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As I didn't really follow the controversy around Kiwi Farms: there have been made quite plausible accusations that the Kiwi Farms are a forum of people for quit

by _ph_ 4y ago

As I didn't really follow the controversy around Kiwi Farms: there have been made quite plausible accusations that the Kiwi Farms are a forum of people for quite some time organizing online hate and harrassment which has lead to swattings, and at least one death. Can anyone dispute those accusations?

DuskStar 4y ago
> a forum of people for quite some time organizing online hate and harrassment which has lead to swattings, and at least one death. Can anyone dispute those accusations? Could you not also say this of Facebook, Whatsapp, YouTube and more?
- threeseed 4y ago
  > Could you not also say this of Facebook, Whatsapp, YouTube and more? No. Because whilst those companies are slower to respond (due to the volume of content their users generate) they are quite active at removing hateful and harassing content.
  - yaddaor 4y ago
    Plus they are more like a general mirror of society where obviously there are bad actors and dark corners but not pretty much exclusively.
  - yanderekko 4y ago
    >Because whilst those companies are slower to respond (due to the volume of content their users generate) they are quite active at removing hateful and harassing content. This is goalpost-shifting. Kiwifarms does moderate threats and such. It does not moderate mere "hateful and harassing content" (whatever that means, I assume a lot of "harassing" content does overlap with illegality), but if the clear no-no actions are swatting and such then clearly KF actively tries to prevent that. I fear that the implicit argument here is that in order for these efforts to be treated as "good faith", then forum owners need to not only remove clear legal threats but all sorts of speech (particularly "hate speech") that can be stochastically linked with the generation of those threats. That having sufficient moderation entails that moderators address not only actual threats but in removing a wide range of speech.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  These companies are widely criticized for enabling harassment, hate, and violence. But these aren't the primary content on these websites. Forums largely dedicated to hating women and trans people are in a meaningfully different category.
  - DuskStar 4y ago
    Ah, so now the goalposts have shifted to "the primary content is something I find objectionable". Why not just take down every site with that kind of content, if the "deaths linked to the site" isn't actually why you want to ban it?
_dain_ 4y ago
Yes I'll dispute them: there's no evidence for it. Swatting is not organized on KF. It's illegal, any planning of such an attack would be deleted and the users banned, and if necessary their details would be shared US law enforcement. It's not only against the rules, it's against the site culture. You're not meant to go out and do stupid offsite or IRL shit (gayops). People who do (or suggest it) are mocked and shunned. KF is a site for documenting weird people and laughing at them, not proactively harassing them. Someone swatted a congresswoman; in the call he claimed to be from KF and said his username. But there is no evidence of any planning on the site itself, and anyone who did so would be incredibly stupid given the admin has repeatedly warned that doing so would result in contacting law enforcement with the details of the perpetrator. Given that a great many people want the site gone, it seems likely this was a low-effort frame job. Like ... swatting is easy. Saying you're someone you're not is easy. Blaming it on someone you don't like is easy. You just have to call 911 and say a bunch of unhinged bullshit. Anyone, anywhere, can do it. Other claims like "KF bullies people to suicide": there is a point-by-point rebuttal to this at the top of the Keffals thread. I'd link to it, but the site is yet again down ... EDIT: here it is: >1. Near / Byuu >Byuu had a 13 page inactive thread on the forum at the time he e-mailed Null offering him money in exchange for deleting his thread. He told Null if he does not accept this offer he would commit suicide, this is extortion. Null told him he can not accept money in exchange for deleting threads and he will not be extorted. The next day a twitter user claiming to be Byuu's co-worker says that Byuu went through with the suicide. His only proof was that he claimed to have called the Japanese police and they confirmed it to him, something that the police would never do since he is not a relative of Byuu. He also posted a picture of an urn that supposedly had Byuus ashes in them as "evidence" of his death. The US government puts out a report every 6 months that includes all American citizen that have died abroad. Byuu's death was never on this list. No American citizens have died overseas within the time-frame that Byuu's death supposedly happened. The japanese government is meticulous when it comes to bureaucracy so this is unlikely to be an oversight. Byuu being dead is extremely unlikely. Something Kiwifarms users have pointed out is that Byuu has gotten in legal trouble with the Japanese police because his emulators broke their copyright law, something that is a very serious offense in Japan. >2. Chloe Sagal >Sagal's thread had been inactive for 8 months before his death. Sagal suffered from BPD and extreme mental health issues. He antagonized his room-mates to the point where they kicked him out and he became homeless. He started a GoFundMe to get help from the trans community to get back on his feet, nobody donated to this GoFundMe due to how unpopular he was in the community. Before Sagal set himself on fire in a public park he held a long speech about mental health and homelessness amongst trans people and how difficult it was for him to get help for his situation and how he was abandoned by his own community. He never mentioned Kiwifarms. >3. Julie Terryberry >Julie was a mentally ill young woman in a relationship with a man 10 years older than her that started when she was 17 and he was 27. She came from a broken home and extreme poverty. Her boyfriend was abusive and regularly beat and cut her. Kiwifarms repeatedly tried to get her help to escape the abusive situation she was in. Her boyfriend regularly threaded to leave her and she told him in return she would kill herself if he did. He left her and she killed herself. The only person who has ever blamed Kiwifarms for this death was the abusive boyfriend who has an account on the site and was an active participant in her thread
isitmadeofglass 4y ago
> Can anyone dispute those accusations? Guilty until proven innocent. And naturally we’ll take away your freedom of speech since your guilty, and also generally disregard anything you have to say to defend yourself, we don’t listen to someone guilty of a crime.
- _ph_ 4y ago
  I am not a judge, I am not asking for a guilty verdict. Perhaps badly phrased, I was asking for a comment, a contrary viewpoint, because all that I had so far heard makes it sound as if cloudflare rather acted to late. But that might be because my source of information might not be very balanced. That is why I am asking for input.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - deleted 4y ago
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  - origin_path 4y ago
    Look at my other comment in this thread on the "drove someone to suicide" aspect. I'm totally neutral, never heard of KF before today. It does look like that's true on some level - the person in question did say to KF "remove a thread about me or I'll kill myself" and appears to have done so, but it's a more complicated story than that. The person in question was clearly a major suicide risk for a long time independent of KF. It's quite possible they'd have done so whether KF ever existed or not, as by their own telling they were totally socially isolated, had no friends, regretted how they'd spent their life, their entire existence was tied up in their internet identity, they were diagnosed with several mental disorders for which they had been taking many different drugs, and was doing a "DIY" gender transition using HRT against their own doctor's advice. The KF thread in question was mostly a record of this person's own online postings (which were all pseudonymous!). The underlying issue here seems like a really complicated and socially tricky one - how should someone respond to a demand of the form "remove evidence of my past online activity or else I'll kill myself". It's probably not specific to KF. Theoretically archive.org could face the exact same situation.

by _ph_ 4y ago

DuskStar 4y ago

> a forum of people for quite some time organizing online hate and harrassment which has lead to swattings, and at least one death. Can anyone dispute those accusations? Could you not also say this of Facebook, Whatsapp, YouTube and more?

threeseed 4y ago
> Could you not also say this of Facebook, Whatsapp, YouTube and more? No. Because whilst those companies are slower to respond (due to the volume of content their users generate) they are quite active at removing hateful and harassing content.
- yaddaor 4y ago
  Plus they are more like a general mirror of society where obviously there are bad actors and dark corners but not pretty much exclusively.
- yanderekko 4y ago
  >Because whilst those companies are slower to respond (due to the volume of content their users generate) they are quite active at removing hateful and harassing content. This is goalpost-shifting. Kiwifarms does moderate threats and such. It does not moderate mere "hateful and harassing content" (whatever that means, I assume a lot of "harassing" content does overlap with illegality), but if the clear no-no actions are swatting and such then clearly KF actively tries to prevent that. I fear that the implicit argument here is that in order for these efforts to be treated as "good faith", then forum owners need to not only remove clear legal threats but all sorts of speech (particularly "hate speech") that can be stochastically linked with the generation of those threats. That having sufficient moderation entails that moderators address not only actual threats but in removing a wide range of speech.
UncleMeat 4y ago
These companies are widely criticized for enabling harassment, hate, and violence. But these aren't the primary content on these websites. Forums largely dedicated to hating women and trans people are in a meaningfully different category.
- DuskStar 4y ago
  Ah, so now the goalposts have shifted to "the primary content is something I find objectionable". Why not just take down every site with that kind of content, if the "deaths linked to the site" isn't actually why you want to ban it?

_dain_ 4y ago

Yes I'll dispute them: there's no evidence for it. Swatting is not organized on KF. It's illegal, any planning of such an attack would be deleted and the users banned, and if necessary their details would be shared US law enforcement. It's not only against the rules, it's against the site culture. You're not meant to go out and do stupid offsite or IRL shit (gayops). People who do (or suggest it) are mocked and shunned. KF is a site for documenting weird people and laughing at them, not proactively harassing them. Someone swatted a congresswoman; in the call he claimed to be from KF and said his username. But there is no evidence of any planning on the site itself, and anyone who did so would be incredibly stupid given the admin has repeatedly warned that doing so would result in contacting law enforcement with the details of the perpetrator. Given that a great many people want the site gone, it seems likely this was a low-effort frame job. Like ... swatting is easy. Saying you're someone you're not is easy. Blaming it on someone you don't like is easy. You just have to call 911 and say a bunch of unhinged bullshit. Anyone, anywhere, can do it. Other claims like "KF bullies people to suicide": there is a point-by-point rebuttal to this at the top of the Keffals thread. I'd link to it, but the site is yet again down ... EDIT: here it is: >1. Near / Byuu >Byuu had a 13 page inactive thread on the forum at the time he e-mailed Null offering him money in exchange for deleting his thread. He told Null if he does not accept this offer he would commit suicide, this is extortion. Null told him he can not accept money in exchange for deleting threads and he will not be extorted. The next day a twitter user claiming to be Byuu's co-worker says that Byuu went through with the suicide. His only proof was that he claimed to have called the Japanese police and they confirmed it to him, something that the police would never do since he is not a relative of Byuu. He also posted a picture of an urn that supposedly had Byuus ashes in them as "evidence" of his death. The US government puts out a report every 6 months that includes all American citizen that have died abroad. Byuu's death was never on this list. No American citizens have died overseas within the time-frame that Byuu's death supposedly happened. The japanese government is meticulous when it comes to bureaucracy so this is unlikely to be an oversight. Byuu being dead is extremely unlikely. Something Kiwifarms users have pointed out is that Byuu has gotten in legal trouble with the Japanese police because his emulators broke their copyright law, something that is a very serious offense in Japan. >2. Chloe Sagal >Sagal's thread had been inactive for 8 months before his death. Sagal suffered from BPD and extreme mental health issues. He antagonized his room-mates to the point where they kicked him out and he became homeless. He started a GoFundMe to get help from the trans community to get back on his feet, nobody donated to this GoFundMe due to how unpopular he was in the community. Before Sagal set himself on fire in a public park he held a long speech about mental health and homelessness amongst trans people and how difficult it was for him to get help for his situation and how he was abandoned by his own community. He never mentioned Kiwifarms. >3. Julie Terryberry >Julie was a mentally ill young woman in a relationship with a man 10 years older than her that started when she was 17 and he was 27. She came from a broken home and extreme poverty. Her boyfriend was abusive and regularly beat and cut her. Kiwifarms repeatedly tried to get her help to escape the abusive situation she was in. Her boyfriend regularly threaded to leave her and she told him in return she would kill herself if he did. He left her and she killed herself. The only person who has ever blamed Kiwifarms for this death was the abusive boyfriend who has an account on the site and was an active participant in her thread

isitmadeofglass 4y ago

> Can anyone dispute those accusations? Guilty until proven innocent. And naturally we’ll take away your freedom of speech since your guilty, and also generally disregard anything you have to say to defend yourself, we don’t listen to someone guilty of a crime.

_ph_ 4y ago
I am not a judge, I am not asking for a guilty verdict. Perhaps badly phrased, I was asking for a comment, a contrary viewpoint, because all that I had so far heard makes it sound as if cloudflare rather acted to late. But that might be because my source of information might not be very balanced. That is why I am asking for input.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- origin_path 4y ago
  Look at my other comment in this thread on the "drove someone to suicide" aspect. I'm totally neutral, never heard of KF before today. It does look like that's true on some level - the person in question did say to KF "remove a thread about me or I'll kill myself" and appears to have done so, but it's a more complicated story than that. The person in question was clearly a major suicide risk for a long time independent of KF. It's quite possible they'd have done so whether KF ever existed or not, as by their own telling they were totally socially isolated, had no friends, regretted how they'd spent their life, their entire existence was tied up in their internet identity, they were diagnosed with several mental disorders for which they had been taking many different drugs, and was doing a "DIY" gender transition using HRT against their own doctor's advice. The KF thread in question was mostly a record of this person's own online postings (which were all pseudonymous!). The underlying issue here seems like a really complicated and socially tricky one - how should someone respond to a demand of the form "remove evidence of my past online activity or else I'll kill myself". It's probably not specific to KF. Theoretically archive.org could face the exact same situation.