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Comment by pseudo0 | Hacker News Reader

If this is what Matthew Prince referred to as:

> 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.

Seriously? I helped moderate a small community at one point and we would see stuff like this on a weekly basis. Or just look at a YouTube or Facebook comment section on a controversial topic. This looks like an excuse to cave to the Twitter mob.

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They were harrasing people to the point of suicide and "swatting" - attempting to murder via police.

How do you know it was them? It wouldn't make much sense for them to SWAT Marjorie Taylor Greene, now does it?

Why not, if mtg was swatted and killed by police, that would great way to show that both sides are the same.

Both sides are the same, they are flawed people.

Then usage of “they” here is suspect, everybody is political, even if you don’t ascribe to be part of a party.

Wrong, and wrong.

It should be noted for the record that Kiwi Farms has had a longstanding 'no touch' rule, usually displayed prominently at the top of every page. (It appears to be currently replaced by the admin notifications whilst the site deals with the current state of events.)

Much like the old site Portal of Evil, another best-of-the-worst aggregator from the early internet, making on-site trolling/harassment plans is a great way to get your account banned very quickly ... or becoming a thread topic yourself.

KF seems to be the forum equivalent of the “I’m not touching you” game.

We (and cloudflare) are morally allowed to read between the lines.

"If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... "

... you can BBQ it and serve it with hoisin.

Then don't whine when other people read between the lines regarding your authoritarian proclivities, and consequently do everything they can to frustrate your aims.

And yet, people are "touched." I wonder how that happens...

Because touching or "I'm not touching you" generates content and engagement. It's basic social media stuff any 10yrold can understand. Playing the I'm not touching you game is content creation - they are the same. It's part of the social media incentive loop.

> They were harrasing people to the point of suicide

a random person on the Internet said. Meanwhile, another random person on the Internet[1] said KF has a ToS that bans anything illegal from the site.

I was unable to independently verify either side of the report.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32712037

By "random person on the Internet," do you mean a person who directly attributed their suicide to Kiwi Farms? Because that happened.

Once you realize that there is no bar to acceptance for some people, things become.more clear. Fully expect responses like, "this would require an rct to prove," in order to avoid all responsibity. The inside words these folks have is, "this is an acceptable loss of life for the position I'm willing to take."

Absolutely correct.

If you don't know anything about KF, maybe don't post? This is common knowledge to anyone familiar with the site.

This kind of comment is not useful. Enlighten us with your knowledge, or, if what you have to say is not better than silence, keep quiet.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms

The article I linked has as many citations of primary sources as you could ever want.

The parent comment seeks to poison the well by casting doubt on the claims that KF is a hate site and pushed people to suicide. It is well-documented and there is no disputing it. Instead of "begging the question", just perform a quick Google search. That way you can:

1. Inform yourself. 2. Not cast a shadow of doubt on easily provable claims.

Many people who have looked into the matter have disagreed with that take. It's fine to disagree, but slamming anyone down as ignorant is not constructive.

Furthermore, RationalWiki is hardly a neutral site, especially on matters like this. Specifically, some members have a long-running irrational beef with KiwiFarms (I used to edit there fairly frequently back in the day). That it includes information on the site owner's mom – who has no proven relationship with the site beyond that there's an account with her real name, which proves nothing – and that it links to an extortionist "mugshot site" for her proves that the article is not as "rational" as one might hope.

There are plenty of primary sources linked from that page.

> slamming anyone down as ignorant is not constructive.

It is when they are reducing it to a he said/she said instead of, I don't know, providing evidence? Begging the question is a way to reduce the credibility of an argument with zero evidence. It's far less constructive than my reply to it, but yet people have taken more issue with my reply.

On the one hand, it probably is at least partly an excuse, given that Kiwifarms is baaasically set up to create exactly those conditions, and I'm skeptical that the most recent incidents are genuinely worse than anything they've done before.

On the other hand, about bloody time they got rid of the site, and if they need to post a public excuse to feel justified in it, sure, whatever.

You are a company if you get death threats against your own workers you have to act. These threats are not anonymous. There are legal implications if you do nothing and something happens.

Matthew Prince did not provide any information on the nature of the threats he claimed, but the two that were widely discussed on Twitter are addressed in the submitted post. Neither of them involve Cloudflare employees, so I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

Let's be clear, there is no level of evidence that would be acceptable to KF supporters. Asking for it is pointless because the response would be to discredit it regardless of what it was. So far we see, "it's a joke," "that's a bad apple," "you cant prove there is a connection," "you don't understand look but not touch," ad nauseum. We're just skipping the dialog tree to the part where CF had the power and KF didn't. Kind of a nothingburger if you ask me. KF lost the game - end of story.

KF is still around and if it wasn’t I’m sure it will be replaced within a month. These are some of the most technically sophisticated users on the internet who are obsessive about internet culture. They aren’t going away via wack-a-mole censorship and apparently their website traffic grew significantly thanks to all of the press they’ve received.

It’s a good test to see how censorship resistant the internet can be.

Sure, if you get one or two...

If you get 5000 from a twitter mob, from people living all around the world, you can still report, but there's pretty much zero chance that anything will happen to any of those 5000 people, because the threats are considered as "not real" and nobody wants to deal with 5000 cases (paperwork, warrants, judical process after, etc.)

You are still liable.

I'm not talking about not-reporting, i'm talking about the uselessness of reporting... you report, the police does nothing. Who are they going to sue? You did what you had to do, the police will do nothing, and suing the police for not investigating 5000 different people from all around the world... well.. good luck with that.

Yeah, that’s still not how the real world works. Liability is there even if you really think it’s all bullshit. No sane corp will ignore it especially not in the US.

You clearly did not read the post you're replying to at all. They are not talking about ignoring it or claiming that they are not liable.

You have clearly no idea that you are still liable if you are not actively reducing the threat against your employees.

It really depends on the country your business is in.

For example in Australia, employers have a duty under workplace health and safety legislation to provide a safe workplace. And similar legislation exists in most countries.

If you have an employee who is receiving death threats, you do nothing about it and then they are killed (or they even just sue you) then you would absolutely be liable.