Could a $400k Australian court ruling silence Kiwi Farms?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
While Kiwifarms is a sight full of degenerates and wicked people - degenerates and wicked people are most often the fringes where free speech should be defended, before laws start punishing those who simply speak out against the government. I'd also say its worth mentioning that the doxxing that began the #dropkiwifarms incident with Clara Sorenti wasn't even published on kiwifarms, it was posted on another site that will remain unmentioned - but it would be too much of an ask for a major newspaper to have its facts right, I suppose.
Horse shit.
In the 60s, black people weren't pushing hate, they weren't coordinating to harass people, they weren't laughing at other's suffering, they WERE sitting silently in diners as white people spit on them and squirted condiments on them and shouted obscenities. They WERE coming together in the streets to shout for equal rights, where they were met with high power fire hoses to shut them up. They WERE trying to go to the exact same school as white people, where literal children had death threats and hate spewed at them by people who should know better.
KiwiFarms isn't some bastion of free speech that exists to empower the little guy. Kiwifarms is explicitly a meeting ground and coordination center for bullies. They are the same people as the ones from the 1960s, trying to shout down ACTUAL valuable fringe speech with literal hate.
These sites are not freedom of speech. They are the heckler's veto
The moment a country like China or Russia goes completely rogue against the consortium then they lose access to the internet.
So yes, build your own everything because technology doesn’t exist in an astral plane and even a whole country can get “cancelled”
Doxxing is a crime in some jurisdictions [1] and at least in the EU in some circumstances a violation of the GDPR so parties involved in it can be fined for that. On top of that come situations that are considered crimes across many jurisdiction (libel/defamation/insults). On top of that comes "swatting", which is a crime in even more jurisdictions [2]. What went on on Kiwifarms is going beyond the reasonable expectations on free speech - they not just enabled people to cross the thresholds of free speech, they facilitated actual legitimate crimes. [ETA:] And if that's not enough, they also kept on hosting actual terrorist manifestos [3]. Good riddance.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing#Legislation
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/cloudflare-kiwi-farms-...
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20190504114633/https://www.nzher...
I'm on the fence about doxxing being illegal, especially as it usually only involves collating already publicly available material. I can certainly see the harm being done by the doxxer, but if all they are doing is revealing or collecting up information I don't know if that should be a crime, but I could be convinced.
Say you're running a flea market and you know the merchants there are offering stolen goods. You'll be dealt with as an accomplice to their crimes. Kiwifarms, 8chan, all the other "free speech"-purporting platforms are just the same in concept.
> I can certainly see the harm being done by the doxxer, but if all they are doing is revealing or collecting up information I don't know if that should be a crime, but I could be convinced.
The reasoning is that, especially if you're revealing information that is not being public (like where someone lives) or is outright wrong, there will be enough miscreants on the Internet that abuse this information to cause serious harms. People already have been killed as a result of swatting [1], businesses like pizza parlors routinely lose absurd amounts of money to "prank" calls (which are a crime, but not investigated by most PDs as the damages are way too small), and the "pizzagate" pizza parlor even got someone nuts enough to shoot the place up [2].
Therefore, doxxing and the upkeep of such material should be made a crime, if only to keep the general public safe from the multiple cases of stochastic terrorism.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_du...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/business/media/comet-ping...
I see no reason why there should be a difference between online and offline facilitation of crimes. This kind of shit has to stop, and if it's easier to nab the site operators than the actual committers of crime, I'm fine with that too.
Kiwifarms does neither, as far as I am aware. The site is largely analogous to multitudes of "snark" forums.
Yea, these are all private companies/actors and it turns out that as you have more and more reprehensible behavior then more and more groups no longer want to do business with you.
As a question for all the free speech absolutists who come out crying whenever some group doing absolutely shit behavior like this gets “silenced” via private groups dropping them as a client, what is your solution to letting them still project their voice on private property without infringing on the property owners rights?
The only solution I can see would be for the government to nationalize these “public squares” so that they are actually public and have the normal free speech protections(per your specific nations view of free speech). The problem there is that the group of free speech absolutists and the group of people who have a stroke at the idea of the government controlling any sort of infrastructure like these seem like a Venn diagram.
I also understand this was a government action in the article but I am replying to a comment referencing private property in terms of “build your own X”
While speech is not violence, political action outside of it to suppress it is necessarily bringing to bear the upstream providers local monopoly on force and ultimately the state's monopoloy violence on speech. It demoralizes violence by using it in tiny increments, and then affects shock when it escalates.
This style of argument needs more of the ridicule it earns. In any conversation, the parties are free to walk away, but when one returns with a bunch of their friends to make sure the conversation doesn't continue, it is no longer a conversation.
Where does the line get drawn on the spectrum of “everyone involved in this pressure campaign is part of a coordinated group” and “everyone involved in this pressure campaign is acting completely independently on their own views”?
Is it the coordination? Does 20% of your customer base dropping you as their vendor all independently because of another client of yours not allow you to drop said client because they all responded similarly? Some other metric?
Wouldn’t that make this ruling completely ok? Kiwifarms was a coordinated group of friends making sure others couldn’t have their own speech
Presumably these people expect the same sort of regulation as utilities: unless you're directly impeding the power company's ability to provide service to others, then they can't just refuse to serve you.
Edit: edit for clarity per the below discussion.
Complaining that your electric utility dropped service to your data center for hosting certain speech is a much different claim than complaining that a hosting provider dropped your website because of certain speech
The parent asked, "what is your solution to letting them still project their voice on private property without infringing on the property owners rights?"
I answered: regulate them like any other utility.
The fact that they are not regulated as utilities is "the problem", assuming you have a problem with the status quo.
I had misinterpreted your original comments phrasing to mean you thought they were already utilities
Please stop being obtuse. You know there is and there are lots of these cryptocurrencies / blockchains that these people turn to due to the problems above.
> You'll see a crackdown on cryptocurrencies soon enough, particularly for energy use.
Ethereum 'cracked down' on its energy usage all the way down to 99.99% [0] when it switched from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
[0] https://consensys.io/blog/ethereum-blockchain-eliminates-99-...
> Ethereum 'cracked down' on its energy usage all the way down to 99.99% [0] when it switched from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
I was referring to China's crackdown on Bitcoin. Proof-of-stake is no longer fully decentralized, and so vulnerable so sufficiently powerful actors.
Strawman much? Did I mention that it will be tolerated indefinitely? In fact, I agree that regulations are coming for crypto since it cannot be completely and totally 100% stopped, like it or not. Both will co-exist.
> I was referring to China's crackdown on Bitcoin.
You didn't mention Bitcoin anywhere in your comment and suggested that a general crackdown on all cryptocurrencies will happen based on their energy usage.
Even so in regards to the Bitcoin, what 'crackdown' exactly? [0] [1] [2]
> Proof-of-stake is no longer fully decentralized, and so vulnerable so sufficiently powerful actors.
Theoretically, but is that why we are still waiting for such powerful actors to fully take over the Ethereum network over its infinitesimal energy usage?
[1] https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2022/bitcoin-mining-new-data-revea...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/18/chinas-underground-bitcoin-m...
Their use case for black markets is just too great, especially after cash disappears and governments are able to track every fiat payment. How else will people pay for their illicit services and products?
If you’re suggestion for a moral quandary is to fight fire with fire then most people are going to choose the side they find more morally “good” and you’re going to find that free speech gets limited more and more as you hold up groups like kiwi farms as someone to protect from non government infrastructure and services.
You’re not solving the fundamental mismatch between letting people/orgs do as they please with their property and simultaneously wanting to let other private actors do as they please on the same property. “Free Speech” as a concept only aligns with “Free Speech” as a right when it comes to interactions between the government and private actors. It doesn’t line up with private-private interactions because you are inherently infringing on others rights when you want to use their property in a way they don’t want it to be used
..But who cancels the, err, cancel-ers?
Jokes aside, I'm always surprised by people who manage to conflate "freedom of speech" rights with the idea all speech should be given every single megaphone that exists for every other type of speech. Yes, the government shouldn't hunt you down for using racial slurs on your homestead far away from society, but society shouldn't have to give people who hurl racial slurs their primetime news slots.
It's usually much easier for normal people to reason about NBC and a racist than the slightly more abstracted and much more online idea of "[private internet infrastructure] should always be made available for every person, because speech!!"
It goes like this: NBC runs a guy hurling racial slurs in their primetime slot. Society is outraged, stops tuning into Seinfeld: 2023, and generally the brand is tarnished. The party which pays NBC, their advertisers, stop wanting to pay for a brand that is associated with a guy hurling racial slurs.
NBC now has to voluntarily choose between advertiser revenue being correctly allocated away from them as a racial slur broadcaster towards their competitors on the principle of "we are not going to be pressured to stop doing business with racial slur guy", or to make more money. As a shareholder of NBC, I'd think it as very silly to choose option 1, and the invisible hand would have guided NBC to voluntarily drop this person simply because "your company generally should not be forced to provide service to people".
Does this make the dissonance between these two concepts that we're all talking about seem a bit clearer?
So to be clear, you think other people will (or perhaps should) interpret NBC broadcasting a random guy who throws racial slurs on their primetime slots as "someone else's media", and think it's silly to be mad at them for broadcasting random racist guy on their primetime slots.
I'm going to the bar later and will pose the same hypothetical to some regulars and randoms in my relatively purple city and state. I will bring up the same hypothetical, and argue your point, and will return their reactions about what if anything should happen about racist guy on NBC. If I'm not beaten up, I'll let you know what their reactions are!
My personal prediction: They will find the take that "individuals in society should both think and act different, but the rules of society ought not force a change in behavior" as ideas that are counter to each other, and the whole argument as similar to the bleating of George Costanza.
I would agree in your scenario it'd be fine to be upset with NBC, but its not analogous with the Kiwifarms scenario, as NBC is directly funding and creating the content - whereas KF is simply a forum powered by users.
It'd be fine to be mad at twitter for changing the notification sound to a custom slur dependent on the race of the user, even if they contracted out the creation of that function to an independent dev. They proposed the change, scoped the change, and paid for it; it is in effect their change, even if it was done through a third party - similarly to how shows on TV are made.
these people have the same right to speech that you do, why do you feel this right should be suppressed for them (but - presumably - not for yourself)?
if their speech is more persuasive then surely that's the marketplace of ideas working as intended, right? why should the government step in and restrict the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of association?
Edit: In fact, there are many things that I think should not be illegal but should be socially shameful for people to do.
Social pressure is shaming people into not doing actions like host the type of content that kiwifarms produces. I can’t come to any interpretation other than you’re just mad that your camp of ideals lost in the public sphere of ideas.
Grappling with others in society does seem like a losing battle for those who support actions that society deems as socially unacceptable
It's a pretty big warning signal about who one chooses to be in bed with. You may think the guy standing next to you is for free speech until you find out that his absolutism is somewhat less than absolute.
Ultimately, I suppose one has the right to lobby other people to shun someone and one has the right to shun someone. Free association is important. But to discover and undiscover that depending on the outcome means it's not a true principle, which is just useful to know about others.
Also w.r.t. to this as a government action, it was acknowledged that the government could not seize servers, seize IP addresses, or similar, as a part of this suit. "You are not being stopped from saying more things, but this thing, you're paying for".
Now, if they refuse to or are unable to pay, and the plaintiff files another action to seize assets or other garnishments, that's a separate matter.
This has been predicted by literally every proponent of free speech since the concept was. No amount of nonsense "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" (it does, by definition) anti-free speech people (fascists for this comment's purposes) will ever change the reality here.
How do you solve the fundamental mismatch of violating the private entities right to their private property and you’re ability to say what you want on their property against their wishes?
If you don’t want the government getting involved then whose right gets to lose here? There is no magical hand wavy answer here where you are infringing on one group or the other because they are fundamentally opppsed
I think this is the best approach i've seen in recent times. Welcome to hear other suggestions, but i think it's obvious that large public backbone services like tier 1 isps or also things like cloudflare should not be policing speech. I would extend that to services on the scale of facebook, twitter, reddit, etc, but probably not individual subreddits.
The only reasoning i see from people disagreeing with this is that they happy with what's getting policed at that moment and would immediately flip their lid if anything they like starts getting censored.
A business dropping a customer because they'll lose more business if they don't isn't fascism, that's capitalism...
> The case claimed that a Brisbane-based company, Flow Chemical, and its sole director, Vincent Zhen, were “instrumental” to its publication and for keeping it accessible, even though they were not the authors of the defamatory Kiwi Farms thread.
> Because the matter was undefended, an interlocutory judgment was made against Flow Chemical and Zhen in July and Fong-Jones was awarded damages of $445,000 plus costs this week.
The defendant didn’t show up to the court so a default judgement happened. No case law was set here. Nothing has changed, at all.
>The courts of Australia have determined that a person I know is personally liable for over $400,000 in defamatory damages to Liz Fong-Jones.
>Vincent is Australian. He owns a company called Flow Chemical Pty Ltd in Australia. The Australian RIR, APNIC, leases him a few IP addresses. Those IPs have been used by my American company 1776 Solutions, LLC to host various web services. Among those services has, at various times, been the Kiwi Farms, a website of Lolcow, LLC in the US. Kiwi Farms hosts comments from users all over the world.
>Victoria courts have determined that both his company and _him as a person_ are liable for close to half a million dollars in damages for statements made by anonymous users on a web forum owned by a company hosted by a company leasing IP space from his company, regardless of their truth or accuracy. This judgement was made in default in his absence because apparently he felt the entire thing was stupid and would be thrown out without him doing anything.
>This loss amounts to nothing for me. I have not been able to reliably use these IP addresses in over a year because Liz Fong-Jones has been harassing any ISP they route through. I also have no stake in Flow Chemical Pty Ltd, so I am not at risk. I can just get new ones at any time in the US.
>However, this is obviously unbelievably f*king ret*rded and evil. I'm not going to let a gross tr**ny fuck over good people. I am looking for references to attorneys in Australia who would be willing to help overturn this absolute travesty. <jcmoon at pm.me>
>The precedent being set in Australian court should terrify anyone living there. You are now personally liable for eating sh*t for anything anyone says, even if it is the truth, if you are within 3 degrees of separation of them.
The only thing it did precedent wise is reinforce the precedent of not no showing to you’re own defense if you don’t want to have a bad time.
The last paragraph he’s made is just fake news. He likely could have had it easily thrown out if there was any attempt to do so. Based on the articles quote about him telling another agency to shove their fines up their ass the gentleman seems like the kind of individual who thinks the law and government power doesn’t apply to him, and is always incensed to find out it actually does
The other uses of “he” were referring to this Vincent fellow who was the defendant of the case and according to the article, under Australian jurisdiction
Maybe Vincent should have thought of the corporate structure for his sole proprietorship more carefully, then. A PLC is not an LLC. And it's not esoteric knowledge that Australian law and courts are happy to pierce corporate veils, especially when they're token/illusory.
The defendant not showing up is peak stupid. Especially if you think it's a non-issue, fucking show up.
Anyway, it will have no impact on KF, just like every other deplatforming attempt just made it more popular.
A crypto donation to one of their wallets is probably one of the most effective ways to fight back against online censorship.