6 ms·

Looking into Cloudflare's claims about Kiwi Farms

39 points by notlukesky 4y ago

unknownaccount 4y ago
- l3uwin 4y ago
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    What does well known history mean when the problematic posts are quickly deleted and someone got KiwiFarms removed from the Internet Archive? Frankly everyone seems to get their take from the same circulated screenshot and whatever the social pressure campaign claims to be true.
  - suumcuique 4y ago
    That well known history was also well known when the CEO of Cloudflare wrote a lengthy blogpost[0] defending his decision to not ban KiwiFarms 4 days before writing a second blogpost reversing that decision[1]. So either something dramatically changed in those 4 days (and as the TFA says, the evidence available to the public is pretty weak) or the more likely explanation: Matthew Prince was just looking for an excuse to submit to the pressure campaign like he did with The Daily Stormer and 8chan. That's his right as CEO of a private company of course and I can't say I'm sorry to see KF go but honestly it's getting a little embarrassing how he writes these lofty blogposts about his principled stance upholding free speech only to capitulate completely days later. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-approach/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a... [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked
ALittleLight 4y ago
So far as I know three suicides are popularly thought to be connected to KiwiFarms. The only one I've looked into at all, the suicide of the emulator developer "near", seems pretty flimsy to me. For one, the KiwiFarms thread on near, prior to his suicide, is pretty tame. There aren't that many comments and the comments that are there aren't so bad - at worst they accuse Near of pedophilia because he likes/defends drawn illustrations of child pornography. Near's real identity is not known so the thread doesn't even stalk him or intrude into his real life. Near emailed KiwiFarms farms asking for the thread to be removed and said he would commit suicide if it wasn't but would pay if the thread was removed. The site owner was researching whether it would be legal to accept money when Near pupportedly killed himself - 12 hours after the initial exchange. It's also not clear that any suicide actually took place. As I mentioned, no real identity is known so there is also no real official confirmation. All of the "confirmation" that appears to exist is an anonymous person on Twitter who is acting on behalf of someone who talked to the Japanese police - and apparently the police confirmed the suicide. A thread on KiwiFarms investigates the idea that Near faked his suicide, showing that Japan's vital statistics, a government page that reports, among other things, the deaths of foreigners in Japan has no corresponding record for Near's death. The KiwiFarms thread also points out that Near had threatened (or maybe pretended to, can't remember) to commit suicide before. There is additional evidence that thread reviews that I've forgotten. I haven't looked into the other two suicides - but from everything I have seen much of what is said of KiwiFarms is overblown. It's true they use racist slurs and say mean things - but the idea that they are some murderous swatting suicide cult seems vastly overblown to me.
- viraptor 4y ago
  > showing that Japan's vital statistics You believe there is ~1 monthly death of US citizens in Japan? No, those stats are not useful. > All of the "confirmation" that appears to exist is an anonymous person on Twitter And you know... confirmation from Near's friends if you don't ignore them. > The KiwiFarms thread also points out that Near had threatened (or maybe pretended to, can't remember) to commit suicide before And this is just disgusting. If you want to publicly discuss someone's attempted suicide and consider if you can legally take their money to remove that discussion... You've hit the bottom. You need to reconsider your life choices at that point.
  - Khaine 4y ago
    Extrodenary claims demand extraordinary proof. Some random person on twitter said that x killed themselves because of site y. X has the burden of proof not Y. So far, Y has done everything to try and disprove X. Yet in every public discussion to date, Y is guilty until proven innocent.
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    1 death by suicide per month of American citizens in Japan is probably high - maybe not if they count the military base. I don't know - I wish I could easily look up their statistics and see what they said - too bad KiwiFarms is not allowed to defend itself against accusations and what they've previously written I'm forbidden to read. Regarding Near's friends - he wrote that he had no friends. None of the people who claim posthumously to have been his friends offered any evidence that any suicide took place. Near, when writing to KiwiFarms, said that right before he killed himself he would send copies of his passport to KiwiFarms so that they would be able to tell he actually did kill himself. Then, in his final message, he decided not to do that. There is no real evidence that Near's suicide actually took place - it's all "This person on Twitter knows Near's friend and they say he killed himself." Maybe that's accurate - but it seems like a low bar for confidence levels if we're going to ban a group from the Internet based on it. Regarding discussing Near's suicide - Near emailed the site owner, Joshua Moon, and made the offer - "I'll pay you 125k to remove the thread or I'll kill myself." Moon replies that he doesn't even know if it would be legal to accept that offer, says that he probably won't and that he would feel guilty about taking Near's money, and the pair discuss it for a few exchanges before Near, apparently, loses patience. Moon also expresses his confusion that Near is upset, because the KiwiFarms thread is about 100 comments in length, none name Near, the thread is not active, and the comments are mostly pretty benign (e.g. "Near must be autistic to spend so much time on emulators).
rosnd 4y ago
This is pretty ridiculous, the author has no idea what Cloudflare's claims are and instead focuses on arguing against the claims made by Kiwifarms admins.
bitwize 4y ago
Does it matter? Kiwi Farms spreads hate, therefore it deserves to be shut down. "Net neutrality" was really about double-dipping by demanding payment to not throttle bandwidth at the server side. It was never about tolerating hate speech. This is how the net works now. It's not the 90s or 2000s anymore. If you are, or are thought to be, spreading hate and fomenting harassment against LGBTQ or other marginalized groups, you cannot be guaranteed that netsec companies will protect you, that networks will route packets coming from you, or that banks and payment processors will handle your money. You are too big a risk for legitimate businesses to deal with you. Watch what you say online. Speech has consequences. LibsofTikTok, Jordan Peterson, J.K. Rowling, all of .win, the Babylon Bee -- they're next.
- rvz 4y ago
  > Does it matter? Kiwi Farms spreads hate, therefore it deserves to be shut down. Well Kiwifarms is still up and running after all of that nonsense, making it a giant waste of time.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    Except: a) it's down right now; b) there are hundreds if not thousands of trans activists able and willing to play whac-a-mole and exert pressure to shut down the site wherever it is found -- and many of those are experts in network infrastructure, which Null is not. Besides, Null is just one guy, he has only so much energy and financial resources. And he's running out of options in terms of people willing to host him.
    - rvz 4y ago
      Well... a) It is still up. b) And after all of the hacks and DDoSing by the script kiddies running booters and attempts to fully de-platform them, it is still up and working. Looks like a complete giant waste of time and a total failure to shut them down.
tjpnz 4y ago
I looked into it too when Kiwi Farms started coming up on HN. I hope more people do because it's troubling how many of the facts being reported about it (love it or loathe it) are demonstrably incorrect. Not liking the site doesn't make it right or even deserved.
- throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
  Which reported facts are incorrect?
  - felix_n 4y ago
    I've used KF a bit, mostly to shit-talk the poser metal bro / MAGA bandwagoneer Räzörfist, but when other forums started getting a higher profile I poked around out of curiosity. In terms of specific facts that are misreported, I don't think claims that addresses are disseminated is true, I never saw any addresses or phone numbers or the like on keffals thread, and no users really expressed much real interest in getting them. More broadly, I can't speak authoritatively, but I never observed any coherent harassment effort, nor did I see any posts that a lone wolf could have really used to wage a harassment campaign. That is, in keffals case I never saw any post with an address or phone number, or UberEATS creds, or anything really that wasn't on the wide internet at some point. To wit, when keffals claimed KF users instigated a swatting, and later fraudulently ordered junk food to the hotel, the forum seemed to laugh it off as an attempt to get sympathy donations or free food. Even the sinister-sounding thread where they correctly snooped the hotel from keffals twitter post was pretty benign, it was a few posts over maybe an hour noting various details and cross referencing against image searches, followed by days of mockery over keffals feeling scared but then posting photos of the safehouse.
    - tjpnz 4y ago
      Those pictures of their "safehouse" were taken from 4chan.
melonrusk 4y ago
A summary of the incident: https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/why-keffals-really-took-down-kiwi https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/why-keffals-really-took...
- bearmode 4y ago
  >A summary of the incident (by a very vocal anti-trans activist, oh and by the way the person who ran the #dropkiwifarms campaign is trans)
- chownie 4y ago
  Shocker, known transphobe Graham Linehan repeats verbatim anti-trans talking points lifted straight from KF. None of this works to paint KF in a positive light, it's like a murderer coming out in defense of cannibals.
devwastaken 4y ago
By IA deleting the evidence, I cannot prove the claims of harassment. Therefore it effectively doesn't exist. CF removed their Ddos protection, instead of working with law enforcement to unmask the supposedly offending users. Then all these other tech entities pile in and make it look like it never happened. No specifics we the public can know about. KF isn't even the only site. Why are we focusing upon KF, but somehow forgetting literal abuse sites? If CF is going to go this far then what about tor? Even 4chan instigates harassment from time to time. Discord servers, telegram. Or you know, Facebook. The tool used for the jan 6th event in the U.S. The excuse is these are big entities, but unwillfull lack of moderation is the same as intentional lack of moderation in effect, as demonstrated. But will these entities take the same stance? No. Because this is about money and power.
Khaine 4y ago
Its pretty absurd that Cloudflare supports sites promoting and encouraging terrorism, but kiwifarms, who mocks people for their absurd behaviour, is beyond the pale.
- throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
  I've always assumed they collaborate with the US gov on illegal activity on the platform at that level. I think they'd be forced to, perhaps behind a gag order, if asked. Or monitored exchanged points. I've definitely seen fraud, ISIS, malware, and whatnot behind Cloudflare at least at one point (not sure the current outlook). Very puzzling indeed.
throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
I first stumbled upon kiwifarms when the Christchurch livestream shooting happened. As I recall, the thread was filled with jokes, memes, and other disturbing comments made by the members of this "community" which seemed to support the shooter's actions in spirit, albeit perhaps only in jest. The owner also took this time to mock the entire country of NZ. I have no doubts about these other claims. Shouldn't any company should have every right to refuse this kind of behavior occurring on their platforms?
- HereIGoAgain 4y ago
  >"The owner also took this time to mock the entire country of NZ" Only after said government tried to get him to turn over all information about everyone who viewed the video, read the MF or even commented on the shooting. (OC all occurring AFTER the fact/shooting) All happening right around the same time the government there was literally locking people up for merely viewing any of it. Full police state kind of tactics. He told them to fuck off when they demanded he help them hunt down unrelated innocent people. Again, this isn't happening on "their platform", they aren't hosts, only acting as network infrastructure. Which is and should always remain neutral.. For the survival of the internet and for freedom!
- unknownaccount 4y ago
  The problem with hosting providers closing down websites over non-criminal speech violations is that it enables anyone with a grudge to shut down any website they dislike. Previously it used to take a court order to shut down a website, Nowadays any old troll can make a few death threats against themselves using Tor, take a few screenshots, report them to the host and the site gets taken down. Even if the webmaster quickly removes the comments it evidently isnt good enough. because as we've seen recently with Cloudflare hosting providers are now retroactively punishing sites for since-deleted content. This introduces a massive Denial-of-Service vulnerabiliy that webmasters have no way to mitigate unless they close off comments entirely. You might not like Kiwifarms and think this was a good thing, but next time it might be your favorite gaming forum or hobby site that trolls get taken down using this method.
  - 4y ago

39 points by notlukesky 4y ago

l3uwin 4y ago
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  What does well known history mean when the problematic posts are quickly deleted and someone got KiwiFarms removed from the Internet Archive? Frankly everyone seems to get their take from the same circulated screenshot and whatever the social pressure campaign claims to be true.
- suumcuique 4y ago
  That well known history was also well known when the CEO of Cloudflare wrote a lengthy blogpost[0] defending his decision to not ban KiwiFarms 4 days before writing a second blogpost reversing that decision[1]. So either something dramatically changed in those 4 days (and as the TFA says, the evidence available to the public is pretty weak) or the more likely explanation: Matthew Prince was just looking for an excuse to submit to the pressure campaign like he did with The Daily Stormer and 8chan. That's his right as CEO of a private company of course and I can't say I'm sorry to see KF go but honestly it's getting a little embarrassing how he writes these lofty blogposts about his principled stance upholding free speech only to capitulate completely days later. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-approach/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a... [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked

So far as I know three suicides are popularly thought to be connected to KiwiFarms. The only one I've looked into at all, the suicide of the emulator developer "near", seems pretty flimsy to me. For one, the KiwiFarms thread on near, prior to his suicide, is pretty tame. There aren't that many comments and the comments that are there aren't so bad - at worst they accuse Near of pedophilia because he likes/defends drawn illustrations of child pornography. Near's real identity is not known so the thread doesn't even stalk him or intrude into his real life. Near emailed KiwiFarms farms asking for the thread to be removed and said he would commit suicide if it wasn't but would pay if the thread was removed. The site owner was researching whether it would be legal to accept money when Near pupportedly killed himself - 12 hours after the initial exchange. It's also not clear that any suicide actually took place. As I mentioned, no real identity is known so there is also no real official confirmation. All of the "confirmation" that appears to exist is an anonymous person on Twitter who is acting on behalf of someone who talked to the Japanese police - and apparently the police confirmed the suicide. A thread on KiwiFarms investigates the idea that Near faked his suicide, showing that Japan's vital statistics, a government page that reports, among other things, the deaths of foreigners in Japan has no corresponding record for Near's death. The KiwiFarms thread also points out that Near had threatened (or maybe pretended to, can't remember) to commit suicide before. There is additional evidence that thread reviews that I've forgotten. I haven't looked into the other two suicides - but from everything I have seen much of what is said of KiwiFarms is overblown. It's true they use racist slurs and say mean things - but the idea that they are some murderous swatting suicide cult seems vastly overblown to me.

viraptor 4y ago
> showing that Japan's vital statistics You believe there is ~1 monthly death of US citizens in Japan? No, those stats are not useful. > All of the "confirmation" that appears to exist is an anonymous person on Twitter And you know... confirmation from Near's friends if you don't ignore them. > The KiwiFarms thread also points out that Near had threatened (or maybe pretended to, can't remember) to commit suicide before And this is just disgusting. If you want to publicly discuss someone's attempted suicide and consider if you can legally take their money to remove that discussion... You've hit the bottom. You need to reconsider your life choices at that point.
- Khaine 4y ago
  Extrodenary claims demand extraordinary proof. Some random person on twitter said that x killed themselves because of site y. X has the burden of proof not Y. So far, Y has done everything to try and disprove X. Yet in every public discussion to date, Y is guilty until proven innocent.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  1 death by suicide per month of American citizens in Japan is probably high - maybe not if they count the military base. I don't know - I wish I could easily look up their statistics and see what they said - too bad KiwiFarms is not allowed to defend itself against accusations and what they've previously written I'm forbidden to read. Regarding Near's friends - he wrote that he had no friends. None of the people who claim posthumously to have been his friends offered any evidence that any suicide took place. Near, when writing to KiwiFarms, said that right before he killed himself he would send copies of his passport to KiwiFarms so that they would be able to tell he actually did kill himself. Then, in his final message, he decided not to do that. There is no real evidence that Near's suicide actually took place - it's all "This person on Twitter knows Near's friend and they say he killed himself." Maybe that's accurate - but it seems like a low bar for confidence levels if we're going to ban a group from the Internet based on it. Regarding discussing Near's suicide - Near emailed the site owner, Joshua Moon, and made the offer - "I'll pay you 125k to remove the thread or I'll kill myself." Moon replies that he doesn't even know if it would be legal to accept that offer, says that he probably won't and that he would feel guilty about taking Near's money, and the pair discuss it for a few exchanges before Near, apparently, loses patience. Moon also expresses his confusion that Near is upset, because the KiwiFarms thread is about 100 comments in length, none name Near, the thread is not active, and the comments are mostly pretty benign (e.g. "Near must be autistic to spend so much time on emulators).

rosnd 4y ago

This is pretty ridiculous, the author has no idea what Cloudflare's claims are and instead focuses on arguing against the claims made by Kiwifarms admins.

bitwize 4y ago

Does it matter? Kiwi Farms spreads hate, therefore it deserves to be shut down. "Net neutrality" was really about double-dipping by demanding payment to not throttle bandwidth at the server side. It was never about tolerating hate speech. This is how the net works now. It's not the 90s or 2000s anymore. If you are, or are thought to be, spreading hate and fomenting harassment against LGBTQ or other marginalized groups, you cannot be guaranteed that netsec companies will protect you, that networks will route packets coming from you, or that banks and payment processors will handle your money. You are too big a risk for legitimate businesses to deal with you. Watch what you say online. Speech has consequences. LibsofTikTok, Jordan Peterson, J.K. Rowling, all of .win, the Babylon Bee -- they're next.

rvz 4y ago
> Does it matter? Kiwi Farms spreads hate, therefore it deserves to be shut down. Well Kiwifarms is still up and running after all of that nonsense, making it a giant waste of time.
- bitwize 4y ago
  Except: a) it's down right now; b) there are hundreds if not thousands of trans activists able and willing to play whac-a-mole and exert pressure to shut down the site wherever it is found -- and many of those are experts in network infrastructure, which Null is not. Besides, Null is just one guy, he has only so much energy and financial resources. And he's running out of options in terms of people willing to host him.
  - rvz 4y ago
    Well... a) It is still up. b) And after all of the hacks and DDoSing by the script kiddies running booters and attempts to fully de-platform them, it is still up and working. Looks like a complete giant waste of time and a total failure to shut them down.

tjpnz 4y ago

I looked into it too when Kiwi Farms started coming up on HN. I hope more people do because it's troubling how many of the facts being reported about it (love it or loathe it) are demonstrably incorrect. Not liking the site doesn't make it right or even deserved.

throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
Which reported facts are incorrect?
- felix_n 4y ago
  I've used KF a bit, mostly to shit-talk the poser metal bro / MAGA bandwagoneer Räzörfist, but when other forums started getting a higher profile I poked around out of curiosity. In terms of specific facts that are misreported, I don't think claims that addresses are disseminated is true, I never saw any addresses or phone numbers or the like on keffals thread, and no users really expressed much real interest in getting them. More broadly, I can't speak authoritatively, but I never observed any coherent harassment effort, nor did I see any posts that a lone wolf could have really used to wage a harassment campaign. That is, in keffals case I never saw any post with an address or phone number, or UberEATS creds, or anything really that wasn't on the wide internet at some point. To wit, when keffals claimed KF users instigated a swatting, and later fraudulently ordered junk food to the hotel, the forum seemed to laugh it off as an attempt to get sympathy donations or free food. Even the sinister-sounding thread where they correctly snooped the hotel from keffals twitter post was pretty benign, it was a few posts over maybe an hour noting various details and cross referencing against image searches, followed by days of mockery over keffals feeling scared but then posting photos of the safehouse.
  - tjpnz 4y ago
    Those pictures of their "safehouse" were taken from 4chan.

melonrusk 4y ago

A summary of the incident: https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/why-keffals-really-took-down-kiwi https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/why-keffals-really-took...

bearmode 4y ago
>A summary of the incident (by a very vocal anti-trans activist, oh and by the way the person who ran the #dropkiwifarms campaign is trans)
chownie 4y ago
Shocker, known transphobe Graham Linehan repeats verbatim anti-trans talking points lifted straight from KF. None of this works to paint KF in a positive light, it's like a murderer coming out in defense of cannibals.

devwastaken 4y ago

By IA deleting the evidence, I cannot prove the claims of harassment. Therefore it effectively doesn't exist. CF removed their Ddos protection, instead of working with law enforcement to unmask the supposedly offending users. Then all these other tech entities pile in and make it look like it never happened. No specifics we the public can know about. KF isn't even the only site. Why are we focusing upon KF, but somehow forgetting literal abuse sites? If CF is going to go this far then what about tor? Even 4chan instigates harassment from time to time. Discord servers, telegram. Or you know, Facebook. The tool used for the jan 6th event in the U.S. The excuse is these are big entities, but unwillfull lack of moderation is the same as intentional lack of moderation in effect, as demonstrated. But will these entities take the same stance? No. Because this is about money and power.

Khaine 4y ago

Its pretty absurd that Cloudflare supports sites promoting and encouraging terrorism, but kiwifarms, who mocks people for their absurd behaviour, is beyond the pale.

throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
I've always assumed they collaborate with the US gov on illegal activity on the platform at that level. I think they'd be forced to, perhaps behind a gag order, if asked. Or monitored exchanged points. I've definitely seen fraud, ISIS, malware, and whatnot behind Cloudflare at least at one point (not sure the current outlook). Very puzzling indeed.

throwawayKiwi9 4y ago

I first stumbled upon kiwifarms when the Christchurch livestream shooting happened. As I recall, the thread was filled with jokes, memes, and other disturbing comments made by the members of this "community" which seemed to support the shooter's actions in spirit, albeit perhaps only in jest. The owner also took this time to mock the entire country of NZ. I have no doubts about these other claims. Shouldn't any company should have every right to refuse this kind of behavior occurring on their platforms?

HereIGoAgain 4y ago
>"The owner also took this time to mock the entire country of NZ" Only after said government tried to get him to turn over all information about everyone who viewed the video, read the MF or even commented on the shooting. (OC all occurring AFTER the fact/shooting) All happening right around the same time the government there was literally locking people up for merely viewing any of it. Full police state kind of tactics. He told them to fuck off when they demanded he help them hunt down unrelated innocent people. Again, this isn't happening on "their platform", they aren't hosts, only acting as network infrastructure. Which is and should always remain neutral.. For the survival of the internet and for freedom!
unknownaccount 4y ago
The problem with hosting providers closing down websites over non-criminal speech violations is that it enables anyone with a grudge to shut down any website they dislike. Previously it used to take a court order to shut down a website, Nowadays any old troll can make a few death threats against themselves using Tor, take a few screenshots, report them to the host and the site gets taken down. Even if the webmaster quickly removes the comments it evidently isnt good enough. because as we've seen recently with Cloudflare hosting providers are now retroactively punishing sites for since-deleted content. This introduces a massive Denial-of-Service vulnerabiliy that webmasters have no way to mitigate unless they close off comments entirely. You might not like Kiwifarms and think this was a good thing, but next time it might be your favorite gaming forum or hobby site that trolls get taken down using this method.
- 4y ago