5 ms·

If you'd like it said more succinctly, here's the EFF saying it: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police-online-speech-no-matter-how-awful

If you'd like it said more succinctly, here's the EFF saying it: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police-online-speech-no-matter-how-awful-it https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police... Courts and judges seem slow and fuddy-duddy, but they're conducted in public, and you have legal avenues of appeal. Unregulated private businesses can do whatever the fuck they like, and that includes just fucking with you because of personal vendettas. Private businesses that fuck with arbitrary people aren't worthy of being a nation's internet backbone. That behaviour needs reigned in, and common carrier status needs to apply. That said, Josh is a piece of shit. He's been trying to maintain the PR line that his forum didn't kill Byuu; they didn't, but they double down and claim Byuu isn't even dead. He's had evidence for over a year that Byuu died exactly as claimed, and he didn't bother publishing it and correcting the public record because it made his site look bad. He's normally so eager to publish the truth of awful internet behaviour, but he's silent on his own site's dirty deeds. What else is he hiding?

rpmisms 2y ago
I personally dislike Josh (moreso the ugly parts of the farms, actually), but strongly agree with him on this particular issue. The open Internet is extremely important to civil liberties.
- amiga386 2y ago
  Exactly. People seem so worried about governments controlling public discourse for their own nefarious ends, that they don't even seem to be aware that private individuals are controlling public discourse for their own nefarious ends. And if well-connected geeks can massage their online profiles, call in favours from unelected moderators, hide pertinent facts about themselves... what's to stop all manner of awful behaviour from being covered up? What's to stop petty business owners from destroying their rivals?
  - VS1999 2y ago
    There's also the issue when private companies just do what the government expects of them, or even pressures them to do. There was a brief controversy (canonized by CBS news) when the current administration ordered social media sites like twitter, youtube, and and facebook to remove posts that they thought were false or painted them in a bad light. What is the point of placing restrictions on government if they can just have a private company do it? I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want." I don't know why the average person is so enthusiastic about the idea of getting taken for a ride by huge corporations.
    - busterarm 2y ago
      > I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want." I don't know why the average person is so enthusiastic about the idea of getting taken for a ride by huge corporations. It's especially humorous when you see those same people claiming that talking out the other side of their mouth about the danger of fascists.
    - mistermann 2y ago
      > What is the point of placing restrictions on government if they can just have a private company do it? "Perception is reality". - Lee Atwater (GOP Consultant) > I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want." A lot of people (many of them smart) don't realize that there is a distinction between the first amendment and the general principle of free speech, which precedes the first amendment.
      - krapp 2y ago
        They realize it, they just don't want it to exist, and have a vested interest in muddying the waters of discourse such that most people remain unaware of it, or mistrust it in principle. For a few years they've been actively campaigning to have protections like Section 230 repealed and have all social media platforms (with some arbitrary number of accounts) be taken over and regulated as utilities by the government.
  - busterarm 2y ago
    Not your average private individuals either, but incredibly wealthy and well-connected private individuals. Keffals, mentioned in the article, is close associates with and supported by Deviant Ollam and his wife Tarah, who was a senior director at Splunk and Symantec and is a fellow at Council on Foreign Relations.
    - DaSHacka 2y ago
      > Keffals, mentioned in the article, is close associates with and supported by Deviant Ollam and his wife Tarah, who was a senior director at Splunk and Symantec and is a fellow at Council on Foreign Relations. As someone familiar with all three, this is extremely disappointing to hear about. I have a lot of respect for Deviant, I can only hope he isn't very close to Keffals, or at the least isn't aware of the sheer number of scummy things they have done.
      - busterarm 2y ago
        Folks in the hacker community have a long history of being too forgiving of what should be hard-avoid character flaws. That's a big part of why these reputation-erasing, behind-closed-door censorship networks exist to begin with. One of infosec's biggest twitter cancel-brigade queens was also the most prolific troll in GNAA and had a long, public history of grooming underage males but everyone looks the other way and celebrates her accomplishments. She literally got a job on Biden's campaign and yet barely anyone talks about it.
        DaSHacka 2y ago
        > Folks in the hacker community have a long history of being too forgiving of what should be hard-avoid character flaws. Maybe, and while most are definitely quite progressive, I would hope most of them (including Deviant) do what they truly believe is the right thing. He has since deleted all his posts relating him to Keffals, so it's possible he just didn't realize how deep the rabbit hole went and has since chosen to cut off ties. > She literally got a job on Biden's campaign and yet barely anyone talks about it. Do you have a source for this?
- thrwaway1234567 2y ago
  He's somewhat misrepresenting the content of his forums: https://old.reddit.com/r/keffals/comments/1bkp9my/proof_kf_harassed_people/ https://old.reddit.com/r/keffals/comments/1bkp9my/proof_kf_h... Keep that in mind when discussing how kiwifarms relates to the open internet that Null allows a lot of questionable things. A few examples: He's fine with stolen credit card and social security numbers being posted to the forum: https://archive.fo/rOKai https://archive.fo/rOKai He's admitted that the rules against harassment are only enforced if it embarrasses him: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/GXIFB https://ghostarchive.org/archive/GXIFB He's openly asked his users to harass people: https://archive.fo/WMrvv https://archive.fo/WMrvv He's admitted that he created secret forums where users could plan harassment campaigns, while he turned a blind eye to it: https://archive.fo/rOKai https://archive.fo/rOKai
  - rpmisms 2y ago
    I read the farms (mostly CWC's thread, some absolutely phenomenal original research), I'm aware of what generally happens there. The only real rule is that porn can't be posted for its own sake. It exists and has a right to do so. The farms exists to shame degeneracy. It started as CWC farms to track the behavior of Chris-chan, of course it's going to be a crazy place. This does not mean they don't deserve access to the backbone of the Internet. You're making moral judgements about who gets to practice legal speech.
    - thrwaway1234567 2y ago
      There are things on the website aren't legal speech or are at least legally questionable. Harassment is illegal for one. The owner is fine with revenge porn being posted, and this has gotten him blocked by some hosts. He's also said he won't ban users who commit illegal acts.
      - rpmisms 2y ago
        Revenge porn isn't generally illegal to post. Posting pornography as revenge is the illegal bit, generally speaking. Also, harassment is illegal in some cases, but talking on a public forum generally doesn't qualify. If the parties talked about it publicly and then committed it, that's their problem. I'm anti-harassment and not in favor of revenge porn. Not really relevant to this discussion, where my position is simply that the law is the law, the government's job is to enforce the law, and companies should be out to make money, not make pretend laws and enforce them via silent agreements.
ImJamal 2y ago
I don't know the veracity of the claim, but Josh basically claims the EFF has been useless on this topic. > At the time the Kiwi Farms deplatforming was starting to show cracks in the Internet backbones, the EFF even launched a petititon website called “Protect the Stack”, dedicated to trying to preserve the neutrality of the Internet. They have never contacted the Kiwi Farms directly to learn about where the stack is in danger, and as a result they have accomplished nothing! Despite the size, prestige, and financial support of the EFF, Protect the Stack has accomplished nothing!
commandlinefan 2y ago
I remember the FCC well enough to be very, very wary of a government-regulated internet. I'd personally rather see the internet become ungovernable - if everybody ran Freenet, Tor and I2P, there'd be nothing to censor, but too many people prefer the illusion of selective censorability for me to believe that will ever happen. What the government _can_ do without nationalizing the internet infrastructure is provide legal support for entities that want to do so in an open way by indemnifying them from "harm". I'd like to see section 230 not repealed, but made more explicit - "no forum can be held legally liable in any way for any content hosted, only the original poster".
- leetcrew 2y ago
  idk, this is all appealing in an abstract way, but I don't think it results in a world most people want to live in. we all draw the line in different places, but I think most would agree that some subset of user-submitted content is purely abusive. if the only recourse available to the victim requires identifying every individual poster, it's effectively impossible to stop. imo some sort of safe harbor mechanism is a reasonable compromise. we can't expect the host to prevent every single instance of abusive content, but we should require them to make some kind of reasonable effort.
  - thegrim33 2y ago
    The issue is, well, let me count the weasel words .. "most would agree", "some subset", "some sort of safe harbor", "some kind of reasonable effort". You just hand wave all the difficult things away with the weasel words, but the majority of the population, in reality, in no way agree on the actual definition of any of the things you're referring to. Not what constitutes abusive content, nor what should be done with it, or whether anything even should be done with it.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - mrWiz 2y ago
      Are you saying that because most people don’t agree on exactly what should be done then nothing should be done?
ClangMan 2y ago
He did correct the record on Byuu with a featured post on his forum and he talked about it in his podcast. It was relatively recently, in the last few weeks if I recall.
- amiga386 2y ago
  One of his forum users posted the official death report (from 2021) in April 2024. He came out of nowhere to announce that, yes, he already had that report, he obtained it last year, and words words words about how right he was to not even mention it until his hand was forced. No "I'm sorry for leading everyone on this whole time" or "RIP Byuu" because the guy's a sociopath concerned mainly about the reputation of himself and his site. But even raging sociopaths don't deserve null-routing.
  - ranger_danger 2y ago
    Why don't you ask him about it instead of assuming an ulterior motive? I believe he did state that he could not verify if the records were real/accurate or not and questioned it himself, and only published it after that other user obtained one of the same documents via FOIA request (maybe this was enough "proof" that Josh's documents were likely genuine). I may not be 100% accurate on that but that's what I recall happening.
    - thrwaway1234567 2y ago
      [flagged]
mistermann 2y ago
> Courts and judges seem slow and fuddy-duddy, but they're conducted in public... How things are supposed to be and how they actually are are not always the same thing. This person is speculating, perhaps without knowing it.
lizthegray 2y ago
[dead]
thrwaway1234567 2y ago
[flagged]
thrwaway1234567 2y ago
Service providers have already been policing websites. It didn't start with kiwifarms. If you go on twitter and look at the profiles of registrars like namecheap, you'll often see them stating they will drop service to websites which are accused of being scams, spam or otherwise malicious.
- coocoon 2y ago
  [dead]

rpmisms 2y ago

I personally dislike Josh (moreso the ugly parts of the farms, actually), but strongly agree with him on this particular issue. The open Internet is extremely important to civil liberties.

amiga386 2y ago
Exactly. People seem so worried about governments controlling public discourse for their own nefarious ends, that they don't even seem to be aware that private individuals are controlling public discourse for their own nefarious ends. And if well-connected geeks can massage their online profiles, call in favours from unelected moderators, hide pertinent facts about themselves... what's to stop all manner of awful behaviour from being covered up? What's to stop petty business owners from destroying their rivals?
- VS1999 2y ago
  There's also the issue when private companies just do what the government expects of them, or even pressures them to do. There was a brief controversy (canonized by CBS news) when the current administration ordered social media sites like twitter, youtube, and and facebook to remove posts that they thought were false or painted them in a bad light. What is the point of placing restrictions on government if they can just have a private company do it? I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want." I don't know why the average person is so enthusiastic about the idea of getting taken for a ride by huge corporations.
  - busterarm 2y ago
    > I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want." I don't know why the average person is so enthusiastic about the idea of getting taken for a ride by huge corporations. It's especially humorous when you see those same people claiming that talking out the other side of their mouth about the danger of fascists.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    > What is the point of placing restrictions on government if they can just have a private company do it? "Perception is reality". - Lee Atwater (GOP Consultant) > I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want." A lot of people (many of them smart) don't realize that there is a distinction between the first amendment and the general principle of free speech, which precedes the first amendment.
    - krapp 2y ago
      They realize it, they just don't want it to exist, and have a vested interest in muddying the waters of discourse such that most people remain unaware of it, or mistrust it in principle. For a few years they've been actively campaigning to have protections like Section 230 repealed and have all social media platforms (with some arbitrary number of accounts) be taken over and regulated as utilities by the government.
- busterarm 2y ago
  Not your average private individuals either, but incredibly wealthy and well-connected private individuals. Keffals, mentioned in the article, is close associates with and supported by Deviant Ollam and his wife Tarah, who was a senior director at Splunk and Symantec and is a fellow at Council on Foreign Relations.
  - DaSHacka 2y ago
    > Keffals, mentioned in the article, is close associates with and supported by Deviant Ollam and his wife Tarah, who was a senior director at Splunk and Symantec and is a fellow at Council on Foreign Relations. As someone familiar with all three, this is extremely disappointing to hear about. I have a lot of respect for Deviant, I can only hope he isn't very close to Keffals, or at the least isn't aware of the sheer number of scummy things they have done.
    - busterarm 2y ago
      Folks in the hacker community have a long history of being too forgiving of what should be hard-avoid character flaws. That's a big part of why these reputation-erasing, behind-closed-door censorship networks exist to begin with. One of infosec's biggest twitter cancel-brigade queens was also the most prolific troll in GNAA and had a long, public history of grooming underage males but everyone looks the other way and celebrates her accomplishments. She literally got a job on Biden's campaign and yet barely anyone talks about it.
      - DaSHacka 2y ago
        > Folks in the hacker community have a long history of being too forgiving of what should be hard-avoid character flaws. Maybe, and while most are definitely quite progressive, I would hope most of them (including Deviant) do what they truly believe is the right thing. He has since deleted all his posts relating him to Keffals, so it's possible he just didn't realize how deep the rabbit hole went and has since chosen to cut off ties. > She literally got a job on Biden's campaign and yet barely anyone talks about it. Do you have a source for this?
thrwaway1234567 2y ago
He's somewhat misrepresenting the content of his forums: https://old.reddit.com/r/keffals/comments/1bkp9my/proof_kf_harassed_people/ https://old.reddit.com/r/keffals/comments/1bkp9my/proof_kf_h... Keep that in mind when discussing how kiwifarms relates to the open internet that Null allows a lot of questionable things. A few examples: He's fine with stolen credit card and social security numbers being posted to the forum: https://archive.fo/rOKai https://archive.fo/rOKai He's admitted that the rules against harassment are only enforced if it embarrasses him: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/GXIFB https://ghostarchive.org/archive/GXIFB He's openly asked his users to harass people: https://archive.fo/WMrvv https://archive.fo/WMrvv He's admitted that he created secret forums where users could plan harassment campaigns, while he turned a blind eye to it: https://archive.fo/rOKai https://archive.fo/rOKai
- rpmisms 2y ago
  I read the farms (mostly CWC's thread, some absolutely phenomenal original research), I'm aware of what generally happens there. The only real rule is that porn can't be posted for its own sake. It exists and has a right to do so. The farms exists to shame degeneracy. It started as CWC farms to track the behavior of Chris-chan, of course it's going to be a crazy place. This does not mean they don't deserve access to the backbone of the Internet. You're making moral judgements about who gets to practice legal speech.
  - thrwaway1234567 2y ago
    There are things on the website aren't legal speech or are at least legally questionable. Harassment is illegal for one. The owner is fine with revenge porn being posted, and this has gotten him blocked by some hosts. He's also said he won't ban users who commit illegal acts.
    - rpmisms 2y ago
      Revenge porn isn't generally illegal to post. Posting pornography as revenge is the illegal bit, generally speaking. Also, harassment is illegal in some cases, but talking on a public forum generally doesn't qualify. If the parties talked about it publicly and then committed it, that's their problem. I'm anti-harassment and not in favor of revenge porn. Not really relevant to this discussion, where my position is simply that the law is the law, the government's job is to enforce the law, and companies should be out to make money, not make pretend laws and enforce them via silent agreements.

ImJamal 2y ago

I don't know the veracity of the claim, but Josh basically claims the EFF has been useless on this topic. > At the time the Kiwi Farms deplatforming was starting to show cracks in the Internet backbones, the EFF even launched a petititon website called “Protect the Stack”, dedicated to trying to preserve the neutrality of the Internet. They have never contacted the Kiwi Farms directly to learn about where the stack is in danger, and as a result they have accomplished nothing! Despite the size, prestige, and financial support of the EFF, Protect the Stack has accomplished nothing!

commandlinefan 2y ago

I remember the FCC well enough to be very, very wary of a government-regulated internet. I'd personally rather see the internet become ungovernable - if everybody ran Freenet, Tor and I2P, there'd be nothing to censor, but too many people prefer the illusion of selective censorability for me to believe that will ever happen. What the government _can_ do without nationalizing the internet infrastructure is provide legal support for entities that want to do so in an open way by indemnifying them from "harm". I'd like to see section 230 not repealed, but made more explicit - "no forum can be held legally liable in any way for any content hosted, only the original poster".

leetcrew 2y ago
idk, this is all appealing in an abstract way, but I don't think it results in a world most people want to live in. we all draw the line in different places, but I think most would agree that some subset of user-submitted content is purely abusive. if the only recourse available to the victim requires identifying every individual poster, it's effectively impossible to stop. imo some sort of safe harbor mechanism is a reasonable compromise. we can't expect the host to prevent every single instance of abusive content, but we should require them to make some kind of reasonable effort.
- thegrim33 2y ago
  The issue is, well, let me count the weasel words .. "most would agree", "some subset", "some sort of safe harbor", "some kind of reasonable effort". You just hand wave all the difficult things away with the weasel words, but the majority of the population, in reality, in no way agree on the actual definition of any of the things you're referring to. Not what constitutes abusive content, nor what should be done with it, or whether anything even should be done with it.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - mrWiz 2y ago
    Are you saying that because most people don’t agree on exactly what should be done then nothing should be done?

ClangMan 2y ago

He did correct the record on Byuu with a featured post on his forum and he talked about it in his podcast. It was relatively recently, in the last few weeks if I recall.

amiga386 2y ago
One of his forum users posted the official death report (from 2021) in April 2024. He came out of nowhere to announce that, yes, he already had that report, he obtained it last year, and words words words about how right he was to not even mention it until his hand was forced. No "I'm sorry for leading everyone on this whole time" or "RIP Byuu" because the guy's a sociopath concerned mainly about the reputation of himself and his site. But even raging sociopaths don't deserve null-routing.
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  Why don't you ask him about it instead of assuming an ulterior motive? I believe he did state that he could not verify if the records were real/accurate or not and questioned it himself, and only published it after that other user obtained one of the same documents via FOIA request (maybe this was enough "proof" that Josh's documents were likely genuine). I may not be 100% accurate on that but that's what I recall happening.
  - thrwaway1234567 2y ago
    [flagged]

mistermann 2y ago

> Courts and judges seem slow and fuddy-duddy, but they're conducted in public... How things are supposed to be and how they actually are are not always the same thing. This person is speculating, perhaps without knowing it.

lizthegray 2y ago

[dead]

thrwaway1234567 2y ago

[flagged]

thrwaway1234567 2y ago

Service providers have already been policing websites. It didn't start with kiwifarms. If you go on twitter and look at the profiles of registrars like namecheap, you'll often see them stating they will drop service to websites which are accused of being scams, spam or otherwise malicious.

coocoon 2y ago
[dead]