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Comment by Sohcahtoa82 | Hacker News Reader

> It officially discourages actual harassment of the people it insults.

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":

https://youtu.be/W9ZD3_ppcPE

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.

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> the only purpose for publishing someone's home address, place of employment, phone number, etc.

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.

You aren't looking very hard

Give me some numbers and methodology. You apparently have access to the site, pick the ten top threads about people and tell us how many many post addresses, phone numbers or emails on the first page.

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.

So, you learned what you could have learned from reading the Wikipedia article or any number of other secondary sources (which you were earlier insinuating could not be trusted on these points). I'm glad that you've proved to your own satisfaction that Kiwi Farms is exactly as awful as almost everyone consistently says that it is, but there might be a lesson here about not being irrationally skeptical of 'mainstream' sources.

It is not "exactly as awful", there have been plenty of untruths and misrepresentations stated about it, both in this comment section and elsewhere.

Primary sources analysed either a good methodology are by far the best way to learn about a subject.

You probably need to dig deeper into the kiwifarms website before you conclude things alleged about it are untrue.

Thank you for putting the effort in. I can't in good faith link to these people's dox in a comment here just to prove this to you. I would also get banned off this site for doing so.

You wouldn't have had to, just reported the proportions. That would be sufficient.

For what it's worth, there are many sites that are just about posting people's PII. Sites like doxbin, which seem to be up with impunity. I'm surprised KF got got, while DB sticks around - DB seems overall worse to me considering that it _is_ a site that is expressly created for harassment

Hopefully the cops take down that site

Users of the site have actually been punished for calling out people breaking the "rules".

> It's a bullshit, paper-thin "policy" that exists only for KF to cover their own asses.

That's only your opinion. What OP says about KF is still correct.

https://kiwifarms.st/threads/why-host-dox.130254/

No, it really isn't.

Addresses are public information

And I addressed this in my original comment.

> 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?

Do you have any links to those forum posts?

go on kf and click a few, there's a ton on there. or just look at their _entire forum_ about a trans-woman named christine chandler, in which they document not only her address, but even have photos of her at walmart, game stores, etc

> go on kf and click a few, there's a ton on there. or just look at their _entire forum_ about a trans-woman named christine chandler, in which they document not only her address, but even have photos of her at walmart, game stores, etc

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IPtLvxO8hs

that is such a circular argument. they are a microcelebrity who has spent the majority of their life being intensely tracked and harassed by a small but dedicated community, the majority of which is on kf.

The original name of kiwifarms was "CWCki", and CWC are the initials of their first victim. The entire premise of the site was harassment of a severely autistic person to trigger "funny" reactions. It's beyond gross.

What does the person being famous before the site existing have to do with harassment?

Also, what does labeling the person as trans (or anything else) have to do with harassment?

May I ask what your point or intent of these questions is?

To understand why the poster is asserting irrelevant materials. Is it their confusion or are they being purposefully obtuse. May I ask why you asked me?

Of course not. Linking to them here would probably be considered doxxing by HN's rules and get me banned here.

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.

> 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.

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.

>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.

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.

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