> play moral police at the moment
Moral fashion police
>That’s what must happen here. The cops and the courts should be working to protect the victims of KF and go after the perpetrators with every legal tool at their disposal. We should be giving them the resources and societal mandate to do so. Solid enforcement of existing laws is something that has been sorely lacking for harassment and abuse online, and it’s one of the reasons people turn to censorship strategies. Finally, we should enact strong data privacy laws that target, among others, the data brokers whose services help enable doxxing.
Eh, maybe, but don't most of these laws mostly fail to work across international borders anyway?
I mean, I haven't seen many cryptolocker authors appearing before US courts. And wikileaks remains online despite the best efforts of US authorities.
Surely anything that could shut down or block kiwifarms could do the same to wikileaks and pirate bay and sci-hub?
Pirate bay and sci-hub get affected by copyright law more than anything else and, to the best of my knowledge, kiwifarms is protected by section 230 in that respect and has always complied with legitimate takedown requests.
Then why do people who issue takedown requests get plastered all over the site and harassed?
I would describe them as operating with a paper thin layer of "plausible" deniability. Officially you aren't allowed to harass or interact with the targets. But posting their home address, stolen passwords, phone numbers, and information about relatives is all allowed. Obviously, if they didn't want their targets harassed, they wouldn't post that. Kiwifarms, now banned, official twitter page said their goal was “exploitation of the mentally handicapped for amusement purposes”. ( Source: https://archive.is/jYp5p ).
But even the rule against interacting with "lolcows" (called "cowtipping") is haphazardly enforced. For example, one user had sex with a "lolcow" and posted photos. The admin explicitly said they would allow the content to remain up: https://archive.is/zYnpK#35%
I could probably post many other examples. Null is entirely willing to host revenge porn on his website. He's also willing to host nudes that he knows were stolen by hackers.
People probably aren't going to want to send takedown requests, when that requires revealing their identity to a site that is known for doxing and harassing people.
And requiring service providers to monitor private communications for organisation of harassment seems Orwellian to me. (Intuition pump: imagine the postal service opening every letter to check to see if someone's organising a letter writing campaign sending abuse to George Washington)
As does prohibiting people saying unpleasant things about semi-public figures in public.
You should read up on what actually happened, one a unbiased source. Which si not Wikipedia.
The sources that are allowed/disallowed and their respective biases (e.g. what they publish or don't say) are a big factor.
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36807942
[2]https://destinygg.substack.com/p/keffals-a-case-study-on-int...
[3]https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-world-should-not-ne...
The first link is from Destiny, a well-known (albeit controversial) online figure. It seems to be a factual timeline of events with citations for every claim made, which is far from an opinion piece.
Completely dismissing the content because you believe it must be biased is somewhat ironic.
Would you at least then concede that the Wikipedia article is also unreliable and biased?
> One is bordering on an attack piece.
Which one? If you're referring to the piece published by Destiny, what constitutes an "attack piece" if all the claims made are rigorously cited? Would being an attack piece invalidate the claims even if they're demonstrably true?
[1]https://destinygg.substack.com/p/keffals-a-case-study-on-int...
Moreover, if it's about the situation mentioned earlier this year on HN, it's problematic because of its complexity and gravity. Even with just facts and only facts, the change of the narrative (ie. the order you present the facts in) is enough for the same reasonable person to come to opposite conclusions. And that's before accounting for rhetorical devices that aim to manipulate the reader while still not crossing the line and sticking to facts - happily employed by both sides of the discussion in staggering quantities. (Then, of course, there's the other 90% of sources full of lies and fabrications, but let's leave those alone on HN at least...)
In short - it's not worth the hassle unless you're invested in the matter enough to care a lot, and once you are, odds are you won't post an unbiased source anyway. You'll need to do your own research, wade through a metric crapton of some of the worst humanity has to offer, and form your own opinion based on that. I don't think there's a shortcut here.
Come on, that is the literal fucking purpose of infrastructure. Water/sewage doesn't get to refuse to flush my toilet because the content of my stool doesn't meet their nutritional expectations.
> I'd never believed that sending someone a pizza would qualify as an act of violence
It doesn't unless you interpret every instance of adversity as an attempt on your life.
Nobody trying to kill anybody sends a pizza, unless the intent is to induce poisoning or choking.
> [Wikipedia] Users also leaked sexually explicit photos of her
"Leaked" sounds so much worse than the truth of the photos being found on a 2257-compliant commercial porn site, which Keffals willingly worked as a onetime model for under a 4-letter pseudonym. To say they were "leaked" is being intentionally dishonest. They were available for sale, by the studio that took them. Users shared the preview images that were publicly posted, because nobody involved felt they were worth paying for.
Don't take my word for it; anyone can see for themselves-- they're helpfully posted in her KF thread, if the site is even up anymore.
Just on this specific point: this is not a particularly weird scenario at all. There are very strong rules about what you can and cannot send in the mail, and these rules are enforced. The most obvious example is the Comstock laws, which regulate "obscene and immoral materials" sent through the mail (including things like information about birth control). They're from the 1800s, but several are still on the books. It's not a strange concept at all in American law to regulate what can and cannot be sent through the mail.
I imagine the moderators giving the same "No, please, don't do this" with the exact same level of authority as Willy Wonka telling people "no don't":
It's a bullshit, paper-thin "policy" that exists only for KF to cover their own asses.
Let's make one thing clear, the only purpose for publishing someone's home address, place of employment, phone number, etc. (aka, "doxxing") is to condone harassment of that individual. Any claims otherwise are completely bad faith and bullshit. Nobody believes you. Stop claiming "Oh, but this information is publicly available!"
If KF truly discouraged harassment, they'd do what every other sane site does and immediately delete the post and ban the user that posted it.
Chris Chan has been a notorious and divisive figure online long before the existence of the Kiwi Farms. They are arguably one of the most well-known Internet personalities.
Merely referring to them as "a trans woman" throws away a massive amount of context why Kiwi Farms (and many other sites) seems so obsessed.
Also, what does labeling the person as trans (or anything else) have to do with harassment?
These threads exist. They're easy to find. I've seen them before and they're absolutely abhorrent.
Another commenter said they checked themselves
> Edit: I have now accessed the site and confirm a culture of doxxing, with 3 of the 10 opening posts proudly having "doxx" sections.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37327204
> Edit: I went through the hassle of figuring out how to get on that website. I can confirm 2 or the five pages I checked had doxx info on them and agree that kiwifarms does not seem to have a policy against doxxing and in fact has a culture that promotes it. This is bad.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37327642
Anyone who claims that KiwiFarms is not a site for harassing and doxxing people has done zero research and is trusting some lying "news" source that tells them something else. I really wish I could understand the mentality of thinking otherwise. Are you really so hung up on "thinking for yourself" that you automatically assume anything said by the mainstream media is a lie? Skepticism is great and I highly encourage it, but automatic knee-jerk rejection is not skepticism, it's basically setting you up for falling for reverse psychology. Just because the mainstream media says one thing while fringe reporters say something else does not automatically mean the mainstream is lying.
Two notes:
1. Kiwifarms, by volume, based on the sampling of posts I've read today, is first and foremost a site for talking about, insulting and mocking people. The harassing and doxxing do not seem to have focus and it would require a relatively minor change (banning and removing doxxing) in order for it to claim innocence of harassment and doxxing.
2. "Does more than zero research" is a very high bar that few meet. The number of people I've found on the internet who cite primary sources, government stats/papers and scientific papers is less than 0% to the nearest tenth of a percent. While its true that sometimes research can take half an hour or more, so often it takes five minutes (like checking out stats on the uk gov website regarding criminal convictions of British Pakistanis for having sex with under 16 year olds to settle the myth of Pakistani child rape).
Ideally everyone would do research and cite real sources, in practice less than one in a thousand do.
That' not going to happen with its current owner.
It's been suggested that doxxing be banned before. But the owner of the site, Joshua Moon (aka null) does NOT want to do that: https://kiwifarms.st/threads/why-host-dox.130254/
(I only mention his real name because he's public about his identity, and he's sometimes referred to in the news by either name).
Here is another ocassion, the admin of the site, outright said he was ok with users posting stolen financial information, such as Social Security Numbers and Credit cards. Source: https://archive.is/0fOcS .
There are many examples of private financial information being posted on the site.
That's only your opinion. What OP says about KF is still correct.
No, it really isn't.
> Let's make one thing clear, the only purpose for [doxxing] is to condone harassment of that individual. Any claims otherwise are completely bad faith and bullshit. Nobody believes you. Stop claiming "Oh, but this information is publicly available!"
Yes, I acknowledge it's all public, but that doesn't explain why you would want to aggregate that information and post it in a public forum and make it easier to acquire. What purpose does it achieve?
I do not recall seeing those in the threads I looked at (which all have an opening post collecting information about the individual).
Can you confirm what proportion, if any, of main posts had that info? Can you also confirm that KF does not have a policy of removing that info?
I can't access kiwifarms at the moment to check, but I strongly suspect that information is in obscure posts by individuals and their "community" as a whole does not condone it and it is removed where obvious.
Edit: I have now accessed the site and confirm a culture of doxxing, with 3 of the 10 opening posts proudly having "doxx" sections.
Edit: I went through the hassle of figuring out how to get on that website. I can confirm 2 or the five pages I checked had doxx info on them and agree that kiwifarms does not seem to have a policy against doxxing and in fact has a culture that promotes it. This is bad.
Primary sources analysed either a good methodology are by far the best way to learn about a subject.
> Just because there’s a serious problem doesn’t mean that every response is a good one
Problem: a forum full of misanthropes dedicated to saying the worst things allowed under the first amendment.
Bad solution: erode 1A at the case law level
Bad solution: censor the internet at the backbone level
Freedom isn't free. We're lucky to live in country with robust speech protections. The tradeoff is that there will always be some people who get a kick out of going right to edge of what they can get away. My view is that our civil liberties are worth it.
Apart from the obvious 1a violation.
You might not like it, but that’s kind of the point, either let the market decide or take the market out of it.
Only, that's not how it works in our (and pretty much any) society. We, as a society, choose what we think is acceptable. And then we make laws to enforce that people behave in a way consistent with that. A company is not free to deny service to someone that is gay, or black, or married; just because that is their chosen business model.
I’m quite discouraged by this thread not being taken down despite the very obvious brigade of alt-right Nazi sympathizers pretending that being gay is the same as yelling for the genocide of gay people.
I don’t think your problem is with Democrats, or social media companies, really, it’s with objective reality.
And I didn’t say they were traitors, you did.
Maybe don’t have racist genocidal stances then?
Trump wasn’t banned for being a republican. He was banned, ultimately, for Jan 6.
In reality, Trump broke all those platforms rules on several occasions and was given a free pass till he tried to steal an election. He’s actually the poster boy for the fact that republicans get MORE leeway on social platforms, not less.
Sounds like you want special treatment for Republicans, yet are paranoid that others might do the same thing.
Infrastructure providers should not be able to refuse customers engaging in lawful activity. Your phone company can't shut you off because you say, "I wish $POLITICIAN were dead." You don't have to like or agree with everything everyone says, but it's a very dangerous slippery slope.
Personal liberty should be maximalized so as not to infringe on the rights of others. You do not have the right to live a life without risk of being offended.
Market forces and competition should help keep speech free because if a private company doesn't allow x group to use their platform, it is likely a competitor will spring up to capture the orphaned market. We see this play out in reality.
This doesn't really apply in the same way in social media. Social media platforms organically turn into monopolies.
X and Facebook and Reddit and Hackernews and Whatsapp are all social media, sure, but they are not in direct competition. One does not start or stop using Instagram because they use Reddit. Same with Hackernews and X, etc etc. The product is different.
When you ban an ideology or a group from a piece of social media, they do run to competitors, but "competitors" which can never penetrate the market because they don't have the userbase, which is the main incentive of social media.
So far-right people get banned from Twitter and they run to Gab, but Gab and Twitter aren't really competitors because Twitter can't ever penetrate into Gab's market (they banned that market to begin with) and Gab can't penetrate Twitter's market (because Twitter is the more attractive platform to begin with, having more users)
The better product is better because of its userbase. There is no real competition, and as such, no upholding of freedom of speech due to it.
If the private sector is more susceptible to moral policing than the public sector, then (all things being equal) if public services are transferred to the public sector(ie: smaller government) then the attack area increases.
There are two conditions, and one conclusion. If you don't agree that the premises apply, then the argument doesn't really matter and also doesn't apply.
I 100% disagree with this, the engineering level of silicon valley left the old "libertarian" hacker ethos behind a long time ago, at the engineering layer there is idea about using technology to build a "better society" where "better society" is ensuring people with "wrong opinions" isolated so they can not "harm" others with their "violence" and violence is now words on the internet.
In fact recent activism coming from the engineer levels at Big Tech (google, Amazon, FB, etc) has me believe that that administrative layer is not really in control, and the policy changes are a reflection coming from the activism in the engineering layer
We also see this through out Open Source with the raise of the CoC to implement systemic changes with in open source to ensure only those with "correct opinions" are allowed to contribute moving from just caring about code, to then caring about code and conduct with in a project and project related events, to now even more expansive monitoring of developers entire lives, and activities completely removed and unrelated to any development activities.
For shame. But, things go in cycles. What was once great becomes a ruin, and then rises again. We are now in the heading steadily towards the ruin phase.
Implementation is the guys holding the shovels, not the guys saying where to dig.
And thank fuck for that.
> at the engineering layer there is idea about using technology to build a "better society" where "better society" is ensuring people with "wrong opinions" isolated so they can not "harm" others with their "violence" and violence is now words on the internet.
People are so glib about this and it's such a catastrophic failure to engage in empathy and respect for other human beings that it simply blows my mind that people can say things like this and think they're in the moral correct. "Being bullied to death by the Internet" isn't even that uncommon anymore. Especially for people who will have a hard time finding community in the real spaces in which they live, Internet communities of like-people become a literal lifeline. Entire relationships both communal and intimate are carried out through the lens of online communication. "Words on the internet" indeed.
And if said words can be a lifeline of communication and community to like-minded people and alleviate suffering, you can be damn well assured that works the other way too. Having personally known and helped people through being the subject of online alt-right hate mobs, I assure you, "words on the internet" can absolutely kill people. I have watched in happen in real time and pulled people back from the precipice.
> We also see this through out Open Source with the raise of the CoC to implement systemic changes with in open source to ensure only those with "correct opinions" are allowed to contribute moving from just caring about code, to then caring about code and conduct with in a project and project related events, to now even more expansive monitoring of developers entire lives, and activities completely removed and unrelated to any development activities.
Yeah I don't particularly want to use software, especially pay to use software, made by people who want to exterminate people I call friends and family. If a developer comes out on their social media and broadcasts about how my friends are some combination of insane/dangerous for being who they are, no, I'm not using their product ever again and I will spread word about it to people I know who feel similarly. This is just how social networks (in the sociology sense, not the technological sense) work and always have.
I guess what I'm saying is if you want maximum capture on your product, tell your team to park their opinions on which groups of people deserve to die on personal, anonymous accounts. I don't think this is a massive ask, personally, but I also don't want anyone dead so I can't really comment on it.
Which one is it? Does your speech have a real world impact? If yes, then you have to acknowledge that it can cause real damage and that private companies have no obligation to accommodate that. If its just meaningless words, then why does it matter that companies ban anyone for any speech?
This is the oddly standard wording used in defense of these newly-fashionable 'everything you've ever done ever can be used against you' contributor codes of conduct and I have to find it very disingenuous.
By and large nobody wants to exterminate anybody. People have legitimate differences of opinion and when they attempt to express them they're being told that even _thinking_ that opinion is tantamount to violence.
If you can't see it as anything other than a transparent attempt to restrict discourse I don't know what to tell you. It isn't like this is the first time this strategy has been used.
Please provide me an example of a code of conduct you find objectionable on these grounds. I have yet to see one that fits the language used both in this and the parent comment I originally replied to of being "orwellian."
Is that hyperbole or do you really believe it?
The concepts of pluralism, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence with people whom we disagree is replaced with forced acceptance, mono-culturalism, speech controls and a rank intolerance of opposing views often supplanted with a rather obtuse perversion of the "paradox of tolerance" where by intolerant people of both political sides justify their actions actions as morally and ethically correct, as being on the "correct side of history" or other such platitudes
Ergo: if you treat everyone around you with the respect and recognition of their personhood, you in turn are 100% entitled to that same respect and recognition. If however you make statements or act in such a way as to diminish the personhood of others, you are no longer entitled to that respect.
I think it's a nice little system and resolves the paradox quite nicely. To promote a tolerant society means being intolerant of intolerance.
The right is most seen on this in the modern era Womens Rights, Schools, Gay Marriage, etc
The left is most seen on this with Speech Codes around "Hate Speech" and Pronouns, in Employment Regulations, in Equity Regulation (enforced by law not market) ,etc
You seem to believe that because 2 cultures exist it is "multicultural" but that is not the reality, "multicultural" would be accepting the other culture as equally as valid as your own, tolerating their existence in a legal and market framework (i.e willing to do business with them, and not use government power to make their culture illegal)
What we have today is 2 cultures attempt each attempting to banish the other both using markets, and using governments.
It isn't an "appeal to emotion," it is emotion. Emotion is not this ephemeral second-class citizen in your mind. It's you. It's the part of you that cares about things. A response being largely emotional does not make it inherently less valid, and not everyone is required to discard half of the human experience in order to be taken seriously.
> How many people have had their characters assassinated, ostracized and fired, sometimes commiting suicide as a result, just because they said the wrong thing now or in the past according to the current moral fashion police.
I would say far too many, but also I would caveat that by pointing to the other pile of corpses from people who did the same thing for just being themselves in the wrong place. Or worse still, had the violence inflicted upon them by another's hand.
So clearly, at the very least, we can agree that it's not just "words on the internet?" They clearly have dire consequences for all parties involved.
> How many are self censoring and falsifying preferences to appease the authoritarians.
"Everyone agrees with me but they're too afraid to say it" is a convenient excuse to hold reprehensible beliefs that you don't want to take responsibility for. If everyone is afraid to say something, maybe that's because it's disgusting? And given what people are happily not only saying, but being paid to say, (usually while whining about how censored they are but I digress) I'm frankly incredibly skeptical of this position.
> They say it's about kindness and respect, inbetween destroying the next individual's life. Authoritarian bullies cloaking themselves in a veneer of kindness is not new.
Again though, while there I am certain are some examples of people being bullied to that point, I have a hard time seeing it. I personally have carried friends through that mess and to that, I can testify first party. However on the opposite side, all I really see is people complaining about how censored they are, on public platforms, to a wide audience, and usually in some way monetizing it: book sales, shows, public speaking engagements, all the while moaning about how they can't speak their minds... while speaking their minds. Repeatedly. For profit.
------------------ I'm rewriting this because the comment above changed substantially since it was originally posted. Below is the original thing I wrote which I'm leaving up because I'm proud of it:
This notion that "well what's objectionable is subjective and therefore having any standard is having an agenda" is frankly, bullhockety. Yes, it does vary from person to person. Different people will have different tolerances to different things, and part of community building is all of those people coming together and, through trial and error, through difficult conversations, through awkward moments, etc. slowly constructing a line in the sand where upon one side is beyond tolerance, and the other side is not, and that line in itself being subject to change based upon new cultural events, new people joining the community, other people being removed from the community for infraction, etc. etc.
We have been doing this since roughly the taming of fire. The only thing that's changed is the mode of enforcement. Now instead of chucking people out of our tribes and telling them to piss off, we block them on social media and revoke their access rights. Same exact thing. If you want to participate in a community, that participation has always, always been conditional upon agreeing to a mutually agreed upon set of rules, that yes, change over time and that can mean you by virtue of being an imperfect human can stumble over them without meaning harm. The differentiator from that point is how you handle that situation and if your reflex is to post on your own social media about how everyone involved in the community you have transgressed against is censoring you and you have a right to say XYZ, then that community in all likelihood is going to reject you in a more permanent fashion. If your individual liberty to say XYZ is more important to you than membership in that community, then that's the choice you make. I don't judge you inherently for that. I have joined and left many communities over the years as my and those communities' values shifted around. This is just how social organizations work and have always worked.
And you in turn are free to demand access to whatever space but that entitlement needs to be articulated, and I am inherently suspicious of this almost reflexive "well I guess I just had the WRONG OPINIONS" response, which almost universally is presented without the opinions attached. (Including in this comment.) What were the opinions? Why were they "wrong?"
And I will grant: in the digital age, the enforcement of being rejected is much easier with a much lower emotional energy gate than it was previously. Now you don't need to confront people, to have conversations, if you don't want to and that makes a certain kind of person perhaps itchier on the trigger finger than is ideal. And that's unfortunate. But on the flip side of that, sometimes the transgression involved is too extreme. Sometimes the transgression makes the people who would confront an individual feel unsafe to do so. Sometimes there is no path to resolution and there's nothing to do but block and move on.
Regardless, it's not an argument. Your emotion has no direct weight on the correctness of an outcome you're arguing for, and trying to appeal to other's emotions in an attempt to sway them is attempting to bypass their critical analysis.
Argue the facts and let emotions happen. They "are you" but should not drive you.
> "Everyone agrees with me but they're too afraid to say it" is a convenient excuse to hold reprehensible beliefs that you don't want to take responsibility for. If everyone is afraid to say something, maybe that's because it's disgusting?
No, likely outcomes and consequences for discussing something are rarely aligned. You're discussing hounding people out of work/home/politics because of your emotional take on what they're saying, without any actual analysis of it or how actionable it is.
In my mind, that's incredibly dangerous (and thus, if I chose to use emotional language - disgusting) but I'm not advocating taking away your right to say it.
> Again though, while there I am certain are some examples of people being bullied to that point, I have a hard time seeing it.
James Damore is a great example. He didn't broadcast his views - he responded privately to questions in a hiring review panel at Google, discussing how the company could improve its hiring of women by understanding the roles it was offering in the light of modern psychological analysis using the "Big Five" traits model.
Specifically, he did not say that women were worse engineers in any way, either holistically or in individual skills, OR less suited to engineering than males. He argued that Google's roles were less suitable for "traditionally female" interests. Again, this was privately, in the context of a panel trying to evaluate why Google wasn't great at hiring women engineers.
His communications were leaked, with the context stripped, in an edited form without any references to gawker-style media who were prompted with the lead 'white guy says - "Don't hire women"' to prompt them into the "right" emotional headspace to write an attack piece.
To tie this back to emotion, obviously someone read his words and let their emotion at those words (I myself don't like psychobabble) override their analysis of what was said. Their emotions are "valid lived experience" but the attacks they called for, and lies used to do so, are not helpful or justified.
Preference falsification from engineers, which was normalized after James Damore had his character publicly assassinated. Throwing rotten tomatoes at him and screaming "shame shame" before chopping off his head was a warning to everyone else to keep quiet or echo the correct opinions.
There's a lot of tribal signaling and "don't hurt me I'm one of you".
Then there's a new brand of engineer, and some old gen converts, who are true believers in the new religion and programming is just a lucrative way to participate in late stage capitalism as a wage slave. Many among them are aggressive bullies and codify their beliefs into CoCs and concern themselves with purity testing.
Not exactly. While there are certainly people who espouse anti-free-speech views in the big tech, I'm pretty sure the companies themselves are pressured/threatened with increased regulatory scrutiny, anti-thrust action and anything else that is at congress/government's disposal. These congress/senate hearings about misinformation are exactly that.
Such a laughable statement given that Silicon Valley was from the beginning a military project, with social control as an explicit aim. Milquetoast lamentations about a lost libertarian dream are no different than old cries about the closing of the Western frontier or Jeffersonian myths about a pastoralist capitalism corrupted by industry.