where the site is actually hosted to take down the site at its roots, should the country allow it. North Korea, China, Russia are prime examples of blocking being heavily used to control the Internet. A government's model will never be "inadequate" as long as people live there and abide by the country's law because of various incentives (economical, sociological, familial, ...).
• knolax 4y ago
  Targeted harassment for the purpose of getting people to kill themselves is illegal. People have gone to jail for less than what KF gloats about. All the free speach absolutists crying about "censorship" just shows how ridiculous their ideology is. Instead of whining about cloudflare they should be looking for lawyers.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• poopscoot69 4y ago
• htk 4y ago
  Let me see if I get this right, they were not hosting KF, they are blocking them via other services like DNS etc?
  • convery 4y ago
    They provided DDoS protection, and thus replaced what content was served through that. KF dot ru is still up because that uses DDoS-Guard.
    • htk 4y ago
      Got it. interesting how they didn't just drop them as customers instead of making a big opinionated deal.
• AussieWog93 4y ago
  I think a lot of people in the comments don't understand what Kiwifarms is. I say this as someone who occasionally browses there and gets some (admittedly sick) enjoyment from it: the main draw of the website is a place for people to get together and bully mentally ill "weirdos". It's not just about people posting offensive shit in their own little corner of the internet - what happens there spreads out, by design, into the mainstream web and real life too. While I'll personally miss watching people do fucked up shit for internet clout, this is a wise and fair decision by Cloudflare, and there's a good chance they may have saved Keffals' life.
  • yomkippur 4y ago
    • AussieWog93 4y ago
      >can't believe you would use your business email to write this AussieWog93 Why? Schadenfreude is a normal human emotion.
      • yomkippur 4y ago
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • dillondoyle 4y ago
    What specifically makes their victims 'weirdos' and why do you feel the need to comment that you get off to 'watching people do fucked up shit for internet clout' That's exactly what you are doing right now. They target trans women like Lizzy Waite and Clara Sorrenti. And gay children... What is so weird about kids who need support from the Trevor Project hotline? Being queer is not a mental illness.
    • AussieWog93 4y ago
• atmosx 4y ago
  "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither and will lose both". We're letting private corporations act as the judiciary and executive branch of governance. "What could go wrong?" I wonder.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• alexnewman 4y ago
  It sucks the legal system can’t move fast enough. We really need a way for the fbi to arrest the site operators more quickly. Of course, This is revolting content of the highest order but that really shouldn’t and doesn’t figure into the calculas. This move was correct because it protects cloudflare shareholders. Taking the site down has serious downsides. It puts all of society at risk. Law enforcement now loses transparency on what is going on with these forums, whose connecting to it, how users are interacting with it. Driving these sites underground means they are more difficult to interdict and may ultimately increase danger and death. Seems kiwifarms was prepared for this and already transferred to new infra at another dns I won’t name
  • guywithahat 4y ago
    What would you arrest them for?
    • alexnewman 4y ago
      Attempted murder, I only wished that sites were brave enough to keep them up and work with law enforcement rather than take them down out of fear of legal risk
      • charcircuit 4y ago
        Please look into section 230, one of the most important pieces of legislation for the internet in regards to hosting content from other users. A website isn't liable for what its users post. Also, a website isn't liable for what its users do.
      • HereIGoAgain 4y ago
        What? Of who, when and how?
• kiwifarmafan 4y ago
• kypro 4y ago
  It always starts as a one off, "this was a special circumstance" type thing. I feel like I've read this post thousand times before at this point. I remember when it "just Alex Jones" getting deplatformed from social media. And it had to be done - he was just too dangerous! But then it expanded to a few more people, and from there a few more. And within the span of just a few years Twitter had gone from Alex Jones to banning the president of the United States. I don't care what Kiwifarms did, this kind of thing has to be left to state. If Kiwifarms is doing something illegal law enforcement will deal with it. This move means Cloudflare is now a company that will remove content they find problematic. Or put another way, if they don't remove content we can now assume it's because they don't find it "dangerous" enough. So all those racist and transphobic blogs calling for race wars and celebrating trans suicides, well I guess Cloudflare just doesn't think they're that bad. And that's why these things always progresses, because turning a blind eye is no longer justifiable position. If you cast judgement on one piece of content, you must do so for everything. Now they've made this move the pressure to remove more content will only intensify. And it will be even harder to say no next time because now they've now lost the ability to say they're neutral. But whatever. I have no hope of a free internet anymore. At this point I think if the West is ever to truly value free speech again we'll need to learn that lesson the hard way.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • cowtools 4y ago
    There's always tor and other networks.
  • atemerev 4y ago
    Twitter has the right to ban anyone for violating their ToS, including the (thankfully, ex) president of the United States. I don’t see any problem with that. You don’t have a _right_ to a space to promote your ideas from a private company, this is not how free speech works. And no, the right to ban someone does not translate to an obligation.
    • cowtools 4y ago
• benmmurphy 4y ago
  kiwifarms is back up at https://kiwifarms.ru/ https://kiwifarms.ru/
  • rvz 4y ago
    So even when Cloudflare bended the knee, nothing has changed and Kiwifarms is still in service via Tor, .ru and have become even more uncensorable, just like 8kun, 4chan, Gab, etc. This sounds like a total failure to bring them down, even Cloudflare knows it.
    • schleck8 4y ago
      Noone actually expected them to stay offline. I guess people expect DDoS Guard to be substantially less resilient again DoS than Cloudflare. > On 1 June 2021, cyber-intelligence company Group-IB reported that they had found DDoS-Guard's database, containing site IP addresses, names, and payment information along with its full source code, for purchase on a cybercrime black market forum. The authenticity of the allegedly stolen data was unverified.[6][7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDoS-Guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDoS-Guard
    • IYasha 4y ago
      Lol, if they're now under jurisdiciton of RKN (Russian Censorship Agency), they're walking a thin line.
      • rvz 4y ago
        What line exactly? The joke is still on you since after less than 13 days after all that chaos, outrage, etc the original domain "kiwifarms.net" is still accessible online. A complete and total failure of a campaign to deplatform and block Kiwifarms.
• kiwifarmafan 4y ago
• 3qz 4y ago
  This is really concerning. I feel like it’s easy to justify now because every major infrastructure provider is on the same side culturally, but what happens when services without competition become ideologically opposed? Imagine an ISP shutting down service to a Visa data centre because they allow cannabis purchases LOL.
  • gkoberger 4y ago
    One side wants to legalize a basically harmless drug, and the other is (literally) trying to kill trans people. Let's not pretend they're even close.
  • 6c737133 4y ago
    If you're so worried about your ideological-divergent subject matter from being entirely unavailable in the future - why not start an ISP, hosting company, DNS provider, DDoS Protection Racket, Server Farm? Then YOU could proudly serve the content of those poor under-served souls which you preemptively mourn
    • 3qz 4y ago
      Because I’ll also have to create my own power company and solar panel manufacturing facility at the rate things are going
      • 6c737133 4y ago
        Wow, sounds like you're poised to be the richest person in the world then. Congrats.
• kiwifarmafan 4y ago
• at_a_remove 4y ago
  This is your daily reminder that the last time Cloudfare did this, they left up ISIS murdersites, featuring videos of people being murdered by ISIS (gunshots to the face, decaptitation via detcord, setting people on fire in a cage). The only conclusion one can come to is that it was a PR move as they caved under pressure. Now, ask yourself if this is a similar situation.
• gkoberger 4y ago
  Based on how this plays out every time, you can always count on Cloudflare to do the right thing after all their goodwill has been utterly destroyed.
• password4321 4y ago
  Anyone willing to stick their neck out with a HN-undeletable prediction of who'll be the target of the next pressure campaign? (which of course wasn't the reason for blocking...) The rumblings I'm detecting now seem to be related to misinformation.
  • yew 4y ago
    Ovarit took part in the harassment campaign, so hopefully they go next. Don't know if Cloudflare hosts them though. Edit: And 4chan is always bigger but more diffuse. Hard to say who's more of a pest. Edit edit: I think the important lesson here is that direct targeting of fascist employees and ex-employees of enablers is very much a live tactic. It worked, it works, it will continue to work.
    • bt4u 4y ago
      How can you be against harassment campaigns while at the same time inciting harassment campaigns? Do you ever notice your hypocrisy and just ignore it or?
      • yew 4y ago
        As per the paradox of tolerance, targeting fascism is never harassment but always a necessary act of compassion. There's no contradiction here.
  • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    Ovarit or possibly the LGB Alliance's website, probably the former.
  • forgotpwd16 4y ago
    Fiberhub apparently. https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566263664746926080 https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566263664746926080
• meman2 4y ago
• yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare's role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with. "We'll keep doing it of course, even after we said we wouldn't do it any more." After all, it's been all of 3 days since they wrote, > Just as the telephone company doesn't terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have concluded in consultation with politicians, policy makers, and experts that turning off security services because we think what you publish is despicable is the wrong policy. To be clear, just because we did it in a limited set of cases before doesn’t mean we were right when we did. Or that we will ever do it again. (https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-approach/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a...) Edit: And to be fair, they do link to that post: "As we outlined last Wednesday, we do not believe that terminating security services is appropriate, even to revolting content.", "The policy we articulated last Wednesday remains our policy." - did I miss the part of that post where they tack on "well, except for the times when it's really bad"? I went and skimmed over it just now to see if they left themselves a loophole that they're using today and I'm not seeing it.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • lanstin 4y ago
    If you take your phone line and start making a lot of harassing calls with that phone, they will cut you off and tell the police. It does not seem that KF posters wanted the speech there to stay private.
    • yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      That's besides the point; I'm not personally arguing (here) that CF shouldn't cut people off, I'm pointing out that CF just said that they didn't think they should cut people off, and proceeded to turn around and do that while still saying they shouldn't do it. You can be for or against CF cutting people off, but either way you can be unhappy with them saying one thing and doing another.
• yacn 4y ago
• guywithahat 4y ago
  If anyone wants to hear Kiwifarm’s response they have a telegram here https://t.me/kiwifarms/19 https://t.me/kiwifarms/19
• Uptrenda 4y ago
  Typical weasel word announcement from a big company bending over backwards to satisfy the prevailing voices of a political narrative. This has nothing to do with 'free speech' or 'due process'. It is about ensuring a brand stays appealing. I say this because they weren't specific about the credibility of any 'threats' made. They invented an enemy and then used it to justify suppressing Kiwifarms --as a whole--. Very convenient since it allows them to dismiss ignoring their supposed values while satisfying the legions of mad people who want them to act a certain way. I also want to point out that Kiwifarms is not an organization. As far as I'm aware: they are a simple, public forum. This means that talking about what 'Kiwifarms' has done is misleading since it only applies to what some users are posting. It would be like saying Facebook are terrorists because sometimes terrorist groups try to use the site for propaganda and recruiting. You need to differentiate between the actions of a user/s and the site. In the case of Facebook they are allowed to stay up and remove offending content on the basis that this is the nature of public communities. This is actually standard practice for websites who may also receive copyrighted material. Otherwise someone could easily take down a website by posting copyrighted material. If there really was a 'life threatening situation' Kiwifarms should have been allowed to handle this themselves. By either removing the content or taking whatever action they felt necessary. But Cloudflare didn't do this. They provide a service that fundamentally undermines the integrity of the Internet. Makes it less resilient. And now the hens have come home to roast: they are dictating how others should run their sites. Eat a massive bag of dicks, cloudflare.
  • skyyler 4y ago
    > You need to differentiate between the actions of a user/s and the site. You do realise that KF was started to bully an autistic sonic fan, right? Have you actually been there?
    • GauntletWizard 4y ago
      An autistic sonic fan who's currently in prison for raping his mother.
      • 4y ago
• UtopiaPunk 4y ago
  Woah. I personally wish that Cloudflare had taken action sooner, but I understood the position. I disagreed with it, because as a free and private entity, Cloudflare can choose to serve whoever they wish (so long as they do not discriminate against legally "protected classes"), and as such, I'd prefer to see them refuse a customer that blatantly courts hate speech, but I understood their commitment to free speech. This decision seems hard. Crime prevention forces should have stepped in already to protect people. But cops protect and serve capital, not people, so the police response will be weak and ineffective until capital becomes upset. Like Cloudflare, I'm also not comfortable with decisions of public safety being handled by corporations, but the police aren't interested, so here we are.
• assetlabel 4y ago
  I don't believe rhetoric is ever a threat to human life so I disagree with this move by cloudflare. Even if illegal credible targeted threats are made, the threat to human life is the threatener, not the content of the speech. Oh, and KF sucks.
  • assetlabel 4y ago
    In fact the speech/threats is evidence against the threatener. Let them hang themselves.
• coldacid 4y ago
  The law, at least in the US of A, puts freedom of speech in a sacred position. There is a reason for the Bill of Rights amendments, and the way they are written. You are claiming "rule of law" to act in a way the law would not allow were you government instead of a private entity. Your claims here, like in the past cases where Cloudflare has committed vigilante censorship, are disingenuous at best. While you strike at the things you hate, you cry that /you/ are the one wounded! Your hypocrisy is disgusting. You and your company do not deserve the position you now hold in the infrastructure of the internet.
• abigail95 4y ago
  Does anyone have an example of the escalating threats and why now it's become a problem? If the police can swat someone anywhere within an hour, what's special about these new threats that the police cannot deal with?
• lbotos 4y ago
  I've followed this story loosely here from HN posts, but does anyone have a blog/TL:DR post around the chain of events that are discussed in this post? (the early events the bubbled this up to ppls attention, and then the new imminent threats?)
  • lbotos 4y ago
    The wikipedia page was actually pretty informative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
• nkurz 4y ago
  Technical question: Cloudflare says they are currently intercepting requests for Kiwifarms and redirecting them to the linked blog post. What does Kiwifarms need to do to remove their dependency on Cloudflare and make their forum visible again [edit: at the original address]? Can they do it unilaterally by changing an DNS address and waiting for it to propagate? Or do they need Cloudflare's cooperation?
  • thepasswordis 4y ago
    It looks like cloudflare is their registrar.
  • chocolatkey 4y ago
    When you set up a Cloudflare account, you tell your domain provider (Namecheap, Godaddy, Google etc.) that you want Cloudflare to have complete control over your domain by setting the domain's nameservers to Cloudflare's. If you want to get off of Cloudflare, you just go to your domain registrar and set your nameservers to some other DNS host, whether it be DDOS-Guard (which is what kiwifarms did with their .ru domain), the domain registrar's own, or any other. It will take a bit to propagate but should be pretty quick. Of course if you bought your domain on Cloudflare you may be kind of screwed, but I don't think that was so in this case. EDIT: It was https://who.is/whois/kiwifarms.net https://who.is/whois/kiwifarms.net so they might be screwed. Depends on if Cloudflare still lets them access the dashboard and transfer the domain to another registrar.
    • nkurz 4y ago
      There's an interesting post from last year by Moon explaining his choice to use Cloudflare for DNS: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2021-10-28/where-sidewalk-ends-death-internet https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2021-10-28/where-sidewalk-end.... quasar posted it on HN, but it's not getting much traction, presumably because it's hosted on ZeroHedge: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32711917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32711917.
  • 6c737133 4y ago
    Change nameserver and wait for propagation It's not rocket surgery. CF is incapable of "taking" any website offline - the only "power" they have, is the choice to not providing free DDoS protection, and/or to stop resolving the site's URL
• derac 4y ago
  • schleck8 4y ago
    I don't trust any screenshot coming out of Kiwifarms since I've seen an edited screenshot tweeted with 10 thousand likes from a (now suspended) popular KF user. You could only see it if you know what to look out for, there was a masking error on the overlayed image in one corner. And the tweet's text was most likely edited with dev tools.
    • derac 4y ago
      Ok, well these things were posted publically on Twitter so there will be many first hand accounts and possibly backups from trusted 3rd parties. Shouldn't be that hard to figure out. I have personally seen some of these tweets as I watch Destiny from time to time and she comes up.
    • dmw_ng 4y ago
      I only briefly flicked through screenshots, but seems parent comment has some truth to it: https://archive.ph/E2pxQ https://archive.ph/E2pxQ https://archive.ph/1cA1M https://archive.ph/1cA1M https://archive.ph/g585F https://archive.ph/g585F Maybe it's possible to game archive.ph, but seems more likely this person's humor has a consistent strongly misogynistic theme. Very happy to see a site causing actual suicides taken down, but the champion of the campaign doesn't come across as any kind of hero It's also interesting to juxtapose comments here against the fact it was so easy to find the original thread on Google.
      • a_shovel 4y ago
        There's nothing actually misogynist here, though? It just looks like vulgar humor to me.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
• m3kw9 4y ago
  At the end of the day I think it’s a net positive
• unknownaccount 4y ago
  Doesn’t this decision to arbitrarily moderate content compromise the possibility of CloudFlare being legally classified a common carrier? I also find it hilarious CloudFlare pretends to care about free speech here when they have been caught red handed arbitrarily canceling peoples services and domains + even going so far as to prevent people from transferring their domains to other registrars¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31576353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31576353 ¹
  • phendrenad2 4y ago
    Common carrier protections are just something people talk about on HN and (long ago) Slashdot. It never appears in real court cases (does it?)
• philliphaydon 4y ago
  So with KF being knocked off CF and it’s back online already. What’s the end goal? It seems like this does nothing more than push the forum more underground and hidden. But doesn’t actually solve the issue of them doxing people?
  • convery 4y ago
    It let's "the good guys" DDoS KF to get some revenge for them archiving their tweets, until a new provider steps in to mitigate it..
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• creeble 4y ago
  Great, now will you take down the dozens of free-speech-suppressing DDoS-for-hire sites that use Cloudflare for protection? Or are these too far above Cloudflare’s moral standard?
• heydemo 4y ago
  Many people appear to be missing the point here. Cloudflare claims there was an imminent threat to life created by KF. That's a factual assertion that's either true or false (and well probably find out which.) If true, free speech is not applicable. Blocking the walkie-talkies of terrorists coordinating a bombing does not restrict "free speech" under any reasonable definition. This level of tactical coordination to commit violence appears to be what they are hinting at in their post, and I take them at their word . It may be they are lying and caved to pressure in regards to KF being generally heinous, but until we find out the specific information that caused them to assess an imminent threat to life, we can't really judge the wisdom of their decision.
• hn2017 4y ago
  The fact people here are defending KiwiFarms is very concerting. "Escalating threats and the potential risk for human life has compelled Cloudflare to block Kiwifarms from being accessed through our infrastructure."
  • HideousKojima 4y ago
    Because the post in question was removed by KiwiFarms moderators, in accordance with KiwiFarms's long-standing (and long-enforced) rules against threats of violence etc.
• SuperNinKenDo 4y ago
  >Hard cases make bad law. This is a hard case and we would caution anyone from seeing it as setting precedent. Sorry, but we don't get to have our cake and eat it too. Precedents set precedents. I literally burst out laughing reading this wishful thinking.
• unknownaccount 4y ago
  I find it utterly bizarre that CloudFlare considers itself some paragon of free speech whilst they have been caught red handed arbitrarily shutting peoples domain names down in their registrar service, even going so far as to prevent people from transfering their domains to other registers and accelerating domain expiry dates. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31576353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31576353
  • jeroenhd 4y ago
    There's a difference in that the termination procedure this thread and the one its derived from talks about is about fraud, which is defined by law and prosecuted, rather than an opinion. When you learn about fraudsters using your service you can either GTFO as soon as possible or get involved with the police unless you want to risk criminal liability for being complicit. Make whatever Kiwifarms does illegal and Cloudflare will probably drop them through their magical detection algorithms alone.
    • unknownaccount 4y ago
      Terminating service to someone suspected of fraud is one thing. This is normal. Preventing someone from transferring their domain to another registrar + accelerating it's expiration/cancellation date + stonewalling appeals is another thing entirely. That is going above and beyond. Domain cancellation is absolutely relevant to the conversation on free speech.
      • jeroenhd 4y ago
        The way I see it, transferring a domain is still a business transaction. The ownership situation of domains are weird and complicated because of the intermediate registrars that are necessary for delegation reasons. The only way I can think of to stop and drop fraudulent customers is to give them a time window to counter the claims and then drop the domain the second that window expires. Helping the customer move registrars after they've been caught is not a great look. Preferably you'd have a human verify the situation before marking a domain as fraudulent but the automated nature of digital fraud can make this untenable and people would be more pissed off if Cloudflare wouldn't do something about the fraud they're able to identify automatically. The procedures themselves are what I'm fine with butI have trouble with the lack of support American tech giants will give you once an automated system flags your account. They stop answering the phone, stop taking emails, and will do nothing until your appeal date expires, knowing that you don't have the resources to sue them. Stripe and Cloudflare are commonly mentioned here for their lacking support and transparency once an account gets flagged (though relatively often the Stripe people get flagged for good reason, but still) because this place is the only way people can get support. These companies treat you like they treat the rest of the web, as a threat needed to be screened and monitored, blocked at the earliest sign of caution. I hope people learn to not trust these huge cloud providers with tiny or unwilling support staff instead of ignoring their better judgement and posting here once they get blocked. We're all perpetuating a system of failure because we want the cheap speediness of fully automated systems and accept the risk of random bans. You can get a domain and a server provisioned in minutes or even seconds at the risk of losing your business down the line and because this rarely ever happens to innocent people we pretend to think it's fine. Perhaps my perspective on this is a little skewed because HN is a place where many people dream of setting up a company to do the exact same thing, calling it "disrupting the market" and making bank rather than setting up a sustainable business with customer service at the forefront.
• gigatexal 4y ago
  Finally after trending on Twitter for days they do the right thing. This forum kiwifarms was outright attacking doxxing harassing people and yet were defended by CF over and over again.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• rekrsiv 4y ago
  I'm sorry but no. The law is the minimum level of enforcement for a working society, not an ethics guide. You're allowed to do better than wait for the situation to go from multiple suicides to a PR crisis before taking action. If I offered protection to a group of unreasonable actors and discovered they needed protection because they like to bully people into taking their own life for fun, the last thing I would want is to accept money from them, let alone offer them protection. Sure, the law can do better too.
  • mleonhard 4y ago
    "In the field of modern business, so rich in opportunity for the exercise of man's finest and most varied mental faculties and moral qualities, mere money-making cannot be regarded as the legitimate end. Neither can mere growth of bulk or power be admitted as a worthy ambition. Nor can a man nobly mindful of his serious responsibilities to society view business as a game; since with the conduct of business human happiness or misery is inextricably interwoven." -- Louis Brandeis, "Business — The New Profession", La Follette's Weekly Magazine, Volume 4, No. 47 (November 23, 1912), p. 7.
  • wahnfrieden 4y ago
    Anyway, do we really want the police handing our internet businesses lists of criminals to manage directly? I for one don't want government and police taking full control over managing access for supposed bad actors, to cover ALL criminal activity without moderation accountability from site owners.
• xdmr 4y ago
  CF could have said to KF "For various reasons we no longer wish to do business with you. In 24 hours we will stop redirecting to your servers. Please make appropriate arrangements." Had they done this, they would not have actually been censoring KF. They would also have been behaving like a responsible service provider by not cutting off service without notice. Instead, they seem to have made the decision to do this in a way where they actually block access to KF, rather than in a way where they simply chose to stop doing business with KF. I could be wrong about this; maybe substantial notice was given, and CF reasonably believed that KF could have avoided service disruption. But given that they wrote a bunch of copy to go with this decision, including the copy for the redirect page, I'm inclined to think that this went off exactly as CF intended. They didn't give notice and attempt to prevent their customer from having service disruption because they wanted them to have service disruption, and they wanted everyone to know they wanted this. CF should not do this. I don't care who KF is or what they've done. CF should either do right by their customers, or stop doing business with them in a responsible way. Not in a way designed to injure their customers. Especially after taking their money, but that's hardly the point.
  • SapporoChris 4y ago
    Cloudflare: "... we believe are potential criminal acts and imminent threats to human life that were posted to the site." No, Cloudflare isn't obligated to continue to provide services to support "potential criminal acts and imminent threats to human life". Perhaps if KiwiFarms had better moderated their content and discouraged such behavior this could have been avoided.
    • byyll 4y ago
      The bomb threat was removed in less than 15 minutes and the user was banned in less than 30 minutes and threats are discouraged both by the website and by other users which could be seen by the amount of downvote reactions to the threat before it was removed.
      • _vvaw 4y ago
        The threat was also quite clearly unserious.
• adultSwim 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • HereIGoAgain 4y ago
    Ok.. But where are the nazis again? This is about DDoS protection and a site that certain people don't like having it.
• ardel95 4y ago
  I wasn’t familiar with Kiwifarms, so I read up about it - and oh, boy. The fact that something like Kiwifarms can exist in the United States without legal or civil liabilities is really problematic.
• nilespotter 4y ago
  > We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign. I will give $100 to anyone who can convince me that they believe that.
• s_ting765 4y ago
  A shameful decision was made. It had to be justified obviously but still not any more or less terrible. BTW Cloudflare is effectively hijacking kiwifarms.net by re-directing visitors to their blog page. When government agencies bust websites associated with criminal activity the most they do after taking control of the homepage is put up a jpeg of the taskforce responsible and a few notes then call it day.
• concordDance 4y ago
  As far as I can tell this action by cloudfare has not accomplished its stated objectives. The site is still up at another url: https://kiwifarms.ru/threads/fuck-cloudflare.128846/ https://kiwifarms.ru/threads/fuck-cloudflare.128846/ Additionally, a single deleted post (or even a handful of them) being a cause for attempted removal from the internet seems like a precedent that would kill every host of user generated content, including hackernews and twitter.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • wahnfrieden 4y ago
    it has just moved and they are already complaining about intermittent access issues. and now former fbi director is saying that their desperate move to russian servers elevates their risk of US marking them as domestic terrorists. so the campaign does appear to be having some impact, and is not over.
• Copenjin 4y ago
  Well functioning adults would have just given the boot to kiwifarms as soon as they discovered they were using their service. No childish discussions about free speech needed, who has time for this? Regardless, Cloudflare with their first response has shown its true colors, joke of a company managed by kids.
• quickthrower2 4y ago
  Would they be aiding in the commission of a crime if they carried on the service?
• Elinvynia 4y ago
• janandonly 4y ago
  Am I the only one who, until reading this article, had never even heard of Kiwifarms?
• orangetuba 4y ago
  Time to boycott Cloudflare.
  • IYasha 4y ago
    Already doing this for years. One more reason to do so for me.
  • NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
    The presumption of guilt for using a VPN had me already doing this.
• deadalus 4y ago
  KiwiFarms is back and is fully opoerational : https://kiwifarms.ru/ https://kiwifarms.ru/ They are now using DD0S-guard : https://ddos-guard.net/ https://ddos-guard.net/
• sgammon 4y ago
  I agree with CloudFlare's stance about security tooling I agree with this decision I agree with their hesitance to consider this their privilege Frankly I am impressed with how CF handled this That being said, timing is a bit sus with their stock price. Although I think I believe they are standing on principal, it's easy to make a case that they are just watching the market and responding.
  • HereIGoAgain 4y ago
    Stock price?
    • sgammon 4y ago
      yes, their stock price. the price of their stock
• not_a_shill 4y ago
  Why don't they post the proof of any of their claims? What exactly has changed since last week?
• GrumpyNl 4y ago
  Lets say i am threating you by phone, are you gonna disconnect me from the phone network or are you gonna close down the telco?
• tomjen3 4y ago
  >We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign Thats believable /s But even if they were speaking the truth, this is just throwing more bait to the pressure campaigns. As the post says this does not make these issues go away, just as putting paint over mold just hides the issue.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• HereIGoAgain 4y ago
  Wait, so just as everything was beginning to calm down, you step in and play internet police once again? The excuses here are as pitiful as those of the misinformed hateful mobs trying to take the site down. Since this mess all started I've been paying close attention to everything going on, including the site, and noting the major discrepancies between what the mob and media report about the site and the reality of the site itself. From allegations of being an alt-right site (the have an entire sub form dedicated to laughing at major alt-right and right-wing personalities, and have leftist members.. not to mention that the site is apolitical in nature to begin with) To claims that it has a history of supposed "intimidation campaigns" and "swatting". (which is not only against the rules but also goes against the core nature of the site to begin with. To document, look and laugh.. but never touch!) Is it distasteful and vulgar, yes, but they (and not just the staff but most users as well) treat threats and attempts at off site harassment, swatting or interaction of any kind, as serious. The site also seems to take dangerous and illegal stuff seriously as well. There is a whole board and a thread dedicated to documenting all the legal interactions and requests by law enforcement. The idea that they suddenly, now, stopped responding is hard to believe. This is why they have been so hard to shutdown in the past. Further more, from the sound of the statement here, not only was law enforcement not on board with this so called threat, but not even after CF reached out to them! This is and has always been about perfectly legal speech that some people don't like and refuse to allow spoken. This is a case of literal misinformation. Much like all the claims of swatting and deaths. It's literally "if you say it enough times people start to believe it" in action. It doesn't matter that allegations have no proof or don't even attempt to provide any.. certain types of media just pick up the allegations are repeat as fact. And specifically here exact type of people complaining should give you a big hint at why this is all being taken so seriously. I know what the response to this is going to be.. "right" minded people jumping in to yell about swatting and harassment etc. Pointing out that keffals was swatted. But ignoring that keffals themselves is the one who claims it was KF based only on... who knows. and before anyone asks who else could or would have done it, don't forget that keffals has a reputation, and is prideful in fact, of a history of attacking and de-platforming people for literal misunderstandings and personal grudges. This all started when the owner of the site commented on keffals gloating about getting Destiny banned and "deprived of his livelihood" for daring to make what amounted to a joke. And that's not even getting into all the messed up stuff they are connected to or directly responsible for. (grooming, abuse allegations, running an under age sexual forum, supporting a site that teaches children how to make homemade hormones in their bathtub secretly and more) This person is the hill so many seem to want to die on! This whole think smells like a major copout.
• Slighted 4y ago
  Not surprising at all that Cloudflare went through with its plan to terminate its contract with Kiwifarms. Reddit had the exact same process happen back in 2021 with r/NoNewNormal. People cried and whined on the site for the subreddit to be banned, Spez wrote an official post defending the subreddits existence by pointing out its freedom of speech, and not long after crumbled and banned the subreddit (And still banned to this day). Corporations do not care about freedom of speech, especially when certain types of speech threaten their health. These flowery corporate blog posts are close to worthless, and I am glad that this step has been taken, as Kiwifarms will reinforce itself further as it has numerous times in the past in response to external threats and will become even more difficult to take down. At the time of Cloudflares decision earlier, Cloudflare had been the weakest link in the infrastructure of the site. Any solution implemented now will certainly be more resilient and reliable.
  • TomSwirly 4y ago
    Kiwi Farms was literally and deliberately driving people to suicide. Your argument appears to be this: "Private companies should be forced by the government to host any content, no matter how horrifying and evil it is." Your argument is morally horrifying, and legally indefensible.
    • jeroenhd 4y ago
      The argument is that companies aren't police. Companies, especially infrastructure companies, should not have a personal view of things like these. What Kiwifarms is doing is either illegal already or should be made illegal. Law enforcement should be the one deplatforming them and taking action against the human drivel that drives people to suicide, it shouldn't be an ISP deciding what is or isn't acceptable. ISPs should not be filtering out LGBT+ content even if that content is considered undesirable by the general population and that argument goes both ways. With the way things are turning in large areas of the USA, I expect state-wide LGBT+ content bans to be up for debate in less than five or ten years, despite the USA's extremely liberal free speech laws. I think most of us here agree that such bans should not happen and ISPs should be dumb pipes in terms of content selection. However, if this holds for your Verizons and Amazons, it should probably also hold for DDoS-protection platforms like Cloudflare. Cloudflare is setting out to be in a similar position to your ISP, a piece of infrastructure to prevent cyber attacks rather than a hosting company where you put your content. I think there's a perfectly fair argument to be made that net neutrality should also apply to companies like Cloudflare, especially in a position of this much power. A company should be able to host anything that's not illegal if it chooses to be infrastructure rather than a hosting provider. In practice, law enforcement doesn't really give a damn about sites like these unless a big story hits the news. The lack of regulation and enforcement is the problem and the burden of combating these societal problems is shifting from the police to companies. Rather than forcing companies to decide what is or isn't right, concrete steps should be taken by the people that are supposed to protect and serve our communities. What is happening to Kiwifarms will soon be happen to content other people get mad about; be it reproductive rights, gay marriage, or any other civil liberty at risk because of conservative outrage.
• HereIGoAgain 4y ago
  These seem to be the "threats" https://kiwifarms.ru/threads/matthew-prince-lied.128900/#post-12906385 https://kiwifarms.ru/threads/matthew-prince-lied.128900/#pos... Notice how once again that have nothing at all to do with KF, simply claims by others that it was from them.
• scotty79 4y ago
  Thank you Cloudflare for introducing me to this corner of the internet I was blissfully unaware of despite living half of my life on the internet for the last decade. There's no such thing as bad publicity.
• HereIGoAgain 4y ago
  Just remember everyone, the precedence this sets.. All you have to do to get a site taken down is create an account and make a ridiculous threat, even if the post is taken down in less than 30 minutes and the user banned, the site is still guilty. And never forget that keffals has gone on record saying that their enemies (KF) is irredeemably evil because of the mean things they say, and thus no tactic against them is going "too far" (something that could be easily taken as a threat in itself I might add) And then suddenly threats and swattings start happening where the perpetrator literally goes out of their way to put blame on KF. Also a reminder that this all suddenly happened just as things were calming down. (and the hate campaign to shut down the site beginning to run out of gas)
  • voganmother42 4y ago
    But the site is still up… All you have to do to is…use other providers, you are not entitled nor required to work with this service. Remember, all you have to do to get kicked out a wendys is to take your shirt off, wave it around your head like a helicopter and start shouting - the humanity!
    • HereIGoAgain 4y ago
      Well then what was this all about in the first place? A giant harassment campaign against something the right people didn't like?
      • voganmother42 4y ago
        Or was it was it multiple groups harassing and threatening each other, and now one group has lost the protection service from a private service provider?
    • phendrenad2 4y ago
      Ah such a big difference between the words "should" and "must". Easy to confuse them though.
  • NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
• tlogan 4y ago
  Why do they need cloudflare? That is the problem. We (the US) need a build global infrastructure which will provide basic security and DoS protection for any website hosted in US: 100% free and public. Website might choose not use it. Sure it will be run by government but the internet is run by the government anyway. I think that will solve problems like this.
• animuchan 4y ago
  > This is an extraordinary decision for us to make It's really not, CF blocked websites that they dislike in the past, and they continue doing so. I don't mind a company sabotaging their customers, but the blog post is beyond pale.
• oxmane 4y ago
  Something I am curious about is why these things (de-platforming of websites for example) are so US-centric. What I'm wondering is whether it is because: 1. Only US-based websites and forums get to that level of extremism that is cause for de-platforming. I find this option the hardest to believe (pretty sure there are hideous things in other countries as well). 2. The infra is mostly US-based (Cloudflare, cloud providers, etc.), they are focused or getting their attention drawn specifically to US-centric topics. 3. It happens in other counties as well, but because HN is US-centric I am hearing about the instances that are dealing with US topics. And specifically I'm currently focusing on democratic countries, where free speech is upheld in some form (obviously government based censorship is happening in authoritarian countries all the time). So which is it? Why am I not hearing of these cases happening to EU-based, Canada-based, Australia-based or Israel-based forums/websites (mentioning Israel specifically as I'd expect to hear about those in my local echo-chamber)? Would love to learn about similar cases from other countries.
  • gjvnq 4y ago
    > 1. Only US-based websites and forums get to that level of extremism that is cause for de-platforming. I find this option the hardest to believe (pretty sure there are hideous things in other countries as well). Because in places like Brazil racists and bigots can be easily-ish arrested long before they reach that level of extremism. For example, throwing racist insults at another person in Brazil is a literal crime for which you can be arested by anyone. Also, places like Brazil make website owner legally liable for user content if the website does not comply with court orders. > 2. The infra is mostly US-based (Cloudflare, cloud providers, etc.), they are focused or getting their attention drawn specifically to US-centric topics. > 3. It happens in other counties as well, but because HN is US-centric I am hearing about the instances that are dealing with US topics. I think that's partially true. However, the big issue is that the US has an absurd view of free speech that doesn't line with anyone else and as such the US hasn't really ratified the ICCPR nor does the US enforce foriegn court orders on matters related to free speech (see the SPEECH act). So anytime anything bad happens anywhere in the world people are forced to go to the media instead of the US government for help. > Would love to learn about similar cases from other countries. In Brazil, Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the arrest of congressman Daniel Silveira for his antidemocratic activities. Because congresspeople can only be arested _in flagrante delicto_, that justice came up with the novel legal theory that everytime a person watches a video you posted it's like if you were speaking the same words again and thus if there's any crime there, you can be arrested at any time so long as the video is still up. I'm of course simplyfing. Daniel Silveira, if I recall correctly, was involved in groups making physical threats against the Supreme Court Justices among other stuff. Some useful sources: (in Portuguese) https://www.conjur.com.br/2021-fev-17/especialistas-defendem-prisao-deputado-atacou-supremo https://www.conjur.com.br/2021-fev-17/especialistas-defendem... https://www.camara.leg.br/noticias/729294-camara-decide-manter-prisao-do-deputado-daniel-silveira https://www.camara.leg.br/noticias/729294-camara-decide-mant... https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2022/04/29/alexandre-de-moraes-palestra-sao-paulo.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2022/04/29/alexandre-d... https://www.conjur.com.br/2022-jun-22/bloqueio-paginas-pco-gera-debate-liberdade-expressao https://www.conjur.com.br/2022-jun-22/bloqueio-paginas-pco-g... https://www.conjur.com.br/2022-set-06/tre-rj-nega-registro-candidatura-daniel-silveira-senado https://www.conjur.com.br/2022-set-06/tre-rj-nega-registro-c... (that congressman was barred from running for relection) https://veja.abril.com.br/politica/deputado-do-psl-ameaca-stf-se-precisar-de-um-cabo-estou-a-disposicao/ https://veja.abril.com.br/politica/deputado-do-psl-ameaca-st... (he said he would volunteer to physically/militarily attack the court)
• rubyist5eva 4y ago
  So let me get this straight. 1. People were trying to cancel kiwi farms 2. Kiwifarms users got mad, I’d argue rightfully, because they were being attacked. 3. Cloudflare doesn’t like Kiwifarms politically so they gave into the mob. 4. Blame the victims because we don’t like them. Ignoring the fact that cloudflare provides we security services and they decided to just give up on it, this leaves a very sour taste in my month. I won’t be giving cloudflare my business anymore. If Kiwifarms users were engaging in illegal activity then just let enforcement do their job.
• dannyw 4y ago
  I am extremely disappointed in the actions taken by Cloudflare. As a $NET investor, I have sold my stock. The underlying infrastructure of the internet must remain infrastructure: as pipes sending bits and bytes. Today, it's Kiwifarms. Tomorrow, it is an end-to-end encrypted messenger that doesn't have a backdoor.
• IYasha 4y ago
  CloudFlare was never to be trusted. Never.
• IYasha 4y ago
  Um... can someone use this tactic to shutdown Facebook or Twintter? That would be fantastic :)
• 0xdeadfed 4y ago
• flerovium 4y ago
  Why do they block this and not, uh, Al-Shabaab, or any other number of terrorist organizations? Does Al-Shabaab not create a "threat of violence"? What argument can there be for blocking one and not the other? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare#Terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare#Terrorism
• mgdlbp 4y ago
  Further reading for you future people who scrolled all the way down here: HN discussions the other two times this has happened with Cloudflare: Why We Terminated Daily Stormer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031922 - 857 points | 2017-08-16 | 1574 (1526) comments Terminating Service for 8Chan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395 - 1098 points | 2019-08-05 | 1438 (1376) comments And, https://hn.algolia.com/?query=8chan https://hn.algolia.com/?query=8chan + https://hn.algolia.com/?query=stormer https://hn.algolia.com/?query=stormer