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This is ridiculous and has been a cascade of awful precedents for the Internet. This is legitimately an extremely bad sign of what's to come for the Internet's

This is ridiculous and has been a cascade of awful precedents for the Internet. This is legitimately an extremely bad sign of what's to come for the Internet's future.

cauthon 4y ago
Popular endorsement of harassment to the point of suicide seems like a worse sign, personally. When it comes to threats to freedom of expression, I'm much more concerned about the religious right's abuse of government authority to censor education, ban books, and suppress the vote, than I am about private institutions taking steps to protect human life.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Private institutions have every right to stand behind whoever they choose. As a user, I have no intention of using Cloudflare because (even as a queer individual) I don't feel safe using a platform that would censor me if enough people were mad enough. I would much rather choose a platform that stands by their TOS as-written, instead of stepping in to arbitrate on a case-by-case basis. Cloudflare has ever right to open Pandora's Box, but I want nothing to do with it. Much like Namecheap's fumble earlier this year, the way they handled this situation showed their true colors, and made it evident that I don't want to ever do business with them.
  - krapp 4y ago
    OK, but there is literally no business in the universe that won't drop you as a customer if you cause them enough trouble.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      You'd think that, but historically this has only encouraged niche businesses to crop up catering to that crowd. Look at Epik (or Vultr) for example, businesses that exist solely to counter this kind of threat. Yes, they still reserve the right to remove abusive users, but that's defined by legal statutes and technical limitations rather than 'icky feelings'. Both services have a surprisingly solid track-record servicing the roughest of customers. Failing all that, KiwiFarms doesn't need a business to stay afloat. The endgame for all of these so-called 'abusive platforms' is retreating to I2P/Tor, or another internet-adjacent network. To stop KiwiFarms from existing, you need to literally silence the people using it, not just shut down their clearnet website. Websites don't harass people, people do.
      - krapp 4y ago
        >You'd think that, but historically this has only encouraged niche businesses to crop up catering to that crowd. Look at Epik (or Vultr) for example, businesses that exist solely to counter this kind of threat. And Cloudflare had no problem hosting Kiwi Farms and Daily Stormer until they crossed a line. Cloudflare's history doesn't exactly paint it as bleeding-heart liberal who can't deal with 'icky feelings.' I'm sure Epik and Vultr have their lines as well, it just happens that none of their customers have crossed it yet. >To stop KiwiFarms from existing, you need to literally silence the people using it, not just shut down their clearnet website. Slowing them down is still a valid goal. >Websites don't harass people, people do. Guns don't kill people, people do. Except people with guns can kill a lot more people faster. That's why guns are a thing. Whether or not you want to be a free speech absolutist, you have to concede that the platform and its reach matters. If it didn't, no one would be up in arms about deplatforming. Yes, it's literally and technically true that a website can't harass people, but having a platform meant to organize and facilitate harassment is a force multiplier for the people doing said embarrassment. Without the website, the people couldn't harass as well as they could with it. And the size, reach and convenience of the network matters in that regard, just as the capacity, rate of fire and caliber of a gun matters, even if it is a person pulling the trigger.
        smoldesu 4y ago
        > I'm sure Epik and Vultr have their lines as well, it just happens that none of their customers have crossed it yet. Indeed they do, which makes me a happy customer. Knowing how inflammatory their other customers are, it brings me great comfort in knowing that their free speech is honored as much as mine. If either of them pulled a "Cloudflare moment" at the same scale, I'd probably start looking for other hosting providers. > Slowing them down is still a valid goal. ...did we do that, though? The past 2 months have done nothing but put KiwiFarms in the spotlight. Instead of privately petitioning Cloudflare to change their policy, we drew battle lines and took to Twitter. All KiwiFarms ever wanted was attention, and we gave them more attention than they could have ever hoped for. Do people seriously think they're going to struggle to bounce back after an attack like this? Giving online organizations a platform has been a huge mistake in the past, like treating "Anonymous" as anything other than the default name for 4chan posters. > you have to concede that the platform and its reach matters Absolutely. That's why I'm afraid that attacking the platform now will cause it to become harder to attack. It's already increased it's reach, the recent media hubbub has ensured that everyone knows about KiwiFarms. I guess the Streisand effect is lost on modern internet users... > Without the website, the people couldn't harass as well as they could with it. Right. Now imagine how much worse things would get if there wasn't a website, but a Tor hidden service. Or a closed Matrix homeserver. Or an IPFS bulletin board. The sky is the limit, and I'd go as far as to argue that they were the least harmless on the surface web. Only time will tell, though. > And the size, reach and convenience of the network matters in that regard, just as the capacity, rate of fire and caliber of a gun matters Well... no. This is something that has been proven time and time again in America; banning certain types of guns doesn't work. Banning an AK doesn't stop someone from chopping their Glock 17 and clearing a room at half the price. Gun legislation doesn't correlate with a reduction in firearm violence. The capacity, rate of fire and caliber never mattered, just the fact that the gun existed in the first place. If we're not going to ban guns outright, what's the point in picking-and-choosing which ones are-and-aren't perceived as harmful? Obviously it's a reductive argument, but the same thing goes for free speech. By choosing to draw the line somewhere, we're giving other people the go-ahead to draw different lines. We're giving world governments the tools they need to oppress LGBT users. We're drawing the blueprints for a new era of information suppression, and nobody seems to care since both sides have started beating the "muh terrorism" and "think of the children!" drums, respectively. And when has that ended well for internet freedom in the past?
  - tssva 4y ago
    "I would much rather choose a platform that stands by their TOS as-written" Terminating services to Kiwi Farms was completely in line with Cloudflare's TOS as-written.
- adamrezich 4y ago
  - superchroma 4y ago
    Sure, words can't hurt you, but coordinated harassment campaigns can, and, for the mentally feeble, like CWC, words can coax you, over enough time, to act in your worst interests.
    - adamrezich 4y ago
      - thunderfork 4y ago
        Do you think the parents whose child was on the cover of Nat Geo count as a "public internet persona"? Do you think it's right that people should be forced to go into hiding and avoid something as basic as a magazine interview for fear of becoming a target on these sites? What you're advocating is complete self-censorship for people with views these websites consider targets.
        superchroma 4y ago
        Right. Also, we're glossing over the fact that it's not just bullying, but swatting, threatening phone calls, contacting employers to seek termination, email spam, sending unpaid-for pizzas, etc. It's not just words.
        salawat 4y ago
        So the logical response is going to service providers and business partners to get them deplatformed? >It's not just bullying Which is already able to be dealt with as harassment, and is defanged in this case in the judicial system most likely under assumption of risk doctrine as a public figure. >It's swatting Already illegal, and has metadata trail through which filing a false report can be dealt with. >threatening phone calls Jesus. So block or screen them. Should I go running to the police because I'm harassed by marketers all the time? Furthermore, LE has the metadata to deal with that too, and if they tell you they don't, they're lying. >contacting employers to seek termination Twitter does a lot of that too. Sucks when the shoe is on the other foot, doesn't it? >email spam Should be a capital offense with death penalty viable, but alas, it's email. Ignore it. Or have fun with it, see how big your collection can get. Start seeing how many times things get repeated. Start doing data analysis on it. >sending unpaid-for pizzas Correct response: I'm sorry, but I did not order any. I have a bit of a problem with people online trying to troll me. Here's my contact info, here's a codeword/auth mechanism that can be used to authenticate something came from me in the future. Done. Would recommend actually vetting the establishment in question, and if you know you are bringing this to your locality, be responsible and proactively front-run it by going and talking to local places that deliver to you. >It's not just words. It totally is. In point of fact, freedom to communicate without someone else deplatforming you is so important, we call it freedom of speech. Nobody else is forcing the person in question to continue feeding the trolls, and it is a poignant point of fact that if they are disturbed by the observations these people are making, it may be worth taking a moment to reorient around their own actions, and to be a bit more self-conscious on what it is they do that may be setting off others in such a way as it does. But no, continue to regale us all about how there is no other more reasonable, local, and less harmful way to deal with something like this than blasting the Internet, and encouraging the weaponization of the infrastructure at the core of technological advancement for the last 50 or so years.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  A website was bullied off the internet because it showcased the horrible activities of horrible people. I'm far more concerned that a handful of Twitter users can memoryhole an entire community.
  - flying-sheep 4y ago
    You say that as if the people running KF didn’t know what the site was for. And a publicly known reason for that website’s existence is because bullies need a place to coordinate harassment. Having the power to shut that place and therefore behavior down but choosing not to means they were complicit. Deplatforming works, the influx of new bullies shrinks when you make their place less public.
    - im3w1l 4y ago
      The removal in question is an archive. A read-only snapshot cannot be used to coordinate anything. But it can be used to view the documentation they have collected. Therefore it would seem that this particular removal is motivated by erasing the documentation and performing a cover up.
    - usednet 4y ago
      That was unequivocally not a publicly known reason. There were thousands upon thousands of “lolcows” documented in kiwifarms and the sites culture strongly emphasized not “disturbing the grazing lolcows” or “taking things IRL.” That much was obvious for me as somebody who only visited the site a few times a year out of curiosity.
      - a_shovel 4y ago
        That may be obvious to you. Have you tried asking some of the people documented there what they think about the site's culture, and how well it discourages harassment against them?
        usednet 4y ago
- issung 4y ago
  How many times have people been ridiculed to the point of suicide by their peers on Facebook, Twitter, etc? Should those sites be taken offline too?
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    If the idea is to take down sites where doxxing and harassment occur, these should be the first targets.
    - jstarfish 4y ago
      KF has, at most, 3 deaths debatably attributable to them. A dozen children died because of the Tide Pod challenge-- and that's just one campaign. We could talk about planking falls, cinnamon poisonings and more if you like. That's before we get to the rise in runaways and child exploitation directly attributable to the "legitimate" platforms. Kids are being solicited on Roblox FFS. How does a community of bullies deliberately targeting (internet celebrities) have a lower kill count and merit higher priority than a handful of individuals conspicuously encouraging ignorant children to engage in lethal acitivities? This is clearly a crusade.
- parkingrift 4y ago

This is ridiculous and has been a cascade of awful precedents for the Internet. This is legitimately an extremely bad sign of what's to come for the Internet's future.

cauthon 4y ago

Popular endorsement of harassment to the point of suicide seems like a worse sign, personally. When it comes to threats to freedom of expression, I'm much more concerned about the religious right's abuse of government authority to censor education, ban books, and suppress the vote, than I am about private institutions taking steps to protect human life.

smoldesu 4y ago
Private institutions have every right to stand behind whoever they choose. As a user, I have no intention of using Cloudflare because (even as a queer individual) I don't feel safe using a platform that would censor me if enough people were mad enough. I would much rather choose a platform that stands by their TOS as-written, instead of stepping in to arbitrate on a case-by-case basis. Cloudflare has ever right to open Pandora's Box, but I want nothing to do with it. Much like Namecheap's fumble earlier this year, the way they handled this situation showed their true colors, and made it evident that I don't want to ever do business with them.
- krapp 4y ago
  OK, but there is literally no business in the universe that won't drop you as a customer if you cause them enough trouble.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    You'd think that, but historically this has only encouraged niche businesses to crop up catering to that crowd. Look at Epik (or Vultr) for example, businesses that exist solely to counter this kind of threat. Yes, they still reserve the right to remove abusive users, but that's defined by legal statutes and technical limitations rather than 'icky feelings'. Both services have a surprisingly solid track-record servicing the roughest of customers. Failing all that, KiwiFarms doesn't need a business to stay afloat. The endgame for all of these so-called 'abusive platforms' is retreating to I2P/Tor, or another internet-adjacent network. To stop KiwiFarms from existing, you need to literally silence the people using it, not just shut down their clearnet website. Websites don't harass people, people do.
    - krapp 4y ago
      >You'd think that, but historically this has only encouraged niche businesses to crop up catering to that crowd. Look at Epik (or Vultr) for example, businesses that exist solely to counter this kind of threat. And Cloudflare had no problem hosting Kiwi Farms and Daily Stormer until they crossed a line. Cloudflare's history doesn't exactly paint it as bleeding-heart liberal who can't deal with 'icky feelings.' I'm sure Epik and Vultr have their lines as well, it just happens that none of their customers have crossed it yet. >To stop KiwiFarms from existing, you need to literally silence the people using it, not just shut down their clearnet website. Slowing them down is still a valid goal. >Websites don't harass people, people do. Guns don't kill people, people do. Except people with guns can kill a lot more people faster. That's why guns are a thing. Whether or not you want to be a free speech absolutist, you have to concede that the platform and its reach matters. If it didn't, no one would be up in arms about deplatforming. Yes, it's literally and technically true that a website can't harass people, but having a platform meant to organize and facilitate harassment is a force multiplier for the people doing said embarrassment. Without the website, the people couldn't harass as well as they could with it. And the size, reach and convenience of the network matters in that regard, just as the capacity, rate of fire and caliber of a gun matters, even if it is a person pulling the trigger.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        > I'm sure Epik and Vultr have their lines as well, it just happens that none of their customers have crossed it yet. Indeed they do, which makes me a happy customer. Knowing how inflammatory their other customers are, it brings me great comfort in knowing that their free speech is honored as much as mine. If either of them pulled a "Cloudflare moment" at the same scale, I'd probably start looking for other hosting providers. > Slowing them down is still a valid goal. ...did we do that, though? The past 2 months have done nothing but put KiwiFarms in the spotlight. Instead of privately petitioning Cloudflare to change their policy, we drew battle lines and took to Twitter. All KiwiFarms ever wanted was attention, and we gave them more attention than they could have ever hoped for. Do people seriously think they're going to struggle to bounce back after an attack like this? Giving online organizations a platform has been a huge mistake in the past, like treating "Anonymous" as anything other than the default name for 4chan posters. > you have to concede that the platform and its reach matters Absolutely. That's why I'm afraid that attacking the platform now will cause it to become harder to attack. It's already increased it's reach, the recent media hubbub has ensured that everyone knows about KiwiFarms. I guess the Streisand effect is lost on modern internet users... > Without the website, the people couldn't harass as well as they could with it. Right. Now imagine how much worse things would get if there wasn't a website, but a Tor hidden service. Or a closed Matrix homeserver. Or an IPFS bulletin board. The sky is the limit, and I'd go as far as to argue that they were the least harmless on the surface web. Only time will tell, though. > And the size, reach and convenience of the network matters in that regard, just as the capacity, rate of fire and caliber of a gun matters Well... no. This is something that has been proven time and time again in America; banning certain types of guns doesn't work. Banning an AK doesn't stop someone from chopping their Glock 17 and clearing a room at half the price. Gun legislation doesn't correlate with a reduction in firearm violence. The capacity, rate of fire and caliber never mattered, just the fact that the gun existed in the first place. If we're not going to ban guns outright, what's the point in picking-and-choosing which ones are-and-aren't perceived as harmful? Obviously it's a reductive argument, but the same thing goes for free speech. By choosing to draw the line somewhere, we're giving other people the go-ahead to draw different lines. We're giving world governments the tools they need to oppress LGBT users. We're drawing the blueprints for a new era of information suppression, and nobody seems to care since both sides have started beating the "muh terrorism" and "think of the children!" drums, respectively. And when has that ended well for internet freedom in the past?
- tssva 4y ago
  "I would much rather choose a platform that stands by their TOS as-written" Terminating services to Kiwi Farms was completely in line with Cloudflare's TOS as-written.
adamrezich 4y ago
- superchroma 4y ago
  Sure, words can't hurt you, but coordinated harassment campaigns can, and, for the mentally feeble, like CWC, words can coax you, over enough time, to act in your worst interests.
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    - thunderfork 4y ago
      Do you think the parents whose child was on the cover of Nat Geo count as a "public internet persona"? Do you think it's right that people should be forced to go into hiding and avoid something as basic as a magazine interview for fear of becoming a target on these sites? What you're advocating is complete self-censorship for people with views these websites consider targets.
      - superchroma 4y ago
        Right. Also, we're glossing over the fact that it's not just bullying, but swatting, threatening phone calls, contacting employers to seek termination, email spam, sending unpaid-for pizzas, etc. It's not just words.
        salawat 4y ago
        So the logical response is going to service providers and business partners to get them deplatformed? >It's not just bullying Which is already able to be dealt with as harassment, and is defanged in this case in the judicial system most likely under assumption of risk doctrine as a public figure. >It's swatting Already illegal, and has metadata trail through which filing a false report can be dealt with. >threatening phone calls Jesus. So block or screen them. Should I go running to the police because I'm harassed by marketers all the time? Furthermore, LE has the metadata to deal with that too, and if they tell you they don't, they're lying. >contacting employers to seek termination Twitter does a lot of that too. Sucks when the shoe is on the other foot, doesn't it? >email spam Should be a capital offense with death penalty viable, but alas, it's email. Ignore it. Or have fun with it, see how big your collection can get. Start seeing how many times things get repeated. Start doing data analysis on it. >sending unpaid-for pizzas Correct response: I'm sorry, but I did not order any. I have a bit of a problem with people online trying to troll me. Here's my contact info, here's a codeword/auth mechanism that can be used to authenticate something came from me in the future. Done. Would recommend actually vetting the establishment in question, and if you know you are bringing this to your locality, be responsible and proactively front-run it by going and talking to local places that deliver to you. >It's not just words. It totally is. In point of fact, freedom to communicate without someone else deplatforming you is so important, we call it freedom of speech. Nobody else is forcing the person in question to continue feeding the trolls, and it is a poignant point of fact that if they are disturbed by the observations these people are making, it may be worth taking a moment to reorient around their own actions, and to be a bit more self-conscious on what it is they do that may be setting off others in such a way as it does. But no, continue to regale us all about how there is no other more reasonable, local, and less harmful way to deal with something like this than blasting the Internet, and encouraging the weaponization of the infrastructure at the core of technological advancement for the last 50 or so years.
ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
A website was bullied off the internet because it showcased the horrible activities of horrible people. I'm far more concerned that a handful of Twitter users can memoryhole an entire community.
- flying-sheep 4y ago
  You say that as if the people running KF didn’t know what the site was for. And a publicly known reason for that website’s existence is because bullies need a place to coordinate harassment. Having the power to shut that place and therefore behavior down but choosing not to means they were complicit. Deplatforming works, the influx of new bullies shrinks when you make their place less public.
  - im3w1l 4y ago
    The removal in question is an archive. A read-only snapshot cannot be used to coordinate anything. But it can be used to view the documentation they have collected. Therefore it would seem that this particular removal is motivated by erasing the documentation and performing a cover up.
  - usednet 4y ago
    That was unequivocally not a publicly known reason. There were thousands upon thousands of “lolcows” documented in kiwifarms and the sites culture strongly emphasized not “disturbing the grazing lolcows” or “taking things IRL.” That much was obvious for me as somebody who only visited the site a few times a year out of curiosity.
    - a_shovel 4y ago
      That may be obvious to you. Have you tried asking some of the people documented there what they think about the site's culture, and how well it discourages harassment against them?
      - usednet 4y ago
issung 4y ago
How many times have people been ridiculed to the point of suicide by their peers on Facebook, Twitter, etc? Should those sites be taken offline too?
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  If the idea is to take down sites where doxxing and harassment occur, these should be the first targets.
  - jstarfish 4y ago
    KF has, at most, 3 deaths debatably attributable to them. A dozen children died because of the Tide Pod challenge-- and that's just one campaign. We could talk about planking falls, cinnamon poisonings and more if you like. That's before we get to the rise in runaways and child exploitation directly attributable to the "legitimate" platforms. Kids are being solicited on Roblox FFS. How does a community of bullies deliberately targeting (internet celebrities) have a lower kill count and merit higher priority than a handful of individuals conspicuously encouraging ignorant children to engage in lethal acitivities? This is clearly a crusade.
parkingrift 4y ago