CEO of FibreHub complains about being doxxed | Hacker News Reader

CEO of FibreHub complains about being doxxed

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1 pointolliej6 comments

Fiberhub being the site hosting KiwiFarms specifically to support the "free speech" of people who dox, harass, attempt murder, and drive people to suicide in order to suppress their speech.

No, FiberHub is hosting KiwiFarms specifically to make money, and incidentally to provide free speech to people who like discussing certain taboo topics, and even more incidentally allowing some minority of users to dox people.

But doxxing is okay, right? Or is it only okay when it hurts people you don't like?

Oh I agree, doxxing is bad, but the CEO of Fiberhub clearly disagreed so it is reasonable that he experience it.

Or is your suggestion that the victims of kiwifarm's constant push to suppress the speech of others should just accept that they aren't allowed to have free speech and go offline and be quiet?

The TLDR of the below is: Fiberhub has abuse policies, kiwifarms doxxes people routinely as part of their campaign of denying free speech. Fiberhub hosting it means they don't consider doxxing abuse. Hence they should accept doxxing as just being part of being online.

Fiberhub, or anyone else, _cannot_ claim to be pro-free speech while supporting suppression of other speech. If all kiwifarms did was be yet another forum for bigots to be bigoted together, they would not be experiencing this. The reason kiwifarms is having so much difficulty with hosting is because they are specifically dedicated not just to hosting bigoted comments but explicitly the goal of silencing others by any means possible. Kiwifarms is a site that is absolutely opposed to free speech, and actively works to that goal, they are proud of driving people to suicide as a result of their harassment, and consider that an acceptable or even good way to get people to be silent.

Knowing this, fiberhub deliberately chose to support their suppression of free speech so fiberhub is explicitly anti-free speech. We know this, and we know that the CEO who is complaining about doxxing thinks that doxxing is ok, because FiberHub has abuse policies, and those policies have not been applied to to kiwi farms.

I must admit, I've never visited KiwiFarms, so I can't defend the contents of the site even if I wanted to, but I still think it's a weird framing to suggest 'KiwiFarms is against free speech because it supports killing people, and dead people can't speak'. That's like saying that Jack the Ripper is famous for not supporting free speech.

If (as a hypothetical extreme) you believe that KiwiFarms (the community and/or the site) is "specifically dedicated" to killing people (via swatting or suicide), then you should make that case clearly, and explain why the forum rules and moderators made efforts to prevent violence (though I accept they could have done more to prevent it).

A more reasonable claim would be that KiwiFarms was "specifically dedicated" to harassment of certain people, but I still don't think you can say that those people were targeted specifically because of their speech. (The fact that people were targeted for non-speech reasons doesn't make the harassment any more acceptable though, of course).

Even more reasonable would be to say that KiwiFarms (if I'm not mistaken) was "specifically dedicated" to discussing and insulting certain people and communities, whose actions and lifestyles they disapprove of. However, the fact that some members approve of harassing those people could be more a symptom of lax moderation rather than actual malicious intent on behalf of the moderators or community as a whole (not to mention the possibility of false flag accounts).

They collectively decide that some people shouldn't be allowed to talk on the internet, and then harass them through every means possible until they remove all presence from the internet. That is the goal, and they plan their methods and share doxxing information on the forum, which the forum owner actively encourages. They plan doxxing, they work to get them fired, they attempt murder by swatting, and attempt to push people to suicide (something they have succeeded in on multiple occasions). The goal is to stop their victims from exercising their own right to free speech.

If it were not for those actions it would just be seen as yet another forum filled with assholes. But because the forum owner not only condones, but actually encourages those actions then it is morally acceptable as a defense to force it offline. It's a pretty standard moral concept - we allow people to use force, even lethal, when someone has attacked them, here when people are using their right to free speech to actively harm others (again, we're not just talking about people being transphobic on a forum, we're talking about people actively attacking their victims in every way that they can come up with).

So I don't have a problem with kiwifarms being "censored" anymore than I have a problem with people losing their freedom of movement when they go to jail. Similarly I don't have a problem with a CEO that supports this behavior, which includes doxxing, being doxxed.

I recognize that people have a right to say horrible things about others, and being what I would consider to be horrible human beings would not be a justification for censoring them (though I would also protect a private institution's right to not publish such content, the 1st amendment applies to government restriction, such as governments restricting access to accurate medical information or mandating what doctors can tell patients, as Florida is doing).

But again, the free speech argument is unreasonable once the speech turns into targeted harassment and threats (and threatening someone _is_ a crime in the US).

> the free speech argument is unreasonable once the speech turns into targeted harassment and threats

For what it's worth, I agree with that. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

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