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Kiwifarms Dropped by Their ISP
- HereIGoAgain 4y agoWell here we are.. It's time to come up with the next argument (excuse) because now building your own site and net is clearly not good enough. ISP networks, protected by governments, are censoring the net.
- josephcsible 4y agoThis is why arguments justifying censorship by saying "just host it yourself then" are wrong. Whenever you take over one level in the stack, the next level down will just censor you instead.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kdmsk 4y agoIndeed all this ride has been a cold lesson and has thankfully shut down the stupid “host it yourself” argument forever.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DangitBobby 4y agoIt mostly works until your speech is so repugnant that no one is willing to risk being associated with you.
- orangepurple 4y agoI don't know what Kikifarms is/does/has. That said, what do you do if you are asymmetrically attacked by activists? Are you automatically in the wrong?
- sascha_sl 4y agoNo, but Cloudflare and several other ISPs will not drop you simply because a large volume of people complains. This doesn't work like Twitter moderation. The quality of these complaints warrants not wanting those people associated with you.
- orangepurple 4y agoThen sue them in US court. They are a US company.
- josephcsible 4y ago> Cloudflare and several other ISPs will not drop you simply because a large volume of people complains. Yes they will. This is the example of them literally doing exactly that.
- insanitybit 4y agoNot according to Cloudflare. Ironically, once Kiwifarms started harassing Cloudflare employees that's when Cloudflare removed them.
- sascha_sl 4y agoThen why are they still hosting several sites that people complain about it all the time too. Cloudflare loves providing services to Nazis as long as they don't get themselves associated with mass shootings too often in the same small time window (8chan) or your Infosec hire turns out to be associated with some of the Nazis who claim they have inside help to stay on Cloudflare. (Daily Stormer) Infowars is literally on Cloudflare right now.
- rvz 4y agoSo is Gab, and they are also using Cloudflare. They also have their own ASN and have been sitting on Hurricane Electric (HE) for years despite all the calls to 'deplatform' them, which like I expected Kiwifarms to move to Epik for their domain, they will also move to HE or elsewhere. I guess Gab is not villain of the month to be deplatformed today.
- dmatech 4y agoThat doesn't appear to be the issue here, though. The users of the site don't find each other completely repugnant. The ISPs might, but repugnance has historically not been a justification for de-peering in the past (at least in the USA).
- dehrmann 4y agoNot entirely. It should inspire people to push for legislation that requires cloud providers to host protected speech, provided someone is paying the bill.
- immibis 4y agoProvided someone is paying the bill and the site's location and ownership are accessible to law enforcement (like any other site). I'm not sure KF would be considered protected speech, even in the USA.
- dehrmann 4y ago> I'm not sure KF would be considered protected speech, even in the USA. True, but I'd rather this be decided by courts than unilateral ISP action.
- immibis 4y agoThe courts still can decide it. Joshua Conner Moon can sue his ISP and demand they reinstate his website.
- yanderekko 4y ago>I'm not sure KF would be considered protected speech, even in the USA. It absolutely is.
- JYellensFuckboy 4y agoThis is correct. The vast majority of KiwiFarm's content (aside from vulgar replies) is the obsessive compilation of public posts, e.g. screenshots of deleted tweets. It's protected because the right to be forgotten isn't recognized in American law.
- insanitybit 4y agoI didn't see that argument a lot. I'm glad their ISP dropped them. "Censorship" is a bit of a silly word to me at this point. Is it censorship when your email provider removes spam? When your antivirus removes malware? I mean, spam is speech, malware is code and code is speech. So it is censorship. We just all agree it's a good thing. This is a good thing. edit: Since this keeps coming up, it's not just spam emails/ malware but also domains/infra hosting those services. If a hosting provider finds out that they are hosting Command and Control infrastructure, or malware, or spam (ie: SES), they will remove that. And no one is up in arms about censorship over it because that would be really stupid.
- josephcsible 4y agoCensorship is different from email spam filters and antivirus software because the recipient can choose to bypass the latter for individual emails or files if they want to. And that ability is important, since both have false positives a lot.
- sascha_sl 4y agoCan the targets of Kiwifarms opt-out from being harassed as a result of being listed alongside their address on the site?
- FeepingCreature 4y agoTwo wrongs don't make a right. If Kiwifarms is acting illegally, sue them in court. If there are no laws, lobby to make them. ISPs are not police, elected representatives or courts; they shouldn't be allowed to usurp that role.
- sascha_sl 4y agoYou're acting like "lobbying to make them" is as easy as following a 3-step how to guide. Think about trans people as a demographic for a second. We have very little economic power or numbers worth mobilizing for votes. Absolutely nobody has any interest in lobbying for us, corporations posturing to appeal to idealistic liberals (and then doing nothing) aside. The only resemblance of institutional power trans people have is to appeal to those that have the actual power.
- d_e_solomon 4y agoKiwifarms has gone way past free speech and onto active harassment. To fly this one as a free speech issue is disingenuous. To act like censorship is the issue here is pretty ripe.
- josephcsible 4y agoDo you mean the legal definition of harassment, or just the colloquial one? If the legal one, then use the legal system to stop it instead of vigilantism. If just the colloquial one, then it is a free speech issue.
- d_e_solomon 4y ago
- dreen 4y agoIf I think my customer is using my service to harass people do I need to sue them? Or can I just refuse business? It's not the same as refusing to make a gay cake either, because you can't discriminate based on someone being an asshole.
- lbruno 4y agoit's the other way around, you can discriminate against arseholes there's specific prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of certain categories
- sascha_sl 4y agoDo you think legal processes can be flawed?
- josephcsible 4y agoYes, but when they are, we should just fix them, rather than resorting to vigilantism.
- simplotek 4y ago> This is why arguments justifying censorship by saying "just host it yourself then" are wrong. That was never the argument. The argument is that private companies have the right to provide their services in their terms, and if your intended use violates those terms then you also have the right to pick a services that tolerates you and your intended use. Aka gay wedding cakes.
- byyll 4y agoAnd what point of the acceptable use policy of Zayo does KiwiFarms break? In any case, is there a point at which it's impossible to have another private company provide you services and you'd consider it censorship?
- tmottabr 4y ago2.7 The prohibited activities set forth above are not an exhaustive list and Zayo reserves the right to take appropriate action to remedy any conduct which it deems to be a violation of this Policy or otherwise may be harmful to Zayo’s Network, its Customers, or Internet users. [0] https://www.zayo.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/zayo-acceptable-use-policy.pdf https://www.zayo.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/zayo-accepta...
- byyll 4y agoAh, guess I missed that. It's still sadly vague, same as how most other companies choose to write their terms/AUP.
- Big_Discourse 4y ago
- customname 4y ago
- lotsofpulp 4y agoPerhaps high quality fiber connections with decent upload capacity should be a utility to every home. And ipv6. Then cutting off connections has to go through courts.
- zo1 4y agoHosting anything on your home connections is already a ToS violation on probably 99.999% of ISPs out there. No need to be Kiwifarms to be kicked off. It's also common from what I heard for them to block incoming HTTP ports entirely.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoYes, that would have to be changed by legislation requiring a utility to not do that.
- SAI_Peregrinus 4y agoFirst we'd need legislation to decide ISPs are actually utilities.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Whenever you take over one level in the stack, the next level down will just censor you instead. That’s (among the reasons) why you need net neutrality, which covers the lowest level of the stack. EDIT: It is interesting that it is the same people that oppose net neutrality that tend to support government intervention at all other levels of the stack to assure that their preferred content regulation and only that content regulation is enforced.
- immibis 4y agoYou can make this argument when it's someone's home connection being shut off. Until then, there's still another level.
- VHRanger 4y agoYes, if absolutely no one wants to associate with you, you'll have to do everything yourself.
- threatofrain 4y agoOne might apply this argument to HN, where mods can silently ban people so that those who are banned don't realize. I mean, are you going to create your own HN? It doesn't matter if creating HN is easier than creating an ISP if the task is practically unsurmountable. Isn't the issue here freedom of association? When in conflict with freedom of speech, which is more important, and why?
- sinity 4y agoI mean, such a thing happened multiple times at this point. Supporters of this aren't really ashamed of what they do. I can't wait to support the other side being censored whenever it'll be possible somehow.
- tmottabr 4y agoYeah, not really.. the argument still stand.. KF can still have their servers and have the site running on then.. They can also go out and install cables connecting their servers to other people for then to access it if they want.. They are allowed to implement their own parallel stack on the side and have 100% control over it as long as they can afford it.. What is happening is that in order to cut those costs they need to use the existing stack and have other companies grab the content from their servers and deliver to other people screens, but other people do not want KF content in their network in any way.. something entirely in their right.. In the end of the day, if they went all the way up the stack and still cannot find a single other company in the whole world willing to work with them it honestly say more about them then it say about the world..
- chroma 4y ago
- customname 4y ago
- anaisbetts 4y ago
- powera 4y agoMagical thinking about "the internet eliminates censorship" cannot and must-not override the very real fact that Kiwifarms is awful and no business that is aware of what goes on there wants to associate with them.
- ultra_nick 4y agoWhat is Kiwifarms?
- sascha_sl 4y agoA website that bullies, ridicules and publishes private information of people they do not like, and then pretends they're not culpable when awful things (suicides, swattings) happen as a result because they technically really aren't responsible for them. Not that they don't usually celebrate when it happens. A trans twitch personality was swatted a while ago and fought back by informing everyone involved with keeping the site alive. They have been dropped by about 99% of the ISPs they've been with (including before that campaign, but now also by Cloudflare).
- anaisbetts 4y agoIt is a KKK-level hate site against LGBT people and particularly trans women, that actively seeks to terrorize them by doxxing them and their family members. Several suicides have been attributed directly to their actions, as well as the Christchurch massacre.
- s9w 4y ago
- midislack 4y ago
- sonoriyuu 4y agoThe Christchurch massacre wasn't initiated by a KF user or initially streamed there. That happened on Facebook. KF "only" archived and reposted the video and manifesto by the Christchurch terrorist. This is illegal in New Zealand and the police asked KF to release the data of all NZ users commenting on the video, which JM refused to do since it's an overreach and they legally run under an US entity thus don't have to comply. That didn't go well with the NZ law enforcement and got them delisted from there. This is why people associate KF with Christchurch, however the terrorism act itself was not initiated by a KF user and anyone saying so is spreading fake news.
- orangepurple 4y agoSnapshot of the main page: https://archive.ph/aIUSE https://archive.ph/aIUSE Excerpt from the top: Zayo, our ISP, has suddenly discontinued service. This is because Blake Willis, a 20 year senior network engineer in the company's Paris HQ, is friends with Liz Fong-Jones - a former Google employee associated with Trans LifeLine charity directors who were removed for inurement, and recently accused of sexual assault. I have appealed this decision but absolutely nothing will happen until Monday.
- d_e_solomon 4y agoSuddenly everyone who attacks Moon supposedly committed sexual assault and is a groomer or some other slanderous attack. Moon should put up or shut up.
- HereIGoAgain 4y agoYou mean the very thing, the very same people are desperately and obsessively trying to keep them from being able to do? You seem to be under the delusion that this is about anything other than the ability of a handful of well connected perverts to effectively silence opinions, information and people they don't like, off of the net. It's pretty humorous for you to argue the need for proof. Also don't forget the the person being talked about has been obsessively stalking and harassing the site owner in question. And yes, that's an objective statement since even the media openly report on his activities against the site.
- boppo1 4y agoMoon? Please loop me in. There is precedent for censorious tech conglomerates (reddit, at least) to defend people who are sex offenders. I'm no fan of Kiwifarms, but I'm also no fan of the DIY HRT guide Keffals runs that advises (often underage) people on doing home-chemistry to make hormones. Would be nice if the right could stop slandering every trans person as a mentally ill groomer and the left could stop labeling anyone questioning the ethics of underage transition as nazis long enough to have a reasonable discussion about the topic.
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- vmh1928 4y ago
- censortime 4y ago
- dmamills 4y agoYet another chapter in these pathetic cry-bullies' lives. What a waste of your life to be so dedicated to "defending" a forum to meticulously document and mock the existence of people that they find distasteful. To pretend this is a crusade for free speech is laughable.
- dmatech 4y agoOn the contrary. This whole episode is a test to see if we're ruled by codified principles or by angry people. While I loathe that site, it's pretty clear that it's an example of legal speech between willing participants. The notion that we can somehow make the world a better place by preventing speech from being heard is a very dangerous (but sadly common) notion.
- dmamills 4y ago> This whole episode is a test to see if we're ruled by codified principles or by angry people. Here's the thing: No it isn't. This isn't a test, a crusade, the last dying breaths of free speech, or any other hyperbolic pearl clutching nonsense. This is about a man having a hard time getting someone to consistently host his racist, homophobic, and downright deplorable content.
- hatefulmoron 4y agoYou write as if the forum is simply Moon writing to himself on alternate accounts. There are tens of thousands of willing participants discussing legally with eachother.
- dmamills 4y agoAre ten thousand homophobic racists posters supposed to be more valuable than one? What is zero times ten thousand?
- hatefulmoron 4y ago
- lbruno 4y agoi'm enjoying the right-leaning comments here -- it's not censorship, it's being censured which highlights a point i like to make: if you wish to defend KF, first you have to justify the concrete speech being carried out on it with examples which you can't post here because it goes against the rules of this place -- which should be a pretty big hint as to why the fruit site got censured
- api 4y agoThe right supports the right of private businesses to decide who to serve unless they are kicking out right wingers in which case we need government intervention to guarantee a platform. It’s sort of like how they support federalism except when states do things they don’t like, or small government except for when it comes to their pet issues.
- zo1 4y agoAs much as I agree with the free-market/private company angle. I also have to say that we are all in a "culture" war, or a war for mindshare in the general public. You have to understand that the right is losing. Sanity and nuance and reasonable thought are losing too, let's be frank about that. Just look at the crazy discussions about any heated topic like race, gender, and now the war in Ukraine to see that. That is why they hold these two seemingly-opposing viewpoints.
- api 4y agoWe certainly are in an era of hyper polarization. I blame the social media algorithms. It maximizes engagement. That being said I don’t think this line of thinking applies to Kiwi Farms. There are loads of conservative mags and podcasts and blogs online that argue against e.g. aspects of the trans movement. They do not get kicked off their ISPs because they do not doxx and cyberbully people to the point of suicide.
- lbruno 4y ago
- ueid-max 4y ago
- midislack 4y ago
- who2 4y ago
- mimikatz 4y agoIt is amazing how fast net neutrality people disappeared when this was the topic
- immibis 4y agoThere's a mix here. I think I'd be more on the side of net neutrality if they were kicking a person off the internet, not a website. Like if the guy was running it through his own home connection, maybe disconnecting it would be harder to defend. Of course, he wouldn't do that, because then he'd be able to be IP-geolocated, and he knows all about how posting people's real addresses in a room full of people who don't like them is evil :)
- bitwize 4y agoNet neutrality is about regulating ISPs to prevent them from double-dipping by charging content providers for preferred access to their audience. It is not about giving reactionaries a platform they don't deserve. The net is not politically neutral; it arcs toward progress. Transgressive, anything-goes edgelordism was the right answer in the 90s, when the people seeking to muzzle speech were the moral busybodies on the right. But we've learned some important lessons since then: that speech can oppress, it can harm, and it can even cast the world into a new fascism -- especially when such speech is given the swift wings of a global computer network. So when those oppressed and harmed by online speech speak up and demand that the network not carry the speech of those who seek to harm or even eradicate them -- our job is to put aside the libertarian platitudes that created the current hellscape, shut up, and listen to their experiences.
- Big_Discourse 4y ago
- cowtools 4y agoNet neutrality is about regulating ISPs to provide the same delivery service regardless of the content being sent. What you're describing is just a single implication of net neutrality involving self-bias of ISPs. >The net is not politically neutral; it arcs toward progress Humble the assumptions you make on the direction of progress
- unsignednoop 4y ago
- IYasha 4y ago
- immibis 4y agoLabelled? They *are* "bad and unworthy". There's no denying that. There's no defending this particular site.
- IYasha 4y agoBad or not - it is not to be decided by ISPs.
- alphabettsy 4y agoYou might want to read up on what a lynching is. Personally I find the use of this term extremely distasteful, and telling, when describing events significantly more trivial than being murdered.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoI first heard of kiwifarms in relation to swatting one of the US congressmembers ( which frankly is likely the reason we are seeing this domino falling into place ). I have no sympathy for swatters, but there are laws in place to handle those. To me it is sad, because the trend is unmistakable. The 90s internet has been dying for a while, but it will just not be there ( or likely partially move to tor-land ) for my kids. For all those, who are cheering this on. You are effectively stamping your approval on the concept 'forbidden knowledge' and that 'some people need to be silenced for the greater good'. I am not being hyperbolic.
- hnusersarelame 4y ago
- freitasm 4y ago
- unsignednoop 4y ago
- bigshell 4y agoYou are upset that this person's Twitter followers use HN and want to participate in a discussion of a topic they clearly care about?
- unsignednoop 4y ago
- soundnote 4y ago“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” ~ H. L. Mencken
- crtasm 4y agoWhich laws are involved in this situation?
- DarkByte8 4y agoCan someone explain to me how 4chan which is in the news all the time linked to mass shooters, linked to Trump and 2016 election, link to misinformation, etc. is still up but kiwifarms is dropped by every company?
- dragonwriter 4y ago4chan has had... quite a lot of platforming-related drama, too.
- DarkByte8 4y agoApparently not enough for cloudflare to drop them.
- thinkingemote 4y agoThey allegedly proactively report users to LEO. It's a kind of voluntary honeypot apparently?
- bobsmooth 4y ago4chan is ephemeral. Kiwifarms documents and archives. One is clearly more dangerous.
- cannabis_sam 4y agoKF defenders are always the true “lolcows”! Have they and/or their nihilistic and sadistic salivation over victims of harassment been made illegal…? Turns out, no… Are private businesses choosing not to service their reprehensible needs for irrelevant gossip legal…? Turns out, yes!!! You either die a free speech defender or you were always an irrelevant misanthropic shitbag who no one wants to associate with… Your next step is to start a “free speech” oriented ISP, cause, you know, that is still not actually illegal. You’ve been talking the talk, time to walk the walk…
- louis_friend 4y ago
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