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Kiwifarms should have been dealt with by the traditional legal system years ago. It is honestly shocking to me that the operator has never been charged. The sit

Kiwifarms should have been dealt with by the traditional legal system years ago. It is honestly shocking to me that the operator has never been charged. The site has been engaging in mass harassment for years and is responsible for multiple suicides. When the legal system fails, people turn to vigilante justice, and we get this mess instead. People feel so strongly that Kiwifarms should be taken offline that they engage in illegal behavior themselves.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
The site and the person who host it (there is no legal entity involved here - just a person) have not done anything other than facilitating speech, which is heavily legally protected. The users of the site have done a lot, though. The proper action would be to go after the users who do bad things, and bury the site operator in subpoenas to find these bad actors.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> and is responsible for multiple suicides. I've suffered some cases of extreme, acute depression in my life, and I was lucky that I had some support that prevented my depression from killing me. That said, I'm really uncomfortable with the language that somebody else can be, as you put it, "responsible" for someone's suicide. One of the things that is really driven home in therapy for depression (that is, after you're no longer in a suicidal state) is that you alone are responsible for your actions; you're not merely at the whim of your circumstances. The harassment from Kiwifarms is/was reprehensible, but harassment alone, at that level, is enough to draw a social and legal response without pretending they are responsible for someone else's suicide.
- zerocrates 4y ago
  There is some recent precedent for criminal responsibility for someone else's suicide: the (in)famous case of Conrad Roy and Michelle Carter. She was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging him to commit suicide over texts and phone calls.
  - adolph 4y ago
- burade 4y ago
  So you admit you had support. What about the people who don't?
- dillondoyle 4y ago
  The standard shouldn't be whether someone is struggling with mental health. It's whether or not that person would be alive today if it weren't for this targeted violence As someone pointed out below people have been found liable for (at a minimum)contributing to someone's suicide. Victims have specifically wrote this in a suicide note. And these sick people follow up on their deceased FB profiles commenting and basically bragging about what they've done.
  - betwixthewires 4y ago
    So first of all, "violence" has a definition. We can't keep expanding the definition in order to justify actual violence in retaliation. You can be found partly liable for someone's suicide if you've encouraged or groomed someone to commit suicide. Saying mean things to them does not constitute such an action. We can all talk about how reprehensible kiwifarms is, that it encourages reprehensible behavior, that we would not want to spend time with many of the people there in our lives, that we would disown our children for participating there, etc. But we have to put a stop to this push to take every opportunity to increase the scope of retaliation. We can't change the scope of what violence is or who is responsible for a suicide just because we find their behavior reprehensible and want revenge, not if we want to live in a just society.
    - dillondoyle 4y ago
      I think the definition of violence is a fair discussion. I think it has shifted a bit. To me words that cause physical harm is violence.
      - betwixthewires 4y ago
        Words can't cause physical harm though. Only actions can.
        dillondoyle 4y ago
        Yes they can. People harm themselves all the time because of words.
- sorenjan 4y ago
  With all due respect, that may be true in most cases and a good message to receive for most people in therapy, but it's not true in all cases. As has been shown time and time again, humans are very receptive to propaganda and brain washing, and there's only so much harassment a person can take. A "regular" person might need to hear that the world doesn't have an agenda against you, that you're responsible for your actions, and if there's something about your life that you don't like you can take action to change it. But if there's an actual campaign against you, that advice no longer holds, and eventually that kind of harassment can definitively drive somebody to suicide. The only time I've heard of Kiwi Farms before today was when Near committed suicide. There's plenty written about the tragic event, but you can start with their goodby thread on Twitter: https://twitter.com/near_koukai/status/1408940057235312640?s=20 https://twitter.com/near_koukai/status/1408940057235312640?s...
  - atdrummond 4y ago
    Near is almost certainly not dead. There is no evidence of his death, he’s been seen alive by fellow foreign devs active in SE Asia and interacting with Hector’s Asahi Linux streams and Hector’s VTuber accounts, and he did not appear on any canonical government (Japanese or US) death lists.
    - initplus 4y ago
      I'm not sure that "this person only faked their suicide to escape harassment" really absolves Kiwifarms of much...
      - atdrummond 4y ago
        Near was dealing with way more than KF. He wanted his thread deleted because it documented him absconding with thousands of dollars of donor money and dozens of rare games he was supposed to return or donate after archiving. He further engaged in rather aggressive behavior with other developers in the emulation community. His thread had actually been dead for nearly a year when he suddenly emailed Josh asking for it to be deleted (which he offered six figures). He threatened suicide when Josh gave the email to his lawyer and asked whether or not said approach by Byuu/Near was legal. Funnily enough the email and the resulting spike in activity on his thread was actually precipitated by a few posts on here about him. Again, my stance is as follows: KF is filled with despicable behavior and people. However we absolutely must be accurate and precise when it comes to what happens there and why certain people would rather the site not exist.
- andywood 4y ago
  Lifetime of depression and multiple suicide attempts as well. If I ever do it, it'll be because I suffered my whole life, not because of the most recent thing that happened the week before.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  > is that you alone are responsible for your actions; you're not merely at the whim of your circumstances. It's not a choice when strangers online begin sending your embarrassing personal info to your family and friends, begin harassing your friends and show up in person to terrorize you. Imagine if when you were suicidal, random strangers threatened the person supporting you until they told you they couldn't help you anymore because of them. > The honest truth is, I've been bullied, ridiculed, and humiliated my entire life. From my earliest grade school memories to now. It's always hurt me deeply enough that I can't describe it in words. I could only just tolerate it with heavy depression when it was 4chan. > But Kiwi Farms has made the harassment orders of magnitude worse. It's escalated from attacking me for being autistic, to attacking and doxing my friends, and trying to suicide bait another, just to get a reaction from me. I lost one of my best friends to this. I feel responsible > I can't handle this anymore. I have tried everything. I have taken every medication available. I have tried multiple therapists. I have tried closing myself off from the world. It doesn't help at all. Every night I am filled with panic attacks and dread and worry -Byuu
Cyberdog 4y ago
Perhaps the reason that they haven't been taken down by the US legal system is because none of what they do is illegal by US law.
- initplus 4y ago
  Yes, that is the problem that I was describing. Facilitating/organizing mass harassment of mentally ill people should be against the law.
  - Cyberdog 4y ago
    Contact your congresscreatures.
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
atdrummond 4y ago
- _vvaw 4y ago
  Do you have sources for Byuu/Near spotted alive? First I’ve heard of it.
  - atdrummond 4y ago
    That’s from two personal friends who are both extremely active in the emulation scene. Feel free to discount it - when the site’s back up, I’ll grab the screens of users in Hector’s streams that use the same exact eccentric writing style Byuu/Near did. (Archive.ph is too stale to have it.) He should be 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... But there’s nothing. https://jp.usembassy.gov/services/death-of-a-u-s-citizen/ https://jp.usembassy.gov/services/death-of-a-u-s-citizen/ Nobody was ever able to get any of the documentation listed on this page from the Japanese side, even family, and the Japanese continually report they have no record of the death. There are also no “blotter” style documents in Japan or the USA documenting his death. I’m willing to be proven wrong - and accept others will not believe what is hearsay to them - but as someone who has been involved in emulation for years my Bayesian prior is extremely, strongly on the side of him being alive.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Acrobatic_Road 4y ago
    - pcwalton 4y ago
      > when the site’s back up, I’ll grab the screens of users in Hector’s streams that use the same exact eccentric writing style Byuu/Near did. That's more than a bit creepy. Please reconsider the lengths you're willing to go to to win this internet argument.
andywood 4y ago
He's been taken to court around 7 times. It's almost as if he didn't break the law, and people just think he must of because it be so nasty!
- initplus 4y ago
  This is the same argument made by anti-free speech people defending companies that censor/deplatform. Something can be legal and wrong. Sometimes the law is out of date with reality.
  - andywood 4y ago
    I don't want that to be a quasi-unilateral judgement. Also, one question. Suppose we do change the laws, and Kiwi Farms continues to operate within those new laws. Will that be enough, do you think? Because the US would have to outlaw dead naming and misgendering for it to be enough for the activists.
    - initplus 4y ago
      Privacy protections should apply regardless of whether it's a megacorporation or a disorganized group of independent actors. Most of the individuals targeted by Kiwifarms are not running for office, or own prominent businesses. They are for the most part unemployed nobodies who live at home. I don't see any public interest in naming these people.
      - andywood 4y ago
        Still really unclear what law is being broken in that case. Unless you're proposing new speech-curtailing legislation. They're Intenet-famous. They're of interest to forever-onlines. This one in particular is of interest to women and parents who've so far resisted brainwashing.
heurisko 4y ago
> The site has been engaging in mass harassment for years and is responsible for multiple suicides > Speculation about the ‘trigger’ or cause of a suicide can oversimplify the issue and should be avoided. Suicide is extremely complex and most of the time there is no single event or factor that leads someone to take their own life. https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/media-guidelines/10-top-tips-reporting-suicide/ https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/media-guidelines...
LawTalkingGuy 4y ago

pclmulqdq 4y ago

The site and the person who host it (there is no legal entity involved here - just a person) have not done anything other than facilitating speech, which is heavily legally protected. The users of the site have done a lot, though. The proper action would be to go after the users who do bad things, and bury the site operator in subpoenas to find these bad actors.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

> and is responsible for multiple suicides. I've suffered some cases of extreme, acute depression in my life, and I was lucky that I had some support that prevented my depression from killing me. That said, I'm really uncomfortable with the language that somebody else can be, as you put it, "responsible" for someone's suicide. One of the things that is really driven home in therapy for depression (that is, after you're no longer in a suicidal state) is that you alone are responsible for your actions; you're not merely at the whim of your circumstances. The harassment from Kiwifarms is/was reprehensible, but harassment alone, at that level, is enough to draw a social and legal response without pretending they are responsible for someone else's suicide.

zerocrates 4y ago
There is some recent precedent for criminal responsibility for someone else's suicide: the (in)famous case of Conrad Roy and Michelle Carter. She was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging him to commit suicide over texts and phone calls.
- adolph 4y ago
burade 4y ago
So you admit you had support. What about the people who don't?
dillondoyle 4y ago
The standard shouldn't be whether someone is struggling with mental health. It's whether or not that person would be alive today if it weren't for this targeted violence As someone pointed out below people have been found liable for (at a minimum)contributing to someone's suicide. Victims have specifically wrote this in a suicide note. And these sick people follow up on their deceased FB profiles commenting and basically bragging about what they've done.
- betwixthewires 4y ago
  So first of all, "violence" has a definition. We can't keep expanding the definition in order to justify actual violence in retaliation. You can be found partly liable for someone's suicide if you've encouraged or groomed someone to commit suicide. Saying mean things to them does not constitute such an action. We can all talk about how reprehensible kiwifarms is, that it encourages reprehensible behavior, that we would not want to spend time with many of the people there in our lives, that we would disown our children for participating there, etc. But we have to put a stop to this push to take every opportunity to increase the scope of retaliation. We can't change the scope of what violence is or who is responsible for a suicide just because we find their behavior reprehensible and want revenge, not if we want to live in a just society.
  - dillondoyle 4y ago
    I think the definition of violence is a fair discussion. I think it has shifted a bit. To me words that cause physical harm is violence.
    - betwixthewires 4y ago
      Words can't cause physical harm though. Only actions can.
      - dillondoyle 4y ago
        Yes they can. People harm themselves all the time because of words.
sorenjan 4y ago
With all due respect, that may be true in most cases and a good message to receive for most people in therapy, but it's not true in all cases. As has been shown time and time again, humans are very receptive to propaganda and brain washing, and there's only so much harassment a person can take. A "regular" person might need to hear that the world doesn't have an agenda against you, that you're responsible for your actions, and if there's something about your life that you don't like you can take action to change it. But if there's an actual campaign against you, that advice no longer holds, and eventually that kind of harassment can definitively drive somebody to suicide. The only time I've heard of Kiwi Farms before today was when Near committed suicide. There's plenty written about the tragic event, but you can start with their goodby thread on Twitter: https://twitter.com/near_koukai/status/1408940057235312640?s=20 https://twitter.com/near_koukai/status/1408940057235312640?s...
- atdrummond 4y ago
  Near is almost certainly not dead. There is no evidence of his death, he’s been seen alive by fellow foreign devs active in SE Asia and interacting with Hector’s Asahi Linux streams and Hector’s VTuber accounts, and he did not appear on any canonical government (Japanese or US) death lists.
  - initplus 4y ago
    I'm not sure that "this person only faked their suicide to escape harassment" really absolves Kiwifarms of much...
    - atdrummond 4y ago
      Near was dealing with way more than KF. He wanted his thread deleted because it documented him absconding with thousands of dollars of donor money and dozens of rare games he was supposed to return or donate after archiving. He further engaged in rather aggressive behavior with other developers in the emulation community. His thread had actually been dead for nearly a year when he suddenly emailed Josh asking for it to be deleted (which he offered six figures). He threatened suicide when Josh gave the email to his lawyer and asked whether or not said approach by Byuu/Near was legal. Funnily enough the email and the resulting spike in activity on his thread was actually precipitated by a few posts on here about him. Again, my stance is as follows: KF is filled with despicable behavior and people. However we absolutely must be accurate and precise when it comes to what happens there and why certain people would rather the site not exist.
andywood 4y ago
Lifetime of depression and multiple suicide attempts as well. If I ever do it, it'll be because I suffered my whole life, not because of the most recent thing that happened the week before.
squeaky-clean 4y ago
> is that you alone are responsible for your actions; you're not merely at the whim of your circumstances. It's not a choice when strangers online begin sending your embarrassing personal info to your family and friends, begin harassing your friends and show up in person to terrorize you. Imagine if when you were suicidal, random strangers threatened the person supporting you until they told you they couldn't help you anymore because of them. > The honest truth is, I've been bullied, ridiculed, and humiliated my entire life. From my earliest grade school memories to now. It's always hurt me deeply enough that I can't describe it in words. I could only just tolerate it with heavy depression when it was 4chan. > But Kiwi Farms has made the harassment orders of magnitude worse. It's escalated from attacking me for being autistic, to attacking and doxing my friends, and trying to suicide bait another, just to get a reaction from me. I lost one of my best friends to this. I feel responsible > I can't handle this anymore. I have tried everything. I have taken every medication available. I have tried multiple therapists. I have tried closing myself off from the world. It doesn't help at all. Every night I am filled with panic attacks and dread and worry -Byuu

Cyberdog 4y ago

Perhaps the reason that they haven't been taken down by the US legal system is because none of what they do is illegal by US law.

initplus 4y ago
Yes, that is the problem that I was describing. Facilitating/organizing mass harassment of mentally ill people should be against the law.
- Cyberdog 4y ago
  Contact your congresscreatures.
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago

atdrummond 4y ago

_vvaw 4y ago
Do you have sources for Byuu/Near spotted alive? First I’ve heard of it.
- atdrummond 4y ago
  That’s from two personal friends who are both extremely active in the emulation scene. Feel free to discount it - when the site’s back up, I’ll grab the screens of users in Hector’s streams that use the same exact eccentric writing style Byuu/Near did. (Archive.ph is too stale to have it.) He should be 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... But there’s nothing. https://jp.usembassy.gov/services/death-of-a-u-s-citizen/ https://jp.usembassy.gov/services/death-of-a-u-s-citizen/ Nobody was ever able to get any of the documentation listed on this page from the Japanese side, even family, and the Japanese continually report they have no record of the death. There are also no “blotter” style documents in Japan or the USA documenting his death. I’m willing to be proven wrong - and accept others will not believe what is hearsay to them - but as someone who has been involved in emulation for years my Bayesian prior is extremely, strongly on the side of him being alive.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Acrobatic_Road 4y ago
  - pcwalton 4y ago
    > when the site’s back up, I’ll grab the screens of users in Hector’s streams that use the same exact eccentric writing style Byuu/Near did. That's more than a bit creepy. Please reconsider the lengths you're willing to go to to win this internet argument.

andywood 4y ago

He's been taken to court around 7 times. It's almost as if he didn't break the law, and people just think he must of because it be so nasty!

initplus 4y ago
This is the same argument made by anti-free speech people defending companies that censor/deplatform. Something can be legal and wrong. Sometimes the law is out of date with reality.
- andywood 4y ago
  I don't want that to be a quasi-unilateral judgement. Also, one question. Suppose we do change the laws, and Kiwi Farms continues to operate within those new laws. Will that be enough, do you think? Because the US would have to outlaw dead naming and misgendering for it to be enough for the activists.
  - initplus 4y ago
    Privacy protections should apply regardless of whether it's a megacorporation or a disorganized group of independent actors. Most of the individuals targeted by Kiwifarms are not running for office, or own prominent businesses. They are for the most part unemployed nobodies who live at home. I don't see any public interest in naming these people.
    - andywood 4y ago
      Still really unclear what law is being broken in that case. Unless you're proposing new speech-curtailing legislation. They're Intenet-famous. They're of interest to forever-onlines. This one in particular is of interest to women and parents who've so far resisted brainwashing.

heurisko 4y ago

> The site has been engaging in mass harassment for years and is responsible for multiple suicides > Speculation about the ‘trigger’ or cause of a suicide can oversimplify the issue and should be avoided. Suicide is extremely complex and most of the time there is no single event or factor that leads someone to take their own life. https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/media-guidelines/10-top-tips-reporting-suicide/ https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/media-guidelines...

LawTalkingGuy 4y ago