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Well I guess there is now limited ways for someone to evaluate for themselves on whether KF was posting horrific content without significant moderation. Guess w

Well I guess there is now limited ways for someone to evaluate for themselves on whether KF was posting horrific content without significant moderation. Guess we at least have Taylor Lorenz to tell us exactly what is going on here in a full and unbiased way. Someone here at HN at least posted this link which told more of the story than I have seen anywhere else. Also search the HN archives (for now at least it seems) for interesting discussions on KF prior to these latest events. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32720162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32720162 Sorry but this feels like book burning to me.

mazdayasna 4y ago
Thanks for spreading this some more. Funny enough, I got that link from reading an archived version of Keffals' thread on KF while trying to get a bead on the situation myself. At best, KF threads are a simple public record of a person's online presence, (that they themselves posted publicly initially) content which I believe should absolutely be online. At worst, the popularity of threads about trans/autistic people on KF amounts to an incentive to provoke the "lolcow" into providing more "milk", which I would say is definitely a form of harassment. Perhaps this will lead to a successor site with a similar "mission" that consists only of what would be a thread OP on KF, without the thousands of pages that follow wherein people say the n-word as many times as they can.
- dmix 4y ago
  There’s no way there won’t be another site of the terminally online obsessively documenting the terminally online. There is clearly massive demand for content about people like Chris Chan and Keffals, and these people have a way of constantly generating new controversy and attention (this obviously doesn’t justify harassment or IRL threats). If the drug war taught us anything it’s that demand can’t be squashed by playing wack-a-mole and then putting your fingers in your ears until it pops back up again next week.
  - richbell 4y ago
    There are already dozens of sites like this today. Many are uncreatively named offshoots of Kiwi Farms.
    - sunsetMurk 4y ago
      have any links?
badRNG 4y ago
It feels deeply disingenuous to claim that all KF is doing is "cataloging someone's online life" while refusing to talk about constant SWAT-ing, the cheering of their victims committing suicide, and the constant IRL harassment they organize against their victims. After Byuu, the emulator dev of bsnes, higan and more was harassed into suicide [1], harassment almost exclusively organized on KF, I've lost patience for weak defenses of a site that causes threats to folk's lives. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814
- parkingrift 4y ago
  The problem is you’re not solving anything with these antics. KF still exists and will continue to exist. It’s just book burning for the sake of feeling better with absolutely nothing to show for it. In this case not even the satisfaction of seeing a burned book. People desperately want the world to be different, and it isn’t. It isn’t, and it won’t change massively within your singular life. So you can grandstand and congratulate yourselves on “winning” with the IA and CF decisions, but KF is still online and all you’ve done is make more people aware of their existence. Furthermore, this idea of banning objectionable content ultimately ends in tyranny as the only way for you to possibly succeed on your mission is to add fundamental filters to the internet. No thanks.
  - badRNG 4y ago
    The idea that we must provide a platform for people to actively organize harassment campaigns designed to kill people in order to avoid "tyranny" is beyond absurd.
    - devwastaken 4y ago
      Nobody said that.
      - colejohnson66 4y ago
        By claiming censorship, it's implied that they deserve a platform, and to not have that taken away from them. You can't censor someone without a platform.
ShowalkKama 4y ago
They still have an hidden service online [0], an ipv6 only mirror [1] and they are working on restoring it "as normal" [2]. In any case they stated a backup of the site will be publicly available if they give up [3]. I find interesting they took the archived copy down instead of keeping it publicly available since it was the only way to prove what kiwifarms has done instead of having as only source "trust me bro". Either way I don't think it matters since nobody actually bothered to link or prove any of their claims so I don't think it really changes much. [0]: http://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedzyqd.onion/ http://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedz... [1]: https://kiwifarms.top https://kiwifarms.top [2]: https://t.me/kiwifarms/29?embed=1 https://t.me/kiwifarms/29?embed=1 [3]: https://t.me/kiwifarms/28?embed=1 https://t.me/kiwifarms/28?embed=1
- throwawayindeed 4y ago
  And as someone else said: One can also use a Tor proxy (tor2web), there is a list here: https://gist.github.com/adulau/5caf188bb1f63263bf7ac00c4a19f710 https://gist.github.com/adulau/5caf188bb1f63263bf7ac00c4a19f... For example, appending ".moe" to the ".onion" in that URL: https://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedzyqd.onion.moe/ https://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificed... Which also allows it to be archived (as the mainstream archive sites don't recognise Tor hidden services): https://web.archive.org/web/20220905153904/https://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedzyqd.onion.moe/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220905153904/https://uquusqsaa...
bastawhiz 4y ago
Is it ethical to keep snapshots of pages doxing people? Or dumps of bank account numbers? There's no way to both preserve that content publicly and also protect the victims.
- _9xrb 4y ago
  There were no dumps of bank account numbers. As far as I saw, Kiwi Farms users posted only publicly-available info about thread subjects. In my opinion, certain categories of public yet personally-identifying information should be covered by US law in a way similar to HIPAA. However, that is not currently the case. Also, info like someone's phone number and home address are only a click away once you have their full name and approximate age/geographic location, at least for people haven't taken extraordinary steps to limit discoverability on Spokeo or White Pages. People post full names and locations to Twitter all the time. They call it "unmasking" when it's someone the ruling consensus dislikes, while they know the info will be used to look up the "dox." This is not Twitter or Kiwi Farms' fault. It is the result of flaws in our legal system which allow sites like Spokeo and White pages to operate.
  - bastawhiz 4y ago
    It's easily verifiable that bank details were shared on KF. It's also easily verifiable to see that non-public information about folks was posted, especially when real details were posted about folks commonly known by their pseudonyms online. Whether it's legal or not is unimportant. My question is for the internet archive: is it ethical for them to knowingly rehost dumps of PII? Just because it's public doesn't mean it's right for them to treat it like any other page. The goal of the KF users is to harass by putting that information out there: if IA rehosts that intentionally, they're making an active choice to further the goals of KF users.
    - _9xrb 4y ago
      >It's easily verifiable that bank details were shared on KF. I see you've backed off from "bank account numbers" to "bank account details," perhaps after Googling the same Twitter screenshots I just found in an attempt to verify your claim. Those screenshots show a user describing a hacked bank account's balance and recent purchases. That's pretty bad; hacking into bank accounts is very illegal. The individual who broke into the account very likely committed a crime. Regardless, the screenshots don't show any credentials or account numbers. I'm not sure if posting someone's bank balance is illegal, but I'm guessing it isn't; maybe it depends on how it was obtained... don't know, not a lawyer. Of course, the screenshot is totally unverifiable now that KF is wiped from the Internet Archives, which is the point of the submitted link.
shitlord 4y ago
Fun fact: Taylor Lorenz's Twitter account is also excluded from the internet archive.
- andywood 4y ago
  Another fun fact: Taylor's uncle is Roger Macdonald, apparently a fairly prominent operator within the internet archive: https://archive.org/details/roger-macdonald-tv-archive https://archive.org/details/roger-macdonald-tv-archive https://dicktracyonline.substack.com/p/who-is-taylor-lorenz https://dicktracyonline.substack.com/p/who-is-taylor-lorenz
  - ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    That makes more sense.
- scifibestfi 4y ago
  Why?
a_shovel 4y ago
From the article: > "Short version: [Kiwi Farms is] A very edgy forum ... where users cruelly gossip and post public information on niche online oddities (lolcows) that thrive on the attention KF gives them." [Emphasis mine.] This piece of egregious victim-blaming should have been your cue to ignore this article. If it wasn't, the victim-blaming in the rest of the article (such as "She probably genuinely enjoys it. Or she has a death drive, a martyr complex.") should have cued you in. There's a lot more people who were targeted by KF than Keffals. The majority were ordinary people who were part of a minority and had just enough of a platform to be on their radar (or were related to/had a similar name to someone who was). "They put themselves out there, online", but that doesn't mean they "have no one to blame but themself" for the harassment and death threats they received. They didn't do anything wrong. The fault lies fully on the users of Kiwi Farms and those who created and supported a community that allowed them to organize and coordinate their harassment.
- voidpointercast 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

mazdayasna 4y ago

Thanks for spreading this some more. Funny enough, I got that link from reading an archived version of Keffals' thread on KF while trying to get a bead on the situation myself. At best, KF threads are a simple public record of a person's online presence, (that they themselves posted publicly initially) content which I believe should absolutely be online. At worst, the popularity of threads about trans/autistic people on KF amounts to an incentive to provoke the "lolcow" into providing more "milk", which I would say is definitely a form of harassment. Perhaps this will lead to a successor site with a similar "mission" that consists only of what would be a thread OP on KF, without the thousands of pages that follow wherein people say the n-word as many times as they can.

dmix 4y ago
There’s no way there won’t be another site of the terminally online obsessively documenting the terminally online. There is clearly massive demand for content about people like Chris Chan and Keffals, and these people have a way of constantly generating new controversy and attention (this obviously doesn’t justify harassment or IRL threats). If the drug war taught us anything it’s that demand can’t be squashed by playing wack-a-mole and then putting your fingers in your ears until it pops back up again next week.
- richbell 4y ago
  There are already dozens of sites like this today. Many are uncreatively named offshoots of Kiwi Farms.
  - sunsetMurk 4y ago
    have any links?

badRNG 4y ago

It feels deeply disingenuous to claim that all KF is doing is "cataloging someone's online life" while refusing to talk about constant SWAT-ing, the cheering of their victims committing suicide, and the constant IRL harassment they organize against their victims. After Byuu, the emulator dev of bsnes, higan and more was harassed into suicide [1], harassment almost exclusively organized on KF, I've lost patience for weak defenses of a site that causes threats to folk's lives. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814

parkingrift 4y ago
The problem is you’re not solving anything with these antics. KF still exists and will continue to exist. It’s just book burning for the sake of feeling better with absolutely nothing to show for it. In this case not even the satisfaction of seeing a burned book. People desperately want the world to be different, and it isn’t. It isn’t, and it won’t change massively within your singular life. So you can grandstand and congratulate yourselves on “winning” with the IA and CF decisions, but KF is still online and all you’ve done is make more people aware of their existence. Furthermore, this idea of banning objectionable content ultimately ends in tyranny as the only way for you to possibly succeed on your mission is to add fundamental filters to the internet. No thanks.
- badRNG 4y ago
  The idea that we must provide a platform for people to actively organize harassment campaigns designed to kill people in order to avoid "tyranny" is beyond absurd.
  - devwastaken 4y ago
    Nobody said that.
    - colejohnson66 4y ago
      By claiming censorship, it's implied that they deserve a platform, and to not have that taken away from them. You can't censor someone without a platform.

ShowalkKama 4y ago

They still have an hidden service online [0], an ipv6 only mirror [1] and they are working on restoring it "as normal" [2]. In any case they stated a backup of the site will be publicly available if they give up [3]. I find interesting they took the archived copy down instead of keeping it publicly available since it was the only way to prove what kiwifarms has done instead of having as only source "trust me bro". Either way I don't think it matters since nobody actually bothered to link or prove any of their claims so I don't think it really changes much. [0]: http://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedzyqd.onion/ http://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedz... [1]: https://kiwifarms.top https://kiwifarms.top [2]: https://t.me/kiwifarms/29?embed=1 https://t.me/kiwifarms/29?embed=1 [3]: https://t.me/kiwifarms/28?embed=1 https://t.me/kiwifarms/28?embed=1

throwawayindeed 4y ago
And as someone else said: One can also use a Tor proxy (tor2web), there is a list here: https://gist.github.com/adulau/5caf188bb1f63263bf7ac00c4a19f710 https://gist.github.com/adulau/5caf188bb1f63263bf7ac00c4a19f... For example, appending ".moe" to the ".onion" in that URL: https://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedzyqd.onion.moe/ https://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificed... Which also allows it to be archived (as the mainstream archive sites don't recognise Tor hidden services): https://web.archive.org/web/20220905153904/https://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedzyqd.onion.moe/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220905153904/https://uquusqsaa...

bastawhiz 4y ago

Is it ethical to keep snapshots of pages doxing people? Or dumps of bank account numbers? There's no way to both preserve that content publicly and also protect the victims.

_9xrb 4y ago
There were no dumps of bank account numbers. As far as I saw, Kiwi Farms users posted only publicly-available info about thread subjects. In my opinion, certain categories of public yet personally-identifying information should be covered by US law in a way similar to HIPAA. However, that is not currently the case. Also, info like someone's phone number and home address are only a click away once you have their full name and approximate age/geographic location, at least for people haven't taken extraordinary steps to limit discoverability on Spokeo or White Pages. People post full names and locations to Twitter all the time. They call it "unmasking" when it's someone the ruling consensus dislikes, while they know the info will be used to look up the "dox." This is not Twitter or Kiwi Farms' fault. It is the result of flaws in our legal system which allow sites like Spokeo and White pages to operate.
- bastawhiz 4y ago
  It's easily verifiable that bank details were shared on KF. It's also easily verifiable to see that non-public information about folks was posted, especially when real details were posted about folks commonly known by their pseudonyms online. Whether it's legal or not is unimportant. My question is for the internet archive: is it ethical for them to knowingly rehost dumps of PII? Just because it's public doesn't mean it's right for them to treat it like any other page. The goal of the KF users is to harass by putting that information out there: if IA rehosts that intentionally, they're making an active choice to further the goals of KF users.
  - _9xrb 4y ago
    >It's easily verifiable that bank details were shared on KF. I see you've backed off from "bank account numbers" to "bank account details," perhaps after Googling the same Twitter screenshots I just found in an attempt to verify your claim. Those screenshots show a user describing a hacked bank account's balance and recent purchases. That's pretty bad; hacking into bank accounts is very illegal. The individual who broke into the account very likely committed a crime. Regardless, the screenshots don't show any credentials or account numbers. I'm not sure if posting someone's bank balance is illegal, but I'm guessing it isn't; maybe it depends on how it was obtained... don't know, not a lawyer. Of course, the screenshot is totally unverifiable now that KF is wiped from the Internet Archives, which is the point of the submitted link.

shitlord 4y ago

Fun fact: Taylor Lorenz's Twitter account is also excluded from the internet archive.

andywood 4y ago
Another fun fact: Taylor's uncle is Roger Macdonald, apparently a fairly prominent operator within the internet archive: https://archive.org/details/roger-macdonald-tv-archive https://archive.org/details/roger-macdonald-tv-archive https://dicktracyonline.substack.com/p/who-is-taylor-lorenz https://dicktracyonline.substack.com/p/who-is-taylor-lorenz
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  That makes more sense.
scifibestfi 4y ago
Why?

a_shovel 4y ago

From the article: > "Short version: [Kiwi Farms is] A very edgy forum ... where users cruelly gossip and post public information on niche online oddities (lolcows) that thrive on the attention KF gives them." [Emphasis mine.] This piece of egregious victim-blaming should have been your cue to ignore this article. If it wasn't, the victim-blaming in the rest of the article (such as "She probably genuinely enjoys it. Or she has a death drive, a martyr complex.") should have cued you in. There's a lot more people who were targeted by KF than Keffals. The majority were ordinary people who were part of a minority and had just enough of a platform to be on their radar (or were related to/had a similar name to someone who was). "They put themselves out there, online", but that doesn't mean they "have no one to blame but themself" for the harassment and death threats they received. They didn't do anything wrong. The fault lies fully on the users of Kiwi Farms and those who created and supported a community that allowed them to organize and coordinate their harassment.

voidpointercast 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]