Blocking Kiwifarms | Hacker News Reader

Blocking Kiwifarms

blog.cloudflare.com

994 points_vvaw1,631 comments

Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not. It’s about what in the US you’d call “due process” and in all the rest of the world you’d call “rule of law.”

Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems.

That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be the ones making that call, and no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat.

Encourage you when these issues arise to think of them in the rule of law context, rather than free speech, in order to have a more robust conversation with frameworks that have an appeal and applicability across nearly every nation and government.

>rather than free speech

i encourage anybody who is calls themselves a "free speech advocate" to consider what kiwifarms has been doing to "free speech". their intimidation campaigns have been doing a lot more to harm the cause of free speech than this decision by cloudflare is. if you really believe in free speech, you understand that trans people deserve free speech too, and kiwifarms harrasment campaigns have been harming their free speech. free speech is for everybody, not just the people who have opinions you agree with, and being openly trans is a form of speech.

Freedom of speech isn't about speech. It's about hearing. There are people who want to read or listen to what others have to say, and often for reasons besides agreement with the author's statements. By silencing someone, you are preventing others from reading what they want to read or hearing what they want to hear. I certainly don't agree with the posts and comments on kiwifarms, but I want to understand what they believe and why. Also, there is a diamond in that dung heap of a website. Kiwifarms users archive tons of stuff, and those archives are very valuable.

Moreover, I cannot help but notice the double standard you've created. You still provide services to godhatesfags.com. Hell, cloudflare provides DDoS protection for ISIS content. How can you say that kiwifarms is too dangerous when you're ensuring that copies of Inspire and Dabiq are available for extremists to read? If you want to talk about dangerous content, go after the people who claim that they want to murder innocent people and have done so many times in the past.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspire_(magazine)

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabiq_(magazine)

> Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems.

> That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be the ones making that call, and no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat.

This is the logic of vigilantes. I'm not saying what you have done is on the same level as vigilante murder or anything, but don't try to justify it as something high-and-mighty. You've once again terminated a customer on a whim. And that's your right, but stop trying to make this out to be anything more than that.

Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems.

Post the screenshot then. Show us what changed between when CF said "KF is acting within the bounds of the law and will remain online" and today.

Refusing service to customers you find contemptible is completely reasonable. Continuing to service customers out of a sense of fairness even though you find them contemptible is also reasonable. Pretending that you have a sense of fairness that keeps all legal entities online and abandoning it to protect your bottom line is hypocritical and cowardly.

Being a company that protects the vulnerable is every bit as honorable as being a company that stands for freedom of expression. Today Cloudflare proves it is neither.

> Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems.

Does Cloudflare wait for a court order before taking action when it detects a DDoS attack or when it suspects that a client is malicious?

The law is by design reactionary. In this case, I don't mean that in a bad way; what I mean is that the law is designed to respond to criminals, not to preempt them. If all of your moderation decisions, even in cases that go beyond hate speech or bigoted content into straight-up abuse of infrastructure and direct targeting of individuals -- if you need that to be reliant on a court then you are giving up the ability to prevent abuse and you can only respond to that abuse.

Do you worry about due process when someone's site is getting knocked offline by automated requests, or is your primary worry about protecting your customers?

What's even worse is that by abjugating your responsibility to protect your customers even in cases where there are clear threats, and by encouraging the law to become even faster and more trigger-happy to compensate, you encourage the creation of censorship engines that are even more dangerous than the ones that you are in charge of. We should have better laws around doxing and threatening people online, but even once we get better laws, Cloudflare is still going to have a part to play in detecting targeted attacks. No just law is going to be fast enough or nuanced enough to make these decisions for you.

You can't get rid of your responsibility to such a degree that you won't need to make moderation decisions even about non-ideological and purely abusive content like doxing forums. And by refusing to recognize your role in that process, you allow people to be completely driven offline and censored in the exact same ways that your company is dedicated to preventing. It's no different than allowing a DDoS attack on one of your clients to continue because you haven't specifically heard from a judge yet that you should stop it.

It’s nonsense this has anything to do with the law.

This solely happened because of mainstream media pressure and significant clients moving or threatening to move away from Cloudflare and the board deciding they don’t need the bad press and loss of customers and nothing else.

You provide a service and like every service provider you have a TOS/AUP. The issue is the Acceptable Use Paragraph is clear as long as the content isn’t Copyright or CSE then it’s fine as you will absolve yourself of any responsibility.

No other CDN/WAF tolerates nationalists who threaten people, Cloudflare does. No other CDN/WAF makes the reporting process essentially doxing yourself to the threatening website. Cloudflare does. No other CDN/WAF intentionally puts all the most vile sites on dedicated CDN hosts so they get DDoSed while the normal customers don’t.

It’s purely so then when the vile sites get DDoSes then they use those learnings to improve the controls for all customers.

Much like providing security guards for a Proud Boys rally. It’s an intentional business decision to provide those services. You could chose not to. But you don’t.

I disagree somewhat. rule of law' sounds like such a neat, objective solution to social problems, but in practice it centralizes a vast amount of decision-making in organs of state (courts and to a lesser extent, public prosecutors.

This in turn drastically shapes incentives, because of the cost of litigation and highly variable access to legal infrastructure: as we all know, police have no formal duty to protect despite having vast levels of legal immunity from consequences when they make bad decisions.

Hence the pressure campaign on your firm, because exerting leverage through market forces and PR strategies is simply more effective than begging some state authority to intervene. Of course, it hurts you somewhat insofar as it's harder for you to sell a service to anyone and everyone when people see that you're willing to revoke access in some cases. but then you were willing to do that already, eg to pre-empt perceived legal risks from FOSTA/SESTA.

I think sites like Kiwifarms have a right to exist, but on the other hand they don't have any particular right to DDOS protection. If a site is so chronically unpopular that it's constantly getting kicked out of nice infrastructure perhaps the operators need to reconsider their security stance or reflect on the basis of said unpopularity.

Of course, DDOS attacks can be engineered rather than being an expression of organic network sentiment, but then so can mitigation strategies.

Tell me then - why does Cloudflare still offer its services to drug dealers? To sites run by terrorist groups like ISIS? To outright criminal scamming operations?

I have no faith in your principles. From my perspective, the only principle you have is your share price. That's fine, of course. I don't expect you to stick your neck out or risk your business. But don't pretend like this is some principled stand.

Forgive me if my understanding is wrong, but if someone were to host a message board or similar site with UGC and have it backed by Cloudflare, and a troll makes posts and threads threatening disasters on multiple occasions even though the site's administration removes them with haste, would Cloudflare also deny service to them? Basically take the current situation but instead of Kiwi Farms, replace it with "Grandma's Cat Forum".

You're not a law enforcement organization. You don't have the ability to investigate and determine whether or not the threat is genuine or if it's an agent provocateur.

Banning them creates a hazard, since now to get an opponent banned from the service, they can create content that reaches to this level.

It's a Layer 8 DDOS.

Ok, can we know what was this great threat then that suddenly made you change your position in just a few days?

Furthermore, do you believe that someone who is issuing a threat on a public platform is going to not act it out because you took it away? If anything it just sounds like it would make them even more incensed to do it, just makes absolutely no sense to frame it as some immediacy issue.

"the threat"

Ever think the feds have half a brain among them, and know there's no threat?

I know how gullible people are in these culture-warish times, but I still hope you've lost credibility with some significant fraction of us. Maybe those of us old enough to remember when the average techy was libertarian and opposed censorship. The Farms is right back up, by the way. But at least now you can wash your hands of it. Don't think Twitter will stop coming at you though. You need to understand those people want to punish and teach.

Kiwifarms should have been dealt with by the traditional legal system years ago. It is honestly shocking to me that the operator has never been charged. The site has been engaging in mass harassment for years and is responsible for multiple suicides.

When the legal system fails, people turn to vigilante justice, and we get this mess instead. People feel so strongly that Kiwifarms should be taken offline that they engage in illegal behavior themselves.

> we shouldn’t be the ones making that call, and no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat

If one patron starts beating another to a pulp, the bartender breaking up the fight does not signify a failure of the rule of law or law enforcement. You stepped in to help. It would be nice if you were given official air cover to do so. But I and most Americans prefer a system where the government has extra hoops to jump through to halt even dangerous speech.

Every website gets threats. The Stoneman Douglas shooter wrote a YouTube comment about how he wanted to be a school shooter, just weeks before his attack, which went unmoderated. Kiwifarms immediately deleted the threatening post. Why hold small discussion forums to such a higher standard? They deleted the post in minutes; so you expect them to delete violating posts faster than YouTube?

In the case of the Daily Stormer, it was free speech and you very clearly and directly made the incorrect call.

I'm a big fan of your thoughtful speeches while you grapple with these sticky situations. But why not just invest some pocket change in helping solve TOR's name resolution problem so that removal from the clearnet isn't the death sentence it currently is?

There's a simple and obvious solution to this which doesn't interfere with your principles or your business model: a crypto-driven system for assigning human readable addresses to onion addresses. With that in place and included in the tor browser and in a simple browser plugin for other browsers, you can focus on fighting DDOS attacks on clearnet sites instead of being the reluctant referee of the world's communication.

The problem is: how do you determine that nobody else was taking this seriously? I don't know anything about Kiwifarms, so I may simply look foolish asking this, but: how do you know there was an imminent emergency? Did you conduct your own independent investigation? Or was this a response to some alarming Twitter outrage? Those are the type of questions on my mind. Essentially, did you do all the things one would reasonably expect of law enforcement who are equip to handle emergencies in a situation like this?

You are right, the simple idea of vigilante corporations makes my skin crawl. The double standards, of sort, are pretty logically inconsistent and frustrating. You’re saying, “Cloudflare acknowledges that policing the internet is not an appropriate responsibility for a platform provider, but we’re gonna do it anyway because the rest of society doesn't have its act together.” I guess I am to some extent expecting a citation on that last part so I can verify your claims are serious and not just corporate knee jerk.

Finally, let’s assuming there is indeed an emergency and the you are 100% spot on with your mitigation strategy. Crisis averted. Then what happens? Is this permanent? Once the immediate emergency is over, would you be comfortable reinstating Kiwifarms as a customer? There are some “don’t be Google” vibes here that make me uncomfortable too.

In a fair environment, once an emergency is dealt with and justice served, we go back to normal. I find it hard to believe you’d be amenable to that type of resolution because I’m used to corporate decisions being final and essentially unable to be appealed. Or, at least they’re final until Twitter starts griping about the new injustice such a final outcome has caused.

You may not want the mantle but, by choosing to act, you are, at least for now, picking it up. Yes, this is way more nuanced than “free speech”. I hope you’re ready…

Imagine I own a bunch of billboards around town. A customer comes to me with cash and wants to display someone's personal details and a message encouraging harassment on my billboards.

Do I have to wait for law enforcement to stop me from displaying their content? Or can I, as a private company, make a judgement call and decline their business?

I think the answer here is pretty obvious and your attempt at passing the buck is pathetically weak.

How do you intend to generalize this case to other websites with user-generated content? Because the precedent set today is that a single threatening user-generated comment is enough to pull Cloudflare security services for the entire site, regardless of how quickly the website performs their own moderation, as long as it stays up long enough to be screenshotted and passed around on Twitter. That's basically carte blanche to deny service to any website with user generated content whenever you want.

Cloudflare's post the other day seemed like a very reasonable framework for making decisions on issues like this, but Cloudflare's actions today just severely undercut your credibility on this issue.

Did blocking the content save anybody's life? If so, how? If you don't know, can you even articulate a theory in which blocking content could save a life imminently threatened?

I don't dispute that a life was threatened and murder may have been imminent, I'm taking that for granted. I just don't understand how this action could have any effect upon that course of events. Murder is a physical-world thing, not an online content thing.

Further explanation would be appreciated.

Unelected technocrats taking the law into their own hands and using arbitrary judgment calls to manipulate infrastructure is not an improvement on the current legal system. Especially when they are making promises they don't keep and when they then try to gaslight people into thinking this has nothing to do with external political pressure.

There was one threat which was immediately removed by the moderators. Why is it your business to take down an entire site because one user on it broke the rules and was stopped by the site moderators?

Actually it's about the fact that you don't want to spend the money to enforce an AUP, like just about every other ISP does. Instead you want someone else to make the that system for you. Every printer gets to decide if they want to print Mein Kampf, and most decide that they won't. Movie theaters get to decide if they want to show dirty movies. Liberal society recognizes human interactions beyond the merely legal.

What you're saying is you're fine hosting harassment until it gets bad enough for a court to finally intervene and order it offline. But Kiwifarms was already banned in New Zealand for hosting a snuff film showing innocent people getting slaughtered for their religion. I'm not sure what exactly you wanted: a US court issuing an order that would almost certainly be unconsitutional prior restraint? An obscenity prosecution?

Society has decided that it's your choice what kinds of speech the company you control enables, and you've decide to tell us that you're going to pretend it isn't. Well, it is. Those sites are up on Cloudflare, because you want them to be, and nothing you say is going to change that reality.

So then why did you become the liability decision maker on behalf of your customer, if you were not required by the law?

After many sales emails that we ignored, your sales guy found and called me on my personal cell when I was on vacations in Mexico City, trying to push a 5000/mo DDoS mitigation contract, and i explained to him that we are happier paying 100k/year to a net neutral company VeriSign (now down to 27k), than offloading the legal liability decisions on our behalf to your Majesty Matthew Prince.

While it makes sense to use CF for a booter DDoS-for-hire outfit accepting Monero, any legitimate company that has real money and jobs at stake should not use CF.

> could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems. > Encourage you when these issues arise to think of them in the rule of law context

To get this straight: your position is that this is not about free speech because something clearly illegal happened and you acted purely to expedite matters since law enforcement was too slow to react and there was material danger.

So you are then tying your reputation to there being eventual legal consequences for what happened in recent days on Kiwi Farms?

I always appreciate your stance (as you have tried to maintain for many years) on the importance of trying to be neutral.

It is kind of funny that your latest argument / blog was your best and just a week ago…

So thank you. Anyone capable of reading between the lines here doesn’t fault you or believe the “new threats story”.

But that’s okay. Media pressure, bad PR, ESG scores, losing customers, and the bigger HR problem of employees/ engineers becoming deranged and unfocused is not worth the trade off. It casts a pretty shadow over the real and good company stuff.

Thanks for being reasonable and understanding this is just not the way things should be.

Hopefully you can quietly lobby for clearer legal guidance or a better measured shift in the public conversation.

Until then… here’s to the next one! See you back here in 6-12 months all over again, haha.

Did Cloudflare give KF notice that it intended to take this action and enable them to avoid service disruption? Or did Cloudflare intend that KF should experience service disruption?

I remember many years ago with lulzsec, where cloudflare refused to shutdown their services. Whether what they did was moral or not, it was a still a crime and I imagine it was because they agreed with the message.

> we shouldn’t be the ones making that call, and no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat.

By making that call regardless, I don’t think you’ve increased the likelihood of law enforcement (or other appropriate parties) stepping up to deal with such cases in a timely manner in the future. Maybe rather the opposite, which would be unfortunate.

What was the actual threat? Was it posted on Kiwi Farms, or transmitted via another channel?

I'd like to honestly better understand why, if there is a threat of violence, law enforcement cannot act.

What threat exactly? How do we know it wasn't a false flag by someone wanting to take the site offline?

Matthew, you don't give a damn about free speech. You've proven it numerous times. Quit pretending that you do.

I don’t necessarily disagree, but what does banning them from Cloudflare achieve?

Is it just that the company feels unconfortable providing them any kind of service given the nature of the currently posted content?

Because banning them should have no effect on their ability to generate/serve that content, maybe make it a bit more expensive (though I see that their site is still blocked, so maybe immediately disabling Cloudflare isn’t an option for them either)

I'd like to have seen some transparency, e.g. post redacted examples of the content that caused this conclusion.

We do not call "rule of law" "due process" in US. Due process is the tempering of the application of law ("Rule of Law") by the state. You start off clouding matters (npi).

> traditional rule of law systems.

As opposed to what, "modern and innovative corporate rule of law systems"?

INAL but I am pretty sure there are all sort of legal actions that can be taken before the entire "due process" is completed.

You are aware, Mr. Prince, that people can be arrested and put in jail ("Rule of Law") and have a court date at a much later date ("Due Process")?

[p.s. for hn]: It's not that I give a fig about wikifarms (which was TIL for me). But this posturing by Cloudflare and framing this as a responsible action in context of 'a broken legal system' (aka "traditional") is too much.

Yes, let's have CEOs of SV companies apply the "Rule of Law" for us. While you are at it, why don't you 'edit' the content that you are 'fronting'? "Traditional editorial systems" are also desperately in need of the wise guidance of CEOs and corporations! /s

>Reading over the comments I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not.

Indeed it’s not - you have no problems with censoring your critics. It’s about you being bad actors (https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=32705613) but now pretending not to, because share prices started to tank.

Josh has received no contact from federal law enforcement. He has never not complied with their requests and is open about every request he does receive. He does this by creating a post notifying the community of the post and how he responded.

He’s also pro-active in both deleting and reporting any posts that advocate violence, whether that’s a bombing, shooting or stalking.

There is no credible evidence of any physical violence or deaths resulting from KiwiFarms.

Chloe Sagal stated in her farewell messages that her pain came from negative comments made about, and to, her by fellow members of the broader LBGTQIA+ community.

Byuu/Near faked his death, as he did not appear on any Japanese or US death lists. He also has been seen by other developer expats in the time that has passed since his purported suicide.

There is no evidence for the claims being made in the drive to cancel this website. I say this as someone who has never posted there and personally find much of it reprehensible to my ethics and politics.

> the risk created by the content

What risk? Can you please share details? From my perspective, it seems like this is a thin excuse, and there was not actually a credible risk that you were mitigating.

> That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be the ones making that call, and no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat.

sure, but I presume CF makes the decision of whether or not to facilitate access to/sell services to other undesirable bits of the internet all the time without requiring law enforcement intervention.

  * Does CF wait for LE or a court case to block or drop malware distribution or command&control channels from their cache/NS/1.1.1.{2+} resolvers?
  * Would CF wait until LE intervenes to drop a known, demonstrated CP host? 
  * Would CF continue to cache pirated material until a court stepped in even if approached by an alleged copyright holder? 
  * Would any of the above actors have a right of appeal with CF?

“The law doesn’t work so I’m gonna be the law.”

- every evil person ever

Another often (purposely?) forgotten freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_association

> we shouldn’t be the ones making that call

So you believe that your company shouldn’t be constrained by morality? This is why I look skeptically at hiring any engineering and product leaders from Cloudflare at any company in which I work

>I see everyone thinking this is about “free speech.” It is not.

Says the people blocking access.

>the risk created by the content

What risk? Fearmongering is always the first defense of those who wish to limit free speech. "Something will happen if we don't." Can I get a crystal ball like yours from amazon?

>no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat.

What threat?

>Encourage you when these issues arise to think of them in the rule of law context, rather than free speech,

Free speech should trump the rule of law. When it doesn't you end up with tyranny.

Twitter mob wants more

I have no idea why and this piecemeal information leak looks bad

You’re just going to wind up like Facebook where their content moderation completely missed the fanning of genocide in Myanmar and that actual outcome, all the “immediate threats” not just one person getting doxxed

Rule of law? I have no clue what distinction you’re making, as it is neither a legal free speech or rule of law issue. Leave the communication to the lawyers?

Will you also ban violent threats from the left to Andy Ngo? He has been thoroughly documenting it. And published a NYT bestseller “Unmasked”, a written account of how violence from the extreme left is being ignored.

I’d like to see equal treatment, that’s the least worst option.

I want extreme objectivity at the highest level.

Edit: I’m questioning OBJECTIVITY and Andy Ngo is just a fucking example. Find some hypothetical antifa forum, the point is about standards.

> we shouldn’t be the ones making that call

Well, who should? Is anything with the authority going to or even inclined to in the slightest?

Cloudflare has maintained a lobbying/policy department since quite early on, but I'd argue that the post from the 31st wasn't so much that there _should_ be policy against this than that there simply isn't. Given the coming EU DSA or, hell, the comical farce that is/was Texas HB20, it seems clear that further government regulation of online speech is coming in some capacity. How is Cloudflare discussing these issues with lawmakers? Are they taking the approach that existing law and enforcement mechanisms are fully sufficient, or are they arguing that there is a common strain between KiwiFarms, 8chan, and the Daily Stormer that has demonstrated a known pathway between speech and violence that needs some sort of updated legal framework?

> Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems.

Given kiwifarms most definitely remains up[1] (all your action did was let them be DDOSed for an hour or two) and this imminent dealy threat has not materialized, will you invite them back to your infrastructure? Or was this just an excuse and you were unhappy about the bad PR?

[1] https://kiwifarms.ru/threads/matthew-prince-lied.128900/

The issue is about "free speech" AND "due process" AND the "rule of law". In the US, the law is emphatic that the government shall not infringe upon the free speech of the individual except under very limited circumstances. People on HN insisting that these are private corporations doing private things are painfully naive "useful idiots" or shills for the government. Zuckerberg just admitted that the FBI and intelligence services applied pressure on Facebook to suppress information that would harm the campaign of the candidate who ended up winning the last presidential election. That is fact. The "requests" from government are ALWAYS going to be couched in the language of risk and helping law enforcement. And what would the consequences of a media company's refusal to comply be? What corporate executive wants to find out?

There is already US case law prohibiting this. At scale, governments prefer to act through "private" enterprise. Such enterprises are "state actors" suppressing speech. That is why government prefers monopoly capitalism. Who wouldn't rather have just one or a few partners to manage?

Of course this is a free speech issue, but it's much more. Cloudflare's volte face is super sus. Even if it's the case that no direct government agents were involved this time, the astroturfed pressure campaigns run by state sponsored NGO money are just the privatized surveillance and secret police state hard at work.

The deep issue is that US politicians and citizens are abandoning "rule of law" expectations in domestic politics. These free speech issues are the visible manifestation of a shift in the structure of power in US politics to an unapologetic administrative uni-party, accelerating in real time. Arguing the ludicrous details of this Kiwifarms blocking is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

> Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems.

So you are fine to bypass the laws on your own? How practical.

Kiwifarmers can call each other on the phone, stand on a soapbox in a park, print pamphlets and distribute them. They are still free to say whatever they want to whomever they want without fear of a Government throwing them in jail unless they break the law. Anonymous posts simply allow Kiwifarmers to say things they would likely never say to your face. Cloudflare simply chose to not allow their paid for service to support this behavior. Big deal.

> Our decision today was that the risk created by the content could not be dealt with in a timely enough matter by the traditional rule of law systems.

Do you not see how concerning (not to mention arrogant) it is when a corporation decides to act because it believes the law is inadequate. When individuals do this, we call it vigilantism.

It does set a dangerous precedent and will have a chilling effect. You could have done this silently. Blogging about this is disgusting.

It is not your job to be the police. You should let the authorities do their job.

I think this better encapsulates what I was going for with my comment. For whatever it's worth, I strongly agree.

"Our decision..." who are you?

For context, @eastdakota on HN is Matthew Prince, the CEO/founder of Cloudflare.

Turns out there's no such thing as neutrality. Connecting content to the world is a choice your team approves or declines. You can complain about scalability of that decision all you want. Cloudflare is not neutral, and will never be. You're an active participant and you have to deal with your responsibility.

>Our decision today

Your decision today. You took ownership before for the arbitrary decisions to remove DS and 8Chan, take ownership now and do not try to backpedal. You are Cloudflare's leader.

>That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be the ones making that call, and no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat.

You failed to take ownership of this issue either way. Your response suggests you can't understand the responsibility that you continue to have and are trying to shirk it. My suggestion is, find someone who is willing to be compensated to have this responsibility if it burdens you so. That's part of a leader's job.

Watching company employees consistently pop up on critical threads (not fingering CF here, many including at least Stripe come to mind as frequently occurring too) feels a lot like gaming the forum. Vetted messages like this from a recognizable source will often end up pinned to the top of the thread, but I don't really think they overly contribute to the conversation in most cases, and I find myself wishing there was some rule against it.

Not to say there shouldn't be a place for official responses, just that it's kinda tiring to see crowdpleasing justifications during times of stress displacing the thoughts of other potentially less biased folk on the Internet discussing the problem at hand.

(The counterargument would be that the status quo provides unparalleled public access to top-level staff, I'll leave that angle for someone else to explore ;)

how do you know it wasn't just trolls trying to get KF taken down?

"hi I'm a liar and we only did something because the bad press started to go mainstream. fuck trans people"

While I agree with you that the content on kiwifarms is not covered by free speech, you should not play law enforcement and wait for a court order instead.

> Encourage you when these issues arise to think of them in the rule of law context, rather than free speech

That's a clever way of spinning the issue. But no amount of spinning can change the fact that you are clearly using doublespeak. Contrary to what you say in the post, this clearly isn't in the spirit of the policy you had promised [1], or even had advertised just a few days ago. [2]

You are mostly just giving in to pressure. I can't blame you for that, given that I have to use a pseudonym here myself.

Otherwise, if this was just a matter of different principles, you would also kick out media websites who regularly dox people, or publish dumps of hacked websites, etc.

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/cloudflares-ceo-...

[2]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a...

Cloudflare can do whatever it wants but I wish they were honest about it.

The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense. If anything the owner has been monitoring the thread more proactively and making sure people follow the law. This is included not allowing the creation of new accounts and reminding everyone that their data will be turned over to the authorities should it be requested.

The only thing that picked up steam in the last two weeks is the campaign to drop Cloudflare and the media attention on the situation. That’s why they caved in. It got big enough to reach Bloomberg/wsj/congress. Just be honest about it.

> The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense.

I don’t believe you have the same information as cloudflare and assuming good faith I believe them when they say there are legitimate threats to body and person.

They have a responsibility to their investors to insure that their brand isn’t used to coordinate violence.

Dont just shrug your shoulders while a small group invites violence because “that’s just too bad” We all have a responsibility to discern what is valuable speech and what is corrosive. Mentally ill people exist, and they are more than happy to use these forums, and they are often used in these forums as tools.

> The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense.

I believe the final push for Cloudflare to drop them was this forum thread where users were organizing a bomb threat & armed confrontation against several members of the Drop Kiwi Farms campaign.

(copied from https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/x56mot/cloudfla...)

Just adding some light to the escalations; there were bomb and shoot threats over the last few days. The userbase on the site upped the tone of their "jokes"/threats after the last blog post and thats what caused the final suspension.

100% they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. First you pretend you care about free speech for a week and gesticulate in public. Then you come up with some extraordinary circumstance so it doesn’t seem like it’s the new normal.

After hearing about the drama and reading kf's pov, I can definitely understand why the people ddosing kf want it down. The stuff they do is illegal and absolutely vile but overlooked by the people in power because it suits their politics. It scares me as a prospective parent.

They didn't say that there was "dangerous escalation" in the past two weeks. They said that there was a pressure campaign over the last two weeks, and they also said that they didn't want to comply with this campaign.

They, crucially, said that there was dangerous escalation over the past 48 hours, i.e., since Thursday. Given that most of us have jobs, we might not have noticed. But what changed in 48 hours that led Cloudflare to contact law enforcement?

Thank you for this comment. The only possible negative here is "Kiwifarms itself will most likely find other infrastructure that allows them to come back online." Cloudflare supposedly being "concerned that our action may only fan the flames of this emergency" is disingenuous at best.

> The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense

How do you know?

And to be specific, the claim was "targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours to the point that we believe there is an unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life".

>The policy we articulated last Wednesday remains our policy.

>have our cake and eat it too.

I don't get this corporate reverse speak.

They literally went against the policies stated on Wednesday and then plainly say "But this violation of that policy doesn't reflect on our policies overall."

I get that Kiwifarms is hated, that doesn't make black turn to white and up turn to down.

Cloudflare reneged on everything they said Wednesday, there isn't two ways about it.

They are self-stated as 'internet infrastructure', and this is definitely a censorship tactic.

It looks like it's time for a government to step in with over-sight, since they want to be an infrastructure player.

As I remember the policy they posted had exceptions for sites that were dangerous/etc. I think what they did today is completely consistent.

What I DON’T get is why they didn’t think the site was dangerous last week. When I read their policy it seems to clearly state they wouldn’t work with a group like kiwifarms, and yet they posted a whole post explaining why they were.

I agree it’s a flip-flop, I guess I see it from the other side.

>It looks like it's time for a government to step in with over-sight

Which government on Earth is going to enforce a principle of neutrality instead of its own particular censorship agenda?

Cloudfare really snatched defeat from the jaws of victory here. Their Wednesday post was fantastic, and for once I had an ounce of hope they’d do the right thing.

Of course they took less than a week to completely cave, falling back on their spineless nature. This kind of institutional rot starts at the top, they desperately need a new CEO.

Utility “companies” don’t get to pick and choose, if you pick and choose you are just a regular company which opens up the whole monopoly trust-busting side of things.

> They literally went against the policies stated on Wednesday

How so?

On Wednesday they said they will block content "that ... incites ... violence against people".

Then now they're saying "targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours to the point that we believe there is an unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life".

Seems perfectly consistent.

I think a lot of people in the comments don't understand what Kiwifarms is.

I say this as someone who occasionally browses there and gets some (admittedly sick) enjoyment from it: the main draw of the website is a place for people to get together and bully mentally ill "weirdos".

It's not just about people posting offensive shit in their own little corner of the internet - what happens there spreads out, by design, into the mainstream web and real life too.

While I'll personally miss watching people do fucked up shit for internet clout, this is a wise and fair decision by Cloudflare, and there's a good chance they may have saved Keffals' life.

What specifically makes their victims 'weirdos' and why do you feel the need to comment that you get off to 'watching people do fucked up shit for internet clout'

That's exactly what you are doing right now.

They target trans women like Lizzy Waite and Clara Sorrenti.

And gay children...

What is so weird about kids who need support from the Trevor Project hotline?

Being queer is not a mental illness.

I've never even heard of Kiwifarms until now. Judging by your comment I can see why. Sadly, I think this will be a "Streisand effect" moment and will likely draw more attention to this site.

Cloudflare bans websites for unproven claims but is perfectly happy to provide protection for ddos-for-hire websites that so happen to help their bottom line by generating a reason for people to use DDOS protection for which Cloudflare is one of very few options that does not have a fixed limit.

Cloudflare has to be in bed with the US government, otherwise it would have been shutdown for ignoring illegal activity (ddos-for-hire) that's been reported to them (aka ignoring complaints is meant to remove your S.230 protection).

CF could have said to KF "For various reasons we no longer wish to do business with you. In 24 hours we will stop redirecting to your servers. Please make appropriate arrangements." Had they done this, they would not have actually been censoring KF. They would also have been behaving like a responsible service provider by not cutting off service without notice.

Instead, they seem to have made the decision to do this in a way where they actually block access to KF, rather than in a way where they simply chose to stop doing business with KF. I could be wrong about this; maybe substantial notice was given, and CF reasonably believed that KF could have avoided service disruption. But given that they wrote a bunch of copy to go with this decision, including the copy for the redirect page, I'm inclined to think that this went off exactly as CF intended. They didn't give notice and attempt to prevent their customer from having service disruption because they wanted them to have service disruption, and they wanted everyone to know they wanted this.

CF should not do this. I don't care who KF is or what they've done. CF should either do right by their customers, or stop doing business with them in a responsible way. Not in a way designed to injure their customers. Especially after taking their money, but that's hardly the point.

> We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign.

Given their principled stand just two days ago, this sounds like a pretty weak "haha we totally don't cave to pressure, it's just coincidence, so don't think pressure campaigns work on us!"

Has Cloudflare proactively blocked any websites without a pressure campaign?

There were no good choices for Cloudflare here, and everyone across the internet who jams their fingers in their ears and shouts their position repeatedly is just contributing to the problem.

Private companies should not be the de facto moderators of free speech in our society. They are forced into that position by woefully inadequate governance by legal authorities operating multiple decades behind the current landscape.

Given that they should never be in this position, Cloudflare is choosing between "platforming the bad guys" and "censoring free speech". They have navigated this imperfectly, but have done better than most would, I think.

I truly hope that those unsatisfied with this outcome (which I suspect will be literally everybody) can take this as an opportunity to go help pressure their respective governments to figure out what the hell should be done, systematically, about hate speech on the internet. It's only 25 years overdue at this point.

I'm sorry but no. The law is the minimum level of enforcement for a working society, not an ethics guide. You're allowed to do better than wait for the situation to go from multiple suicides to a PR crisis before taking action.

If I offered protection to a group of unreasonable actors and discovered they needed protection because they like to bully people into taking their own life for fun, the last thing I would want is to accept money from them, let alone offer them protection.

Sure, the law can do better too.

I don't get it, Cloudflare is not the court, nor is it a monopoly.

It's not some tragic Greek hero holding the line for freedom of speech.

It's just a business, and business can decide to not provide service to assholes, just like your local restaurant.

It already decided it won't provide hosting service to the despicables, but somehow the security service is vital to freedom of speech? I don't buy it.

It's all about their legal exposure, and it looks like the heat's too much this time.

The only thing that bothers me about this decision is the fact that they made a wrong-headed announcement of principle that calls the decision into question.

Free speech absolutism which extends beyond legal protection, and which demands private organizations and individuals to materially protect and service all speech is hopelessly naive. Volunteering to do it is past the point of absurdity.

By engaging in that absurdity, they undermined the credibility of their motives making this decision today. They knew there’s a red line, and if at least two adults were in a room before the previous statement was issued it would be almost impossible to believe that they hadn’t discussed that red line. That knowledge should have guided them against making any statement at all, because even clarifying their red lines would create perverse incentives.

I don’t begrudge Cloudflare their principles, nor their decision to deviate from them in the face of reality. I also don’t doubt their motives as written in both statements, though I think they may wildly underestimate how much trust and good will that requires… and how little reason they have to assume it’s present. I do personally wish they’d reached this decision sooner, as a non-binary person who could certainly be targeted by KF campaigns. But I have a strong free expression instinct too, and a set of privileges of my own which sometimes delay my recognition of real present danger that I don’t experience directly.

If any Cloudflare staff is reading this comment: you made the right decision. Please try to use caution when such a decision is potentially on the horizon but hasn’t yet been made. Just as real human lives are at stake when you provide (or don’t provide) services to any particular customer, real human lives are at stake when you damage your credibility making that decision.

We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign.

Oh, guess it's those one of those Cloudflare Coincidences (tm).

They muffed it. They were proving to the world how reliable they could be and repairing the damage from the Stormfront debacle, and again they just showed how prone to caving to pressure they can be. What a joke.

I will never use CF for anything I want kept online in the face of angry people.

Hope the tech elite who naysay journalism take note that it wasn't the 3 suicides, or the swatting, or the death threats or the stalking or the harassment that compelled Matthew Prince to stop hosting kiwifarms.

It was the heat from negative PR that did it.

Typical weasel word announcement from a big company bending over backwards to satisfy the prevailing voices of a political narrative. This has nothing to do with 'free speech' or 'due process'. It is about ensuring a brand stays appealing. I say this because they weren't specific about the credibility of any 'threats' made. They invented an enemy and then used it to justify suppressing Kiwifarms --as a whole--. Very convenient since it allows them to dismiss ignoring their supposed values while satisfying the legions of mad people who want them to act a certain way.

I also want to point out that Kiwifarms is not an organization. As far as I'm aware: they are a simple, public forum. This means that talking about what 'Kiwifarms' has done is misleading since it only applies to what some users are posting. It would be like saying Facebook are terrorists because sometimes terrorist groups try to use the site for propaganda and recruiting. You need to differentiate between the actions of a user/s and the site. In the case of Facebook they are allowed to stay up and remove offending content on the basis that this is the nature of public communities. This is actually standard practice for websites who may also receive copyrighted material. Otherwise someone could easily take down a website by posting copyrighted material.

If there really was a 'life threatening situation' Kiwifarms should have been allowed to handle this themselves. By either removing the content or taking whatever action they felt necessary. But Cloudflare didn't do this. They provide a service that fundamentally undermines the integrity of the Internet. Makes it less resilient. And now the hens have come home to roast: they are dictating how others should run their sites. Eat a massive bag of dicks, cloudflare.

I don't understand where the myth of a "free" Internet comes from. Since privatization in 1993, you've always been held to _someone's_ terms of service. Even if you become your own ISP--get an ASN, IP space, a place to rack equipment--you still have to find someone to peer with, and if you bring enough heat you'll find yourself dropped.

Not to mention DNS which is subject to the laws of the country of registrar; plenty of pirate sites have had their domains have been seized by the US gov't.

Pretty crazy turnaround. I really liked the pretty clear and reasoned abuse policy[1] they put out recently, and I don't envy the position they are in. On one hand, yes, this specific site is terrible. But they are trying very hard to not become the arbiters of what is terrible and what isn't terrible, and I respect them for that.

It's not an easy line to take, and other companies like Google and Facebook have not made that same choice to stay neutral.

> Some argue that we should terminate these services to content we find reprehensible so that others can launch attacks to knock it offline. That is the equivalent argument in the physical world that the fire department shouldn't respond to fires in the homes of people who do not possess sufficient moral character

1. https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a...

The problem with cases like this one is that they really show the inadequacy of the geographic government model in the age of the internet.

If a Czech citizen, currently living in Slovakia, doxxx a British person resident in Canada on a site hosted in the Maldives and managed by a Japanese citizen, protected by a German server owned by an American security company, which government has the right to order the content to be taken down?

This is a bit unsettling, I thought that the emergency threat was moderated off the site (as mentionned by the main [1]).

I know that place is horrendous, but it feels like CF blocked it because of the media attention instead of the threat itself. There is plenty of content online that actively partakes in stochastic terrorism as well as direct threats that are serviced by Cloudflare.

The question of what makes content worth dropping, without the involvement of law enforcement, from such low level infrastructure services is a scary prospect, especially when you consider the issues that current internet has[2].

The moment they caved in, Cloudflare stopped being a simple infrastructure provider, and we can be sure that there will be actors, big and small, that will pull levers to make this happen again.

The silver lining is that a hateful forum will probably cease to operate for good.

[1] - https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566158393391423489

[2] - https://secushare.org/broken-internet

Boy, this sure would have been a lot easier if they just dropped Kiwi Farms with little fanfare the instant it was clear they were using CF. I bet they'd have been able to even keep the perception that they're a super neutral platform, too.

This is probably a worst case scenario for Cloudflare here. I'm generally in favor of them and I agree with their abuse policy they posted the other day.

But now twice Cloudflare has posted they won't moderate content, and then two days later done... exactly that while posting that they don't like doing it.

For folks concerned about abusive and harmful internet behavior, Prince has made it clear he doesn't feel responsible to take action and will avoid doing so as much as possible. And for folks concerned about free speech and censorship, Prince has made it clear he can be pushed around with enough pressure (regardless what the post says, it's how it will be read).

Cloudflare could've arguably taken either position with some level of righteousness, but by essentially caving to both, he proves himself to neither.

>Kiwifarms itself will most likely find other infrastructure that allows them to come back online, as the Daily Stormer and 8chan did themselves after we terminated them. And, even if they don't, the individuals that used the site to increasingly terrorize will feel even more isolated and attacked and may lash out further. There is real risk that by taking this action today we may have further heightened the emergency.

Yeah no shit, of course this is going to happen. It's clearly just a way to save face from Cloudflare - though they definitely needed to do it as this problem was never going to go away for them if they didn't. The entire point of the internet is to be uncensorable, and that's not going to change with them dropping KiwiFarms. As terrible of a website as it is, it's just going to come back up with a provider that has even lower moral standards than Cloudflare.

Just remember everyone, the precedence this sets.. All you have to do to get a site taken down is create an account and make a ridiculous threat, even if the post is taken down in less than 30 minutes and the user banned, the site is still guilty.

And never forget that keffals has gone on record saying that their enemies (KF) is irredeemably evil because of the mean things they say, and thus no tactic against them is going "too far" (something that could be easily taken as a threat in itself I might add) And then suddenly threats and swattings start happening where the perpetrator literally goes out of their way to put blame on KF.

Also a reminder that this all suddenly happened just as things were calming down. (and the hate campaign to shut down the site beginning to run out of gas)

As far as I can tell this action by cloudfare has not accomplished its stated objectives. The site is still up at another url: https://kiwifarms.ru/threads/fuck-cloudflare.128846/

Additionally, a single deleted post (or even a handful of them) being a cause for attempted removal from the internet seems like a precedent that would kill every host of user generated content, including hackernews and twitter.

This is your daily reminder that the last time Cloudfare did this, they left up ISIS murdersites, featuring videos of people being murdered by ISIS (gunshots to the face, decaptitation via detcord, setting people on fire in a cage).

The only conclusion one can come to is that it was a PR move as they caved under pressure.

Now, ask yourself if this is a similar situation.

Seems to me it would be better for Cloudflare to keep serving Kiwifarms, and cooperate with government requests for access logs / etc. Then at least our law enforcement would have data to help with finding threat actors.

I hope we can all join hands and say "DDOS'ing is a crime and we all hope that the FBI finds people participating in DDOS attacks and put them in jail."

That shouldn't be controversial right?

>We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign.

Haven't been following this story, but it seems they haven't considered that whatever antagonists the site has could have posted the putatively objectionable content there themselves, due to the website's nature as a forum for user-generated content. Furthermore, the article throughout seems to suffer from the "anthropomorphic fallacy", in failing to acknowledge that it is speaking about a web service rather than person, and falsely attributing to it emotions and intentions.

>However, the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site and specific, targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours to the point that we believe there is an unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life unlike we have previously seen from Kiwifarms or any other customer before.

If this is true, couldn't they be a little more descriptive? What happened in the last 48 hours that hasn't been happening for the last eight years?

Cloudflare would do better to simply stop making posts every time they do something. Every other company bans users every day and have learned to stop talking about it. Or the inverse. Regardless of what cloudflare does, right or wrong, there will be mobs of people responding negatively and positively to it. People love drama.

If their policy was "we'll ban anyone we want for whatever reason." I'd respect that more because that's the truth.

Further troubling is how this is over what they believe to be illigal conduct. It may very well be, but now they're creating a precedent that they are capable of detecting and stopping it themselves outside the justice system.

This also doesn't stop kiwifarms or it's organizers. If there's illigal conduct, or even civil discovery, CF has to give up those details. All stopping Ddos support does is allows kiwifarms to receive Ddos.

No doubt they'll eventually take to tor and that doesn't have a good physical address to serve warrants to.

>Hard cases make bad law. This is a hard case and we would caution anyone from seeing it as setting precedent.

Sorry, but we don't get to have our cake and eat it too. Precedents set precedents. I literally burst out laughing reading this wishful thinking.

Meta, but: Hoping the moderators on HN are doing good this evening as I can't begin to imagine the amount of sock-puppetry they're dealing with right now

I find it utterly bizarre that CloudFlare considers itself some paragon of free speech whilst they have been caught red handed arbitrarily shutting peoples domain names down in their registrar service, even going so far as to prevent people from transfering their domains to other registers and accelerating domain expiry dates. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31576353

And, just like that, the internet lost one of its most staunch defenders. I don't care for KF nor did I used to care about 8chan or stormfront, but it just shows that all the grandstanding from Matthew Prince was for show all along. and the worst of all? its fro nothing, the people doing whatever they were being accused of, which i'm still trying to piece together, are just gonna be in discords or the nth-chan that shows up to host it.

Well I hope he enjoys suddenly having his huge customers from saudi arabia or whatever else start calling things worrysome and prey on that weakness.

Doesn’t this decision to arbitrarily moderate content compromise the possibility of CloudFlare being legally classified a common carrier?

I also find it hilarious CloudFlare pretends to care about free speech here when they have been caught red handed arbitrarily canceling peoples services and domains + even going so far as to prevent people from transferring their domains to other registrars¹

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31576353 ¹

> We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign.

I will give $100 to anyone who can convince me that they believe that.

Well functioning adults would have just given the boot to kiwifarms as soon as they discovered they were using their service. No childish discussions about free speech needed, who has time for this?

Regardless, Cloudflare with their first response has shown its true colors, joke of a company managed by kids.

> This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare's role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with.

"We'll keep doing it of course, even after we said we wouldn't do it any more."

After all, it's been all of 3 days since they wrote,

> Just as the telephone company doesn't terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have concluded in consultation with politicians, policy makers, and experts that turning off security services because we think what you publish is despicable is the wrong policy. To be clear, just because we did it in a limited set of cases before doesn’t mean we were right when we did. Or that we will ever do it again.

(https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-a...)

Edit: And to be fair, they do link to that post: "As we outlined last Wednesday, we do not believe that terminating security services is appropriate, even to revolting content.", "The policy we articulated last Wednesday remains our policy." - did I miss the part of that post where they tack on "well, except for the times when it's really bad"? I went and skimmed over it just now to see if they left themselves a loophole that they're using today and I'm not seeing it.

A shameful decision was made. It had to be justified obviously but still not any more or less terrible.

BTW Cloudflare is effectively hijacking kiwifarms.net by re-directing visitors to their blog page.

When government agencies bust websites associated with criminal activity the most they do after taking control of the homepage is put up a jpeg of the taskforce responsible and a few notes then call it day.

Many people appear to be missing the point here. Cloudflare claims there was an imminent threat to life created by KF. That's a factual assertion that's either true or false (and well probably find out which.)

If true, free speech is not applicable. Blocking the walkie-talkies of terrorists coordinating a bombing does not restrict "free speech" under any reasonable definition.

This level of tactical coordination to commit violence appears to be what they are hinting at in their post, and I take them at their word .

It may be they are lying and caved to pressure in regards to KF being generally heinous, but until we find out the specific information that caused them to assess an imminent threat to life, we can't really judge the wisdom of their decision.

> Hard cases make bad law. This is a hard case and we would caution anyone from seeing it as setting precedent.

OK, but you should be clear about the definition of hard cases. What exactly constitutes "an emergency threat to human life"?

Hypothetical example: Suppose you're providing DDOS protection for a website belonging to country X, that acts against the interests of your country. War erupts between the two countries, and the website plays an important role in the information warfare by propagating fake news. Would that constitute an emergency threat to human life since it helps perpetuate the war?

Not surprising at all that Cloudflare went through with its plan to terminate its contract with Kiwifarms. Reddit had the exact same process happen back in 2021 with r/NoNewNormal. People cried and whined on the site for the subreddit to be banned, Spez wrote an official post defending the subreddits existence by pointing out its freedom of speech, and not long after crumbled and banned the subreddit (And still banned to this day). Corporations do not care about freedom of speech, especially when certain types of speech threaten their health. These flowery corporate blog posts are close to worthless, and I am glad that this step has been taken, as Kiwifarms will reinforce itself further as it has numerous times in the past in response to external threats and will become even more difficult to take down. At the time of Cloudflares decision earlier, Cloudflare had been the weakest link in the infrastructure of the site. Any solution implemented now will certainly be more resilient and reliable.

I have to wonder if everyone calling this site a cess pool has actually visited it. It was, in general, more civil and better moderated than, say, Twitter or Reddit which regularly generate a circlejerk of hatred and violent rhetoric. The subject matter may be distasteful, but the website was not at all what you everyone seems to be making it out to be.

I wasn’t familiar with Kiwifarms, so I read up about it - and oh, boy. The fact that something like Kiwifarms can exist in the United States without legal or civil liabilities is really problematic.

I've only recently learned of this site, and being a NZer, with the name Kiwi in the title I assumed some sort of connection to NZ.

But it looks like there isn't? It's American based, and when the NZ govt made a request related to the Christchurch mosque massacre, the admin told them to pound sand.

So, why is it called Kiwifarms?

Woah. I personally wish that Cloudflare had taken action sooner, but I understood the position. I disagreed with it, because as a free and private entity, Cloudflare can choose to serve whoever they wish (so long as they do not discriminate against legally "protected classes"), and as such, I'd prefer to see them refuse a customer that blatantly courts hate speech, but I understood their commitment to free speech.

This decision seems hard. Crime prevention forces should have stepped in already to protect people. But cops protect and serve capital, not people, so the police response will be weak and ineffective until capital becomes upset. Like Cloudflare, I'm also not comfortable with decisions of public safety being handled by corporations, but the police aren't interested, so here we are.

Technical question: Cloudflare says they are currently intercepting requests for Kiwifarms and redirecting them to the linked blog post. What does Kiwifarms need to do to remove their dependency on Cloudflare and make their forum visible again [edit: at the original address]? Can they do it unilaterally by changing an DNS address and waiting for it to propagate? Or do they need Cloudflare's cooperation?

Unless law enforcement was actively telling you to do this, you really dropped ther ball.

So people post info they find via a Google search. Them not posting it on Kiwifarms isn't going to make the information any less readily available.

Pulling screens of random users posting threats is disingenuous. Other users actively discourage such activities constantly.

This all started because people wanted to laugh at someone being ridiculous on Twitter, but then they kept digging and found more and more deplorable stuff. The only reason the campaign to drop the farms exists is to cover up the activities a narcissist openly talked about on social media.

The site is no more dangerous or racist than Jaime Cochran was.

One thing I wish CF would address is their hand-waving about what "security services" actually means. Based on the original post from Wednesday, this seems to include caching services (though it is only mentioned once in the post). Despite saying they're not the host, providing caching services is effectively hosting. Consider, for instance, the "always online" feature, which literally makes sure your site stays online even when your hosting is down.

Yes, caching is also (in some ways) a security service, in that "security" can mean protection from resource utilization attacks. But that very feature also necessarily makes the cache the source for the content in the overwhelming majority of cases.

It doesn't irk me that Cloudflare provides security services to kiwifarms. I don't think, for instance, McAfee should withhold virus protection from 8chan, or clinics withholding vaccines from people they're ideologically opposed to. But it does irk me that they essentially provide hosting but wiggle out of the repercussions of providing hosting through some corporate doublespeak. It's one thing to have morals, but it's another thing to use loopholes in your own morals to (try to) avoid the consequences of those morals.

Why do they need cloudflare? That is the problem.

We (the US) need a build global infrastructure which will provide basic security and DoS protection for any website hosted in US: 100% free and public. Website might choose not use it.

Sure it will be run by government but the internet is run by the government anyway.

I think that will solve problems like this.

Good.

I'm sorry, I'm generally Mr. "Raw raw free speech", but let's not kid ourselves; by all accounts KiwiFarms is (and always has been) a cesspool of horrible people. It's not like 4chan or something, where it might have started with reasonable intentions and just became horrible; KiwiFarms was started for the specific purpose of bullying Chris-Chan, hence why it was initially called Cwcki Farms. KiwiFarms has been implicated in multiple suicides, and countless cases of bullying (and possibly doxing), and Null's response to all of these allegations has been almost entirely ambivalent.

At some point, we have to ask: is this the world we actually want to live it? I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is a moron, but even I think that the doxing and SWATing campaigns against her lead to a really bad world to live in, and that's not even getting into people I actually like.

I'm just some idiot on the internet, but I think that the world is a better place without KiwiFarms.

Give it 5 years. The internet will be divided along political lines and private companies will decide who's political message is true, and what is legal and not.

kiwifarms is back up at https://kiwifarms.ru/

Something I am curious about is why these things (de-platforming of websites for example) are so US-centric.

What I'm wondering is whether it is because:

1. Only US-based websites and forums get to that level of extremism that is cause for de-platforming. I find this option the hardest to believe (pretty sure there are hideous things in other countries as well).

2. The infra is mostly US-based (Cloudflare, cloud providers, etc.), they are focused or getting their attention drawn specifically to US-centric topics.

3. It happens in other counties as well, but because HN is US-centric I am hearing about the instances that are dealing with US topics.

And specifically I'm currently focusing on democratic countries, where free speech is upheld in some form (obviously government based censorship is happening in authoritarian countries all the time).

So which is it? Why am I not hearing of these cases happening to EU-based, Canada-based, Australia-based or Israel-based forums/websites (mentioning Israel specifically as I'd expect to hear about those in my local echo-chamber)?

Would love to learn about similar cases from other countries.

Does anyone have an example of the escalating threats and why now it's become a problem?

If the police can swat someone anywhere within an hour, what's special about these new threats that the police cannot deal with?

> However, as the pressure campaign escalated, so did the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site. Feeling attacked, users of the site became even more aggressive. Over the last two weeks, we have proactively reached out to law enforcement in multiple jurisdictions highlighting what we believe are potential criminal acts and imminent threats to human life that were posted to the site.

I’m sorry, but what?

Few thoughts:

1. Couldn’t people be joining Kiwifarms and acting aggressive to get it banned?

2. Why is cloudflare reporting anything to police? That’s effectively implying they are regularly reviewing content… which is weird if your providing DDoS protection.

The main issue I take is that cloudflare isn’t hosting the content… it’s providing protection from DDoS. So kiwifarms is literally having their security turned on them.

That is imo a breach of contract. It’s one thing to just drop them as a customer it’s another to:

> Visitors to any of the Kiwifarms sites that use any of Cloudflare's services will see a Cloudflare block page and a link to this post.

You’re hijacking their website and saying “read our content” instead.

> This is an extraordinary decision for us to make

It's really not, CF blocked websites that they dislike in the past, and they continue doing so.

I don't mind a company sabotaging their customers, but the blog post is beyond pale.

Lastly here is proof that another individual unaffiliated with KF was the one that left the note outside of the apartment- https://archive.ph/ksqln https://archive.ph/MCGFB

Great, now will you take down the dozens of free-speech-suppressing DDoS-for-hire sites that use Cloudflare for protection?

Or are these too far above Cloudflare’s moral standard?

I am extremely disappointed in the actions taken by Cloudflare. As a $NET investor, I have sold my stock.

The underlying infrastructure of the internet must remain infrastructure: as pipes sending bits and bytes.

Today, it's Kiwifarms. Tomorrow, it is an end-to-end encrypted messenger that doesn't have a backdoor.

Well I run a service with 100 million registered users and this is why we don't use Cloudflare. We use VeriSign BGP DDoS mitigation which is more expensive than Cloudflare (about 27k per year with our traffic) but i don't have the luxury of losing the business on a Saturday afternoon on a whim of an anonymous Cloudflare censor, their lawyer or even his Majesty Matthew Prince Himself making a preemptive liability decision on behalf of my own business.

I know that Google takes those deplatforming decisions with ease, because they have billions of users but with Cloudflare's much more finite enterprise userbase, I would be careful to aspire to Google's heavy handed approach: for Cloudflare's customers, real money and real jobs are at stake.

The law, at least in the US of A, puts freedom of speech in a sacred position. There is a reason for the Bill of Rights amendments, and the way they are written. You are claiming "rule of law" to act in a way the law would not allow were you government instead of a private entity. Your claims here, like in the past cases where Cloudflare has committed vigilante censorship, are disingenuous at best. While you strike at the things you hate, you cry that /you/ are the one wounded! Your hypocrisy is disgusting. You and your company do not deserve the position you now hold in the infrastructure of the internet.

I think as a private company they made the right decision. At some point you have to just make a call and cut out the cancer.

Let me see if I get this right, they were not hosting KF, they are blocking them via other services like DNS etc?

Finally after trending on Twitter for days they do the right thing. This forum kiwifarms was outright attacking doxxing harassing people and yet were defended by CF over and over again.

Am I the only one who, until reading this article, had never even heard of Kiwifarms?

Based on how this plays out every time, you can always count on Cloudflare to do the right thing after all their goodwill has been utterly destroyed.

So I assume 4Chan will go down to right? Since one of there users actually showed up to Keffals house?

Right, they had IRL stalking deaththreat posted to there site?

I agree with CloudFlare's stance about security tooling I agree with this decision I agree with their hesitance to consider this their privilege Frankly I am impressed with how CF handled this

That being said, timing is a bit sus with their stock price. Although I think I believe they are standing on principal, it's easy to make a case that they are just watching the market and responding.

I feel like I'm missing something

so what exactly happened on Kiwifarms website in response to the deplatforming campaign on Twitter?

how could Cloudflare write that entire justification without giving an example to someone that wasn't following the drama? To me it looks like Cloudflare arbitrarily took someone down specifically after writing that they wouldn't, in the same blog entry.

Here are the relevant archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20220827161740/https://twitter.c... https://web.archive.org/web/20220824040635/https://twitter.c... HRT and under 18 comments where Keffals admits this. https://web.archive.org/web/20220823162144/https://twitter.c...

These seem to be the "threats"

https://kiwifarms.ru/threads/matthew-prince-lied.128900/#pos...

Notice how once again that have nothing at all to do with KF, simply claims by others that it was from them.

Further reading for you future people who scrolled all the way down here: HN discussions the other two times this has happened with Cloudflare:

Why We Terminated Daily Stormer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031922 - 857 points | 2017-08-16 | 1574 (1526) comments

Terminating Service for 8Chan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395 - 1098 points | 2019-08-05 | 1438 (1376) comments

And, https://hn.algolia.com/?query=8chan + https://hn.algolia.com/?query=stormer

What is kiwifarm? It think it should be the first paragraph.

>We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign

Thats believable /s

But even if they were speaking the truth, this is just throwing more bait to the pressure campaigns. As the post says this does not make these issues go away, just as putting paint over mold just hides the issue.

It sucks the legal system can’t move fast enough. We really need a way for the fbi to arrest the site operators more quickly. Of course, This is revolting content of the highest order but that really shouldn’t and doesn’t figure into the calculas.

This move was correct because it protects cloudflare shareholders. Taking the site down has serious downsides. It puts all of society at risk. Law enforcement now loses transparency on what is going on with these forums, whose connecting to it, how users are interacting with it. Driving these sites underground means they are more difficult to interdict and may ultimately increase danger and death.

Seems kiwifarms was prepared for this and already transferred to new infra at another dns I won’t name

I spend 30 mins on kw (through archive.org). It is a very pathetic forum with low value. I don't have any problems with cf disabling them. Free speech does not include assistance from others.

An edge service having problems about edgelords. Almost poetic.

possibly better to keep quiet about high-minded principles one doesn't actually hold

I don't believe rhetoric is ever a threat to human life so I disagree with this move by cloudflare. Even if illegal credible targeted threats are made, the threat to human life is the threatener, not the content of the speech.

Oh, and KF sucks.

So let me get this straight. 1. People were trying to cancel kiwi farms 2. Kiwifarms users got mad, I’d argue rightfully, because they were being attacked. 3. Cloudflare doesn’t like Kiwifarms politically so they gave into the mob. 4. Blame the victims because we don’t like them.

Ignoring the fact that cloudflare provides we security services and they decided to just give up on it, this leaves a very sour taste in my month. I won’t be giving cloudflare my business anymore. If Kiwifarms users were engaging in illegal activity then just let enforcement do their job.

The people who pushed for this have a list of the next sites they are going to get taken down. In particular any place TERFs have discussions.

I give it 2 years and they will be successful.

Not working with fascists (yes, really) makes me much happier about cloudflare. They have their problems but they're not totally amoral.

I just love how the pro-censorship crowd here is faking moderation and exasperated reasonableness, while the rest of us know full well how this game is played. We see it on literally all major social media platforms right now. It started (roughly) with banning Alex Jones and a few others. Why would you be opposed to banning of that screaming crazy person, right?

Fast forward just a few years, it's now impossible to use use social media to coherently discuss any major issues affecting our society if you don't mince words and don't subscribe to orthodoxy de jour. And the worst part is the smug, obnoxious gaslighting about it all that happens all the time.

"Twitter doesn't delete content for political purposes. wink wink"

Hunter Biden laptop story? Unity 2020? Suspension of people like Jordan Peterson? James Lindsey? Hundreds of other high-profile accounts. Probably tens of thousand of lower profile accounts.

"It's not censorship of it's a private company. node nod"

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-biden-admin-held-week...

https://nypost.com/2022/08/28/fbi-put-the-hunter-biden-story...

"We're just doing commons sense stuff. Like following science."

https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-quietly-dropped-covid-cens...

Etc, etc.

All these cliche arguments have been revealed to be entirely in bad faith, so I have absolutely no reason to trust people here who are now claiming that they want some sort of "reasonable" policy from infrastructure providers. It has been demonstrated time and time again that people who don't oppose deplatforming on principle are actually fine with it whenever it suits them.

I don’t think it matters if you’re the host (ethically) if you’re responsible for facilitating access.

KiwiFarms is back and is fully opoerational : https://kiwifarms.ru/

They are now using DD0S-guard : https://ddos-guard.net/

I find this sad, and perhaps this comment will die amongst the rest, but there really is a misunderstanding on what KiwiFarms is/was.

The website was one created by a lunatic who wanted to say whatever he wanted amongst other people who felt the same. A true free speech advocate, who abided by every law the US has regarding content moderation but did nothing additional. The bulk of KiwiFarm users were not Nazis, they were just people. Everyone is a bit fucked, and some people like being able to say anything about odd people on the internet. The downside to that, is you will get genuinely harmful or crazy people who take it too far. But that's nothing new, Facebook has hosted live massacres, snapchat is a vector for nude stealing and distribution, Pornhub hosted child or underage porn and probably still does. The point is, KiwiFarms wasn't the issue, it was the small minority causing huge problems as they always do. What will change now that it's gone? Nothing. You'll still have the same people who take it too far, you'll still have the regular people who just want to be able to talk without having to care how other people feel, you'll still have the oddities on the internet, they'll just disperse somewhere else. No issues have been fixed, no problems addressed, but everyone will pat themselves on the back and feel good. Another pillar of the internet gone, and we'll see what is the next to go.

KiwiFarms going down changes nothing, but the act of it being taken down by such a formerly neutral, and vital part of internet infrastructure is a terrible precedent. When everything is political, when everything is responsible for everything else, then only the most milktoast, party-line response will be allowed, and since politics is pendulum shaped, everyone celebrating this now will unfortunately reap the rewards when it swings again.

I think the "neutrality" framing is pretty interesting, because this basically confirms that the CF policy is not actually ideological, but instead a direct reflection of what they think the worst-case scenarios are.

Broadly, to the left, the worst-case scenario is that this policy terminates with a part 2 of Black's _IBM and the Holocaust_. That is: a scenario where eventually the public _believes_ the company to be materially responsible for a terrible outcome, even if it was legal at the time. They think these harms are both on the table and imminent, and they are willing to deplatform KF/Stormfront/_etc_. as a result.

I think CF believes this is not plausible, and is instead worried about a worst-case scenario where (I'm guessing) an audience like Trump voters are not allowed to host websites.

I think this issues is unlikely to make real progress until both camps can find a way to talk about these material outcomes, and get aligned on which are plausible.

Time to boycott Cloudflare.

Thank you Cloudflare for introducing me to this corner of the internet I was blissfully unaware of despite living half of my life on the internet for the last decade.

There's no such thing as bad publicity.

At the end of the day I think it’s a net positive

Lets say i am threating you by phone, are you gonna disconnect me from the phone network or are you gonna close down the telco?

CloudFlare was never to be trusted. Never.

Their threshold for victim count and severity of organized crime hosted on their platform is way too high

Why don't they post the proof of any of their claims? What exactly has changed since last week?

Um... can someone use this tactic to shutdown Facebook or Twintter? That would be fantastic :)

Why do they block this and not, uh, Al-Shabaab, or any other number of terrorist organizations?

Does Al-Shabaab not create a "threat of violence"?

What argument can there be for blocking one and not the other?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudflare#Terrorism

I am a free speech absolutist, but I read the Wikipedia page on this site and it seems bad. "Crimes were committed," "People lost their lives" bad. Unjustifiably bad.

That said, is anyone willing to steelman this website? Could this possibly be construed as just a big misunderstanding?

Good.

Good. Now that we've finally established that Cloudflare isn't impotent after all, it's time to go down the list. No more faux "conversations." This isn't the only site they already know they need to drop.

Just learned about this site thanks to Cloudflare. Crazy world.

Anyone willing to stick their neck out with a HN-undeletable prediction of who'll be the target of the next pressure campaign? (which of course wasn't the reason for blocking...)

The rumblings I'm detecting now seem to be related to misinformation.

Liberty is the right to be wrong, not to do wrong.

Wow, there sure is a lot of flagged/dead comments here that mentions some inconvenient info..

I've followed this story loosely here from HN posts, but does anyone have a blog/TL:DR post around the chain of events that are discussed in this post? (the early events the bubbled this up to ppls attention, and then the new imminent threats?)

Cloudflare are pure evil. Their business will never a vendor of mine.

DDoS-Guard it is.

Wait, so just as everything was beginning to calm down, you step in and play internet police once again?

The excuses here are as pitiful as those of the misinformed hateful mobs trying to take the site down.

Since this mess all started I've been paying close attention to everything going on, including the site, and noting the major discrepancies between what the mob and media report about the site and the reality of the site itself. From allegations of being an alt-right site (the have an entire sub form dedicated to laughing at major alt-right and right-wing personalities, and have leftist members.. not to mention that the site is apolitical in nature to begin with) To claims that it has a history of supposed "intimidation campaigns" and "swatting". (which is not only against the rules but also goes against the core nature of the site to begin with. To document, look and laugh.. but never touch!)

Is it distasteful and vulgar, yes, but they (and not just the staff but most users as well) treat threats and attempts at off site harassment, swatting or interaction of any kind, as serious.

The site also seems to take dangerous and illegal stuff seriously as well. There is a whole board and a thread dedicated to documenting all the legal interactions and requests by law enforcement. The idea that they suddenly, now, stopped responding is hard to believe. This is why they have been so hard to shutdown in the past. Further more, from the sound of the statement here, not only was law enforcement not on board with this so called threat, but not even after CF reached out to them!

This is and has always been about perfectly legal speech that some people don't like and refuse to allow spoken. This is a case of literal misinformation. Much like all the claims of swatting and deaths. It's literally "if you say it enough times people start to believe it" in action. It doesn't matter that allegations have no proof or don't even attempt to provide any.. certain types of media just pick up the allegations are repeat as fact. And specifically here exact type of people complaining should give you a big hint at why this is all being taken so seriously.

I know what the response to this is going to be.. "right" minded people jumping in to yell about swatting and harassment etc. Pointing out that keffals was swatted. But ignoring that keffals themselves is the one who claims it was KF based only on... who knows. and before anyone asks who else could or would have done it, don't forget that keffals has a reputation, and is prideful in fact, of a history of attacking and de-platforming people for literal misunderstandings and personal grudges. This all started when the owner of the site commented on keffals gloating about getting Destiny banned and "deprived of his livelihood" for daring to make what amounted to a joke. And that's not even getting into all the messed up stuff they are connected to or directly responsible for. (grooming, abuse allegations, running an under age sexual forum, supporting a site that teaches children how to make homemade hormones in their bathtub secretly and more) This person is the hill so many seem to want to die on!

This whole think smells like a major copout.

This has nothing to do with Kiwifarms, it's just same story all over again. It happened before and I bet it will happen again.

1. Some awful website uses Cloudflare.

2. Something ignites outrage that Cloudflare is protecting that awful website.

3. Cloudflare initially refuses to take it down, arguing that they are neutral infrastructure providers.

4. Twitter-amplified outrage keeps growing

5. Cloudflare caves in and kicks that site off, posting about that this is only due to very recent emergency (which is nonsense, they serviced these sites for years and nothing materially changed).

6. ???

7. No profit, go back to step 1.

My prediction: because they cannot stick to their stance, every cycle makes it more probable that next attempt will succeed, until nobody will believe in infrastructure provider interpretation and they will be forced to estabilish some moderation.

It always starts as a one off, "this was a special circumstance" type thing. I feel like I've read this post thousand times before at this point. I remember when it "just Alex Jones" getting deplatformed from social media. And it had to be done - he was just too dangerous! But then it expanded to a few more people, and from there a few more. And within the span of just a few years Twitter had gone from Alex Jones to banning the president of the United States.

I don't care what Kiwifarms did, this kind of thing has to be left to state. If Kiwifarms is doing something illegal law enforcement will deal with it. This move means Cloudflare is now a company that will remove content they find problematic. Or put another way, if they don't remove content we can now assume it's because they don't find it "dangerous" enough. So all those racist and transphobic blogs calling for race wars and celebrating trans suicides, well I guess Cloudflare just doesn't think they're that bad. And that's why these things always progresses, because turning a blind eye is no longer justifiable position. If you cast judgement on one piece of content, you must do so for everything. Now they've made this move the pressure to remove more content will only intensify. And it will be even harder to say no next time because now they've now lost the ability to say they're neutral.

But whatever. I have no hope of a free internet anymore. At this point I think if the West is ever to truly value free speech again we'll need to learn that lesson the hard way.

Never heard of kiwifarms before but after having a quick read on it, I don't see any reasons why any provider of any sorts would deal with them. Not sure how screwed up in their heads people need to be to engage in this kind of shit.

The admin of kiwifarms has posted the following in response:

>I am so full of hate for this situation. I try to write down my thoughts and I find myself unable to focus on one thing I hate the most. The person committing crimes to frame my community, or the sex pest who groom little boys, or the journalists who outright lie, or the corporate cowardice responsibility for the fragile state of the Internet.

>It is all so rotten and unsalvageable. Each of these problems complement the other, in a strange and disjointed way, where trying to explain how they tie together is just exhausting. Multiple evils with their own completely independent and selfish objectives - each coincidentally involve wanting to stop people from talking to each other freely as they have been able to for the last 20 years.

----- Here is an archive and a screenshot of the message:

https://archive.ph/vTnBj

https://i.imgur.com/EsgkAJT.png

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"

"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither and will lose both".

We're letting private corporations act as the judiciary and executive branch of governance.

"What could go wrong?" I wonder.

This is really concerning. I feel like it’s easy to justify now because every major infrastructure provider is on the same side culturally, but what happens when services without competition become ideologically opposed? Imagine an ISP shutting down service to a Visa data centre because they allow cannabis purchases LOL.

> The policy we articulated last Wednesday remains our policy. We continue to believe that the best way to relegate cyberattacks to the dustbin of history is to give everyone the tools to prevent them.

This is just doublespeak. No matter the merits of this decision, clearly this not the policy they advertised they have on Wednesday.

So with KF being knocked off CF and it’s back online already. What’s the end goal?

It seems like this does nothing more than push the forum more underground and hidden. But doesn’t actually solve the issue of them doxing people?

Targeted harassment for the purpose of getting people to kill themselves is illegal. People have gone to jail for less than what KF gloats about. All the free speach absolutists crying about "censorship" just shows how ridiculous their ideology is. Instead of whining about cloudflare they should be looking for lawyers.

Where are these "escalations" and "agressive" contents? Why was law enforcement "too slow" and who judges what is an appropriate time frame for law enforcement? Does Cloudflare?

Cloudflare is a private busniess and can refute service ofc, but should the owner not get some notice of the termination to move to another service in time?

The fact people here are defending KiwiFarms is very concerting. "Escalating threats and the potential risk for human life has compelled Cloudflare to block Kiwifarms from being accessed through our infrastructure."

The government shouldn't do anything about hate speech. Full stop.

Edit: I’d love a definition of hate speech from someone who downvoted me.

A timely reminder for all of us that "half the internet has a single point of failure called Cloudflare". [1]

[1]: https://easydns.com/blog/2020/07/20/turns-out-half-the-inter...

They aren't giving us any details. Nothing really changed over the last two weeks. My guess is somebody is using suicide threats as leverage here.

Would they be aiding in the commission of a crime if they carried on the service?

The network interprets hate as noise and filters it out.

If anyone wants to hear Kiwifarm’s response they have a telegram here https://t.me/kiwifarms/19

So we have privatised the legislative and police on the internet? What that means we shall see in ten years or so.

Why are crimes committed on KF not stopped “the old fashioned way”, ie rule of law and the court system?

> We have never been their hosting provider

That is simply not how it works. The bits came from Cloudflare.

> Feeling attacked, users of the site became even more aggressive. Over the last two weeks, we have proactively reached out to law enforcement in multiple jurisdictions highlighting what we believe are potential criminal acts and imminent threats to human life

What are they talking about? From what I've seen, this is somewhere between grossly exaggerated and completely fictional. Did they see someone post the "300 confirmed kills" copypasta and think it was serious?

What the hell is this travesty. Now any old nobody can kill a site by larping drama on fucking twitter.

You should all think about the people dying in dictatorships before you give up a free and open Internet over some paedophile using twitter clout to ban a gossip forum

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