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Comment by ChicagoDave | Hacker News Reader

I don't know the entire history here, but my understanding is that KF was a forum where doxing and swatting was openly pervasive. Sounds like a perfect example of society holding a site accountable and producing the correct outcome.

There was no government involved, so it's not a "free speech" issue.

I always talk about the wild west of the late 90's when the Internet was brand new. My colleagues and I all talked about the myriad sketchy ways we could make money. We chose not to. It's as simple as that. If you want to develop something you think is beneficial to society, don't support bad behavior and certainly not dangerous or illegal behavior.

This idea that a "dangerous idea" should somehow be a protected normality is ridiculous. Society has limits. Get used to it.

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Free speech is more than just an amendment to the constitution. It is also a doctrine that knowledge and discussion should generally be free, and that people shouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs.

It used to be that all forums had pervasive doxxing and swatting. People didn't use to have public internet identities like they do today- probably because there wasn't any way to profit from owning a public identity or from harvesting the data of others. Maybe people don't remember that since reddit (and others) ate up all the small forums and made them advertiser friendly.

One of these "sketchy ways to make money" is to abuse the networks with DDoS attacks and racketeering- on either the protection side (CloudFlare, etc.) or the offensive side (botnets, etc.)

> Free speech is more than just an amendment to the constitution. It is also a doctrine that knowledge and discussion should generally be free, and that people shouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs.

"Generally" is an important word here. So is "should". That speech "should generally" be free does not mean all speech is always acceptable.

As the saying goes, your freedom to act ends where my nose begins. When a site is used to organize and synchronise harassment for months, to the at least tacit allowance and at most open encouragement of the site's management, it is way beyond where noses begin.

> It used to be that all forums had pervasive doxxing and swatting.

That is a level of nonsense and whataboutism I've rarely seen.

Should be persecuted BY THE GOVERNMENT. At no point has any nation held that all people should be able to say whatever they want at any time with zero repercussions from anywhere. You can yell in a crowded theater, and they can kick you out. If you yell "fire" and cause a panic, you're arrested for the panic, not the fact you spoke, but for the fact you put people in potential danger. But if you only yell some racial slur, for example, no one will arrest you for the slur, but you can be asked to leave the theater and never return because that's private property.

Freedom of speech is not and has never been freedom from consequences.

> If you yell "fire" and cause a panic, you're arrested for the panic, not the fact you spoke, but for the fact you put people in potential danger.

This analogy was created in an attempt to outlaw people speaking against the draft. My understanding is that it was overturned and is no longer considered a relevant example on the test of free speech.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_t...

I don’t think that’s relevant. The point is just that you really can’t shout ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre and use a free speech defense to escape responsibility for your actions. Various other scenarios may or may not have been found to be legally analogous to this one by various courts. Nonetheless, the example still serves to illustrate the limits of free speech.

To put it another way, Brandenburg v. Ohio didn’t find that it actually is ok to shout ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre. Rather, it found that a particular instance of speech wasn’t analogous to that example.

It is relevant if the courts later overturned the decision and it is now considered free speech.

I get your point, it's just a bad example given the historical baggage.

AFAIK the courts did not find this. After all, they were not considering the case of someone who shouted ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre. If someone actually did this and people died as a result (e.g. in a stampede), it seems highly unlikely that a free speech defense could be used.

> It is relevant if the courts later overturned the decision and it is now considered free speech.

Since "it" is the draft stuff, not shouting fire, it's only mildly sometimes relevant.

The analogy itself is dicta: part of the decision’s explanation and commentary; not a statement of law or binding precedent. Therefore not something that can be overturned in the subsequent case.

What is “the government” in a democracy?

The government apparatus, as only that has the power to fine you, jail you, etc.

Ok, and how is being fined by a government materially different from being intimated and canceled by a mob?

And why would the approaches to them be different if, presumably, both represent the people?

Most people are fairly aware that context matters. What's illegal in one context is perfectly legal in another. These are two very different contexts.

> people shouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs

Who is being persecuted? For which beliefs? And how are they being persecuted?

No one in this specific situation is being persecuted for their beliefs:

The coordinator of the DDoS attack (Who I am apparently not allowed to say the name of or my comment will be instantly flagged after posting) is being persecuted for their shady history and actions, which includes being a prostitute and sponsoring the (paralegal?) distribution of transgender hormones to minors.

The KiwiForum is being persecuted for the gossip and personal information that they have been (re-)publishing on the previously mentioned person. As well as some threats like swatting which have allegedly been attributed to them.

Both sides employ a public figurehead who abuses their para-social relationship with their supporters to extract donations from them. So in this sense, the "persecution complex" is an artificial mechanism whereby they drum up support.

Ah ok, if nobody is being persecuted here, then I don’t understand why you insinuated it.

The first amendment is designed to protect people from government. That's it. It's beyond clear in its text. Courts have ruled time and time again finding speech that harms people is most certainly not protected. We have laws that deal with slander, libel, harassment, and speech that does not pass the clear and present danger clause does meet the criteria for "free" speech.

I don't understand how anyone can look at the first amendment text and believe anything else. The only people that think they should be allowed to say whatever they want and face no repercussion are people that simply do not understand the first amendment.

I believe that free speech, as a doctrine, is an intrinsic good. It is that simple.

I think the late Aaron Swartz describes my stance on free speech as a doctrine and moral principle: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/becausewecan

The status of the law has no influence on my stance on morality. Legality neither sufficient nor necessary for morality. The existence of slavery was once legal, was that sufficient to make it moral? It is obviously the case that the law is backed by moral principles and not the other way around, and that we should lead ourselves chiefly by moral principles and not legal ones.

You believe I should be able to engage in hate speech and harass people and that CF has an obligation to help me in that endeavor? Bruh...

People have the freedom to say awful things. That's part of free speech. But shunning then for saying these awful things is also part of my free speech. Calling on others to shun them for saying these awful things is also part of my free speech. You cannot have free speech without also allowing people to be ostracized (even in organized campaigns) for how they use it.

Sure, but the internet's centralized nature breaks this dynamic because the "public square" is being privatized. Imagine if you couldn't print political flyers without active participation from the paper company, or if you couldn't host meetups without the wholesale endorsement of the phone company.

What we are seeing is not a shunning by society at large. What we're seeing is a fight between two radical (and generally unhinged) groups of individuals on the internet.

The real problem is that these technical problems devolve into bureaucratic social problems due to the design of the internet. If there is a silver lining here, it's that more people will be encouraged to learn about censorship-resistant networks like Tor.

I think a return to voluntary communication on a peer-to-peer basis may one day return sanity to the network, because direct-messaging retains much of the IRL social characteristics you've described.

> Imagine if you couldn't print political flyers without active participation from the paper company, or if you couldn't host meetups without the wholesale endorsement of the phone company.

Except, Cloudflare isn't required to run a website. If you are printing 100s or even 1000s of flyers your home printer might be fine. If you are printing millions your probably going to need to make a significant investment or work with a professional printer. The same is true for Cloudflare in this scenario. It doesn't enable running the site, it just helps scale it for cheaper. If the professional printers/cloudflare's of the world decide to shun you, yeah you'll have a harder time getting your message out, but I see that as a feature, not a bug. If I shun someone I don't want someone else handing them a megaphone to scream in my ear.

>Except, Cloudflare isn't required to run a website.

A sizable CDN, which Cloudflare is one example of, is practically required to serve a website seeing any significant traffic in this day and age.

And therein lies the problem.

The internet was founded on a philosophy of decentralization, the fucking thing was designed to withstand all the destructive forces of a nuclear war. If one part of the network is damaged or otherwise inaccessible, the rest of the network will route around the damage to reestablish connections.

But that's not the state of the internet today. The internet today is heavily centralized around a small handful of key players. Cloudflare is one such player. Without the blessings of such players, you have no ability to access or do anything on the internet.

For now the vast majority of people receive and enjoy the blessings and thus aren't compelled to do anything about this fucking gigantic elephant in the room. But those blessings aren't guaranteed, and the fact we must rely on such frivolous blessings is by itself preposterous.

>If you are printing millions your probably going to need to make a significant investment or work with a professional printer.

What we're seeing here is a professional printer refusing services because he doesn't like what's being printed, with no basis on legality which is the only grounds upon which any business may refuse to render services.

Anyone who claims to support free speech shouldn't be happy about any of this turn of events. You don't spread free speech by censoring speech, the results are quite the opposite every single time and these will all add up to come crashing down eventually.

And especially to those celebrating or ecstatic this happened: Be careful what you wish for, because when your turn to get cancelled comes up, nobody might be around to help you.

The whole point of free speech is to protect and guarantee the expression of disagreeable speech, because nobody's going to censor speech they like or agree with.

> What we're seeing here is a professional printer refusing services because he doesn't like what's being printed, with no basis on legality which is the only grounds upon which any business may refuse to render services.

A business can in general refuse to do business with anyone for any reason. There are certain federal restrictions, namely religion, race, gender etc, but outside that refusing to do business with someone is an inherent part of free speech. Advocating for requiring a company to do business with someone they don't want to is advocating against free speech

>Advocating for requiring a company to do business with someone they don't want to is advocating against free speech

Yes, quite so, and in fact I agree that Cloudflare has a right to do or not do business as they please.

The real, fundamental problem is that the internet has become too centralized, such that a few entities can direct the rest with impunity.

However, I think we can agree that fixing the centralization of the internet at this point is a fool's errand.

I recall recently about a story of how a father got kicked out by Google for uploading some pictures to his Google account. Fundamentally, KF getting kicked out by Cloudflare is the same thing: Customers getting kicked out by companies because of disagreeable content; companies which are effectively gatekeepers to the internet at large.

So the next best way, in the interim, to keep the internet working in some fashion, is to have businesses like Cloudflare not kick customers out simply for saying or having disagreeable things.

With great powers come great responsibilities, as the saying goes.

> Advocating for requiring a company to do business with someone they don't want to is advocating against free speech

Only if you accept that corporations should have the same rights as people. To me that makes no sense once the get to a certain scale.

It's not a problem if one print shop declines to print your flyer; it is a problem if there's only three print shops in the world.

A sizable CDN is not required to run a website with significant traffic.

Cloudflare plays a critical role here because of DDoS and not any of the legitimate load.

That's why society is dependent on large companies staying in their lane. If a hospital decides to refuse service to bad people because the world would be better if they died, we'd obviously condemn that. The same is true of some utilities, but general businesses can shun people.

Cloudflare tried to stay in its lane, but it was dragged out of it by the Twitter mob.

> Cloudflare tried to stay in its lane, but it was dragged out of it by the Twitter mob.

That's bullshit. Cloudflare removed the sex worker-friendly social media network Switter over NO complaints or likewise.

Cloudflare seems eagerly anti-sexwork and pro nazi. Except when the whole internet comes out and says "NO".

Cloudflare can play pretend that it's some "core functionality" of the internet, but their core business is "safeguarding booters to DDoS sites" while they provide the DDoS cover as a business racket. One might even describe it as "organized"

I wouldn't call the passing of SESTA/FOSTA "no complaints or likewise". In that specific instance, you can very much put the blame on lawmakers being more anti-sexwork than anti-nazis, if you want to frame it that way.

FOSTA/SESTA was a poorly-conceived law that created a lot of potential liability for the ostensible goal of reducing sex trafficking. Pretty much all sex work is potentially sex trafficking, so any corporate lawyer will tell management to stay as far away from that as possible.

The USA cannot criminalize being a "Nazi" because freedom of political affiliation and political expression is a core right. The USA went through political inquisitions in past decades to root out communism among US citizens, and nobody looks back on that with approval.

As an aside, "Nazi" has devolved into a completely meaningless term, so I'd prefer something a bit more specific.

You can't print political flyers without a press. Freedom of the press has never implied everyone is owed access to someone else's press or other services.

There are very narrowly tailored prior restraint on the freedom of association in the US, and outside of those companies have wide latitude. The New York Times is not obligated to donate column inches to the KKK, for example.

> I think a return to voluntary communication on a peer-to-peer basis

That's what we have now; the issue I believe you appear to have is you're not a peer. Most of us never were; how many actually ran their own ISP back in the day or actually entered into a traffic peering agreement?

> believe that free speech, as a doctrine, is an intrinsic good.

I don't believe so. For example, hate speech and verbal abuse against a mentally vulnerable person, privately communicated, with only the intent to harm that person is clearly morally bad. It then follows that if we can identify exactly when this occurs and limit it without further externalities, then that would be morally good.

Another example: there is a fire, and you give firefighters misinformation with the intent to prevent people from being saved. That is a moral bad, externalities notwithstanding, and it is a moral good if we could prevent exactly such acts.

If you accept these, then the discussion is no longer that free speech is always good, but that what forms of speech in what contexts are acceptable, and what limits on enforcement on free speech is acceptable. I suppose that most people accept these, as opposed to having an absolute stance as yours, and people with varied experiences have different positions on this complicated issue, hence the constant conversation and reappraisal.

Of course but it’s about promoting a culture of free speech. It’s important. And of course that doesn’t mean absolute. If speech is being used to create an imminent threat then it should be limited during that time. But hurt feelings, feeling “unsafe”, being insulted, being offended, blasphemy, etc. are not reasons to limit the culture of free speech. It creates more harm long term than it solves.

Of course different communities that moderate can choose what that means to them. But there is a bad precedent when global bans are implemented, especially when it’s arbitrary. This appeal to authority, like begging a lordship is not the right direction.

What happens when inevitably the authority is not someone we agree with? Precedent has been set. We encoded into law free speech for this reason. We’d be wise to promote it as cultural value too.

(US) Law has nothing to do with free speech.

No, it did not used to be that "all forums had pervasive doxxing and swatting". That has never been true. It has never been widespread. Heck, swatting as we know it today wasn't even remotely common until quite recently, and doxxing has been actively frowned on and treated as potentially criminal since, like, the 80s.

I dunno what you think you're arguing, but it's nonsense.

Doxxing and swatting has always been frowned upon, but it continues to happen regardless. So the idea that it can be curbed through social stigma and criminalization is clearly false. The technology for surveillance and publishing has only improved over time.

I mean murder continues despite social stigma and criminalization. Unless you are suggesting we legalize murder I'm not seeing your point here.

The difference is that murder is not prone to sybil attacks. You could literally mass-automate doxxing and swatting if you wanted to. Like imagine that you just had a bot that just scraped PII from a website, purchased phone numbers off the DN, and then used text-to-speech to call in a bomb threat. You can conduct this attack anonymously from the other side of the globe.

In order to murder someone you would physically have to visit them and try not to get killed yourself. Anyone can defend against murder, but literally no one can defend against swatting. There is literally nothing you can do to legally prevent yourself from being swatted.

I honestly don't get what you are saying here. Because you can physically do something to prevent being murdered it's sensible to have laws against murder, but because you can't physically defend against swatting we should just accept it as part of our society?

I don't think that's what you are trying to say, but I can't put together what you are.

From a policy perspective I find it extremely problematic to say that CloudFlare is an essential part of modern free speech. If we say that free speech is shouting from a publicly funded street corner, that's one thing. But it's quite another to say that free speech requires expensive engineers, infrastructure, and energy expenditure, all funded by an American business.

If we want public squares, why then do we not pay for it with public money? Furthermore, is it not incredibly problematic that private companies are such an important pillar of free speech in an international context? Is CloudFlare essential for German free speech?

And most importantly, what about the freedom of association as a moral principle? How does an individual's freedom to speak weigh against another's capacity to say "leave me alone?" At the extreme, we might see that in a small town, if enough people disassociate from you then freedom of speech is no longer the top issue. The top issue becomes whether you can even live. So which of these ideal rights are most weighty, and how ought they interact with other rights?

What determines that freedom of association is subordinate to the freedom of speech in an X society?

On a more technical question, what is stopping Kiwi Farms from gathering on the many private forums which exist around the world? There's 4chan, Reddit, TruthSocial, or Facebook. CloudFlare was not a host in this context, it was a DDOS protection service, which is indirectly a wallet protection service. Who will be DDOS'ing Facebook's wallet?

> It used to be that all forums had pervasive doxxing and swatting.

There is no way this is true. I have been a member of countless forums over the decades, and have never seen or experienced this. Anecdotal of course. But for such a substantial claim as you have made, a source is necessary. Though I suspect there is none.

"It used to be that all forums had pervasive doxxing and swatting..."

What kind of hell-forums were you using in the late 90s?! I never saw anything like that going on in the forums I was using back in my early days of internetting, though to be fair, I was mostly on classical music, historical fiction, and parrot-keeping forums, which tend to attract people outside the bored young male demographic, but I was also a regular Slashdot reader, where things sometimes got nasty, but I don't remember a swatting incident, or much in the way of doxxing.

> was no government involved, so it's not a "free speech" issue

Nitpick: it is a free speech issue. It’s just not a First Amendment concern.

Your broader point stands: rights must balance; it’s perfectly fair for the freedom of assembly to peacefully balance someone freedom of speech.

I agree - you have the right to not go some place where you don't want to be.

You do not have the right to convince a fire department to stop protecting a house so you can burn it down in peace.

To think this situation is anything BUT that is pure hypocrisy.

> this situation is anything BUT that is pure hypocrisy

Fires kill people. As do bombs. As in bomb threats levied to intimidate someone into not speaking. Nobody is dying because Kiwi Farms is being DDOS’d. If there is a side antithetical to free speech in this discussion, it’s the group threatening to assault people whose speech they disagree with. Not those asking them to take their business elsewhere.

Here is an excellent writeup on the forum and the recent drama, that is not actively trying to push an agenda on the situation.

https://defaultfriend.substack.com/p/suicide-by-kiwi-farms

Thank you for a varied view of this. Not surprised to see Taylor Lorenz involved in all of this...

>In a profile on her in the Washington Post, written by, oh wow, Taylor Lorenz again, Taylor writes...

Well, doxing by public means seemed to be pretty open and shut yes, but while there are accusations galore of swatting I'm yet to see a single piece of evidence of them being to blame for it, and on paper they actively prohibit illegal things of that sort, for whatever that's worth. Hell the obvious false flag on the congresswomen straight up saying it was a specific user on the forum should be enough to cast suspicions on all these accusations as far as I'm concerned and at least expect some proof, some archive, something.

> I don't know the entire history here, but my understanding is that KF was a forum where doxing and swatting was openly pervasive. Sounds like a perfect example of society holding a site accountable and producing the correct outcome.

Because it IS just that. This is the logical and proper consequence for freedom of speech. You speak, others get to react in their own way that does not HARM you but they are not obligated to HELP you speak.

>There was no government involved, so it's not a "free speech" issue.

Strong disagree. Free speech is a central tenet for the entire modern society. Without it, there is no scientific revolution, no Enlightenment.

Accept controversial, unpleasant, disruptive discussion and ideas or accept stagnation. That's it, there is no way around it.

I, and others, are using our speech to convince others that this forum shouldn't have a platform on the internet. Should you accept my speech? Should you accept CF's form of speech (which is to not help amplify harmful speech)?

Free speech isn't just the ability to say things, but also the ability to not say something, and to not help share something. Action (and inaction) is a form of speech.

In terms of SWATing, harassment, and "driving people to suicide" this is a false impression, one that is intentionally spread by the site's detractors. SWATing and harassment is strictly banned on Kiwi Farms. The site owner aggressively removes such posts and cooperates with law enforcement.

The leader of the campaign to take down Kiwi Farms is Keffals, a transsexual Twitch streamer with a large underage audience. Kiwi Farms has documented Keffals’ sexualized interactions with underage members of her community, as well as her history in porn and online interactions with several open pedophiles. Some believe this is why she wants the site nuked.

See archived copy of the Kiwi Farms thread for documentation of Keffals' encouragement of doxing and SWATing, sexual grooming of minors on the “Catboy Ranch” Discord server, and her website which instructs minors on how to secretly obtain and self-dose cross-sex hormones behind parents’ backs:

https://archive.ph/HY4hK

The sketchy online pharmacy Keffals’ DIY HRT Directory promotes sells cross-sex hormones marketed to children, with holofoil anime lolita box art and labels that say “keep away from parents”:

https://archive.ph/zZMRp

The medical consequences of a confused child self-dosing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones outside parental and medical supervision can be sterilizing, irreversible, and lifelong. Keffals promotes the DIY HRT Directory on Twitter and Twitch to a huge audience of underaged viewers.

None of these details about Keffals were mentioned in WaPo or NBC accounts of this story. It is incredibly dismaying to see Keffals doing this to children, well-documented and for the most part out in the open, and realize that no one in the news media cares.

===

EDIT: In response to a comment below...

KF's owner refused the New Zealand's government command to remove Brenton Tarrant's manifesto and shooting video. This demand was not backed up by American law. He cooperates with law enforcement requests for information on criminal threats and illegal material posted to Kiwi Farms.

Got five kids. If any of them were trans, I'd support them connecting with whatever community they could find. Some people were born into the wrong body and most kids know it immediately. The dysphoria can happen early. I'm sure there are some kids that make mistakes and try hormone therapy because they think it will make them feel better. The list of reasons they might do this are long and many are related to abuse or depression.

How about we stop labeling people pedophiles and support people (even kids) finding their truth.

I'd also firmly believe all transgender adults would be _horrified_ by any type of abuse. You're going to find an outlier in there as with any statistic. But like 99.9999% of all transgender adults come from a position of empathy and support. To assume otherwise is you just pushing your idea of morality on other people.

Of course if you simply refuse to believe in the idea that someone could be gay or bi or trans (and be certain of it at a young age), that's an entirely different conversation. Kids know who they are. We're supposed to guide them. Not oppress them.

(a) There is no independent verification of those claims against Keffals

(b) It’s irrelevant — this is about kiwifarms behavior, not Keffals

> There is no independent verification of those claims against Keffals

What would independent verification look like? I browsed the archived thread and it seems like the vast majority of claims have accompanying Twitter and archive links.

> (a) There is no independent verification of those claims against Keffals

There absolutely is. The DIY HRT Directory website is live right now, as are Keffals' tweets and Twitch clips promoting it. The sexual tweets directed at minors are archived on archive.ph, as are Keffals' doxing of the KF owner's mom and Keffal's calls for SWAting and doxing. The "Catboy Ranch" screenshots and Kiwi Farms investigation prompted Keffals to wipe the server. It's impossible to save Discord content on third-party archival services, but tweets between Discord users from that period buttress the allegations.

Wait, the owner of the site explicitly doesn’t cooperate with law enforcement though?? I first heard of them because of the owner of the site insisted on hosting a video of a hate-based mass shooting against law enforcement requests.

I really doubt your claims here; you lie in your first paragraph.

with US law enforcement, for actual criminal activity. null told the new zealand police to get lost when they ordered him to take down the video of the mosque shooting; rightly so.

He seems to explicitly cooperate with US law enforcement[0], what you're referring to is the new zealand government trying to get them not only to take down the chirstchurch shooting video but also give them the IP of everyone that posted it so they can prosecute them. The only jurisdiction that matters to him is the US, so i'd assume that's where the servers and the company is located.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220707041302/https://kiwifarms...

another one, seems like there was a git with some transparency stuff, its down unfortunately :https://web.archive.org/web/20220801104812/https://kiwifarms...

update to those reading later, the links don't work for the twitter people decided to take down the archives from the wayback machine...

the same links from archive.md: https://archive.md/c8hXj https://archive.md/cgWAJ

He cooperates with the law in the country he resides and the site is hosted in. He told NZ to fuck off 'cause they had no say in whether or not he was allowed to host the video.

> I don't know the entire history here, but my understanding is that KF was a forum where doxing and swatting was openly pervasive.

That's the issue. You are getting your understanding for the situation from one side as the other is being actively censored.

> There was no government involved, so it's not a "free speech" issue.

(US) government or laws have nothing to do with free speech.

> don't support bad behavior and certainly not dangerous

"bad" and "dangerous" are broad and extremely, extremely subjective terms.

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