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This 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

This 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
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kdmsk 4y ago
Indeed all this ride has been a cold lesson and has thankfully shut down the stupid “host it yourself” argument forever.
- deleted 4y ago
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- DangitBobby 4y ago
  It mostly works until your speech is so repugnant that no one is willing to risk being associated with you.
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    I 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 ago
      No, 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 ago
        Then 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 ago
        Not according to Cloudflare. Ironically, once Kiwifarms started harassing Cloudflare employees that's when Cloudflare removed them.
        sascha_sl 4y ago
        Then 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 ago
        So 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.
        sascha_sl 4y ago
        Gab is simply irrelevant in the big picture.
    - d_e_solomon 4y ago
      No, but any reasonable examination of Kiwifarms shows a history of swatting, doxing, and bullying that has led to suicides. If I had a hosting business, I don't see why I should be required to carry their content or provide service to them. It's not a free speech question - it's a shitty behavior question.
      - josephcsible 4y ago
        > If I had a hosting business, I don't see why I should be required to carry their content or provide service to them. This story is about an ISP, not a hosting business. To understand why, imagine if you were instead a utility company asking why you should have to provide water or electricity to them.
        immibis 4y ago
        icycombative 4y ago
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        Big_Discourse 4y ago
        [flagged]
        syrrim 4y ago
        This hypothetical is utter nonsense. If you weren't helping hitler, he would send his storm troopers to arrest you, then do what he wanted anyways. There's a reason godwin's law exists: people think that invoking hitler is an argument cure-all, not realizing there's a reason why hitler is considered a uniquely bad person. We pretense to live in a "free society". This refers to one where each person is allowed to do as he pleases, as long as he isn't interfering with another's right to do the same. The concept of "utility neutrality" can only exist within such a society, but more importantly, a free society cannot exist without such a concept. As long as there are laws preventing a person from misusing utilities, someone's use of a utility can never be an attack on another's freedom: before that occurred, they would be arrested for breaking the law. On the other hand, people rely on access to utilities for heating, for cooking, and more broadly for survival, let alone necessary for that pursuit of happiness supposed to be crucial to the american dream. If a person's utilities can be cut off arbitrarily, then naturally this can be used as a punishment for their behaviour or identity; their person, in other words, is no longer free to do as they will. If you cannot see how this is exactly a step towards hitler's dystopia, then there is no helping you.
    - zo1 4y ago
      Putting this at the beginning, just in case. I'm not saying that I support this website, but if we're going to be deplatforming and targeting websites, we better be damn sure that they're evil, otherwise we're just puppets of the activists. Kiwifarms triggered a cascade. They did "enough" questionable things to create a slew of articles that self-reference each other and paint a picture of "kiwi farms is a harassment website that does these X Y Z bad things". There is no "proving" that they aren't bad now, it's been decided by some sort of weird and emergent self-referencing consensus process on the internet. Last time this topic came up, I tried so very very hard, to find credible sources about wtf this website or it's users did exactly, and couldn't (found some but it was very light). I mean it's there on Wikipedia sure, but if you keep digging it starts repeating and self-referencing other websites that are just as "not credible" or relying on "other websites" that I can't take them seriously on their claims. This very much reminds me of the question of notability and citing of sources in Wikipedia. The articles they reference are "enough" to have Wikipedia say that this website is "tied [...] to the suicides of three people targeted by members of the forum.". Wtf does "tied" even mean here? Red-flags abound. At this point it seems like a targeted harassment campaign by activists that may well not even know what Kiwifarms did first-hand.
      - sinity 4y ago
        > Last time this topic came up, I tried so very very hard, to find credible sources about wtf this website or it's users did exactly, and couldn't (found some but it was very light). I mean it's there on Wikipedia sure, but if you keep digging it starts repeating and self-referencing other websites that are just as "not credible" or relying on "other websites" that I can't take them seriously on their claims. Paywalled, but: "How Journalists Botched Their Coverage Of #DropKiwiFarms" https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-journalists-botched-their-coverage https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-journalists-botched-t... Author is credible enough, I think. Quoting wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal "Jesse Singal is an American journalist. He has written for publications including New York magazine, The New York Times and The Atlantic." "Singal's political orientation has often been described as liberal but "heterodox", though he has expressed an aversion to the latter term as a descriptor of his work" == I'll quote some parts: > briefly, so as not to ignore one of the most serious allegations, I also think the oft-repeated claim that Kiwi Farms directly caused or “was linked to” multiple suicides, is, when presented without any further context, misleading — not to mention an irresponsible way to report on suicide. On this front, I can’t really do anything but link (https://archive.ph/34wUy https://archive.ph/34wUy) to Moon’s own post on the #DropKiwiFarms controversy. YOU SHOULD NOT ACCEPT HIS CLAIMS AT FACE VALUE. But many of them are easily checkable and clearly true — for example, one of the suicide victims herself blamed her act on homelessness and mental health issues (for what that’s worth), and prior to suicide nothing had been posted about her to Kiwi Farms in six months (Moon says eight, which appears to be incorrect). Of course if you are already struggling with other issues, having a thread on a site like Kiwi Farms could exacerbate your situation, and nudge you toward suicide — “suicide isn’t monocausal” doesn’t mean external factors have no impact on it. But this is being reported in a much more simplistic manner, without much regard for the specifics of these terrible cases. -------- > The Journalism About Sorrenti’s Specific Fight With Kiwi Farms Has Also Been Extremely Negligent, More Like PR Than Reporting > On August 21, Sorrenti was sent a bunch of Uber Eats stuff from her own account that she didn’t order — a fraudulent charge. > (...) she immediately blames Kiwi Farms, and uses the incident to inject more momentum into her campaign: Her third tweet is directed at the CEO of Cloudflare, and she says “this is why I want you to drop kiwifarms from @Cloudflare. even speaking up about it has meant retaliation for me. they are going to keep trying to track me down and you have the power to end this[.]” > Sorrenti’s personal information, including her Uber Eats password, was posted to a notorious doxxing site the very next day, August 22, and a known hacker collective took credit. It took days before that information showed up on Kiwi Farms, and when it did the poster specifically credited the other site. > I do not believe the hackers explicitly said they submitted the false Uber Eats order, but they were the ones who acquired and posted her account info, making them a prime suspect, Occam’s Razor–wise: again, the false order is sent in, and then her info is dropped on the site, with very little time between the two acts. Sorrenti’s information has been posted to the top of that site ever since, making it one likely source of some of the harassment. > But she hasn’t mentioned that site at all, and in a pair of subsequently deleted quote-retweets she actually criticized me for even acknowledging its existence on our podcast and on Twitter: > > Can you please stop making allusions to the site that has the dox of my entire family. I haven’t talked about it and asked journalists not to mention it because I don’t want to put my family at risk. There is no reason for you to be sharing this information. … Actual journalists know what the truth is. I’ve been quite forward about it. You are actively putting my family at risk because you care more about views than human decency. What the hell are you even doing? > I agree that journalists shouldn’t mention this other site by name, let alone link to it, and I haven’t. But you can’t have it both ways: You can’t launch an entire campaign dedicated to ending a website that hosts personal information about you and your family and then complain when someone mentions the existence of a different website that… hosts personal information about you and your family. I do think the other website probably has more personal information about her family and associates, yes, but either the question of who is harassing Sorrenti is an international story, or it isn’t. If it is — and everyone hoping to get companies to #DropKiwiFarms, Sorrenti included, has sought to make it an international story — then of course it matters that at least one of these incidents appears to have had nothing to do with Kiwi Farms. > (It’s very striking that *Sorrenti appears to have asked journalists not to mention the other site, and that she seems to have succeeded. It suggests she is effectively manipulating them not to focus on any potential source of her ongoing travails other than Kiwi Farms, which is of course a smart PR strategy from the perspective of her campaign. But why should journalists participate in that campaign?*) > Along those same lines, and as I laid out in an endless episode of the podcast, there’s very strong reason to believe that the person who showed up outside the apartment where Sorrenti was staying and posted a creepy note to 4chan — a note that promptly caused the #DropKiwiFarms snowball to roll even faster and bigger — has nothing to do with Kiwi Farms. The kid who says he did it, who I spoke with at length via Twitter and Discord DMs, has an extremely long, rich, abusive online history, all linked to the same base username, and he has no genuine connection to Kiwi Farms. In fact, Kiwi Farms thinks he’s a dork and has tried to dig up personal information on him. > It’s crazy that this needs to be said, but there’s a difference between reporting on a sympathetic source and acting like a member of their public relations team.
    - immibis 4y ago
      Then you should research it before commenting. Maybe you're not aware, but when an ISP receives a load of hate mail saying "cut off this site" this mail is received by a human who has a chance to check out the site and decide whether it is so evil it should be cut off, or whether the haters are just full of shit. We aren't even talking about a mere repository of hateful information - in terms of badness, Kiwifarms isn't like a Nazi's Guide to Killing Untermensch. Even that could probably find hosting somewhere on the internet. It's a level above that. This was a forum for coordinating tracking down and harassing people in real life and keeping them in constant fear until they commit suicide. That's the point. They do it for fun.
    - deleted 4y ago
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  - dmatech 4y ago
    That 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 ago
  Not 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 ago
    Provided 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 ago
        The 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 ago
        This 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Censorship 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 ago
    Can the targets of Kiwifarms opt-out from being harassed as a result of being listed alongside their address on the site?
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      Two 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 ago
        You'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 ago
Kiwifarms 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 ago
  Do 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 ago
    If 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 ago
      it'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 ago
    Do you think legal processes can be flawed?
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      Yes, 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 ago
  And 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 ago
    2.7 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 ago
      Ah, 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 ago
Perhaps 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 ago
  Hosting 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 ago
    Yes, that would have to be changed by legislation requiring a utility to not do that.
    - SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
      First 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 ago
  You can make this argument when it's someone's home connection being shut off. Until then, there's still another level.
VHRanger 4y ago
Yes, if absolutely no one wants to associate with you, you'll have to do everything yourself.
threatofrain 4y ago
One 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 ago
I 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 ago
Yeah, 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

This 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

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kdmsk 4y ago

Indeed 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 ago
It mostly works until your speech is so repugnant that no one is willing to risk being associated with you.
- orangepurple 4y ago
  I 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 ago
    No, 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 ago
      Then 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 ago
        Not according to Cloudflare. Ironically, once Kiwifarms started harassing Cloudflare employees that's when Cloudflare removed them.
      - sascha_sl 4y ago
        Then 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 ago
        So 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.
        sascha_sl 4y ago
        Gab is simply irrelevant in the big picture.
  - d_e_solomon 4y ago
    No, but any reasonable examination of Kiwifarms shows a history of swatting, doxing, and bullying that has led to suicides. If I had a hosting business, I don't see why I should be required to carry their content or provide service to them. It's not a free speech question - it's a shitty behavior question.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      > If I had a hosting business, I don't see why I should be required to carry their content or provide service to them. This story is about an ISP, not a hosting business. To understand why, imagine if you were instead a utility company asking why you should have to provide water or electricity to them.
      - immibis 4y ago
        icycombative 4y ago
        [dead]
        Big_Discourse 4y ago
        [flagged]
        syrrim 4y ago
        This hypothetical is utter nonsense. If you weren't helping hitler, he would send his storm troopers to arrest you, then do what he wanted anyways. There's a reason godwin's law exists: people think that invoking hitler is an argument cure-all, not realizing there's a reason why hitler is considered a uniquely bad person. We pretense to live in a "free society". This refers to one where each person is allowed to do as he pleases, as long as he isn't interfering with another's right to do the same. The concept of "utility neutrality" can only exist within such a society, but more importantly, a free society cannot exist without such a concept. As long as there are laws preventing a person from misusing utilities, someone's use of a utility can never be an attack on another's freedom: before that occurred, they would be arrested for breaking the law. On the other hand, people rely on access to utilities for heating, for cooking, and more broadly for survival, let alone necessary for that pursuit of happiness supposed to be crucial to the american dream. If a person's utilities can be cut off arbitrarily, then naturally this can be used as a punishment for their behaviour or identity; their person, in other words, is no longer free to do as they will. If you cannot see how this is exactly a step towards hitler's dystopia, then there is no helping you.
  - zo1 4y ago
    Putting this at the beginning, just in case. I'm not saying that I support this website, but if we're going to be deplatforming and targeting websites, we better be damn sure that they're evil, otherwise we're just puppets of the activists. Kiwifarms triggered a cascade. They did "enough" questionable things to create a slew of articles that self-reference each other and paint a picture of "kiwi farms is a harassment website that does these X Y Z bad things". There is no "proving" that they aren't bad now, it's been decided by some sort of weird and emergent self-referencing consensus process on the internet. Last time this topic came up, I tried so very very hard, to find credible sources about wtf this website or it's users did exactly, and couldn't (found some but it was very light). I mean it's there on Wikipedia sure, but if you keep digging it starts repeating and self-referencing other websites that are just as "not credible" or relying on "other websites" that I can't take them seriously on their claims. This very much reminds me of the question of notability and citing of sources in Wikipedia. The articles they reference are "enough" to have Wikipedia say that this website is "tied [...] to the suicides of three people targeted by members of the forum.". Wtf does "tied" even mean here? Red-flags abound. At this point it seems like a targeted harassment campaign by activists that may well not even know what Kiwifarms did first-hand.
    - sinity 4y ago
      > Last time this topic came up, I tried so very very hard, to find credible sources about wtf this website or it's users did exactly, and couldn't (found some but it was very light). I mean it's there on Wikipedia sure, but if you keep digging it starts repeating and self-referencing other websites that are just as "not credible" or relying on "other websites" that I can't take them seriously on their claims. Paywalled, but: "How Journalists Botched Their Coverage Of #DropKiwiFarms" https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-journalists-botched-their-coverage https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-journalists-botched-t... Author is credible enough, I think. Quoting wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Singal "Jesse Singal is an American journalist. He has written for publications including New York magazine, The New York Times and The Atlantic." "Singal's political orientation has often been described as liberal but "heterodox", though he has expressed an aversion to the latter term as a descriptor of his work" == I'll quote some parts: > briefly, so as not to ignore one of the most serious allegations, I also think the oft-repeated claim that Kiwi Farms directly caused or “was linked to” multiple suicides, is, when presented without any further context, misleading — not to mention an irresponsible way to report on suicide. On this front, I can’t really do anything but link (https://archive.ph/34wUy https://archive.ph/34wUy) to Moon’s own post on the #DropKiwiFarms controversy. YOU SHOULD NOT ACCEPT HIS CLAIMS AT FACE VALUE. But many of them are easily checkable and clearly true — for example, one of the suicide victims herself blamed her act on homelessness and mental health issues (for what that’s worth), and prior to suicide nothing had been posted about her to Kiwi Farms in six months (Moon says eight, which appears to be incorrect). Of course if you are already struggling with other issues, having a thread on a site like Kiwi Farms could exacerbate your situation, and nudge you toward suicide — “suicide isn’t monocausal” doesn’t mean external factors have no impact on it. But this is being reported in a much more simplistic manner, without much regard for the specifics of these terrible cases. -------- > The Journalism About Sorrenti’s Specific Fight With Kiwi Farms Has Also Been Extremely Negligent, More Like PR Than Reporting > On August 21, Sorrenti was sent a bunch of Uber Eats stuff from her own account that she didn’t order — a fraudulent charge. > (...) she immediately blames Kiwi Farms, and uses the incident to inject more momentum into her campaign: Her third tweet is directed at the CEO of Cloudflare, and she says “this is why I want you to drop kiwifarms from @Cloudflare. even speaking up about it has meant retaliation for me. they are going to keep trying to track me down and you have the power to end this[.]” > Sorrenti’s personal information, including her Uber Eats password, was posted to a notorious doxxing site the very next day, August 22, and a known hacker collective took credit. It took days before that information showed up on Kiwi Farms, and when it did the poster specifically credited the other site. > I do not believe the hackers explicitly said they submitted the false Uber Eats order, but they were the ones who acquired and posted her account info, making them a prime suspect, Occam’s Razor–wise: again, the false order is sent in, and then her info is dropped on the site, with very little time between the two acts. Sorrenti’s information has been posted to the top of that site ever since, making it one likely source of some of the harassment. > But she hasn’t mentioned that site at all, and in a pair of subsequently deleted quote-retweets she actually criticized me for even acknowledging its existence on our podcast and on Twitter: > > Can you please stop making allusions to the site that has the dox of my entire family. I haven’t talked about it and asked journalists not to mention it because I don’t want to put my family at risk. There is no reason for you to be sharing this information. … Actual journalists know what the truth is. I’ve been quite forward about it. You are actively putting my family at risk because you care more about views than human decency. What the hell are you even doing? > I agree that journalists shouldn’t mention this other site by name, let alone link to it, and I haven’t. But you can’t have it both ways: You can’t launch an entire campaign dedicated to ending a website that hosts personal information about you and your family and then complain when someone mentions the existence of a different website that… hosts personal information about you and your family. I do think the other website probably has more personal information about her family and associates, yes, but either the question of who is harassing Sorrenti is an international story, or it isn’t. If it is — and everyone hoping to get companies to #DropKiwiFarms, Sorrenti included, has sought to make it an international story — then of course it matters that at least one of these incidents appears to have had nothing to do with Kiwi Farms. > (It’s very striking that *Sorrenti appears to have asked journalists not to mention the other site, and that she seems to have succeeded. It suggests she is effectively manipulating them not to focus on any potential source of her ongoing travails other than Kiwi Farms, which is of course a smart PR strategy from the perspective of her campaign. But why should journalists participate in that campaign?*) > Along those same lines, and as I laid out in an endless episode of the podcast, there’s very strong reason to believe that the person who showed up outside the apartment where Sorrenti was staying and posted a creepy note to 4chan — a note that promptly caused the #DropKiwiFarms snowball to roll even faster and bigger — has nothing to do with Kiwi Farms. The kid who says he did it, who I spoke with at length via Twitter and Discord DMs, has an extremely long, rich, abusive online history, all linked to the same base username, and he has no genuine connection to Kiwi Farms. In fact, Kiwi Farms thinks he’s a dork and has tried to dig up personal information on him. > It’s crazy that this needs to be said, but there’s a difference between reporting on a sympathetic source and acting like a member of their public relations team.
  - immibis 4y ago
    Then you should research it before commenting. Maybe you're not aware, but when an ISP receives a load of hate mail saying "cut off this site" this mail is received by a human who has a chance to check out the site and decide whether it is so evil it should be cut off, or whether the haters are just full of shit. We aren't even talking about a mere repository of hateful information - in terms of badness, Kiwifarms isn't like a Nazi's Guide to Killing Untermensch. Even that could probably find hosting somewhere on the internet. It's a level above that. This was a forum for coordinating tracking down and harassing people in real life and keeping them in constant fear until they commit suicide. That's the point. They do it for fun.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- dmatech 4y ago
  That 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 ago
Not 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 ago
  Provided 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 ago
      The 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 ago
      This 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 ago

I 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 ago
Censorship 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 ago
  Can the targets of Kiwifarms opt-out from being harassed as a result of being listed alongside their address on the site?
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    Two 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 ago
      You'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 ago

Kiwifarms 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 ago
Do 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 ago
  If 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 ago
    it'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 ago
  Do you think legal processes can be flawed?
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    Yes, 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 ago
And 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 ago
  2.7 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 ago
    Ah, 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 ago

Perhaps 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 ago
Hosting 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 ago
  Yes, that would have to be changed by legislation requiring a utility to not do that.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
    First 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 ago
You can make this argument when it's someone's home connection being shut off. Until then, there's still another level.

VHRanger 4y ago

Yes, if absolutely no one wants to associate with you, you'll have to do everything yourself.

threatofrain 4y ago

One 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 ago

I 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 ago

Yeah, 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