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I think it’s interesting that so many people see the danger in a Twitter “mob” effectively running Kiwifarms off the public, visible internet, without recognis

I think it’s interesting that so many people see the danger in a Twitter “mob” effectively running Kiwifarms off the public, visible internet, without recognising that Kiwifarms themselves were a mob, with the precise goal of running people (including the recently targeted streamer) off the public visible internet too. The tactics were different, but the goal is effectively the same. The key differences are Kiwifarms is targeting individuals personally. And that they’re doing it kind of randomly, for the lulz. Whereas their main opponents here are targeting a company/community, and acting in self-defence. I know who I think is more worthy of protection.

cowtools 4y ago
I don't think the goal of KF is to de-platform individuals, but merely to discredit them by publishing demeaning information and rumors about them. So they are categorically different: one side is pro-free-speech, and the other side is pro-censorship. "Doxxing" doesn't restrict someone else's free speech. It just discourages them from conducting speech under their public identity. If you ask me, what they ought to do is "counter-dox" the KiwiForum users and give them a taste of their own medicine.
- BizarroLand 4y ago
  They published the home address of the family of a trans child and their members physically showed up in person to harass and intimidate that family for years for the crime of existing. https://old.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/x76vck/a_story_of_kiwifarms_targeting_a_child_worth_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/x76vck/...
- philosopher1234 4y ago
  Oh no you can’t post hate on the internet, that’s clearly just as bad as causing someone to commit suicide.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    KF is certainly quite hateful, racist, spiteful, etc. I just don't like when arguments devolve into unplugging each other the internet.
    - sealeck 4y ago
      If you're using the internet to try and threaten and intimidate people then yes, people will try to unplug you from it.
      - cowtools 4y ago
        You could conceivably regard almost any comment as "threatening and intimidating". On a larger, more serious scale, almost every world power uses the internet to distribute propaganda with the effect of "threatening and intimidating" other nations. There is some degree of "threatening and intimidating" in almost every discussion of politics. The US Gov might consider Wikileaks to be "threatening and intimidating". Ukraine "threatens and intimidates" Russia and vice versa. Corporations "threaten and intimidate" their workers, while unions "threaten and intimidate" corporations. I don't think that's a justified basis to atomize the entire internet, but I do think that is a basis for partisan censorship On a small scale, none of this matters because it is just internet gossip between a few deranged individuals. But this is creating a precedent for internet censorship at large.
        sealeck 4y ago
        > You could conceivably regard almost any comment as "threatening and intimidating" Of course, but I think a threat to kill someone with a bomb is unambiguously threatening and intimidating whereas "I think this person's ideology is terrible and disagree with it" is not. > The US Gov might consider Wikileaks to be "threatening and intimidating". Ukraine "threatens and intimidates" Russia and vice versa. Corporations "threaten and intimidate" their workers, while unions "threaten and intimidate" corporations. You're kind of lumping in a bunch of separate concerns - a war between Russia and Ukraine is not the same as a forum of neo Nazis and neither are whistleblowing or labour relations disputes. Could you explain why you think they're related (as I can't personally see how they are)?
- sealeck 4y ago
  > "Doxxing" doesn't restrict someone else's free speech. It just discourages them from conducting speech under their public identity. That is restricting their ability to speak freely - now they have to hide their identity for fear of physical violence!!!
  - tsol 4y ago
    So the free exchange of information is dangerous-- why stop here? There's a lot more protecting we can do
    - sealeck 4y ago
      Of course exchanging information can be dangerous - e.g. when people decide to run coordinated harrassment campaigns - it can also be a wonderful, magnificent thing (e.g. distributing academic knowledge freely) but it's not all good.
  - _vvaw 4y ago
  - byyll 4y ago
    I've seen people make the argument "free speech does not mean free from consequences". This seems to be the same case here. Free speech does not mean free from the consequence of "doxxing"
    - sealeck 4y ago
      This argument is patently ridiculous - according to this logic everyone has "free speech" in that they are able to express themselves even if they are attacked for it with physical violence.
- elcamino44 4y ago
  > "Doxxing" doesn't restrict someone else's free speech. It just discourages them from conducting speech under their public identity. Isn’t this the exact same thing? Discouraging someone from conducting speech under their public identity is taking away their audience and community. It’s not removing their ability to speak, but it’s hard to see how it’s not restricting their free speech. And in the exact same way, no one has removed the ability to speak of any KiwiFarms member (or indeed of their community as a whole). It’s simply been made harder for them to conduct their speech under their current public identity.
- phatfish 4y ago
  > So they are categorically different: one side is pro-free-speech, and the other side is pro-censorship. The "free speech" angle is an obvious smoke screen for bullying. Their "doxing" is in typical bully style, a whole forum against one person they take a dislike to. Most normal people don't want to play that game, or even have the resources to do it.
0xy 4y ago
- elcamino44 4y ago
  Providing information about how to source drugs (and even encouraging people to take them) is not the same as drug trafficking. Erowid is not the Silk Road. As for the second allegation, I haven’t seen any substantiation. But I do know that in some circles any discussion in any context (eg: school) about sexual identity with teenagers has come to be considered “grooming” so I’m a bit suspect about the choice of words.
  - 0xy 4y ago
    - artifact_44 4y ago
      I Keffals broke the law, then that is a matter for law enforcement. It's not the purview of an internet hate mob acting as judge, jury, and executioner. Every defense I've seen of kiwifarms is exactly like yours. Some insinuations about how "distasteful" an individual is, and then an implied "Can you really blame them for going after him/her?"
      - verisimilitudes 4y ago
        If Kiwifarms broke the law, then that is a matter for law enforcement. It's not the purview of an internet cartel and hate mob acting as judge, jury, and executioner. Every defense I've seen of censorship is exactly like yours. Some insinuations about how "distasteful" a group is, and then an implied "Can you really blame them for going after it?"
        drewbug01 4y ago
        The comparison here is clever, certainly. But the scope matters: KF relentlessly attacks individuals, to the point of suicide. The anti-KF campaign only seeks to take KF offline by making it too expensive for hosting providers. Nobody is trying to SWAT the guy behind KF. It is a huge, consequential difference.
fluoridation 4y ago
- vintermann 4y ago
  That's a half-truth at best. There's a big part of the site dedicated to covering e.g. animal abusers. The site owner seems to rarely promote that kind of content to the front page though, unless they try to get the site shut down.
  - fluoridation 4y ago
    If anything I'd say that's in favor of them.
- throwaway9271 4y ago
  - fluoridation 4y ago
    Uh, no. I'm responding to the interpretation that the KW users generally want the people they follow to stop doing the things that make them worthy of being followed. ("Followed" here meaning "being talked about and having the things they do documented".) That's just not true, by-and-large.
rowanG077 4y ago
It's not about who is more worthy of protection. And viewing it that way is incredibly dangerous. It's about what cost you are willing to pay for that protection. Ex: we have a pretty clear innocent until proven guilty justice system. This means there will always be people who are guilty who will not be punished. We can make that less likely by just throwing every suspect into jail. This protects the general public better then the current system. But most will agree that the cost of this is too high. So we don't do it. That doesn't mean we don't want the protect the public from criminals. The people who are against cloudflare banning kiwifarms aren't debating for who to protect. They are debating about the cost of that protection.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > They are debating about the cost of that protection. Sure, but the parent post is asking you to also consider the cost of not acting.
  - rowanG077 4y ago
    That's obvious and I'd hoped my example with the justice system illustrated that.
- cywick 4y ago
  > Ex: we have a pretty clear innocent until proven guilty justice system. The high bar of "innocent until proven guilty" (and "beyond a reasonable doubt") only applies to criminal cases, though, and not to civil ones. The present situation is much more analogous to a civil case where you have to weigh the interests of two parties (i.e., Kiwifarms and their victims) against each other.
  - koheripbal 4y ago
    Even civil cases require material preponderance of evidence. Online mobs need only confirmation bias.
  - rowanG077 4y ago
    It was an example to show it's way too simplistic to view the situation as only "kiwifarms bad". The example cannot be mapped to the situation as you are trying to do. And it wasn't intented as an analogy. Besides the two parties are not kiwifarms and their victims. The people who are against it make arguments about free speech and whether platforms should be responsible for the content hosted on them. If it was as simple as just kiwifarms vs the victims it would be an open and shut case.
ranger_danger 4y ago
you couldn't be more wrong
phantom_of_cato 4y ago
> without recognising that Kiwifarms themselves were a mob That's seems like a false equivalence to me. They don't have nearly as much as power and influence as the Twitter mobs. Which entire major websites do you think the KF "mob" can get off the internet by political/social pressure? Also, if there's no avoiding the existence of mobs in the current political climate, it's better to allow all sides to have their own. > I know who I think is more worthy of protection. People with backing from almost all social major institutions, corporations, and academia?
- crayboff 4y ago
  Who do you think has more power? A group of anonymous internet "trolls" attacking and harassing an individual or the individual who can't do anything to stop it? Freedom of speech may protect against government consequences but it doesn't protect against social consequences.
  - phantom_of_cato 4y ago
    > A group of anonymous internet "trolls" attacking and harassing an individual or the individual who can't do anything to stop it? The comparison isn't to the people who are being harassed randomly. It's between two "mobs", the Twitter one and the KF one. > Freedom of speech may protect against government consequences but it doesn't protect against social consequences. The legal concept doesn't, but the ideal (and the social norm) does.
  - throwawayacc2 4y ago
    > Freedom of speech may protect against government consequences but it doesn't protect against social consequences. Whenever I see this line, all I can think is this is the exact same reasoning used by racists and homophobes and religious fanatics in the past. Maybe it’s legal for you to be gay now, but we don’t want to welcome you in our community. Maybe it’s legal for black people to buy houses in our neighbourhoods now that doesn’t mean we have to be welcoming. Maybe we can’t kill you know for being an atheist but we’ll banish you from the community. The reason modern societies are functionally republics ( I am counting constitutional monarchies here as well ) and not direct democracies is to protect against this very phenomenon of changing societal whims. If you subscribe to this line of thinking, remember one thing. Societal normal are constantly changing. Just as acceptance of homosexuality waxed and waned across time, just as acceptance of foreigners waxed and waned, so to it will in the future. There will come one day, maybe in our life time, maybe far into the future, when all your values will be turned upside down and it will be people like you who will find themselves persecuted. And when that happens, just tell to yourself “Freedom of speech may protect against government consequences but it doesn't protect against social consequences”

cowtools 4y ago

I don't think the goal of KF is to de-platform individuals, but merely to discredit them by publishing demeaning information and rumors about them. So they are categorically different: one side is pro-free-speech, and the other side is pro-censorship. "Doxxing" doesn't restrict someone else's free speech. It just discourages them from conducting speech under their public identity. If you ask me, what they ought to do is "counter-dox" the KiwiForum users and give them a taste of their own medicine.

BizarroLand 4y ago
They published the home address of the family of a trans child and their members physically showed up in person to harass and intimidate that family for years for the crime of existing. https://old.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/x76vck/a_story_of_kiwifarms_targeting_a_child_worth_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/x76vck/...
philosopher1234 4y ago
Oh no you can’t post hate on the internet, that’s clearly just as bad as causing someone to commit suicide.
- cowtools 4y ago
  KF is certainly quite hateful, racist, spiteful, etc. I just don't like when arguments devolve into unplugging each other the internet.
  - sealeck 4y ago
    If you're using the internet to try and threaten and intimidate people then yes, people will try to unplug you from it.
    - cowtools 4y ago
      You could conceivably regard almost any comment as "threatening and intimidating". On a larger, more serious scale, almost every world power uses the internet to distribute propaganda with the effect of "threatening and intimidating" other nations. There is some degree of "threatening and intimidating" in almost every discussion of politics. The US Gov might consider Wikileaks to be "threatening and intimidating". Ukraine "threatens and intimidates" Russia and vice versa. Corporations "threaten and intimidate" their workers, while unions "threaten and intimidate" corporations. I don't think that's a justified basis to atomize the entire internet, but I do think that is a basis for partisan censorship On a small scale, none of this matters because it is just internet gossip between a few deranged individuals. But this is creating a precedent for internet censorship at large.
      - sealeck 4y ago
        > You could conceivably regard almost any comment as "threatening and intimidating" Of course, but I think a threat to kill someone with a bomb is unambiguously threatening and intimidating whereas "I think this person's ideology is terrible and disagree with it" is not. > The US Gov might consider Wikileaks to be "threatening and intimidating". Ukraine "threatens and intimidates" Russia and vice versa. Corporations "threaten and intimidate" their workers, while unions "threaten and intimidate" corporations. You're kind of lumping in a bunch of separate concerns - a war between Russia and Ukraine is not the same as a forum of neo Nazis and neither are whistleblowing or labour relations disputes. Could you explain why you think they're related (as I can't personally see how they are)?
sealeck 4y ago
> "Doxxing" doesn't restrict someone else's free speech. It just discourages them from conducting speech under their public identity. That is restricting their ability to speak freely - now they have to hide their identity for fear of physical violence!!!
- tsol 4y ago
  So the free exchange of information is dangerous-- why stop here? There's a lot more protecting we can do
  - sealeck 4y ago
    Of course exchanging information can be dangerous - e.g. when people decide to run coordinated harrassment campaigns - it can also be a wonderful, magnificent thing (e.g. distributing academic knowledge freely) but it's not all good.
- _vvaw 4y ago
- byyll 4y ago
  I've seen people make the argument "free speech does not mean free from consequences". This seems to be the same case here. Free speech does not mean free from the consequence of "doxxing"
  - sealeck 4y ago
    This argument is patently ridiculous - according to this logic everyone has "free speech" in that they are able to express themselves even if they are attacked for it with physical violence.
elcamino44 4y ago
> "Doxxing" doesn't restrict someone else's free speech. It just discourages them from conducting speech under their public identity. Isn’t this the exact same thing? Discouraging someone from conducting speech under their public identity is taking away their audience and community. It’s not removing their ability to speak, but it’s hard to see how it’s not restricting their free speech. And in the exact same way, no one has removed the ability to speak of any KiwiFarms member (or indeed of their community as a whole). It’s simply been made harder for them to conduct their speech under their current public identity.
phatfish 4y ago
> So they are categorically different: one side is pro-free-speech, and the other side is pro-censorship. The "free speech" angle is an obvious smoke screen for bullying. Their "doxing" is in typical bully style, a whole forum against one person they take a dislike to. Most normal people don't want to play that game, or even have the resources to do it.

0xy 4y ago

elcamino44 4y ago
Providing information about how to source drugs (and even encouraging people to take them) is not the same as drug trafficking. Erowid is not the Silk Road. As for the second allegation, I haven’t seen any substantiation. But I do know that in some circles any discussion in any context (eg: school) about sexual identity with teenagers has come to be considered “grooming” so I’m a bit suspect about the choice of words.
- 0xy 4y ago
  - artifact_44 4y ago
    I Keffals broke the law, then that is a matter for law enforcement. It's not the purview of an internet hate mob acting as judge, jury, and executioner. Every defense I've seen of kiwifarms is exactly like yours. Some insinuations about how "distasteful" an individual is, and then an implied "Can you really blame them for going after him/her?"
    - verisimilitudes 4y ago
      If Kiwifarms broke the law, then that is a matter for law enforcement. It's not the purview of an internet cartel and hate mob acting as judge, jury, and executioner. Every defense I've seen of censorship is exactly like yours. Some insinuations about how "distasteful" a group is, and then an implied "Can you really blame them for going after it?"
      - drewbug01 4y ago
        The comparison here is clever, certainly. But the scope matters: KF relentlessly attacks individuals, to the point of suicide. The anti-KF campaign only seeks to take KF offline by making it too expensive for hosting providers. Nobody is trying to SWAT the guy behind KF. It is a huge, consequential difference.

fluoridation 4y ago

vintermann 4y ago
That's a half-truth at best. There's a big part of the site dedicated to covering e.g. animal abusers. The site owner seems to rarely promote that kind of content to the front page though, unless they try to get the site shut down.
- fluoridation 4y ago
  If anything I'd say that's in favor of them.
throwaway9271 4y ago
- fluoridation 4y ago
  Uh, no. I'm responding to the interpretation that the KW users generally want the people they follow to stop doing the things that make them worthy of being followed. ("Followed" here meaning "being talked about and having the things they do documented".) That's just not true, by-and-large.

rowanG077 4y ago

It's not about who is more worthy of protection. And viewing it that way is incredibly dangerous. It's about what cost you are willing to pay for that protection. Ex: we have a pretty clear innocent until proven guilty justice system. This means there will always be people who are guilty who will not be punished. We can make that less likely by just throwing every suspect into jail. This protects the general public better then the current system. But most will agree that the cost of this is too high. So we don't do it. That doesn't mean we don't want the protect the public from criminals. The people who are against cloudflare banning kiwifarms aren't debating for who to protect. They are debating about the cost of that protection.

ceejayoz 4y ago
> They are debating about the cost of that protection. Sure, but the parent post is asking you to also consider the cost of not acting.
- rowanG077 4y ago
  That's obvious and I'd hoped my example with the justice system illustrated that.
cywick 4y ago
> Ex: we have a pretty clear innocent until proven guilty justice system. The high bar of "innocent until proven guilty" (and "beyond a reasonable doubt") only applies to criminal cases, though, and not to civil ones. The present situation is much more analogous to a civil case where you have to weigh the interests of two parties (i.e., Kiwifarms and their victims) against each other.
- koheripbal 4y ago
  Even civil cases require material preponderance of evidence. Online mobs need only confirmation bias.
- rowanG077 4y ago
  It was an example to show it's way too simplistic to view the situation as only "kiwifarms bad". The example cannot be mapped to the situation as you are trying to do. And it wasn't intented as an analogy. Besides the two parties are not kiwifarms and their victims. The people who are against it make arguments about free speech and whether platforms should be responsible for the content hosted on them. If it was as simple as just kiwifarms vs the victims it would be an open and shut case.

ranger_danger 4y ago

you couldn't be more wrong

phantom_of_cato 4y ago

> without recognising that Kiwifarms themselves were a mob That's seems like a false equivalence to me. They don't have nearly as much as power and influence as the Twitter mobs. Which entire major websites do you think the KF "mob" can get off the internet by political/social pressure? Also, if there's no avoiding the existence of mobs in the current political climate, it's better to allow all sides to have their own. > I know who I think is more worthy of protection. People with backing from almost all social major institutions, corporations, and academia?

crayboff 4y ago
Who do you think has more power? A group of anonymous internet "trolls" attacking and harassing an individual or the individual who can't do anything to stop it? Freedom of speech may protect against government consequences but it doesn't protect against social consequences.
- phantom_of_cato 4y ago
  > A group of anonymous internet "trolls" attacking and harassing an individual or the individual who can't do anything to stop it? The comparison isn't to the people who are being harassed randomly. It's between two "mobs", the Twitter one and the KF one. > Freedom of speech may protect against government consequences but it doesn't protect against social consequences. The legal concept doesn't, but the ideal (and the social norm) does.
- throwawayacc2 4y ago
  > Freedom of speech may protect against government consequences but it doesn't protect against social consequences. Whenever I see this line, all I can think is this is the exact same reasoning used by racists and homophobes and religious fanatics in the past. Maybe it’s legal for you to be gay now, but we don’t want to welcome you in our community. Maybe it’s legal for black people to buy houses in our neighbourhoods now that doesn’t mean we have to be welcoming. Maybe we can’t kill you know for being an atheist but we’ll banish you from the community. The reason modern societies are functionally republics ( I am counting constitutional monarchies here as well ) and not direct democracies is to protect against this very phenomenon of changing societal whims. If you subscribe to this line of thinking, remember one thing. Societal normal are constantly changing. Just as acceptance of homosexuality waxed and waned across time, just as acceptance of foreigners waxed and waned, so to it will in the future. There will come one day, maybe in our life time, maybe far into the future, when all your values will be turned upside down and it will be people like you who will find themselves persecuted. And when that happens, just tell to yourself “Freedom of speech may protect against government consequences but it doesn't protect against social consequences”