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>rather than free speech i encourage anybody who is calls themselves a "free speech advocate" to consider what kiwifarms has been doing to "free speech". thei

>rather than free speech i encourage anybody who is calls themselves a "free speech advocate" to consider what kiwifarms has been doing to "free speech". their intimidation campaigns have been doing a lot more to harm the cause of free speech than this decision by cloudflare is. if you really believe in free speech, you understand that trans people deserve free speech too, and kiwifarms harrasment campaigns have been harming their free speech. free speech is for everybody, not just the people who have opinions you agree with, and being openly trans is a form of speech.

BrainVirus 4y ago
Why should I take this argument on good faith when literally this same argument has been repeatedly used in attempts to deplatform comedians, popular politicians, writers, journalists and tons of ordinary people?
- pixl97 4y ago
  Were said comedians, popular politicians, writers, and journalist calling for immediate violent acts and intimidation of others. If yes, then I believe they should be censored. If no, , then they should not. Authoritarians will use both arguments at the same time, they have no problem with hypocrisy. They will threaten you with violence, and demand their violence be published, while with the slights of those they do not like demand censorship. Calls for violence must not be tolerated, for if they are civil society cannot exist.
- hackerlight 4y ago
cowtools 4y ago
- lupire 4y ago
  Coordinating real world afk harassment and physical attacks. https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/2022-alleged-kiwi-farms-swattings-on-keffals-and-marjorie-taylor-greene https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/2022-alleged-kiwi-...
  - cowtools 4y ago
    - lupire 4y ago
      To the best of CF's knowledge, I presume. KYM posted screenshots.
- hartator 4y ago
  Yes, the devil is in the details like always.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    Well it seems to me like the kiwifarm posts demeaning information about this person who is co-ordinating the DDoS, like that they were a pornstar or something. So this campaign seems like a tactic to shut down the discussion of facts that are inconvenient for their reputation, like a SLAPP suit.
- notatoad 4y ago
  most recently, they executed a targeted intimidation campaign to the point where somebody felt the need to flee Canada. and then continued it when kiwifarms users discovered that person's new home in ireland. (edit: corrected US to canada. most of the coverage of this was coming from NBC, assumed that meant the victim was american)
  - cowtools 4y ago
    It might help the "victim" if they weren't constantly posting online and leaking their whereabouts. But hey, how else would they be able to solicit donations? When I grew up, people used to say that you should never post your personal details online. I think we should normalize that attitude again. It really makes me wonder why they decided to go with a DDoS attack as opposed to counter-doxxing the operator of KiwiFarm, who also seems to be a donation-soliciting public nuisance and "internet celebrity".
    - notatoad 4y ago
      kiwifarms users identified the victim's locations by identifying her hotel from a picture she posted that included a small portion of the bedsheets in the hotel she was hiding in after they intimidated her out of her own home. in what ridiculous world does that count as "posting your personal details online"?
      - cowtools 4y ago
        If you are trying to hide from internet stalkers, why would you publicly post a picture of your hotel? As a society, I feel like we have normalized oversharing to the extent that young people don't have regard for their own personal safety. In any case, I think this young woman should stay strapped if there are people coming to her house.
      - User23 4y ago
        Evidently in the ridiculous world we’re currently inhabiting. That being the case, we should probably do a better job of educating people on just how much signal there is in even innocuous seeming information.
- pfisch 4y ago
  I knew someone that kiwifarms had a big hand in driving to commit suicide. I don't want to really get into the details, but we should push places like kiwifarms to the corners of the internet, and then keep pushing.
xupybd 4y ago
Free speech is about giving people the freedom to say things I find disgusting. It's about giving each individual the choice to listen to what ever influence they wish. It takes the the power of ideas and elevates them above physical force.
- more_corn 4y ago
  But it doesn’t extend to advocating for violence. We can rightly enact limits on inciting violence.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  This ideological purism doesn't grapple with real world corner cases where one person's freedoms infringe on another person's freedoms.
- danShumway 4y ago
  > It takes the the power of ideas and elevates them above physical force. This is exactly why dropping Kiwi Farms was the right decision. There is a difference between saying hateful things and doxing and harassing people with threats of violence. We don't even need to dip into the endless debate about tolerating hate -- there's no level of ideological indirection here, Kiwi Farms was just very straightforwardly driving people offline with threats of physical harm and real-world harassment.
  - kybernetyk 4y ago
    So what's the difference between Kiwifarms doxxing some poor soul and the New York Times or Washington Post doing the same to some other sucker? Why hasn't the NYT been taken down yet?
    - cowtools 4y ago
      Is this referring to the "slate star codex" incident a couple years back?
      - 4y ago
shrubble 4y ago
smsm42 4y ago
- coldacid 4y ago
  Don't forget informing jurors of their actual rights and responsibilities.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    Well, you can yell "nullification" in a crowded courtroom, everybody knows that.
andywood 4y ago
> what kiwifarms has been doing to "free speech" What? Testing it? To make sure we can actually exercise it in practice? Because "be careful how you use it or you might ruin it for everyone" wasn't ever how the 1st amendment was meant to work. Like, what would be the point. Let's let the 1st amendment say you have to check in with anyone sensitive and if they don't like it, you can't say it, because "we live in a society" Let's have a new Mandatory Courtesy and Respect amendment. I am so utterly ashamed of the tech industry at this point. I'm glad I retired and don't have to pretend to your faces. "The Internet interpretes censorship as damage and routes around it." Oh how naive and libertarian us techies were in the reactionary nineteen hundred and nineties.
- kanbara 4y ago
  private companies have no obligation under the 1st amendment. violence and hatred have no place in this world or on the internet. i'm ashamed of all the people who stand up and defend nazis, fascists, and cyber-bullying and doxxing. this isn't about sensitivity it's about vile human actions, and viewpoints like yours are what allowed for fascism to spread in europe, asia, and america.
  - andywood 4y ago
    Tell it to somebody who's already subscribed to that whole delusional ideology. Such as every other user in this thread.
deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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ClassyJacket 4y ago
- jmcgough 4y ago
  Nobody is arguing that any one group should have blanket free speech protections. There are definitely trans people who turn to harassment and threats to try to protect their community, which isn't okay. But at least three trans/gnc people have died through suicide, directly attributable to Kiwi Farms. Near, a brilliant and widely respected open source contributor, specified in their suicide note that it was because Kiwi Farms had made their life hell for years (https://www.ign.com/articles/near-bsnes-remembrance https://www.ign.com/articles/near-bsnes-remembrance). Just because there are some bad apples in the trans community doesn't make this okay, and they don't get carte blanche to make threats online - they get banned from social media like most other people. There is no trans equivalent of kiwi farms where they cheer driving people to suicide.
  - Acrobatic_Road 4y ago
    - howinteresting 4y ago
    - jmcgough 4y ago
      Friend of a friend knew them IRL, and was extremely upset with me for thinking they might be faking their own death. Near is likely dead as much as we don't want to believe it.
      - Acrobatic_Road 4y ago
        does this friend of a friend go by marcan?
    - echelon 4y ago
      One of my friends was Near's partner and was devastated by what happened. Near is gone... :(
isitmadeofglass 4y ago
- hackerlight 4y ago
seydor 4y ago
yeah a "my speech is better than yours" situation
refurb 4y ago
It’s like the US military explaining their actions during the Vietnam War - “we needed to destroy the city in order to save it”
ekianjo 4y ago
> if you really believe in free speech, you understand that trans people deserve free speech too, and kiwifarms harrasment campaigns have been harming their free speech. free speech is for everybody, As far as I know you have many pro-trans channels to communicate online, and it's very natural that you find the opposite as well on the internet. I love the fact that you guys never complain about anticlerical content that's rampant in the most popular platforms. It's almost like you only dislike one type of discrimination. TDLR: "Free Speech only for the Speech I like"
- andrepd 4y ago
  Please point me to co-ordinated mass harassment campaigns with the objective of leading clerics to suicide, and you might change my mind. Otherwise your comparison is absurd.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    If you believe that words are violence then it cuts both ways whether you are trans or just another group that is discriminated against online. Since when is suicide the only endpoint to look at? Shifting goalposts much?
    - andrepd 4y ago
      Not to suicide then, point me to a website created for the purpose of coordinating sustained harassment campaigns towards clerics please.
      - zo1 4y ago
        Not 100% exactly the same, but wth do you think this is: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi... But it's okay, they're supposedly "Nazis", so it's okay to punch that way and coordinate harassment, deplatforming and marginalization. I see at least two people on that list that are ridiculously benign, just hold "bad" opinions. One of them is so obviously a hit-job, it's sad. Or how about articles detailing how "favored" groups like Antifa coordinate, glorifying their doxxing and very potential real harmful consequences for the people they target (who may or may not be innocent). This is targeted at much less high-profile individuals as opposed to the SPLC one above. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/antifa-proud-boys-militia-trump-insurrection-1121933/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/anti... I honestly have no idea how people can be okay with this kind of behavior (the above is just the tip of the iceberg, as I don't have the resources and institutional backing like the SPLC to document, record and collate the hate and filter the best examples for you. Honestly, couldn't find half the stuff without resorting to site-searching Gab for references to articles. Google.) Future generations will frown upon us for this dark part of our history.
ed_voc 4y ago
There seems to be a double standard with who can partake in intimidation campaigns. Before any mention of keffals in Kiwifarms she was running a harassment campaign against Destiny, making false accusations that he was a rapist and rallying their followers to get him de-platformed on all platforms. The worst situation is having one sided intimidation campaigns where trans activists can de-platform users like Destiny but they cannot defend themselves due to either losing remaining platforms or fear of losing their remaining platforms.
- dools 4y ago
  Making accusations against someone and trying to get them deplatformed is not the same as threatening someone with violence. I know very few details but the moral equivalence you’re drawing in this comment is false.
  - Smithalicious 4y ago
    Is it? Attacking someone's livelihood is a very real and impactful form of aggression. Compared threats of violence there's more cases where it's warranted, yes, but I think I would personally rather be on the receiving end of threats of violence than of someone attempting to make me lose my job and become much harder to employ. Of course actual violence is a different case altogether.
    - zamalek 4y ago
      If that's your stance then that's fine. However, the correct approach would have been for Destiny to take legal action, instead of vigilantism. In addition, the prior comments talk about things that may causally limit freedom of speech. Losing your job does not mean losing your voice. When it comes to how FoS is constitutionally defined (across several countries), it is worth learning about "fighting words." Nearly every justice system agrees that any goes, except words that may (not merely will) cause imminent harm. The line has to be drawn somewhere.
      - Banana699 4y ago
tomjen3 4y ago
I am not aware of what Kiwifarms have done, but I am aware of what is often said when people claim harrasment of trans people. And that would not be considered harrasment in any other context. So maybe this is the case that has finally gotten too far, but when you have been crying wolf as many times as the trans movement has, well I am not going to care.
Slighted 4y ago
Free speech is free speech, and it includes speech that you and others will find hateful, cruel, and disgusting. Doesn't stop it from being protected by free speech laws. Would you say trans people have been hurting the free speech of people on Twitter by reporting them and harassing them en masse for speaking against them and refusing to follow their demands of tolerance?
HereIGoAgain 4y ago
You mean practicing and protecting it? What harassment campaigns? Talking about someone and pointing out what publicly say is not harassment. "free speech is certain types of people not having anything they don't like spoken anywhere"

BrainVirus 4y ago

Why should I take this argument on good faith when literally this same argument has been repeatedly used in attempts to deplatform comedians, popular politicians, writers, journalists and tons of ordinary people?

pixl97 4y ago
Were said comedians, popular politicians, writers, and journalist calling for immediate violent acts and intimidation of others. If yes, then I believe they should be censored. If no, , then they should not. Authoritarians will use both arguments at the same time, they have no problem with hypocrisy. They will threaten you with violence, and demand their violence be published, while with the slights of those they do not like demand censorship. Calls for violence must not be tolerated, for if they are civil society cannot exist.
hackerlight 4y ago

cowtools 4y ago

lupire 4y ago
Coordinating real world afk harassment and physical attacks. https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/2022-alleged-kiwi-farms-swattings-on-keffals-and-marjorie-taylor-greene https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/2022-alleged-kiwi-...
- cowtools 4y ago
  - lupire 4y ago
    To the best of CF's knowledge, I presume. KYM posted screenshots.
hartator 4y ago
Yes, the devil is in the details like always.
- cowtools 4y ago
  Well it seems to me like the kiwifarm posts demeaning information about this person who is co-ordinating the DDoS, like that they were a pornstar or something. So this campaign seems like a tactic to shut down the discussion of facts that are inconvenient for their reputation, like a SLAPP suit.
notatoad 4y ago
most recently, they executed a targeted intimidation campaign to the point where somebody felt the need to flee Canada. and then continued it when kiwifarms users discovered that person's new home in ireland. (edit: corrected US to canada. most of the coverage of this was coming from NBC, assumed that meant the victim was american)
- cowtools 4y ago
  It might help the "victim" if they weren't constantly posting online and leaking their whereabouts. But hey, how else would they be able to solicit donations? When I grew up, people used to say that you should never post your personal details online. I think we should normalize that attitude again. It really makes me wonder why they decided to go with a DDoS attack as opposed to counter-doxxing the operator of KiwiFarm, who also seems to be a donation-soliciting public nuisance and "internet celebrity".
  - notatoad 4y ago
    kiwifarms users identified the victim's locations by identifying her hotel from a picture she posted that included a small portion of the bedsheets in the hotel she was hiding in after they intimidated her out of her own home. in what ridiculous world does that count as "posting your personal details online"?
    - cowtools 4y ago
      If you are trying to hide from internet stalkers, why would you publicly post a picture of your hotel? As a society, I feel like we have normalized oversharing to the extent that young people don't have regard for their own personal safety. In any case, I think this young woman should stay strapped if there are people coming to her house.
    - User23 4y ago
      Evidently in the ridiculous world we’re currently inhabiting. That being the case, we should probably do a better job of educating people on just how much signal there is in even innocuous seeming information.
pfisch 4y ago
I knew someone that kiwifarms had a big hand in driving to commit suicide. I don't want to really get into the details, but we should push places like kiwifarms to the corners of the internet, and then keep pushing.

xupybd 4y ago

Free speech is about giving people the freedom to say things I find disgusting. It's about giving each individual the choice to listen to what ever influence they wish. It takes the the power of ideas and elevates them above physical force.

more_corn 4y ago
But it doesn’t extend to advocating for violence. We can rightly enact limits on inciting violence.
hackerlight 4y ago
This ideological purism doesn't grapple with real world corner cases where one person's freedoms infringe on another person's freedoms.
danShumway 4y ago
> It takes the the power of ideas and elevates them above physical force. This is exactly why dropping Kiwi Farms was the right decision. There is a difference between saying hateful things and doxing and harassing people with threats of violence. We don't even need to dip into the endless debate about tolerating hate -- there's no level of ideological indirection here, Kiwi Farms was just very straightforwardly driving people offline with threats of physical harm and real-world harassment.
- kybernetyk 4y ago
  So what's the difference between Kiwifarms doxxing some poor soul and the New York Times or Washington Post doing the same to some other sucker? Why hasn't the NYT been taken down yet?
  - cowtools 4y ago
    Is this referring to the "slate star codex" incident a couple years back?
    - 4y ago

shrubble 4y ago

smsm42 4y ago

coldacid 4y ago
Don't forget informing jurors of their actual rights and responsibilities.
- smsm42 4y ago
  Well, you can yell "nullification" in a crowded courtroom, everybody knows that.

andywood 4y ago

> what kiwifarms has been doing to "free speech" What? Testing it? To make sure we can actually exercise it in practice? Because "be careful how you use it or you might ruin it for everyone" wasn't ever how the 1st amendment was meant to work. Like, what would be the point. Let's let the 1st amendment say you have to check in with anyone sensitive and if they don't like it, you can't say it, because "we live in a society" Let's have a new Mandatory Courtesy and Respect amendment. I am so utterly ashamed of the tech industry at this point. I'm glad I retired and don't have to pretend to your faces. "The Internet interpretes censorship as damage and routes around it." Oh how naive and libertarian us techies were in the reactionary nineteen hundred and nineties.

kanbara 4y ago
private companies have no obligation under the 1st amendment. violence and hatred have no place in this world or on the internet. i'm ashamed of all the people who stand up and defend nazis, fascists, and cyber-bullying and doxxing. this isn't about sensitivity it's about vile human actions, and viewpoints like yours are what allowed for fascism to spread in europe, asia, and america.
- andywood 4y ago
  Tell it to somebody who's already subscribed to that whole delusional ideology. Such as every other user in this thread.

deleted 4y ago

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deleted 4y ago

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ClassyJacket 4y ago

jmcgough 4y ago
Nobody is arguing that any one group should have blanket free speech protections. There are definitely trans people who turn to harassment and threats to try to protect their community, which isn't okay. But at least three trans/gnc people have died through suicide, directly attributable to Kiwi Farms. Near, a brilliant and widely respected open source contributor, specified in their suicide note that it was because Kiwi Farms had made their life hell for years (https://www.ign.com/articles/near-bsnes-remembrance https://www.ign.com/articles/near-bsnes-remembrance). Just because there are some bad apples in the trans community doesn't make this okay, and they don't get carte blanche to make threats online - they get banned from social media like most other people. There is no trans equivalent of kiwi farms where they cheer driving people to suicide.
- Acrobatic_Road 4y ago
  - howinteresting 4y ago
  - jmcgough 4y ago
    Friend of a friend knew them IRL, and was extremely upset with me for thinking they might be faking their own death. Near is likely dead as much as we don't want to believe it.
    - Acrobatic_Road 4y ago
      does this friend of a friend go by marcan?
  - echelon 4y ago
    One of my friends was Near's partner and was devastated by what happened. Near is gone... :(

isitmadeofglass 4y ago

hackerlight 4y ago

seydor 4y ago

yeah a "my speech is better than yours" situation

refurb 4y ago

It’s like the US military explaining their actions during the Vietnam War - “we needed to destroy the city in order to save it”

ekianjo 4y ago

> if you really believe in free speech, you understand that trans people deserve free speech too, and kiwifarms harrasment campaigns have been harming their free speech. free speech is for everybody, As far as I know you have many pro-trans channels to communicate online, and it's very natural that you find the opposite as well on the internet. I love the fact that you guys never complain about anticlerical content that's rampant in the most popular platforms. It's almost like you only dislike one type of discrimination. TDLR: "Free Speech only for the Speech I like"

andrepd 4y ago
Please point me to co-ordinated mass harassment campaigns with the objective of leading clerics to suicide, and you might change my mind. Otherwise your comparison is absurd.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  If you believe that words are violence then it cuts both ways whether you are trans or just another group that is discriminated against online. Since when is suicide the only endpoint to look at? Shifting goalposts much?
  - andrepd 4y ago
    Not to suicide then, point me to a website created for the purpose of coordinating sustained harassment campaigns towards clerics please.
    - zo1 4y ago
      Not 100% exactly the same, but wth do you think this is: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi... But it's okay, they're supposedly "Nazis", so it's okay to punch that way and coordinate harassment, deplatforming and marginalization. I see at least two people on that list that are ridiculously benign, just hold "bad" opinions. One of them is so obviously a hit-job, it's sad. Or how about articles detailing how "favored" groups like Antifa coordinate, glorifying their doxxing and very potential real harmful consequences for the people they target (who may or may not be innocent). This is targeted at much less high-profile individuals as opposed to the SPLC one above. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/antifa-proud-boys-militia-trump-insurrection-1121933/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/anti... I honestly have no idea how people can be okay with this kind of behavior (the above is just the tip of the iceberg, as I don't have the resources and institutional backing like the SPLC to document, record and collate the hate and filter the best examples for you. Honestly, couldn't find half the stuff without resorting to site-searching Gab for references to articles. Google.) Future generations will frown upon us for this dark part of our history.

ed_voc 4y ago

There seems to be a double standard with who can partake in intimidation campaigns. Before any mention of keffals in Kiwifarms she was running a harassment campaign against Destiny, making false accusations that he was a rapist and rallying their followers to get him de-platformed on all platforms. The worst situation is having one sided intimidation campaigns where trans activists can de-platform users like Destiny but they cannot defend themselves due to either losing remaining platforms or fear of losing their remaining platforms.

dools 4y ago
Making accusations against someone and trying to get them deplatformed is not the same as threatening someone with violence. I know very few details but the moral equivalence you’re drawing in this comment is false.
- Smithalicious 4y ago
  Is it? Attacking someone's livelihood is a very real and impactful form of aggression. Compared threats of violence there's more cases where it's warranted, yes, but I think I would personally rather be on the receiving end of threats of violence than of someone attempting to make me lose my job and become much harder to employ. Of course actual violence is a different case altogether.
  - zamalek 4y ago
    If that's your stance then that's fine. However, the correct approach would have been for Destiny to take legal action, instead of vigilantism. In addition, the prior comments talk about things that may causally limit freedom of speech. Losing your job does not mean losing your voice. When it comes to how FoS is constitutionally defined (across several countries), it is worth learning about "fighting words." Nearly every justice system agrees that any goes, except words that may (not merely will) cause imminent harm. The line has to be drawn somewhere.
    - Banana699 4y ago

tomjen3 4y ago

I am not aware of what Kiwifarms have done, but I am aware of what is often said when people claim harrasment of trans people. And that would not be considered harrasment in any other context. So maybe this is the case that has finally gotten too far, but when you have been crying wolf as many times as the trans movement has, well I am not going to care.

Slighted 4y ago

Free speech is free speech, and it includes speech that you and others will find hateful, cruel, and disgusting. Doesn't stop it from being protected by free speech laws. Would you say trans people have been hurting the free speech of people on Twitter by reporting them and harassing them en masse for speaking against them and refusing to follow their demands of tolerance?

HereIGoAgain 4y ago

You mean practicing and protecting it? What harassment campaigns? Talking about someone and pointing out what publicly say is not harassment. "free speech is certain types of people not having anything they don't like spoken anywhere"