How many more are dead from activities on Facebook, Instagram, etc? Why is it that big businesses see no punishment for vastly larger crimes and small communities are harshly dealt with?
KF never evolved.
It's just not very sensible to think that big companies care about a few people dying because of a small forum when they demonstrably do not care about many, many, more people dying because of a big forum. It seems way more plausible to me that big tech companies work together to kill small social media than that they have some secret ethic which compels them to care about small harms over big harms.
Very illuminating!
I think you may have good point hiding in there (maybe "Facebook may not do it intentionally, but they've been so negligent that..."), but it's lost in the dripping sarcasm. The point you're replying to wasn't that ridiculous.
It is, of course, completely ridiculous to think that "intent" separates Facebook and KiwiFarms. Facebook doesn't intend to cause civil wars, genocides, spree killers, gang violence, body dismorphia, self-harm, harassment, and suicide. Facebook intends to connect people so that they can develop a social network and monetize the social network and they are willing to break a few eggs to make that omelette.
You might as well say that it is the color of Mark Zuckerberg's shoes that matters as say it is Facebook's intent. No, obviously, what matters is the bad stuff and the people harmed. It's not like any of those people are less dead because of Facebook's intentions. If Facebook had terrible intentions and excellent outcomes that would be a much better world.
The other problem with saying intent is what matters is that the people who make this argument also make some kind of magical mind reading claim that they know the intentions of others. "Intent is what matters, and I know the intentions of KiwiFarms! They are bad!" Just save everyone some time and explain that you know KiwiFarms is bad and that is why they must be destroyed.
KiwiFarms is bad because they intended to get people killed. No, there is no evidence for that. And yes, there is plenty of evidence against that in the form of trying to get people hurt being against the rules and moderation of the site. No, there was no police or legal action against KiwiFarms for the crimes we "know" they were committing - but all that is beside the point. We know their intent! It is bad and they must be removed!
Or... Let's say a group of a dozen people got together and decided to make life a living hell for their target. They are going to mock the target mercilessly, following up on any online interaction by posting vile shit, sending nasty DMs on every platform they can find, etc... Nothing illegal, but just being awful.
But let's say in one world, they're coordinating this stuff on Facebook, and in another they're coordinating it on KF. Now let's say the target gets logs of the coordination, and they report it to the site where it happened. Which site do you think would be most likely to take action, FB or KF? I think the obvious answer is that FB is much more likely to try to put a stop to the harassment.
Also, for you to claim you're arguing in good faith when your entire response to a reasonable argument was to mockingly agree with it and say "Very illuminating!" is really rich. If you want to actually convince people of your points, you're going to have to do a lot better.
For the record, I really don't like that KF has been forced off the internet the way it has. But you're not going to convince anyone by being sarcastic and pretending that KF isn't an awful place where users try to do awful things.
I think the fine should be substantially higher since they are 'big, rich and powerful as well' [3].
[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/30/india-twitter-kashm...
[1] https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-rules-twitter-can-be-su...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-20/twitter-f...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-...
Facebook absolutely would have criminal intent the same way kiwifarms would - in both cases, they intended to serve content from their users.
So just guessing here, but Meta properties alone must have killed thousands of teenagers.
Near literally said he was committing suicide due to the abuse from Kiwi Farms. If you're doubtful, it's because you're willfully ignorant.
https://twitter.com/near_koukai/status/1408986855014428672
It could be guilting those who harrassed and bullied him. But it's probably just highlighting how bad it was for him.
To me, it's pretty clear KiwiFarms were a major contributing factor to their sucide.
One of Near's friends just tweeted a message where they had begged, "do something about this site already" the day they killed themself. Nier committed suicide because of KF harassment. https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1567014389282385922
Because they have more resources and it's easier to take down a small target than a large one. I am more than fine with Zuckerberg and others being held to account for harms negligently or callously inflicted by Facebook.
Is Comcast getting any flak for providing internet to the KKK offices? Or their water provider? Is Netflix getting any complains for providing entertainment to terrorists? Or vodafone for mobile connectivity?
Why is it different for cloudflare?
Comcast must provide service as part of the agreement to give them local monopoly privilege.
The water company where I am is the government so they are forced to provide service because of the 1st amendment.
Vodafone similarly bought public airspace and it came with rules. I wonder if they can pick and choose their customers.
Cloudflare though is just a regular company. They provide a service, but there is nothing restricting them from banning people. It’s like how Google can ban you for almost no reason.
Regarding your Netflix example, I doubt Netflix knows if any particular customer is a terrorist.
Having access to a CDN provider isn't in the same "basic rights" league.
I agree that trying to cancel people from being able to enjoy baseline physical necessities is not a line that's being crossed yet, but an attack on utilities may not necessitate this. Let's say Joshua Moon also happened to run a small hobby store in a strip mall. Would going after the utility providers (or landlord) for this store be "fair game" in order to attack KiwiFarms? Why or why not?
They absolutely will ask landlords to kick somebody out. If it becomes known that you're renting a spare room to a neonazi who's become infamous to twitter, don't expect to stay out of the fray.
Do you have any examples of this line being crossed? I mean I'm sure that oftentimes the mob has raised these issues to landlords and managed to get leases revoked, but I haven't seen an actual serious attempt to attack an unresponsive landlord in the way we've seen with the attack on Cloudflare.
We act like utilities are some inalienable right, but this is by far the worst argument ever. Licensed installers setup the utilities and have the work inspected. At any point where your environment presents a hazard, the utilities will be disconnected until it passes another inspection.
Cloudflare is playing a big game.
Comparing Cloudflare protecting bad actors to the water company providing water to KKK members is completely disingenuous, but you know that, obviously. You should pick better examples.
I don't know what distinction you were imagining, but I think this one is relatively simple
CloudFlare’s original announcement mentions law enforcement. The bomb threats will almost certainly see investigation; that’s domestic terrorism.
Additionally, it's a retail store. I can't imagine they would lose a lot of business if their website was down. Still, they could just as easily fall victim to a DDoS racketeering scheme I suppose.
If somehow someone objected to cheesecake factory's practices (let's say they're a vegan or they disapproved of cheesecake factory's health practices or something), then it would be disproportionately easy for the cheesecake factory to conduct a DDoS attack on the protester's website than vice-versa. So the idea that we should support DDoS as some form of free speech is obviously pro-corporatist in my perspective, because it empowers those with more financial and bureaucratic control over the internet.
"I don't like what you're saying, so I'm going to shoot you in the face so you stop."
"I don't like the content your web server is serving, so I'm going to DDoS it so it stops."
The DDoS is not an idea in the same way that a bullet isn't one. Therefore no, this is not "the marketplace of ideas in action".
This isn't about 1 website here. This is about the precedent.
Every time cloudflare gets bullied into taking a website offline, it is ammunition that an authoritarian government can use against it.
What happens when one of these countries starts to threaten cloudflare employees lives, to force them to take down some human rights organizations' websites?
Maybe it won't happen tomorrow. But every time a mob forces cloudflare to take these sorts of actions, it weakens cloudflare's ability to fight against the real threats.
If you want to stand by your opinion in this, then fine. But I get to hold you responsible for the deaths that happen, if cloudflare is no longer able to stand up against these greater threats.
This isn't how normal people think.
I, on the other hand, am concerned about the lives that could be lost, due to authoritarian governments having more ammo to pressure cloudflare with.
This specific time might not be the tipping point. But if stuff like this keeps happening, the real threats can use the precedent to target vulnerable groups, and yes that can cause lives to be lost.
Why don't we stretch this in any old way back to DDoS? Why should the government say which packets I can and cannot send? Any encroachment by the government into something as silly as sending DDoS packets slices down my ability to speak freely. If they start at DDoS, then what's stopping them from limiting other forms of speech?
See, I can do the same thing. Just because free speech in the form of sending DDoS packets isn't liked by people doesn't mean we should be willing to give it up. Right? Because once we start limiting what kind of packets we can send, we're only a slipper slope away from being told which other kinds of packets we can't send.
Still, I'm not sure why you're dragging government into a scenario which is otherwise devoid of government interference. In this whole story, all I see is a bunch of civilians. If there is a government actor, department, or anything, please share. Otherwise it just looks like standard whataboutism directed at the govt.
Look, if you are ok with authoritarian governments DDoSing human rights organizations, then say so.
> I'm not sure why you're dragging government into a scenario
So, one big reason why cloudflare is used, is by human rights organizations to protect themselves from being DDoS'ed by authoritarian governments.
If you don't care about that, then just say so.
> is otherwise devoid of government interference.
It is not devoid from government interference, because cloudflare stops authoritarian governments from interfering with human right's organizations.
And, as I said before, this precedent hurts cloudfares ability to protect human right's organizations from being taken down by these governments, by protecting them from DDoS attacks, from those governments.
> If there is a government actor, department, or anything
Every time cloudflare is pressured to stop protecting websites, this is ammo that authoritarian governments can use against them, to drop protections for other organizations, such as human rights organizations. It might not happen tomorrow, but it is more ammo that these governments can use.
Why do you keep avoiding this idea of authoritarian governments DDoSing human rights organizations?
> that you're ok with the government censoring which packets people send.
So, if an authoritarian government, tried to target a gay rights organization, yes I would be ok with a different government protecting this targeted minority from DDoS attacks.
This is because I do not want important human rights organizations, such as ones that protect gay people from being oppressed, from being taken off the internet by bad people.
Do you see how I just directly addressed the question, by saying that yes I am in favor of the government protecting, for example, gay rights organizations, from being DDoSed?
Do you really oppose this protection? Would you support an authoritarian government, taking down a gay rights organization?
I tried to get them to talk about this issue, and they basically admitted that they support removing, for example, gay right organizations from the internet, via DDoS attacks.
Because apparently protecting gay rights organizations would infringe on their free speech to target and remove those organizations from the internet.
No, there's no law anywhere that includes actions performed by machines in the definition of free speech. DDoSing a server is not performance art, and neither is shooting someone.
And that goes to anyone involved in any part of this whole fight.
There was no physical not psychological violence here. Only Ddos. Why is that bad? Do you have an inherent right to not be buried under request? protected from bots?
Well, we have a lot of laws against that in every major country.
Yes, if police catch you doing that, then they will put you in a cage.
With a DDOS the goal is to prevent people from reading someone's words. With harassment the goal is to prevent people hearing the targets future words.
Both are forms of censorship.
Generally speaking, the best way to handle situations like that is to get the police to put someone in a cage.
Also, have any of the people complaining about this on the internet actually filed complaints with the police/procesutor's office? Have they even attempted to follow the legal channels before deciding to take the law into their own hands?
Surely a prosecutor standing for re-election would be much more likely to be swayed than a massive mega corporation. But why go through the bother of actually doing something that could help set legal precedent when you can simply tweet furiously.
Not concern trolling, a google search only turned up a kiwifarms thread that _could_ have been relevant, but is now obviously inaccessable.
- Whether KF was relevant to their suicide
- Whether ongoing harassment from KF was relevant to their suicide
Unless one equates the mere existence to the thread itself with ongoing harassment then one can answer affirm the former question without the latter. The "required evidence" for the latter would require some sort of allegation that KF members were actively harassing Near at some point reasonably prior to their suicide, which afaik was just not alleged.
For the love of god, please use archive.ph or archive.org.
The line with "Kiwi Farms is responsible for 3 suicides" seems to be repeating that lie until it sticks. The truth is more complicated:
Nobody is talking about nuking any of these platforms from existence just because of some isolated illegal incidents.
If you're going to take a strawman this far, blame the cellphone and camera manufacturers involved in those live streams. As well as the landlord who owned the building it happened in. And any restaurants that serve them, can't murder if you don't eat.
> KiwiFarms does encourage everything that happens on it
Wrong. The admin, Null, has explicitly said they don't allow doxxing or swatting and complies with law enforcement
> If you're going to take a strawman this far, blame the cellphone and camera manufacturers involved in those live streams. As well as the landlord who owned the building it happened in. And any restaurants that serve them, can't murder if you don't eat.
That's cute but what you're describing as absurd is basically what Keffals et al are doing with this website by hounding every service they tangentially use to get them banned. If they could make the site operator unbankable or unable to receive postal mail it's pretty obvious they gladly would
Heck, there are plenty of anecdotes showing they bias towards keeping hate subs targeted at "majorities" alive, and have actively changed their ToS multiple times to discriminate between who they consider vulnerable.
The solutions put forth by the elected officials of Chicago and Illinois seem to fall into two general strategies; providing funding for anti-violence programs in Chicago, and lobbying for DOA legislation in Washington. Those outreach programs, such as Chicago CRED, READI Chicago and Metropolitan Peace Initiatives, have social science studies backing up their efficacy, but say they need more money to have a greater impact (Chicago's 2021 budget was $12.8 billion, with $16.5 million allocated to violence prevention.) They're very clear about needing more money to hire more social workers, but I can't find any statements from these organizations about the need for moderating reddit and youtube.
It's more likely the sub taps into a vein of black culture that happens to be interwoven with some violence, and Reddit tolerates it because they don't want to be seen as trampling out anything to do with black culture.
Now if there were a sub dedicated to a popular genre of exclusively white musicians who occasionally livestream themselves murdering their white "opps," Reddit would ban it in a heartbeat under their "glorifying violence" ToS policy
>Now if there were a sub dedicated to a popular genre of exclusively white musicians who occasionally livestream themselves murdering their white "opps," Reddit would ban it in a heartbeat under their "glorifying violence" ToS policy
Not the same, but combat footage is a popular sub that's basically just watching brown people get bombed.
That's a reeeeach. I've been subbed there since 2013 and there were also many contemporary posts of white Americans (because that's disproportionately who serves and dies in combat) and European service members being shot and blown up by IEDs and so forth in GWOT (although the votes and comments were more controversial).
The war in Donbas also yielded plenty of footage of white casualties. And now the latest Ukrainian conflict.
The most controversial time on the sub was when ISIS was at their peak and people were straight posting their propaganda (executions and so forth). That was all disallowed unless it was only traditional combat footage, preferably with nasheeds stripped out. If the sub was about enjoying brown death that carnage would've been allowed.
With the war in Ukraine, it's gotten more diverse (even if there's still some ME content published)
How many people are dead because of twitter/facebook/tiktok stalking, arguments, etc?
Their story, which doesn't seem to appear in the responses in that Twitter thread, was that a 2 year old account that only posted once previously in its history suddenly activated, posted a picture of someone holding a threatening letter of some type outside of someone's home, then this was screencapped on Twitter a short time later (~15 minutes). The post was removed 2 minutes after it hit Twitter by the submitter (they originally thought their mods did it, but corrected this, saying it was removed with the note "retarded").
I don't ever read that site other than to look at stuff like this when it hits the news, so I don't claim to know anything more than that, but you were for a time able to look at the forum threads and see the posts they mentioned, etc.
Moreover some of the people, who pushed to shut down the forum, openly support the transition of teens (even without the knowledge of their parents). Yet trans teens face an even higher risk of attempting suicide. Therefore one must ask if those who wanted to remove KF are not responsible for more suicides by promoting and facilitating transition among teens in identity crisis i.e. by making their problems even worse.
Our legislators needs to make laws against targeted, anonymous, non-journalistic doxxing. It needs to include clauses that escalate the severity when revenge porn or racial, sexual, or other discrimination is being incited. If this bullying results in suicide, that should also increase the severity of the crime.
Until these laws exist, prosecutors need to use this angle and try these cases anyway.
- leader of a mafia
- any government leader
- billionaires in general
- anyone in a position of power
Investigating their crimes and doxxing them is very different from "lmao look at this piece of shit loser, let's bully it to death".
Man it really didn't take long for people to forget things like the CNN reddit kid dox or even more recent the twitter account from tiktok dox by journalists active still today.
[0]https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/04/politics/kfile-reddit-use...
Fair enough.
>What does "government leader" means?
>what does "anyone in a position of power" actually means?
I'm not a lawmaker, it's one of those "you know it when you see it" things.
>Man it really didn't take long for people to forget things like the CNN reddit kid dox or even more recent the twitter account from tiktok dox by journalists active still today.
That's exactly why I put the above caveat.
Now be a good boy or else CNN might release your name and address: https://www.engadget.com/2017-07-05-cnn-will-expose-reddit-u...