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Comment by ed_voc | Hacker News Reader

There seems to be a double standard with who can partake in intimidation campaigns.

Before any mention of keffals in Kiwifarms she was running a harassment campaign against Destiny, making false accusations that he was a rapist and rallying their followers to get him de-platformed on all platforms.

The worst situation is having one sided intimidation campaigns where trans activists can de-platform users like Destiny but they cannot defend themselves due to either losing remaining platforms or fear of losing their remaining platforms.

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Making accusations against someone and trying to get them deplatformed is not the same as threatening someone with violence. I know very few details but the moral equivalence you’re drawing in this comment is false.

Is it? Attacking someone's livelihood is a very real and impactful form of aggression. Compared threats of violence there's more cases where it's warranted, yes, but I think I would personally rather be on the receiving end of threats of violence than of someone attempting to make me lose my job and become much harder to employ.

Of course actual violence is a different case altogether.

If that's your stance then that's fine. However, the correct approach would have been for Destiny to take legal action, instead of vigilantism.

In addition, the prior comments talk about things that may causally limit freedom of speech. Losing your job does not mean losing your voice.

When it comes to how FoS is constitutionally defined (across several countries), it is worth learning about "fighting words." Nearly every justice system agrees that any goes, except words that may (not merely will) cause imminent harm. The line has to be drawn somewhere.

>the correct approach would have been for Destiny to take legal action, instead of vigilantism.

So the correct response to percieved harrassment is indeed taking legal action, and not, say, mobilizing mobs to retaliate back ? Mmm, I wonder who needs to hear that.

It's quite frightening how people cannot piece together the logic like this when it comes to situations involving transgenderism.

You're obviously correct here, and I'm still trying to figure out how the above poster didn't realize what they were saying as they were saying it.

What's more frightening is how many people can't piece together that every situation is not a dichotomy.

As far as I understand, the people on kiwifarms _also_ try to get their targets fired by enailing their employees and claiming their targets are pedophiles or something like that.

If I'm not mistaken, the threat of violence came from someone USING the KF platform, not KF itself. If you want to make equivalences, deplatforming Destiny means removing him FROM a platform, and thus the person making threats should have been banned from KF to result an an equivalence. Yet the action taken was to actually remove the entire platform.

Am I wrong here?

I was responding to this comment:

“There seems to be a double standard with who can partake in intimidation campaigns.”

I'm unfamiliar with KF but if a platform can't or won't do a good enough job of moderating its content and users, then transitively the platform itself needs to be blocked.

...and who makes this decision? What's the measurement of doing a "good enough job?"

Publicly calling someone a rapist can very well get someone injured or killed. Unless you’re a victim whose pleas are being completely ignored by the legal system, it’s not justifiable and not something that should be taken as anything but a threat to someone’s life.

I have no clue who these people are or what the situation is, but I’ve seen more than enough angry mobs appear out of nowhere after an accusation of a crime.

“I have no clue who these people are or what the situation is, but I’ve seen more than enough angry mobs appear out of nowhere after an accusation of a crime.”

What are some specific examples of this phenomenon you’re referring to?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-44856910

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." Humans are inherently tribal. If enough of us get together in a group, we are capable of terrible things - and the justification of them.

Violent mobs organised through private channels by men seems to be more similar to what KiwiFarms are doing than what they are reacting to.

This seems like a fundamentally different scenario than the OP I was responding to, glad I asked for specifics ;)

This is the post the got the site shut down: https://i.imgur.com/S1z3Po2.jpg

And btw, kiwifarms had to get their own ip block because no one would host them any more that was like 5+ years ago or something. So cloudflare never really provided any service to the site as their IPs were public knowledge and could be ddos'd (hence why it is always going down)

A post deleted as soon as a mod saw it (~30 minutes) with an account ban, by an account with virtually no posting history before this drama started.... hmmm

I also have no idea why this website is responsible for a random post by a user, when the post is apparently against the stated rules of the forum?

Are there not death threats posted on Twitter and Facebook all the time?

Because it is just a pretext and not an actual reason.

As far as I know both the people who doxxed kavanagh and jk Rowling are still happily posting on twitter.

Oh and the journalist who threatened those schoolboys with violence.

Of course those aren’t real threats of violence apparently. Only the right threatens actual violence. The left only does rhetoric. /s

Last I checked both Kavanaugh and Rowling have shit loads of security. I can't say the same for a random trans person, can you???

Ah yes, because having security makes it okay.

Those people should also be banned from twitter. Just because some folks aren't banned when they should be doesn't mean we should stop banning everyone.

This isn't a left vs right thing. It's a "we shouldn't let people bring harm to other people online" thing. It seems you're the one making it left vs right.

...but they aren't banned from Twitter: that's the point. "Should" is different from "are" -- and "should" doesn't mean a whole bunch.

>making false accusations that he was a rapist

This is a lie. What happened is Destiny had a tirade about how to him stealthing isn’t rape, and Keffals pointed it out. Then KF went wild, as seen above.

For people who don't like to hide an essay's worth of scum behind a two-syllable word, "stealthing" is used above to describe putting on a condom to obtain consent and then discreetly removing the condom after consent is obtained.

No Keffals said that destiny is a rapist

https://streamable.com/ti9rgx

Good point, stealthing is in fact rape.

Has Destiny admitted to stealthing, or merely given his own opinion on whether or not stealthing is rape?

What does that have to do with my statement agreeing that stealthing is in fact rape?

At no point has he said that he stealthed anybody, and nobody has made an accusations against him for that.

Your post is dangerous misinformation.

I would suggest taking a deep breath. I didn't accuse anyone of anything, I pointed out that stealthing is rape. I did so because stealthing is in fact rape. I don't know how that simple fact is misinformation, let alone dangerous - please explain.

You left the part out where Keffals once again went out of their way to then get Destiny (and by Keffals own words, livelihood) de-platformed first and how Keffals is the one in fact who started the fight with KF. (who only looked further into the person's pretty unsavory history because of their freak out)

To this day Kiwifarms still hosts the Christchurch video.

They posted the AU Government’s takedown order along with their response: “were a US company,” refusing to remove it.

You can still find it by searching for “AU Government Class 1 Security Kiwifarms”

They clearly want to keep this content up.

Yes and thank god they do. I watched it several times so I could better understand what happened in this scenario and what an evil person may do if I find myself unarmed with a pile of people in a confined space like this. I learned that hiding in the corner resulted in piles of people simply ending up getting shot, and that immediately exiting out through windows and other less expected exit points greatly aided survivors. This is counter to idiotic advice my teachers gave me, like hiding under chairs and desks, which the shooter in Uvalde took advantage of to massacre virtually all the children in their room.

After watching the videos I came up with a plan as to what to do if an evil person ever enters close quarters building and I have no way to fight back. Only by watching such a gruesome video with such explicit results did it really drive home what the stakes are. I truly believe Kiwifarms may save lives by keeping up this video.

It's amazing the degree to which people are fine treating their fellow humans as means towards an end. Even unarmed victims of a massacre. We should put a Netflix Original series out that is curated gore videos with commentary from former cops, military, mercenaries, etc. about surviving horrific situations unarmed. Who cares about the families of the victims or the survivors?

>It's amazing the degree to which people are fine treating their fellow humans as means towards an end.

I could make that exact statement about those wanting to restrict the video. They want the end result of the video being unshared, and they're willing to discard the freedom of speech rights of other humans in their efforts.

Free speech is not guaranteed if it harms others.

In the case of the Christchurch video, the harm has already been done. One could argue that sharing the video creates demand for more shooting videos (as is argued with CSAM), but the USA considers this to be protected for whatever reason (unlike CSAM or obscenity).

I question whether mere possession of CSAM without any personal proximity to abuse isn't the digital version of allowing police an easy way to plant weed. It (the planting of this evidence) seems like way too convenient of a way to prosecute any political enemies, other disfavored groups, etc. And there's no one to cross-examine, except the policeman who potentially planted it themselves. IMO until police corruption is sorted out, these kind of prosecutions should require accusations or confirmation from the abused that the person in question actually was involved in the abuse.

In fact, this may be one of the reason why the founders were free speech 'extremists.' If merely _owning_ some information that is easily plantable is illegal, it is trivial to frame someone.

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