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Let's just be honest about CloudFlare. They write these hand-wringing posts occasionally to try to justify their 'policies', but their policy is quite literally

Let's just be honest about CloudFlare. They write these hand-wringing posts occasionally to try to justify their 'policies', but their policy is quite literally 'block someone if enough people demand it on twitter'.

hackerlight 4y ago
So they are lying when they say "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"? You lack the imagination to think of alternative possibilities other than they're lying?
- nailer 4y ago
  > "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" The post directly addressed this matter.
- cft 4y ago
  I am not a Kiwifarms user, but since it's now available at the new domain (and according to CF, KF is not cooperating) the threats should still be there. I cannot find them. Can you please link those threats? Otherwise this lends me to believe that the basis of Matthew Prince's sudden reversal on his "free speech" ideals was something else, not the KF content.
  - calahad 4y ago
    The kiwi response states emphatically that they were deleted
    - cft 4y ago
      Then if the site promptly deleted allegedly unlawful content, why was it deplatformed by CF?
      - bobzimuta 4y ago
        the twitter pressure campaign
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        cft 4y ago
        It could be the threats from their more important clients https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1565026728241614849 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1565026728241614849
        dalmo3 4y ago
        Interestingly, that thread gives no indication (other than the date it was written) whether the user is mad at CloudFlare for enacting censorship or for the lack of censorship.
      - danielmalmer 4y ago
        Google exists.
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        For the same reason thieves go to prison after returning stolen goods.
        josephcsible 4y ago
        Unlawful content gets posted to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. all the time. We don't deplatform all of them just because there was a window of time in which it was posted but not yet removed.
        shadowgovt 4y ago
        Their value proposition outweighs the harm.
    - sophacles 4y ago
      - yanderekko 4y ago
        What unambiguous claim has KF lied about in the past?
      - philippejara 4y ago
        This is coming from keffals herself: https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566158393391423489 https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566158393391423489
        sophacles 4y ago
        Who is keffals and why do I care? Lots of people say lots of things, what does that have to do with the KFools being lying bullies?
        philippejara 4y ago
        my friend she is the target of the threat we are discussing here...
- zppln 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, what caused targeted threats to escalate over the last 48 hours? I'm not familiar with the site, but from what I understand they've been around for over a decade doing basically the same thing, so what caused this escalation?
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Keffals posted that she was going to Belfast, which caused the escalation of targeted threats, this time reported through a different more effective police service. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32712196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32712196
  - criley2 4y ago
    Now that the community is being used to target US politicians, I'm surprised the government hasn't stepped in.
- gsich 4y ago
  They lied before, so yes it's possible.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    How did they lie before?
- robobro 4y ago
  I've had people post phony bomb threats on my services in the past in an attempt to make my life more difficult. Do you think that I shouldn't be allowed to host services because I'm targeted by bad actors? Maybe we should shut down Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail et al. because they allow pseudonymous entities to say whatever they want until moderation addresses problematic posting (as Kiwifarms did with the bomb threat -- they deleted the post and banned the account of the user who made it). Not trying to defend Kiwifarms here but looking at this an abstracted issue. The real reason why KF was kicked off of Cloudflare is because a lot of people told Cloudflare to stop hosting it, not simply because a bad actor made a malicious post.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    > I've had people post phony bomb threats on my services in the past in an attempt to make my life more difficult. Do you think that I shouldn't be allowed to host services because I'm targeted by bad actors? > Maybe we should shut down Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail et al. because they allow pseudonymous entities to say whatever they want until moderation addresses problematic posting (as Kiwifarms did with the bomb threat -- they deleted the post and banned the account of the user who made it). This is all disanalogous. With Kiwifarms, the incitement to violence was the straw that broke the camel's back. It presumably wasn't just the incitement per se. The incitement didn't happen in a vacuum. Gmail and Yahoo don't have social mechanics that encourage this behavior. Twitter and Facebook actively ban many of the things that Kiwifarms doesn't ban, and presumably your forum does too. > Not trying to defend Kiwifarms here but looking at this an abstracted issue. Don't look at it as an asbtracted issue. Study the details, otherwise you will confuse yourself by trying to draw analogies between a hate forum with targeted harassment on the one hand, and an email provider on the other, which share nothing in common aside from them both being websites.
    - salawat 4y ago
      Fine then. Here we go. I now suggest a medium by which others may pseudonymously incite each other to violence by creating accounts on various services, and hosting credentials in a regular manner such that one can compose a system using arbitrary providers to host the same type of speech. By your logic, "Welp, there goes the internet because there are awful people." Welcome to reality. People are horrible. They have been horrible, this is not new. They will not stop being horrible. We maintain these systems in spite of them that the not horrible people may be able to achieve something they otherwise couldn't before. The problem, in my estimation, is people who are uncomfortable with other people organizing which in and of itself is the collective superpower of humanity. They would see that capability locked away, only to be approved by someone, but never taking into account that someday that ability to squelch organization may be applied to them. I'm sorry, but no. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. The cost of Liberty is vigilance eternal. You may cower in fear at the prospect. Not everyone does. If someone grabs your hair in a fight, you don't chop it off so they can't do it anymore. You adapt.
- fsociety999 4y ago
  Is there any evidence that it is true other than the word of one person? The Cloudflare post didn’t provide any examples, and it seemed to be news to the Kiwi Farms people as well. Just a few days ago Cloudflare took a pretty strong stance that they would not take action so for them to flip-flop like this in such a short period of time they must either have received: - Strong proof that there has been an escalation, and there is an immediate threat to human life. - Pressure from investors who are worried about the stock price and company’s image - Their own set of threats against Cloudflare employees for refusing to take action - Word that a large company who uses their platform was threatening to remove all traffic ($$) from Cloudflare unless they took immediate action Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof so if they can’t provide the proof, it seems far more likely they caved to social/investor pressure. I hope you see the irony of taking a big tech CEO at their word and criticizing someone else for lacking an imagination when they suggest an alternative.
  - res0nat0r 4y ago
    Yes https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1565797220531814406 https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/15657972205318144...
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    There was 2 specific threats. One bomb threat posted to KF proper, and one threat posted to 4chan from outside her apartment that referenced the KF forum on a piece of paper that was photographed. > Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof Nice sloganeering, but it's hardly an extraordinary claim. I can see the 2,000 page thread of harassment and hate directed at a single person for myself.
    - fsociety999 4y ago
      The Kiwi Farms response claims that post was deleted within minutes, and the fact that someone posted on 4chan referencing a post on another site is a ridiculous reason to ban the other site. The original justification from Cloudflare for de-platforming them which you quoted in your post was that “targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours”. That is the claim that requires evidence. Citing a post that was removed prior to that time period is not proof that threats have escalated over the last 48 hours. What evidence is there of this claim? Do you have a link you can share to the thread of harassment and hate?
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  We've been on the internet for more than six weeks, rather Don't be an apologist for these guys
- yanderekko 4y ago
  >So they are lying when they say "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"? In a word, yes. In several words, if the CEO wants to go on about due process, then he should provide it. Establish that there's an "unprecedented threat", either publicly or to Moon in private correspondence. Also I really dislike that perception of KF required to be so negative that people are severely discounting the probability that this is a false flag attack, especially given the obvious incentives of activists to do this sort of stuff. If KF started producing material indicating that TRAs were plotting to murder Joshua Moon, would anyone take it seriously?
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    > discounting the probability that this is a false flag attack There's a great kid's story (name escapes me now) about a boy who won't stop pulling the pig-tails of the girl in front of him. Every time he does, she shrieks, and the teacher reprimands him. Finally, he gets the last reprimand: if it happens again, he'll be suspended. He returns to his desk, resolved to be better, having decided he doesn't want to be suspended. With no known reason, the girl shrieks. He's sent home. Moral of the story: the line is actually further away from the edge than tricksters think it is.
wodenokoto 4y ago
There’s protecting free speech and there’s enabling harassment. Come on. Shouting “fire!” In a crowded room is not free speech and no company in their right mind should support that
- _dain_ 4y ago
  >Shouting “fire!” In a crowded room is not free speech stop using this dumb analogy. it was invented to justify prosecuting people for speaking out against the draft, and it was later denounced by the very person who coined it. in this case it's more like: a random person who never went to the theatre before shouted fire in the theatre, the person was summarily booted from the premises and banned by the theatre staff. then later on the police come by and shut down the theatre because they hosted fire-shouters.
- quazar 4y ago
  - pjc50 4y ago
    It absolutely is. It would and should get you banned from HN. In particular, people phoning in bomb threats and fake calls to the police is harrasment.
    - _vvaw 4y ago
      Bomb threats, real world harassment and fake calls to the police are strictly banned on Kiwi Farms. Making fun of transsexuals is not. Nor is the latter illegal, as much as some in this case and in this comment section wish it were.
      - sseagull 4y ago
        If legality is your bar to clear, then you should support Cloudfare as well, since what they did was perfectly legal.
ThrustVectoring 4y ago
To be fair to CloudFlare, their entire business model is dependent on the US regulatory environment and section 230 protections. If there's a credible threat from Congress along the lines of "if the internet won't self-regulate, we'll have to do it for them", it's existential to their business.
nkurz 4y ago
How do you differentiate between "if enough people demand it on Twitter" and "if our consciences demand that we act"? I agree that they don't seem to be adhering to the policy that they published just last week, but a company that didn't care passionately about free speech wouldn't have published what they did. It was clearly going to offend a lot of people on Twitter. On the other hand, they clearly don't want their company to be used to kill anyone. Even if they are wrong that there is an "emergency", it seems likely they believe that there is one. Isn't a more plausible explanation that they truly believe free speech is important, but that it's not the only deciding factor?
- ilammy 4y ago
  > How do you differentiate between "if enough people demand it on Twitter" and "if our consciences demand that we act"? Easy: for-profit organizations do not have conscience, in principle.
empathy_m 4y ago
Bottom line is that somebody (foreign governments, weev) will always take whatever a site's ToS are and repeatedly ram up right against the edges of the policy until they have extracted as many lulz as possible. This is tough to deal with if you have a conscience, or need money. What they tried at first, which is very "90s internet", is to become a bit of a troll yourself: "We are deeply committed to the principles of free speech and will never deny a customer service to our critical infrastructure based on the content of their messages. You are banned. Now, go away, lolcow." Reddit did something similar -- not with the /r/thefappening, but later on with /r/the_donald. Recall when /u/spez randomly edited comments left by contributors there, sending a clear message "we have no rules, and we will break you if we feel like it". The public apology ( https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/ ) conveys the subtext that it will happen again, there are no firm rules, and you are not welcome here. I dunno quite what the plan is here going forward. weev and null are kind of an amazing force for chaos and if you can get them defensive and off kilter, that's certainly interesting. Overall though I have found kiwifarms a helpful resource for understanding online harassment. I appreciate that members do their coordination in the open; by reading forum activity you can understanding roughly where the next massacre will happen. The community targets lulz as weakness and many of their most persistent attackers have gotten sucked in and doxxed themselves, notably in the Chris-Chan maelstrom. The community has successfully killed people and the fact that they have a centralized repository with documentation will be helpful for the next Michelle Carter style prosecution.
- shitlord 4y ago
  > by reading forum activity you can understanding roughly where the next massacre will happen What? Citation needed. Has there been a single massacre committed by any of its members?
- mgdlbp 4y ago
  Nah, Reddit's Kiwi Farms was r/jailbait. Ironically, it's SomethingAwful that is credited* with rousing the press attention required for Reddit to rescind its free speech ideal (making SA chaotically the progenitor of both 4chan and r/ShitRedditSays). There too was suspicion of raiding with questionable activity from those who wanted the ban. *I'm not sure; take anything about this internet drama with ample salt. Some primary sources are the graph of pages reachable from the references at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities#Jailbait https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti... About this, however: > We understand that this might make some of you worried about the slippery slope from banning one specific type of content to banning other types of content. We're concerned about that too, and do not make this policy change lightly or without careful deliberation. We will tirelessly defend the right to freely share information on reddit in any way we can, even if it is offensive or discusses something that may be illegal. (from Reddit's statement, https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/pmj7f/a_necessary_change_in_policy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/pmj7f/a_necessary_cha...) yea... As for generalization, a 2012 writeup on Reddit's situation cites LiveJournal's incident in 2007 and further LambdaMOO's, from 1992: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3585997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3585997
cluedos 4y ago
I feel sorry for Cloudflare's management team in having to deal with all this nonsense. What they really want to focus on is growing their business, developing new cloud-scale technologies, and serving their customers the best they can. Instead they've ended up stuck in this ridiculous online spat between two internet mobs headed by two unsavoury individuals. If I was CEO of Cloudflare, and I and my employees were being harassed, doxxed, threatened by an online mob, I'd have done the same. Never mind taking a principled stand, it's not worth being involved in the first place.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  I don't get it. Do trans people and women and all the alleged victims "are a part of that community" that they endured years of torture and talking down leading to suicide as is being alleged or do these KF people do doxing on sorts on other sites and use KF as a central place to coordinate attacks? I am not on 8chan. I can never be harassed by anyone in /b/ or whatever the bad that forums are. If I am aan active part of a community, I should not claim peer pressure and influence or should I not?
  - malepoon 4y ago
    > or do these KF people do doxing on sorts on other sites and use KF as a central place to coordinate attacks? Yep. KF is their harassment HQ where they share information about individuals they don't approve of. It's creepy.
    - salawat 4y ago
      ...That's always going to exist. It's gone by different names. It's why you aren't supposed to share personal info on the Web, btw, because anyone can get to it, now without even leaving the comfort of home. The bus has sailed on that one though.
      - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
        you know when the whole foursquare started gamification of locations, i did go into it pretty early on but some "time" later i was like "why am i doing this? for achievements?" same for the whole gamification of your facebook profile which nudges you to give more and more info about yourself... the "connect your accounts" is terrible way of keeping watertight identities. look. do you remember when "chatroom etiquette" meant not correctly answering a/s/l? because that would be creepy if the stranger found out and nasty things could happen? i mean its easy to "connect" and tie everything to one identity but then that same identity means you cannot hide. its a tradeoff and one i personally am willing to give.
matrix_overload 4y ago
They did it because of the cesspit environment inside every American corporation. If the CEO doesn't cave in under sufficient pressure, his internal political rivals will extend the guilt of association to him personally, and he will lose his position. This is a modern-day equivalent of lynch mobs that has nothing to do with reason, good intentions or due process.
- femiagbabiaka 4y ago
  Lynch mobs would kill people you know. They’d hang them from a tree or worse. This isn’t equivalent to that at all.
  - matrix_overload 4y ago
    Equivalent power structure/motivation of individual members. Agreeably less violent methods. Still not something I would call a civilized behavior.
res0nat0r 4y ago
That sounds perfectly fine to me. https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1565797220531814406 https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/15657972205318144...

hackerlight 4y ago

So they are lying when they say "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"? You lack the imagination to think of alternative possibilities other than they're lying?

nailer 4y ago
> "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" The post directly addressed this matter.
cft 4y ago
I am not a Kiwifarms user, but since it's now available at the new domain (and according to CF, KF is not cooperating) the threats should still be there. I cannot find them. Can you please link those threats? Otherwise this lends me to believe that the basis of Matthew Prince's sudden reversal on his "free speech" ideals was something else, not the KF content.
- calahad 4y ago
  The kiwi response states emphatically that they were deleted
  - cft 4y ago
    Then if the site promptly deleted allegedly unlawful content, why was it deplatformed by CF?
    - bobzimuta 4y ago
      the twitter pressure campaign
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - cft 4y ago
        It could be the threats from their more important clients https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1565026728241614849 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1565026728241614849
        dalmo3 4y ago
        Interestingly, that thread gives no indication (other than the date it was written) whether the user is mad at CloudFlare for enacting censorship or for the lack of censorship.
    - danielmalmer 4y ago
      Google exists.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      For the same reason thieves go to prison after returning stolen goods.
      - josephcsible 4y ago
        Unlawful content gets posted to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. all the time. We don't deplatform all of them just because there was a window of time in which it was posted but not yet removed.
        shadowgovt 4y ago
        Their value proposition outweighs the harm.
  - sophacles 4y ago
    - yanderekko 4y ago
      What unambiguous claim has KF lied about in the past?
    - philippejara 4y ago
      This is coming from keffals herself: https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566158393391423489 https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566158393391423489
      - sophacles 4y ago
        Who is keffals and why do I care? Lots of people say lots of things, what does that have to do with the KFools being lying bullies?
        philippejara 4y ago
        my friend she is the target of the threat we are discussing here...
zppln 4y ago
Out of curiosity, what caused targeted threats to escalate over the last 48 hours? I'm not familiar with the site, but from what I understand they've been around for over a decade doing basically the same thing, so what caused this escalation?
- pjc50 4y ago
  Keffals posted that she was going to Belfast, which caused the escalation of targeted threats, this time reported through a different more effective police service. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32712196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32712196
- criley2 4y ago
  Now that the community is being used to target US politicians, I'm surprised the government hasn't stepped in.
gsich 4y ago
They lied before, so yes it's possible.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  How did they lie before?
robobro 4y ago
I've had people post phony bomb threats on my services in the past in an attempt to make my life more difficult. Do you think that I shouldn't be allowed to host services because I'm targeted by bad actors? Maybe we should shut down Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail et al. because they allow pseudonymous entities to say whatever they want until moderation addresses problematic posting (as Kiwifarms did with the bomb threat -- they deleted the post and banned the account of the user who made it). Not trying to defend Kiwifarms here but looking at this an abstracted issue. The real reason why KF was kicked off of Cloudflare is because a lot of people told Cloudflare to stop hosting it, not simply because a bad actor made a malicious post.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  > I've had people post phony bomb threats on my services in the past in an attempt to make my life more difficult. Do you think that I shouldn't be allowed to host services because I'm targeted by bad actors? > Maybe we should shut down Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail et al. because they allow pseudonymous entities to say whatever they want until moderation addresses problematic posting (as Kiwifarms did with the bomb threat -- they deleted the post and banned the account of the user who made it). This is all disanalogous. With Kiwifarms, the incitement to violence was the straw that broke the camel's back. It presumably wasn't just the incitement per se. The incitement didn't happen in a vacuum. Gmail and Yahoo don't have social mechanics that encourage this behavior. Twitter and Facebook actively ban many of the things that Kiwifarms doesn't ban, and presumably your forum does too. > Not trying to defend Kiwifarms here but looking at this an abstracted issue. Don't look at it as an asbtracted issue. Study the details, otherwise you will confuse yourself by trying to draw analogies between a hate forum with targeted harassment on the one hand, and an email provider on the other, which share nothing in common aside from them both being websites.
  - salawat 4y ago
    Fine then. Here we go. I now suggest a medium by which others may pseudonymously incite each other to violence by creating accounts on various services, and hosting credentials in a regular manner such that one can compose a system using arbitrary providers to host the same type of speech. By your logic, "Welp, there goes the internet because there are awful people." Welcome to reality. People are horrible. They have been horrible, this is not new. They will not stop being horrible. We maintain these systems in spite of them that the not horrible people may be able to achieve something they otherwise couldn't before. The problem, in my estimation, is people who are uncomfortable with other people organizing which in and of itself is the collective superpower of humanity. They would see that capability locked away, only to be approved by someone, but never taking into account that someday that ability to squelch organization may be applied to them. I'm sorry, but no. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. The cost of Liberty is vigilance eternal. You may cower in fear at the prospect. Not everyone does. If someone grabs your hair in a fight, you don't chop it off so they can't do it anymore. You adapt.
fsociety999 4y ago
Is there any evidence that it is true other than the word of one person? The Cloudflare post didn’t provide any examples, and it seemed to be news to the Kiwi Farms people as well. Just a few days ago Cloudflare took a pretty strong stance that they would not take action so for them to flip-flop like this in such a short period of time they must either have received: - Strong proof that there has been an escalation, and there is an immediate threat to human life. - Pressure from investors who are worried about the stock price and company’s image - Their own set of threats against Cloudflare employees for refusing to take action - Word that a large company who uses their platform was threatening to remove all traffic ($$) from Cloudflare unless they took immediate action Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof so if they can’t provide the proof, it seems far more likely they caved to social/investor pressure. I hope you see the irony of taking a big tech CEO at their word and criticizing someone else for lacking an imagination when they suggest an alternative.
- res0nat0r 4y ago
  Yes https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1565797220531814406 https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/15657972205318144...
- hackerlight 4y ago
  There was 2 specific threats. One bomb threat posted to KF proper, and one threat posted to 4chan from outside her apartment that referenced the KF forum on a piece of paper that was photographed. > Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof Nice sloganeering, but it's hardly an extraordinary claim. I can see the 2,000 page thread of harassment and hate directed at a single person for myself.
  - fsociety999 4y ago
    The Kiwi Farms response claims that post was deleted within minutes, and the fact that someone posted on 4chan referencing a post on another site is a ridiculous reason to ban the other site. The original justification from Cloudflare for de-platforming them which you quoted in your post was that “targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours”. That is the claim that requires evidence. Citing a post that was removed prior to that time period is not proof that threats have escalated over the last 48 hours. What evidence is there of this claim? Do you have a link you can share to the thread of harassment and hate?
JohnHaugeland 4y ago
We've been on the internet for more than six weeks, rather Don't be an apologist for these guys
yanderekko 4y ago
>So they are lying when they say "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"? In a word, yes. In several words, if the CEO wants to go on about due process, then he should provide it. Establish that there's an "unprecedented threat", either publicly or to Moon in private correspondence. Also I really dislike that perception of KF required to be so negative that people are severely discounting the probability that this is a false flag attack, especially given the obvious incentives of activists to do this sort of stuff. If KF started producing material indicating that TRAs were plotting to murder Joshua Moon, would anyone take it seriously?
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  > discounting the probability that this is a false flag attack There's a great kid's story (name escapes me now) about a boy who won't stop pulling the pig-tails of the girl in front of him. Every time he does, she shrieks, and the teacher reprimands him. Finally, he gets the last reprimand: if it happens again, he'll be suspended. He returns to his desk, resolved to be better, having decided he doesn't want to be suspended. With no known reason, the girl shrieks. He's sent home. Moral of the story: the line is actually further away from the edge than tricksters think it is.

wodenokoto 4y ago

There’s protecting free speech and there’s enabling harassment. Come on. Shouting “fire!” In a crowded room is not free speech and no company in their right mind should support that

_dain_ 4y ago
>Shouting “fire!” In a crowded room is not free speech stop using this dumb analogy. it was invented to justify prosecuting people for speaking out against the draft, and it was later denounced by the very person who coined it. in this case it's more like: a random person who never went to the theatre before shouted fire in the theatre, the person was summarily booted from the premises and banned by the theatre staff. then later on the police come by and shut down the theatre because they hosted fire-shouters.
quazar 4y ago
- pjc50 4y ago
  It absolutely is. It would and should get you banned from HN. In particular, people phoning in bomb threats and fake calls to the police is harrasment.
  - _vvaw 4y ago
    Bomb threats, real world harassment and fake calls to the police are strictly banned on Kiwi Farms. Making fun of transsexuals is not. Nor is the latter illegal, as much as some in this case and in this comment section wish it were.
    - sseagull 4y ago
      If legality is your bar to clear, then you should support Cloudfare as well, since what they did was perfectly legal.

ThrustVectoring 4y ago

To be fair to CloudFlare, their entire business model is dependent on the US regulatory environment and section 230 protections. If there's a credible threat from Congress along the lines of "if the internet won't self-regulate, we'll have to do it for them", it's existential to their business.

nkurz 4y ago

How do you differentiate between "if enough people demand it on Twitter" and "if our consciences demand that we act"? I agree that they don't seem to be adhering to the policy that they published just last week, but a company that didn't care passionately about free speech wouldn't have published what they did. It was clearly going to offend a lot of people on Twitter. On the other hand, they clearly don't want their company to be used to kill anyone. Even if they are wrong that there is an "emergency", it seems likely they believe that there is one. Isn't a more plausible explanation that they truly believe free speech is important, but that it's not the only deciding factor?

ilammy 4y ago
> How do you differentiate between "if enough people demand it on Twitter" and "if our consciences demand that we act"? Easy: for-profit organizations do not have conscience, in principle.

empathy_m 4y ago

Bottom line is that somebody (foreign governments, weev) will always take whatever a site's ToS are and repeatedly ram up right against the edges of the policy until they have extracted as many lulz as possible. This is tough to deal with if you have a conscience, or need money. What they tried at first, which is very "90s internet", is to become a bit of a troll yourself: "We are deeply committed to the principles of free speech and will never deny a customer service to our critical infrastructure based on the content of their messages. You are banned. Now, go away, lolcow." Reddit did something similar -- not with the /r/thefappening, but later on with /r/the_donald. Recall when /u/spez randomly edited comments left by contributors there, sending a clear message "we have no rules, and we will break you if we feel like it". The public apology ( https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/ ) conveys the subtext that it will happen again, there are no firm rules, and you are not welcome here. I dunno quite what the plan is here going forward. weev and null are kind of an amazing force for chaos and if you can get them defensive and off kilter, that's certainly interesting. Overall though I have found kiwifarms a helpful resource for understanding online harassment. I appreciate that members do their coordination in the open; by reading forum activity you can understanding roughly where the next massacre will happen. The community targets lulz as weakness and many of their most persistent attackers have gotten sucked in and doxxed themselves, notably in the Chris-Chan maelstrom. The community has successfully killed people and the fact that they have a centralized repository with documentation will be helpful for the next Michelle Carter style prosecution.

shitlord 4y ago
> by reading forum activity you can understanding roughly where the next massacre will happen What? Citation needed. Has there been a single massacre committed by any of its members?
mgdlbp 4y ago
Nah, Reddit's Kiwi Farms was r/jailbait. Ironically, it's SomethingAwful that is credited* with rousing the press attention required for Reddit to rescind its free speech ideal (making SA chaotically the progenitor of both 4chan and r/ShitRedditSays). There too was suspicion of raiding with questionable activity from those who wanted the ban. *I'm not sure; take anything about this internet drama with ample salt. Some primary sources are the graph of pages reachable from the references at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities#Jailbait https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti... About this, however: > We understand that this might make some of you worried about the slippery slope from banning one specific type of content to banning other types of content. We're concerned about that too, and do not make this policy change lightly or without careful deliberation. We will tirelessly defend the right to freely share information on reddit in any way we can, even if it is offensive or discusses something that may be illegal. (from Reddit's statement, https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/pmj7f/a_necessary_change_in_policy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/pmj7f/a_necessary_cha...) yea... As for generalization, a 2012 writeup on Reddit's situation cites LiveJournal's incident in 2007 and further LambdaMOO's, from 1992: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3585997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3585997

cluedos 4y ago

I feel sorry for Cloudflare's management team in having to deal with all this nonsense. What they really want to focus on is growing their business, developing new cloud-scale technologies, and serving their customers the best they can. Instead they've ended up stuck in this ridiculous online spat between two internet mobs headed by two unsavoury individuals. If I was CEO of Cloudflare, and I and my employees were being harassed, doxxed, threatened by an online mob, I'd have done the same. Never mind taking a principled stand, it's not worth being involved in the first place.

2Gkashmiri 4y ago
I don't get it. Do trans people and women and all the alleged victims "are a part of that community" that they endured years of torture and talking down leading to suicide as is being alleged or do these KF people do doxing on sorts on other sites and use KF as a central place to coordinate attacks? I am not on 8chan. I can never be harassed by anyone in /b/ or whatever the bad that forums are. If I am aan active part of a community, I should not claim peer pressure and influence or should I not?
- malepoon 4y ago
  > or do these KF people do doxing on sorts on other sites and use KF as a central place to coordinate attacks? Yep. KF is their harassment HQ where they share information about individuals they don't approve of. It's creepy.
  - salawat 4y ago
    ...That's always going to exist. It's gone by different names. It's why you aren't supposed to share personal info on the Web, btw, because anyone can get to it, now without even leaving the comfort of home. The bus has sailed on that one though.
    - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
      you know when the whole foursquare started gamification of locations, i did go into it pretty early on but some "time" later i was like "why am i doing this? for achievements?" same for the whole gamification of your facebook profile which nudges you to give more and more info about yourself... the "connect your accounts" is terrible way of keeping watertight identities. look. do you remember when "chatroom etiquette" meant not correctly answering a/s/l? because that would be creepy if the stranger found out and nasty things could happen? i mean its easy to "connect" and tie everything to one identity but then that same identity means you cannot hide. its a tradeoff and one i personally am willing to give.

matrix_overload 4y ago

They did it because of the cesspit environment inside every American corporation. If the CEO doesn't cave in under sufficient pressure, his internal political rivals will extend the guilt of association to him personally, and he will lose his position. This is a modern-day equivalent of lynch mobs that has nothing to do with reason, good intentions or due process.

femiagbabiaka 4y ago
Lynch mobs would kill people you know. They’d hang them from a tree or worse. This isn’t equivalent to that at all.
- matrix_overload 4y ago
  Equivalent power structure/motivation of individual members. Agreeably less violent methods. Still not something I would call a civilized behavior.

res0nat0r 4y ago

That sounds perfectly fine to me. https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1565797220531814406 https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/15657972205318144...