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Comment by neonsunset | Hacker News Reader

The problem with salem witch trials du jour so fervently pushed by certain groups of people is closing to its demise with every case like this. The advantage of emotionally immature people (regardless of their actual age) having too much time on their hands forcing their narrative and banning any discourse that they don't like will eventually cease when the majority of people will realize that they are, well, in a majority, and it's time to put stop to this madness.

In other news, http://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedz... is up.

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You do realize that this wasn't simply about "discourse", yes? This was about active doxxing and swatting of real living human beings. Being transphobic might be just an (ignorant) opinion, but actively working to harm people needs to be shut right down.

SWATing and harassment is explicitly prohibited on Kiwi Farms, and the site owner aggressively removes such content. "Doxing" is for better or worse not a crime, and is practiced by the very same people currently crying for Kiwi Farms' deletion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms I think maybe you should read this.

And I think you should read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32712037

And this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32728365

The fight over Kiwi Farms' Wikipedia page is intense. Keffals, a central figure to this story described in the second link above, is now quoting the Wikipedia page as fact because it quotes an NBC News story which quotes... Keffals. If you don't rely strictly on primary sources it's impossible to determine truth in this situation.

It's interesting to see posts simply pointing out the facts getting downvoted. Almost as if it's more important to pursue something out of ideological and emotional motivation, reality be damned.

Also, a very good demonstration of the plague rampaging through STEM circles. Driving blind might be fashionable, but it won't make a wall one is running into go away.

One side of a disagreement getting to write the relevant Wikipedia page has some trade-offs. On the one hand, the dominant side can cast the argument however they want. On the other hand, they can't really make it look like a fair or dispassionate accounting.

Your argument looks like blatant self victimisation. Kiwi Farms is involved in the suicides and endangerement of multiple people. I really don't see the coherence in your arguments here.

If they are doing something criminal, let the courts set them out with an established procedure and a a group of informed jurors instead of mob rule.

There's no mob rule. A private company decided to stop servicing that filth because it would hurt their profits. There's nothing freer than this.

This is mob rule, private companies do nothing but appeal to whatever they have to in order to make money, and to rely on them for control of our basic ability to have a platform is incredibly harmful and you should not support it.

There are some powers which should not be in the hands of corporate executives, this is one of them.

There are also times that it wouldn't be mob rule, those times should be shareholder rule, which is liable to be even more harmful and even less transparent.

So you're telling me that companies shouldn't have full control over their operations and products and that the government should limit them in that aspect?

I think that systems like cloudflare should be treated partially as utilities and required to provide services as if they were one, because that's what they are.

There are lots of times that companies find themselves in a position of such responsibility and power that they can no longer be trusted to wield that responsibility and power without public oversight.

My concern with this would evaporate entirely if I knew that there was some form of reasonable checks and balances against companies like cloudflare doing whatever the heck they want to do, and all it would take in the future to get a website off the internet is some mass of well connected people deciding that a site should go away.

This is not an issue with the site being taken down, it's an issue with entirely unregulated power held by people who should not hold that power.

As if the Kiwifarms community is anything other than a mob. This whole drama is basically about a bunch of people who love to dish out abuse but can't take it.

In an ideal world (in this world) we would be able to both deal with bad actors and not have mob rule at the same time.

That's not my idea of an ideal world. I think reciprocity has its place and don't wish to inhabit some sort of social kindergarten in which every dispute must be solved through a process of arbitration.

This only works if people who think like you are a minority. The other side can reciprocate just as hard as you can. If they can't, they'll escalate in different ways.

Society means having rules and agreeing to follow them. Yes, even for disputes like these.

Nonsense. You can argue that to be true for a reciprocity -only proposition, but claiming that any reciprocity causes society to collapse is absurd. The proof is that most jurisdictions recognize rights of self-defense and expand it in some contexts (eg your home), and yet society endures.

In this case, what's the difference between mob rule and serving your customers?

Odd, for some reason i'm getting the urge to disconnect your internet service, because it would hurt my profits, and i decided your opinion is dangerous to free society.

It is not without merit to assume the counter-argument is made in a bad faith. The discussion is about wider implications of deplatforming a specific site based on the mob justice of small group of people instead of legal proceedings where each side would be able to defend their position. It is also about the discrepancy between accusations and facts because the subject has become so distorted.

Last but not least, "...I would kick such people out of the healthcare system or make them pay more for living obese unhealthy lives." by Febra33 [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29286944#29287326 / https://web.archive.org/web/20220905202953/https://news.ycom...

Take from that what you will.

(I'm inferring that your comment is supporting KiwiFarms. If this is not the case, you should probably re-word it.)

> salem witch trials du jour so fervently pushed by certain groups of people

Hunting trans people and pushing them to suicide sounds like much more of a witch trial to me.

> forcing their narrative and banning any discourse that they don't like

Telling to people to kill themselves is "discourse" that we merely "don't like"?

> put stop to this madness

Even if you're a raging transphobe, how can you possibly think being trans is more madness than pushing people to kill themselves?

Your response is a perfect demonstration of the issue at hand and the choice of words is driven by a desire to silence the people who question the logic of a tribe you perceive yourself a part of: nothing in my post indicated support of some narrow part of the spectrum of opinions yet you make an assumption and go through with accusation anyway.

As Paul Graham himself put this, anyone suspected of supporting yellowists is to be investigated for missteps and once one is found to the trial they go.

Supporting Kiwi Farms right to exist is not the same as supporting the content.

You’re right, but they’re related.

KF has a right to exist. But if they want to be part of society at large, society owes them no great debt; they are welcome to remain insular and talk about their bullshit amongst themselves, or even host their own CDN mitigation service if nobody wants to work with them, but nobody is required to give them a platform to spew their odious content.

KF has a responsibility to abide by the law. By extension, it has a responsibility to ensure its users do not use it to break the law. I support KF's right to exist, but not in this state.

It has a right to exist. CF has the right to choose their clients. I really don't see your problem. If they want to exist, they can host themselves and/or use TOR.

If they want to exist they can roll their own framework, host themselves, make their own chips, mine their own ore.

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