The amount of attention KiwiFarms gets is ridiculously outsized for what it is: a fairly small forum with a bunch of mean-spirited people telling mean-spirited "jokes". It's a very odd target for all these free speech issues.
What's your list of things to block that are higher up the list?
- Countries that commit crimes against humanity but those should be fully physically blockaded rather than just blocking their internet.
- ISP's and ISP resellers that aid and abet watering holes, phishing sites, scams, etc... and probably also entire countries that refuse to lift a finger to stop scam call centers should be globally BGP filtered .
The argument in the article is suggesting that blocking something so bad they will not defend it nor do they even want to look like they are defending it should not be done because of the slippery slope, meanwhile you've leapt straight to partitioning the internet cutting off billions of people.
That it is and that is the point / goal. It would be in place about a day if even that long. Their government would go round up all the scam center scammers as they already know who and where they all are and the block would be lifted assuming it even managed to escalate to that point.
FWIW I was just answering the question of who who deserves some attention prior to doing anything with the unhealthy trolls at KF. This is assuming anyone even had the ability to do anything I suggested. I would honestly prefer sites like KF stick around so they can be infiltrated by law enforcement to watch for the planning of bad things and I am making a massive assumption that glowies won't instigate the bad things to justify budgets but that's also a big topic in and of itself.
1) They clearly are able to tolerate being locked out of the internet at least in limited fashion, this is regularly being used to control domestic protests.: https://internetshutdowns.in/
2) If an external party imposes a constraint on a nationalistic government the govt can use this external attack to help bind their country together.
I will also let you know that many neutral countries receive our internet through some of those you imply by your statement. You would cut significant chunks of mostly poor population off the internet. We have some connectivity through other countries, but it will be back to the dial-up days for at least 5-10 years until more fiber is laid out.
I used to think this as well and even offered suggestions on HN for countries that were being blocked. In hindsight I feel that may have been a sub-optimal decision on my part. They need to first communicate with one another in their nation and find a way to rise up above the tyranny. The outside world will do little help with this. Physical blockades will make them desperate and force hard decisions and sacrifice. Every nation has to go through these awful growing pains. But ripping off that bandage is a big topic for another thread I think.
This is misguided, naive, and even arrogant. Instead of playing the group identity game and anthropomorphizing lawnmowers, imagining what someone must do, you need to understand how totalitarian systems work, there's no "government" and "people" as separate entities to clash, and no "dictators" either. There is simply no "they" to communicate to one another, and there's no communication/organization possible, as the system removes any means for doing that. Paradoxically, any totalitarian system is decentralized and stuck in the local optimum.
Totalitarian systems are perfectly in balance while being isolated, and in fact always move towards self-isolation - take imperial Japan, USSR, or any other similar society. When your goals are the same as those systems', you should take a long look at what you're doing. It's often said that "Jeans brought USSR down", meaning the cultural influence of outside world. Discarding that is just stupid, it's the most fundamental leverage you have at your disposal.
You could make a credible argument that the US is on that list too.
That is true, but that is only part of the story. If that was all, the website would not be so notorious.
Kiwifarms, now banned, official twitter page said their goal was “exploitation of the mentally handicapped for amusement purposes”. ( Source: https://archive.is/jYp5p ).
I think Kiwifarms is (borderline) criminal. Null, 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.
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.
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.
The site is probably one of the only sources of actual gang stalking on the planet, and when it isn't stalking and harassing people on an industrial scale, it also moonlights as a suicide factory. The psychopaths that run and participate on the site are proud of their body count.