8 ms·

DDoS’ing is quite different from just turning your back on someone. It’s more akin to following someone around with a megaphone and shouting over everything the

by mikl 4y ago

DDoS’ing is quite different from just turning your back on someone. It’s more akin to following someone around with a megaphone and shouting over everything they say so no one can hear them. Sure, you might celebrate when that’s done to someone you dislike, but a lot less appealing if you imagine it done to a cause you agree with.

akira2501 4y ago
Also, DDoS is a crime. Saying racist things isn't. We shouldn't blur the line here.
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  Companies are not prosecutors of crimes. They're entities acting in a society. The whole point of my comment is that there is already a clear line and by removing Kiwi Farms from circulation this way, rather than by government edict, we are observing it.
- borski 4y ago
  Under current First Amendment jurisprudence, hate speech can only be criminalized when it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group. Kiwi Farms absolutely incited imminent criminal activity (harassment, among other things) and made lots of specific threats against specifically targeted people and groups. This is a false equivalence.
  - akira2501 4y ago
    > when it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group Aren't these already crimes? Isn't the "hate crime" charge just a way to enhance the sentencing for someone thus convicted? And isn't the original charge required for this enhancement? Thus, mere "hate speech" in and of itself cannot be a crime? > Kiwi Farms absolutely incited imminent criminal activity According to you and some twitter threads. I'm not comfortable accepting this prima facie, though. > This is a false equivalence. Does Section 230 not apply to Kiwi Farms? Is Kiwi Farms actually guilty of crimes here, or is it specific forum users? If so, why are there no efforts to go after the users but just go directly to banning the entire site?
    - borski 4y ago
      1. Yes, those are already crimes. You were making the claim that hate speech is never illegal. I was clarifying that there are caveats that take what would otherwise be free speech and turn them into actual crimes. 2. You don’t have to accept it prima facie. Go read the forums, they’re still up on Tor. Fair warning, I have, and they’re horrid. 3. Not when the mods and owners of KF are engaging in the very same. I do not know if law enforcement is looking into individual users or KF itself, but that’s not what we’re discussing. We are discussing the rights of a private company to not give a platform to a group of people they believe are committing or engaging in potentially criminal activity. CF doesn’t have to prove it. If CF is wrong, KF is welcome to find support elsewhere. Good luck.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        borski 4y ago
        Huh? I didn’t say hate speech was illegal. I said hate speech when it progressed to inciting crime was illegal. (I edited the parent comment to include the word “never” to clarify my position)
  - dmatech 4y ago
    Inciting harassment might be someone telling everyone to order pizzas and send them to an address. It wouldn't be posting a picture of someone's house with no context. While that might facilitate harassment, it doesn't actually incite it.
    - borski 4y ago
      Agreed. And? KF actively encouraged and supported the former.
  - not_a_shill 4y ago
    Can you provide any proof for your claims about advocating for imminent criminal activity? Ie something that would pass the Brandenburg test?
    - borski 4y ago
      I’m not interested in going to KF again because I don’t want to read all their horrid shit (too much of that the past few days), but you are welcome to, while it is still up on Tor. Moon was a frequent participant, and KF’s stated goal was to abuse and dox and threaten people and their families and their friends until they drive someone to commit suicide.
      - not_a_shill 4y ago
        borski 4y ago
        Have you read through it? I have. I don’t want to do it again. Sounds like we’re not going to come to a conclusion here, which is fine.
        Akronymus 4y ago
        It is impossible to prove a negative. So the burden of proof is on the accusers, in this case.
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        To some extent, but "I haven't even looked" is a very tepid defense.
        Akronymus 4y ago
        Well, I crawled a LOT of pages when it was up. Havent found any examples. And as the claims are usually about it being widespread, it should be very easy to provide at least one example.
- forty 4y ago
  That probably depends a lot of the country. Both are illegal here in France (for racism, if it's insulting or hateful in particular)
  - anon291 4y ago
  - tsol 4y ago
    If that counts, there are a bunch of reddit subs that are dedicated to hating Muslims, fat people, Indians, the religious(which as a Muslim is just full of casual racism and Muslim hate). No one seems to care. I don't know why we don't get these responses for minority issues. Racism has been a problem on the internet since the beginning and there is never such a push as these issues.
tedivm 4y ago
You have no idea how ironic this comment is considering the history of Cloudflare. I remember going to a talk by their CEO at Defcon years ago when Scientology was being DDoSed and he was bragging about providing CDN services to the Anonymous hacker groups that were behind the DDoS. Cloudflare didn't seem to care about free speech for the Scientologists. There was even a huge discussion about whether performing a DDoS was itself a version of free speech or not (this was assuming people were volunteering their computers to join the botnet, as was the case with the scientology protests). It's funny you mention the megaphone thing too, as that is an example of free speech. People do this regularly. The person with the megaphone has the free speech right to shout over the person next to him- at least in public. > Sure, you might celebrate when that’s done to someone you dislike, but a lot less appealing if you imagine it done to a cause you agree with. The slippery slop fallacy is called a fallacy for a reason. What kills me though is that people on this site aren't nearly as upset about Cloudflare taking down Switter and other sex worker websites as they are about Kiwifarms. It makes it hard to take the free speech argument seriously when the people making it only care about it when the sites they visit get taken down.
- philippejara 4y ago
  Not everyone who disagrees with you is implicitly morally corrupt or a member of some interest grooup, I have no clue what switter is and i'm sure many others don't either, kiwifarms has been on the media for the entirety of the last week.
- mikl 4y ago
  In public, sure, but a website is explicitly private property, so the megaphone-DDoS move would in this case be trespassing and harassment. And the slippery slope is a real problem, no matter how much people call it a fallacy. As we’ve seen countless times in history, the distance from viewing some group as less deserving of freedom than you, and actively persecuting them is short.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Something needs to replace it - the closest is the canary I think - as long as X hasn’t happened I am not threatened. As long as the student I know is doing worse than me hasn’t been put on academic probation, I am fine. Canaries are everywhere and real.
ivraatiems 4y ago
I am not saying people should be allowed to DDoS anyone, including Kiwi Farms, from a legality perspective. Illegal things are still illegal. I am saying that companies which provide protection services shouldn't extend them to Kiwi Farms because they are societally not worth protecting.
- OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  Thats right - the fire departments should just stop protecting the houses of people you dislike so folks can burn them down in peace.
  - ivraatiems 4y ago
    Fire departments are government agencies. I don't know how to be clearer about this: Government doesn't get to discriminate based on speech. Private entities do.
    - OrangeMonkey 4y ago
      - ivraatiems 4y ago
        But you can't have it both ways. You can think firefighters should be a public entity run for the public good, or you can think firefighters ought to be private entities, and therefore that they should have discretion about who they provide service to. It'd be nonsense to say "they're private, except when they do things I don't like." In the US, the way we apply this to private corporations is by calling them "utilities" and subjecting them to stringent regulation. So do you support Cloudflare and other such companies being recognized as public utilities, like phone or electricity? Because that's what you're asking for, and honestly, I might take you up on it, even if this is the price. You just may not like what other regulations they might end up subjected to.
        4y ago
jakelazaroff 4y ago
Cloudflare and DDoS-Guard aren’t themselves DDoSing KF, though. They are just turning their backs. If KF wanted their continued protection, they could have stopped stalking and harassing people. But they didn’t, so here we are. And of course I wouldn’t be happy if a website I support were DDoSed. It’s perfectly consistent to celebrate when a murderer gets convicted and be outraged when an innocent person does. There’s a difference between good and bad things!
- OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  - ranger_danger 4y ago
- mikl 4y ago
  No one’s saying they are. But Cloudflare enjoys a virtual monopoly on affordable and reliable DDoS protection, and that is a very unhealthy thing for the open Internet. If you operate an online business and your comptetitors can somehow convince Cloudflare to drop you, they can have you taken offline, permanently, by paying a pittance to have you DDoS'ed.
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    I don’t think you can fairly call them a monopoly. It took me like three minutes to come up with seven different competitors offering DDoS protection. And that’s just top-of-mind companies, without even doing research into anyone I might not know offhand. - https://www.fastly.com/products/ddos-mitigation https://www.fastly.com/products/ddos-mitigation - https://aws.amazon.com/shield/ https://aws.amazon.com/shield/ - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ddos-protection/ddos-protection-overview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ddos-protection/ddos-... - https://www.akamai.com/solutions/security/ddos-protection https://www.akamai.com/solutions/security/ddos-protection - https://cloud.google.com/armor https://cloud.google.com/armor - https://www.ibm.com/cloud/cloud-internet-services https://www.ibm.com/cloud/cloud-internet-services - https://www.rackspace.com/response/rackspace-ddos-mitigation-services https://www.rackspace.com/response/rackspace-ddos-mitigation...

by mikl 4y ago

akira2501 4y ago

Also, DDoS is a crime. Saying racist things isn't. We shouldn't blur the line here.

ivraatiems 4y ago
Companies are not prosecutors of crimes. They're entities acting in a society. The whole point of my comment is that there is already a clear line and by removing Kiwi Farms from circulation this way, rather than by government edict, we are observing it.
borski 4y ago
Under current First Amendment jurisprudence, hate speech can only be criminalized when it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group. Kiwi Farms absolutely incited imminent criminal activity (harassment, among other things) and made lots of specific threats against specifically targeted people and groups. This is a false equivalence.
- akira2501 4y ago
  > when it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group Aren't these already crimes? Isn't the "hate crime" charge just a way to enhance the sentencing for someone thus convicted? And isn't the original charge required for this enhancement? Thus, mere "hate speech" in and of itself cannot be a crime? > Kiwi Farms absolutely incited imminent criminal activity According to you and some twitter threads. I'm not comfortable accepting this prima facie, though. > This is a false equivalence. Does Section 230 not apply to Kiwi Farms? Is Kiwi Farms actually guilty of crimes here, or is it specific forum users? If so, why are there no efforts to go after the users but just go directly to banning the entire site?
  - borski 4y ago
    1. Yes, those are already crimes. You were making the claim that hate speech is never illegal. I was clarifying that there are caveats that take what would otherwise be free speech and turn them into actual crimes. 2. You don’t have to accept it prima facie. Go read the forums, they’re still up on Tor. Fair warning, I have, and they’re horrid. 3. Not when the mods and owners of KF are engaging in the very same. I do not know if law enforcement is looking into individual users or KF itself, but that’s not what we’re discussing. We are discussing the rights of a private company to not give a platform to a group of people they believe are committing or engaging in potentially criminal activity. CF doesn’t have to prove it. If CF is wrong, KF is welcome to find support elsewhere. Good luck.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      - borski 4y ago
        Huh? I didn’t say hate speech was illegal. I said hate speech when it progressed to inciting crime was illegal. (I edited the parent comment to include the word “never” to clarify my position)
- dmatech 4y ago
  Inciting harassment might be someone telling everyone to order pizzas and send them to an address. It wouldn't be posting a picture of someone's house with no context. While that might facilitate harassment, it doesn't actually incite it.
  - borski 4y ago
    Agreed. And? KF actively encouraged and supported the former.
- not_a_shill 4y ago
  Can you provide any proof for your claims about advocating for imminent criminal activity? Ie something that would pass the Brandenburg test?
  - borski 4y ago
    I’m not interested in going to KF again because I don’t want to read all their horrid shit (too much of that the past few days), but you are welcome to, while it is still up on Tor. Moon was a frequent participant, and KF’s stated goal was to abuse and dox and threaten people and their families and their friends until they drive someone to commit suicide.
    - not_a_shill 4y ago
      - borski 4y ago
        Have you read through it? I have. I don’t want to do it again. Sounds like we’re not going to come to a conclusion here, which is fine.
        Akronymus 4y ago
        It is impossible to prove a negative. So the burden of proof is on the accusers, in this case.
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        To some extent, but "I haven't even looked" is a very tepid defense.
        Akronymus 4y ago
        Well, I crawled a LOT of pages when it was up. Havent found any examples. And as the claims are usually about it being widespread, it should be very easy to provide at least one example.
forty 4y ago
That probably depends a lot of the country. Both are illegal here in France (for racism, if it's insulting or hateful in particular)
- anon291 4y ago
- tsol 4y ago
  If that counts, there are a bunch of reddit subs that are dedicated to hating Muslims, fat people, Indians, the religious(which as a Muslim is just full of casual racism and Muslim hate). No one seems to care. I don't know why we don't get these responses for minority issues. Racism has been a problem on the internet since the beginning and there is never such a push as these issues.

tedivm 4y ago

You have no idea how ironic this comment is considering the history of Cloudflare. I remember going to a talk by their CEO at Defcon years ago when Scientology was being DDoSed and he was bragging about providing CDN services to the Anonymous hacker groups that were behind the DDoS. Cloudflare didn't seem to care about free speech for the Scientologists. There was even a huge discussion about whether performing a DDoS was itself a version of free speech or not (this was assuming people were volunteering their computers to join the botnet, as was the case with the scientology protests). It's funny you mention the megaphone thing too, as that is an example of free speech. People do this regularly. The person with the megaphone has the free speech right to shout over the person next to him- at least in public. > Sure, you might celebrate when that’s done to someone you dislike, but a lot less appealing if you imagine it done to a cause you agree with. The slippery slop fallacy is called a fallacy for a reason. What kills me though is that people on this site aren't nearly as upset about Cloudflare taking down Switter and other sex worker websites as they are about Kiwifarms. It makes it hard to take the free speech argument seriously when the people making it only care about it when the sites they visit get taken down.

philippejara 4y ago
Not everyone who disagrees with you is implicitly morally corrupt or a member of some interest grooup, I have no clue what switter is and i'm sure many others don't either, kiwifarms has been on the media for the entirety of the last week.
mikl 4y ago
In public, sure, but a website is explicitly private property, so the megaphone-DDoS move would in this case be trespassing and harassment. And the slippery slope is a real problem, no matter how much people call it a fallacy. As we’ve seen countless times in history, the distance from viewing some group as less deserving of freedom than you, and actively persecuting them is short.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Something needs to replace it - the closest is the canary I think - as long as X hasn’t happened I am not threatened. As long as the student I know is doing worse than me hasn’t been put on academic probation, I am fine. Canaries are everywhere and real.

ivraatiems 4y ago

I am not saying people should be allowed to DDoS anyone, including Kiwi Farms, from a legality perspective. Illegal things are still illegal. I am saying that companies which provide protection services shouldn't extend them to Kiwi Farms because they are societally not worth protecting.

OrangeMonkey 4y ago
Thats right - the fire departments should just stop protecting the houses of people you dislike so folks can burn them down in peace.
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  Fire departments are government agencies. I don't know how to be clearer about this: Government doesn't get to discriminate based on speech. Private entities do.
  - OrangeMonkey 4y ago
    - ivraatiems 4y ago
      But you can't have it both ways. You can think firefighters should be a public entity run for the public good, or you can think firefighters ought to be private entities, and therefore that they should have discretion about who they provide service to. It'd be nonsense to say "they're private, except when they do things I don't like." In the US, the way we apply this to private corporations is by calling them "utilities" and subjecting them to stringent regulation. So do you support Cloudflare and other such companies being recognized as public utilities, like phone or electricity? Because that's what you're asking for, and honestly, I might take you up on it, even if this is the price. You just may not like what other regulations they might end up subjected to.
      - 4y ago

jakelazaroff 4y ago

Cloudflare and DDoS-Guard aren’t themselves DDoSing KF, though. They are just turning their backs. If KF wanted their continued protection, they could have stopped stalking and harassing people. But they didn’t, so here we are. And of course I wouldn’t be happy if a website I support were DDoSed. It’s perfectly consistent to celebrate when a murderer gets convicted and be outraged when an innocent person does. There’s a difference between good and bad things!

OrangeMonkey 4y ago
- ranger_danger 4y ago
mikl 4y ago
No one’s saying they are. But Cloudflare enjoys a virtual monopoly on affordable and reliable DDoS protection, and that is a very unhealthy thing for the open Internet. If you operate an online business and your comptetitors can somehow convince Cloudflare to drop you, they can have you taken offline, permanently, by paying a pittance to have you DDoS'ed.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  I don’t think you can fairly call them a monopoly. It took me like three minutes to come up with seven different competitors offering DDoS protection. And that’s just top-of-mind companies, without even doing research into anyone I might not know offhand. - https://www.fastly.com/products/ddos-mitigation https://www.fastly.com/products/ddos-mitigation - https://aws.amazon.com/shield/ https://aws.amazon.com/shield/ - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ddos-protection/ddos-protection-overview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ddos-protection/ddos-... - https://www.akamai.com/solutions/security/ddos-protection https://www.akamai.com/solutions/security/ddos-protection - https://cloud.google.com/armor https://cloud.google.com/armor - https://www.ibm.com/cloud/cloud-internet-services https://www.ibm.com/cloud/cloud-internet-services - https://www.rackspace.com/response/rackspace-ddos-mitigation-services https://www.rackspace.com/response/rackspace-ddos-mitigation...