Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died
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I don't really know what to say here. I didn't know them personally, but I saw their work and was truly stunned. Most people don't achieve in their entire lives what Near (aka Byuu) did in their comparatively short one. To say I was impressed is an understatement. I simply don't have the words.
What happened, shouldn't have happened. There needs to be a wider discussion of responsibility of hosting providers for the actions of their customers, and especially Cloudflare for shielding illegal acts. But that's a discussion for another day.
Tonight, the sky is darker, for the loss of one of its brightest stars.
How about holding the actual bullies accountable instead of shifting accountability to the ISP/Host? What happens in real life (i.e. outside the context of the internet) if bullies harass someone with hate mail until that person commits suicide? Does the blame shift away from the bullies to USPS or FedEx for failing to shield the recipient from the hate mail?
I could see a case made against kiwi farms, but cloudflare? They are infrastructure level and should not get in user content moderation imo
They’ve opened the doors, so it’s not unreasonable to expect that they could/would/should do it again.
Cloudflare has only ever intervened in matters like this when the mainstream press has given them an absolute and utter kicking.
The sad fact is, when you have your own AS-number and peering agreement, you can do pretty much whatever you like on the Internet.
De-peering a few of the worst network abusers and "it's not my problem, I just want the money" merchants would go a long way to improving the internet for the rest of us.
This might seem hardline, but it's not without precedent: the precedent is the Internet itself, in its earlier days.
The guy who runs the site is a US citizen. If the police don't give a damn (which seems to be the case)... why aren't US citizens writing to their representatives about this?
Does that actually do anything?
I'm astonished that someone with this caliber of attention to detail and proven track record to deliver was not already in at least an internship program. Would have definitely earned at least a closer scrutiny from me and I would have pulled strings to accommodate their special needs if that closer look held up.
KF depravity, if practiced upon a puppy with mapped-over harassment as say, constant yelling or similar behavior, if documented, would net the perps with harsher consequences than the nada they will get. An individual's character is measured by how they behave when no one is watching. A civilization's strength is measured by how it behaves when its weakest members are preyed upon.
The biggest impact Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, had on the technology community is killing Near and so many others by standing behind these sites. This is the principle for which he stands.
What happened, shouldn't have happened. There needs to be a wider discussion of responsibility of hosting providers for the actions of their customers, and especially Cloudflare for shielding illegal acts. But that's a discussion for another day.
Tonight, the sky is darker, for the loss of one of its brightest stars.
A monumental loss. I never knew them personally, and generally didn't keep up with development, but they were a truly magical person and didn't deserve this in the slightest.
near posted a few words of encouragement when I was wondering whether to start a SNES emulator of my own, which inspired me to build one over the course of a few months. That journey gained me a huge amount of engineering, personal and aesthetic fulfillment.
I hope all the people Near/byuu inspired never forget their contributions to the field either. Rest in peace.
His work raised the bar for emulator accuracy and the preservation of video games. He was a towering figure in the field, and will be sorely missed.
I am unaware of a better source for this information besides this Google doc, at the moment. Near’s Twitter handle is @near_koukai, where you can see his farewell message.
The incredibly talented author of pcemu - probably the best classic Pc platform emulators, was subjected to a similar campaign of anti trans abuse and harassment (most of it can still be found online) and called it quits.
[1]: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/04/25/commemoration-rachel... [2]: https://www.nj.com/monmouth/2015/04/post_18.html
The overall conclusion I get from it is that homicide or manslaughter charges could be brought in principle, but prosecutions are rare, and successful ones even more rare. The article author proposes a legal standard for culpability, but it's not clear it's been adopted by any courts. There are also some examples of lesser charges, like harassment or stalking, but they're also rare. In addition, several states have passed specific criminal bullying and/or cyberbullying laws that might allow easier conviction on a lesser charge, but they haven't been widely tested yet.
Am I missing something?
1 - https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...
They'll try to get you fired, call your boss, harass your workplace with fake reviews about you until you get fired, etc.
That said, it's one side, and not even from the source, but from someone's interpretation/understanding of what happened to the source, so I'm being careful to not assume much. The quick-take might be the correct take in this case, but that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with using it.
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...
these are evil people. I wonder if they realize how evil they are.
Just yesterday YouTube recommended me a video about an Australian YouTuber facing legal trouble for being mean to an Australian government figure. The laws he may, or may not, have run afoul of use similar language about online harassment. The YouTuber claims to be calling attention to corruption and poor governmental practice.
To me, the Australian YouTuber drama epitomizes a bad possible result of making online bullying illegal. Such laws will be used to squash genuine dissent - not just jerks.
I do think the cruel people celebrating a suicide should be morally condemned. I would think less of people who do that. I wouldn't advertise there, work there, etc. But I don't think it should be illegal and it is not similar to murder.
Do you believe that psychological attacks can have a lasting impact?
Do you think that threatening someone’s friends and families is a reasonable act?
Do you agree that getting an intermediary to kill a third party is still murder? Why can’t the intermediary also be the third party?
This was a pre-meditated and coordinated long term psychological attack, with the explicit goal of getting someone to kill themselves. These actions must have consequences.
The methods and means don't need to be enumerated. The intent and the end state are what is defined in law.
Both the US and Japan have standing here to charge KF members with murder and those that run KF as an accomplice.
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...
Looking through that thread, I wouldn’t be surprised if a cyberbullying case could be made in many states. There are early comments predicting and mocking the victim’s suicide far in advance of it. With all the evidence we’ve got, it seems like this cyberbullying has some culpability in a death.
I am not saying these two situations are exactly the same, but here is a situation where someone used an electronic device to encourage a suicide and was prosecuted for manslaughter
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.californiacriminaldefensela...
The posts along the lines of “I hope he does it so our kill count will increase by 1” don’t seem totally dissimilar.
On the matter of byuu's/Near's suicide, the (or at least one) motivation wasn't from bullying per se, but from Null's refusal to take down the 3 year old discussion thread regarding byuu.
Source:https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...
https://mobile.twitter.com/near_koukai/status/14089400572353...
I was arguing that the event could be considered more than nothing, possibly something like manslaughter due to possibly analogous events being considered as such. Not that the actors would be prosecuted under any particular law.
Barillaro then sicked an anti-terrorism task force on him, lying about almost ever aspect of the encounter. The difference? Those being actually stalked could never get this unit to act.
A complete abuse of power. But different to this.
> Near survived that. Many wouldn’t, but Near was strong enough to overcome that level of emotional abuse. But Kiwi Farms is relentless. Not to be defeated in their pursuit of utter emotional and psychological destruction, they went after who Near treasured most: their friends. Doxing some, directly harassing others, and even specifically seeking out suicidal people to target.
> That broke Near.
[...]
> Some of you may be aware of Near’s notoriously paranoid opsec. After getting to know them, it became clear this was a defense mechanism; a product of all the abuse they received over their entire life.
Not that I'm doing anything particularly likely to attract the attention of the worst part of the internet (but then, you'd hope that "writing some emulators and going by 'they'" shouldn't either), but, I've thought about it and decided I can deal with people going after me. To some extent, I can be careful about opsec; to some extent, if someone goes after me, I'm all right with that.
But what if they go after other people in the name of targeting me? What if they go after my friends, or even my family, who has very little say in what I do? What if my parents, who have never had to care about opsec in their lives and like most people's parents own a house and have their real names on it, get SWATted because some monster on an internet forum hates me?
How am I supposed to respond except by deciding, I will not do anything with my life that could attract Kiwi Farms' attention?
This is terrorism, and I am terrified.
If legal pressure isn't enough, why not try political pressure?
The members seem to have a strange, self-claimed moral authority. The posts are a mix of records of what they have done to harass people, updates on past targets, ideas for future hate, and justification about why this person deserves it. Overall it was sad for everyone involved. I hope they find some solace in their lives, if only to let their victims find it also.
I'm friends with a few people who have been targeted by Kiwi Farms. Near is far from the only person driven to suicide by overwhelming bullying. it's one reason I keep a low profile - I'm just too scared.
True, although it's sometimes possible to do a 2-step process under a lower standard. First, ask for a restraining order in civil court. Getting a restraining order has a much lower bar than charging someone with a crime does. If they don't stop, and violate the terms of the restraining order, then they can be sanctioned in various ways (civilly or criminally) for violating the restraining order, depending on the jurisdiction.
There are organizations that regularly do this pro bono for domestic violence cases, where the process is pretty well understood [1]. I'm not as sure what organizations or assistance exist for online harassment, unfortunately.
[1] https://www.womenslaw.org/laws/general/restraining-orders
Sounds a lot like Twitter.
On Twitter, self-appointed mobs of the morally righteous call for violence against children [0], farm lulz from the killings of police officers [1], dox strangers to get them fired over off-color jokes [2], and endlessly harass and threaten certain conservative journalists and activists [3]. Actual Twitter employees harassed right-wing reporter Andy Ngo [4] after a real-world mob attack sent him to the ER with a brain hemmorhage, an event which "ACAB Twitter" continues to celebrate and remind him about.
The trolls on Twitter blend in by being a few medium-sized fish in the ocean. The trolls on Kiwi Farms are more visible as big fish in their own small pond. They're ideologically flipped compared to Twitter trolls, but fundamentally alike in their methods, moral posturing, and disregard for basic human decency. They're all an enormous net-negative for humanity.
[0] https://medium.com/@RevolutionaryId/twitter-democratizing-mo...
[1] https://twitter.com/halfsleeps/status/1320955923205033984
[2] https://news.yahoo.com/journalist-apologizes-for--hasjustine...
[3] https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/its-insane-were-having-a-...
Truly disheartened and saddened. Be good to people everyone. Even people, dare I say especially the people, you disagree with or dislike. Everyone is going through something you know nothing about.
Skimming through, I don't see a reason why they were harassed by Kiwi Farms. I don't get it, what caused that?
I never personally interacted with Near, but I've been following them and their work since the days of the zsnes forums, back in the mid-00s. I'm a huge fan - not just of their technical achievements or their ideological commitment, but also of the seeming grace with which they carried themselves in the past few years. I don't know if I'll get all the details right, but I'll try.
My understanding is that KF chooses to harass people who are marginalized, easy to bully, and on the basis of how dramatic, embarrassing, or "cringe" their response would be. Near was gay, autistic, non-binary, and involved with furry communities (though IIRC they may not have been a furry themselves - not that it matters), which made them an easy target. They were sensitive and struggled with depression - KF knew their harassment would be effective. And Near was a controversial public(ish) figure who'd, in the past, courted a fair amount of scene drama and flame wars (sometimes blamelessly, sometimes not, as I'm sure they'd tell you themselves) that occasionally got very personal. In other words: KF looks to stir shit up, and Near sadly provided an ample amount of shit to stir.
No one deserves to be harassed like this, but it feels especially cruel that it was done to someone as remarkable as Near. This is a terrible loss.
KF apparently didn’t like the posts, and set them up as a virtually permanent target.
So stupid.
Showers always build up mildew, but we still periodically scrub them.
Just be respectful, ok?
Near was not done with this incredible work; it was impressive to see such devotion to accuracy on an ongoing basis.
A real loss.
>We just sent notice that we are terminating 8chan as a customer effective at midnight tonight Pacific Time. The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths.
>Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit.
Cloudflare should drop Kiwi Forums as a customer based on this. In fact Kiwi Forums might be worse because it specifically exists to discuss and coordinate harassment, doxing, and stalking of others both online and offline. 8chan was at least ostensibly "just" an anonymous imageboard with a lack of moderation. Kiwi Forums has no justifiable reason to be kept online and Cloudflare's association with it should be kept in mind when chosing to do business with Cloudflare.
Same applies to Dreamhost, their domain registrar. No, kicking them off these platforms won't shutdown the site. They'll move to a Russian DDoS protection service like 8chan did. But there's no reason for Cloudflare/Dreamhost to make it easy for Kiwi Forums to exist, or to continue to receive revenue by hosting them.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-...
Tragic loss, RIP.
I do.
Intent matters.
No they haven't.
>There’s explicit examples in other comments to this article.
No there isn't.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27656582
> No they haven’t.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michelle-carter-found-g...
Completely different scenario that's not even closely related. This example involved an intimate partner that was on the phone with the victim when he was clearly in an altered state, instructing him to go back into harm's way to kill himself.
>https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michelle-carter-found-g...
Literally the exact same case.
I'll say it again: there have been no cases that supports what happened being called "murder".
It’s usually, when criminally charged, been charged as a lesser degree of homicide (typically some form of manslaughter), but that's because its hard in that kind of case to prove premeditation, as the causation element is the same between murder and manslaughter.
If there is actual premeditation, it fits within the definition of murder.
He was not doxxed (no one even knew his name), did not have threats posted there... I fail to see how it can even closely be related to "murder".
What a loss of talent, especially the loss of someone who dedicated so much time to a passion project with tremendous contribution to the community.
Is there a way to keep their home page online?
So many of us grew up in the early-to-late-2000s internet, likely on many of the forums that touched on emulation. Near/byuu's achievements in emulation/game preservation are insane and arguably unmatched, and they also posted here from time[1] to time[2].
So sad to see this all unfold.
Kiwi Farms is a vile, awful place and encountering it a few years ago changed my perceptions on laws, anonymity and privacy. I didn't expect such an awful place to exist and I wish there were some laws in place to implicate them in the murders they have committed over the years.
I know this sounds like victim-blaming, but this is not my intention. It's just that maybe we humans were not built to be judged by everyone everywhere. For those that watched the anime Evangelion, there was a nice, forward-thinking discussion about this idea there.
I've been on the internet for almost 30 years. This is something that we've lost in the last decade of people dying to tie their real identity to everything. The wild west internet was actively hostile and you had to be smart about not only what you said, but who you were associating with.
This form of "internet bullying" has existed since the dawn of the internet. That doesn't make it any more correct and it's only gotten more vicious with age. Especially because finding exploitable weaknesses is extremely easy when people leave themselves exposed on social media, twitter, discord, etc. We haven't solved it because I don't believe there is an actual solution. You get rid of KF and 4chan, another 10 communities pop up and the most popular one survives. You hit the registars, and they find another. Eventually they'll end up on one of the many registrars located outside the US that could not care any less what is hosted there.
The best thing you can do is compartmentalize. The problem is people, for better or worse, tie their entire identity to whatever they do on the internet. This is fraught with danger because it makes you easy to attack. But being easy to attack isn't enough, you have to also have to have shown some weakness they can use as leverage. Near is an unfortunate example of this. KF bullied them mercilessly because they possessed enough exploitable traits to make it profitable. This isn't victim blaming, but unfortunately something we must learn from. Privacy, compartmentalization, and good operational security are the only things that can protect you.
Maybe we can return to the internet of psuedonyms and lies that I remember. It was safer then, because no one trusted anyone implicitly and no one was willing to expose weaknesses that could be exploited.
Insofar as privacy, compartmentalization, and good opsec, near did all of that, doesn't help when the mob goes after friends and family.
I do agree on the furry + anime vices stuff that mixing that in with the legendary byuu was silly and wouldn't surprise me if it was unfortunately due to their autism (they they have it in the twitter thread).
However I don't think LGBT + incredible hacker is a huge blunder IF and only IF, you can be assertive about it, which is much easier said than done when:
A: Most people just want to live their lives without none-sense
B: LGBT people are far more likely to be brought up either through parents or environment to feel the need to be introverted about themselves to protect themselves from harm.
But say someone like say Rupaul, even if they get hate, they simply would never take it.
The real difference now compared to the past IMO is that as a society we haven't really internalized that will large, possibly global reach and the benefits it may bring come an associated set of dangers. The larger the audience, the larger the possible benefits of your interactions. Linus Torvalds leverages a global audience into a volunteer workforce for what is likely the greatest software engineering product of the human race to date. Another person makes a poor decision or hurtful comment or is just interpreted wrong, and is the zeitgeist of a day or two, but a day or two of almost the whole world's ire. That can have major personal and professional consequences, as we've seen.
Managing a one-on-one interaction and explaining yourself to someone is generally trivial, for mature people. Doing so for a group of 10 is harder, but also possible much of the time. For 100, adequately assuaging them all is unlikely, some will retain reservations you'll likely never know are directly related. It worsens at every level. At the point where thousands or millions of people have negative impressions of you, many will never even see counterfactual evidence to what was initially presented, and your reputation may be tarnished, possibly to a sizeable fractions of the human race, and there's not much you can do about it, because the novel situation that got information about you in front of them initially is extremely unlikely to be repeated.
Tbh should be mandatory for a FB account and Twitter given their large hold on social media. They want to allow non verifiable or accountable users. Give me the user the ability to block interaction with all non verified accounts. Problem mostly sorted.
These ideas weren't invented out of thin air, but to defend things that are hard to defend on their own merits. And just as the devinity of kings mysteriously only brought rights and no responsibilities, it is equally telling that the only time the "marketplace of ideas" is ever brought is in the context of why we shouldn't be doing anything about all of the hate speech.
No, they were invented to provide air for all things to be considered on their merits, and to defeat dogma and traditionalism. That it also allows bad ideas to get some air is not the purpose, but a necessary feature to allow the good but discriminated against ideas surface.
> And just as the devinity of kings mysteriously only brought rights and no responsibilities
Making nonsensical allusions between dissimilar things doesn't mean they are similar. A marketplace of ideas is exactly the kind of thing that allows the divinity of kings to be questioned and reconsidered in the first place, so equating them is particularly odd.
> it is equally telling that the only time the "marketplace of ideas" is ever brought is in the context of why we shouldn't be doing anything about all of the hate speech.
That the things that are considered but wrong generate a lot of noise continuously as they keep being wrong is not unexpected. The correct and or good things that eventually supplant the prior things stop making noise by nature of be accepted. Equality of races and sexes is something you get out of the marketplace of ideas, as well as race and gender superiority. Once upon a time, race and gender superiority was the accepted norm, and calls for equality were the loud complaints that people had to hear and decide whether to agree with. Eventually equality supplanted the prior norm, and we hear some noisy ideas about superiority. I doubt that will supplant the norm in the majority though, it's an obviously inferior situation for the majority than equality, because everyone is a minority depending on how you slice it.