Online censorship's institutional power
madattheinternet.substack.com
madattheinternet.substack.com
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police...
Courts and judges seem slow and fuddy-duddy, but they're conducted in public, and you have legal avenues of appeal. Unregulated private businesses can do whatever the fuck they like, and that includes just fucking with you because of personal vendettas. Private businesses that fuck with arbitrary people aren't worthy of being a nation's internet backbone. That behaviour needs reigned in, and common carrier status needs to apply.
That said, Josh is a piece of shit. He's been trying to maintain the PR line that his forum didn't kill Byuu; they didn't, but they double down and claim Byuu isn't even dead. He's had evidence for over a year that Byuu died exactly as claimed, and he didn't bother publishing it and correcting the public record because it made his site look bad. He's normally so eager to publish the truth of awful internet behaviour, but he's silent on his own site's dirty deeds. What else is he hiding?
And if well-connected geeks can massage their online profiles, call in favours from unelected moderators, hide pertinent facts about themselves... what's to stop all manner of awful behaviour from being covered up? What's to stop petty business owners from destroying their rivals?
I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want." I don't know why the average person is so enthusiastic about the idea of getting taken for a ride by huge corporations.
It's especially humorous when you see those same people claiming that talking out the other side of their mouth about the danger of fascists.
"Perception is reality".
- Lee Atwater (GOP Consultant)
> I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want."
A lot of people (many of them smart) don't realize that there is a distinction between the first amendment and the general principle of free speech, which precedes the first amendment.
Keffals, mentioned in the article, is close associates with and supported by Deviant Ollam and his wife Tarah, who was a senior director at Splunk and Symantec and is a fellow at Council on Foreign Relations.
As someone familiar with all three, this is extremely disappointing to hear about.
I have a lot of respect for Deviant, I can only hope he isn't very close to Keffals, or at the least isn't aware of the sheer number of scummy things they have done.
That's a big part of why these reputation-erasing, behind-closed-door censorship networks exist to begin with.
One of infosec's biggest twitter cancel-brigade queens was also the most prolific troll in GNAA and had a long, public history of grooming underage males but everyone looks the other way and celebrates her accomplishments. She literally got a job on Biden's campaign and yet barely anyone talks about it.
Maybe, and while most are definitely quite progressive, I would hope most of them (including Deviant) do what they truly believe is the right thing. He has since deleted all his posts relating him to Keffals, so it's possible he just didn't realize how deep the rabbit hole went and has since chosen to cut off ties.
> She literally got a job on Biden's campaign and yet barely anyone talks about it.
Do you have a source for this?
I'm not talking about Keffals here. What I am talking about was reported in a newspaper but is common knowledge to longtime NYC2600 folks.
https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-164-the-torture...
https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-165-the-torture...
Oh, and the real Torswats allegedly turned out to be a California teenager: https://www.wired.com/story/torswats-swatting-arrest/
Not in the wake of other less visible creators voicing literally the exact same concerns. Not the doxxing campaigns, not the Catboy Ranch stuff and not the DIY hormone website stuff.
I get it. He's a very busy guy...but if you're going to engage in activism you need to be extra guarded about who your associations are with.
Keep that in mind when discussing how kiwifarms relates to the open internet that Null allows a lot of questionable things. A few examples:
He's fine with stolen credit card and social security numbers being posted to the forum: https://archive.fo/rOKai
He's admitted that the rules against harassment are only enforced if it embarrasses him: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/GXIFB
He's openly asked his users to harass people: https://archive.fo/WMrvv
He's admitted that he created secret forums where users could plan harassment campaigns, while he turned a blind eye to it: https://archive.fo/rOKai
The farms exists to shame degeneracy. It started as CWC farms to track the behavior of Chris-chan, of course it's going to be a crazy place. This does not mean they don't deserve access to the backbone of the Internet. You're making moral judgements about who gets to practice legal speech.
The owner is fine with revenge porn being posted, and this has gotten him blocked by some hosts. He's also said he won't ban users who commit illegal acts.
I'm anti-harassment and not in favor of revenge porn. Not really relevant to this discussion, where my position is simply that the law is the law, the government's job is to enforce the law, and companies should be out to make money, not make pretend laws and enforce them via silent agreements.
IIRC, there are laws against sharing revenge porn in 48 states. They don't require you to be the person it was originally shared to: https://cybercivilrights.org/nonconsensual-distribution-of-i...
>Also, harassment is illegal in some cases, but talking on a public forum generally doesn't qualify. If the parties talked about it publicly and then committed it, that's their problem.
If the example of Null asking his users to harass someone doesn't count, then at what point can something be considered organized harassment?
Another example is the user "Not Based and Redpilled" hacking the game developer of Yandere Simulator. Other users were egging him on and giving suggestions on how to misuse the hacked account. Null was aware of it and described it as a violation of federal law, but didn't punish the hacker. In fact the only user who was punished was someone who criticized the hack: https://archive.is/dr0MR#10%
> If the example of Null asking his users to harass someone doesn't count, then at what point can something be considered organized harassment?
If he asked them to, and those specific users committed illegal harassment in the manner he requested, that would be organized harassment.
From "W. Va. Code §61-8-28a: Nonconsensual disclosure of private intimate images; definitions; and penalties."
There is nothing in the law that says it only bans illicit recordings (like creepshot videos). If you share a video that someone took of themself, you can be be prosecuted under it.
But yes, there is this clause in the law:
>(e) Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose liability on the provider of an interactive computer service as defined by 47 U.S.C. §230(f)(2), an information service as defined by 47 U.S.C. §153(24), or telecommunications service as defined by 47 U.S.C. §153(53), for content provided by another person.
I think this is more of a legal issue regarding selective enforcement and Section 230. He has a good lawyer and always wins his cases, maybe don't be so quick to claim he is being wreckless or breaking laws.
He's only won cases against Melinda Scott.
>He's fine with stolen credit card and social security numbers being posted to the forum: https://archive.fo/rOKai
That is from last year. But I accidentally posted the wrong archive link in that example. Here is the correct one: https://archive.is/0fOcS
This is from late last year: https://archive.is/pha8Q#75% He admits he won't ban users who break the law.
In other words, an open internet. Doxxing is not illegal if your intent is not considered harassment or threatening (if it's just for "public shame" or ridicule, that's allowed). If the website or Josh's conduct WAS so illegal, it would have been dealt with already. You're whining at the wrong person, or perhaps, pissing into the wrong wind.
He continues to be sued every couple of months at least, by lots of angry people who were upset at things that were posted, whether by him or others, and he has won against them every single time. I think Melinda alone has sued him like six times, and always lost.
Also your archive links are crimeflared and the opposite of open.
He also allows revenge porn (wich is illegal to distribute in most of the usa), as I have mentioned elsewhere. He's also refused to ban hackers before, and instead chose to punish someone criticizing them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40396348
>He continues to be sued every couple of months at least, by lots of angry people who were upset at things that were posted, whether by him or others, and he has won against them every single time. I think Melinda alone has sued him like six times, and always lost.
He's only been sued by 3 people in total. 2 of them have ongoing lawsuits against him. All of them are pro-se litigants and are not the sharpest tools in the shed. Melinda is the only person he's won against so far. He didn't win because of the merits of his case, he won because the other side wasn't capable of arguing theirs.
> At the time the Kiwi Farms deplatforming was starting to show cracks in the Internet backbones, the EFF even launched a petititon website called “Protect the Stack”, dedicated to trying to preserve the neutrality of the Internet. They have never contacted the Kiwi Farms directly to learn about where the stack is in danger, and as a result they have accomplished nothing! Despite the size, prestige, and financial support of the EFF, Protect the Stack has accomplished nothing!
we all draw the line in different places, but I think most would agree that some subset of user-submitted content is purely abusive. if the only recourse available to the victim requires identifying every individual poster, it's effectively impossible to stop.
imo some sort of safe harbor mechanism is a reasonable compromise. we can't expect the host to prevent every single instance of abusive content, but we should require them to make some kind of reasonable effort.
You just hand wave all the difficult things away with the weasel words, but the majority of the population, in reality, in no way agree on the actual definition of any of the things you're referring to. Not what constitutes abusive content, nor what should be done with it, or whether anything even should be done with it.
yes, I'm being intentionally vague about "abusive content", because that's not really what I want to debate here. revenge porn might be a good example though. what fraction of people do you think would be okay with having their privately-shared nudes posted over and over with no practical recourse or mechanism for slowing it down? no one I know in real life would accept that.
I'd say Kiwifarms has failed to make that kind of reasonable effort.
There is a good faith moderation clause in part of section 230, but I'm not sure how it has been enforced in the past or if it is similar to what you are thinking of.
It was relatively recently, in the last few weeks if I recall.
No "I'm sorry for leading everyone on this whole time" or "RIP Byuu" because the guy's a sociopath concerned mainly about the reputation of himself and his site. But even raging sociopaths don't deserve null-routing.
How things are supposed to be and how they actually are are not always the same thing. This person is speculating, perhaps without knowing it.
If you go on twitter and look at the profiles of registrars like namecheap, you'll often see them stating they will drop service to websites which are accused of being scams, spam or otherwise malicious.
Edit: And now this post is marked as a "dupe", even though it doesn't appear to have been posted on Hacker News before. Weird.
Given the topic and the people part of it, I don't think anything constructive will come from it.
We redact PII on HN pretty regularly. The basic principles are that we don't want anyone to get in trouble from anything they posted on HN, and we don't want HN commenters to use other people's personal details as ammunition.
Wrote to hn@... but haven't got a reply (it was a couple days ago, so I imagine you're all busy).
I propose journalists should do their own research like the old days, and directly talk to the people in question, then form their own conclusions and report that, instead of just regurgitating third-hand blogspam.
If something true and important can't be written on Wikipedia, that is actually a problem. If something false can be written on Wikipedia because a truthy source has said it, that's a huge problem.
Wikipedia should also acknowledge that a source can be trustworthy in some areas and not in others, and that e.g. someone posting evidence of their own statements is more trustworthy than a third party saying what they said.
In short, it's not hard imagining better policies. It's maybe hard to imagine getting them implemented in the most socially gamed institution on the internet.
Here are citations of actual things the site owner has said: https://old.reddit.com/r/keffals/comments/1bkp9my/proof_kf_h...
I mean, there is no evidence of claims against Fong-jones apart from the allegations recorded in the hacker news thread (and the admission of a "consent-accident"), and I've never seen actual evidence of kiwifarms being the actual cause of Buy's death, yet it is repeatedly claimed as such.
Byuu/Near is the one who blames kiwifarms in their suicide note on twitter.
https://twitter.com/near_koukai/status/1408940057235312640
Archived link, since twitter isn't usable without login: https://archive.ph/HmIcA
Here's part of what they said in that thread:
>But Kiwi Farms has made the harassment orders of magnitude worse. It's escalated from attacking me for being autistic, to attacking and doxing my friends, and trying to suicide bait another, just to get a reaction from me. I lost one of my best friends to this. I feel responsible
>[...]
>It's too late for me, but I pray that someone, at some point, will do something about that website. There's too many people suffering, and no one seems to care because we are relative nobodies online, and they know that. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
>[...]
>I would have kept going if Joshua Moon had shown me just the tiniest bit of compassion. But he chose not to. That's not on me, that's on him. That's on every last person who pushed me to this point and didn't let up. I never deserved any of this.
The defamation case mentioned in Australia appears not to have been responded to (see https://austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/vic/VSC/2023...), but the judge in the case was satisfied that she was actually defamed and doxxed on the site, that she had been harassed as a result of that doxxing, and that the plaintiff had been informed in advance and had done nothing.
It seems legitimate that courts in that case should be able to take such things down.
The Kiwi Farms posts that supposedly defamed Fong-Jones were made by American users and the man sued in Australia had absolutely no connection to them other than leasing IPs to Joshua Moon's company. It's absolutely not legitimate. The only reason the man in Australia was sued is because Fong-Jones would not win a lawsuit against Joshua or the users of the site.
Joshua specifically talks about the legitimacy of the lawsuit in the article:
"In affidavits supplied to Australian court, Liz Fong-Jones has promised under penalty of perjury that these IP addresses are critical to the Kiwi Farms’s operations, uptime, and (most importantly) ability to deliver mean posts about him to the world-wide Internet.
We have not used these IP addresses in a year, and only used them publicly for less than a year. How critical these IP addresses are can be easily determined by the fact that the Kiwi Farms remains available to the world-wide Internet, and that we do not use any Flow Chemical IP addresses in doing
In regards to the litigation, your interpretation is wrong. The main reason why the default was granted is that LFJ lied in the affidavits to the court. It was stated under penalty of perjury that the IPs were absolutely necessary for the site to be able to stay up.
The site is still up and you may access it on the normal Internet with a normal browser. No IPs from Flow Chemical are in use. Therefore, LFJ's claims that the IPs were necessary are a lie.
The other claim significant to the litigation is that I am unserviceable. That the need to sue Vincent was that there is no way to sue me. I am currently involved in two, soon three, separate ongoing civil litigations in the United States. My attorney's address can be found by a link present on every single page of the Kiwi Farms. Simply put, LFJ lied that there is no way to service me.
Perhaps, if my website was Australian, it would be within the Court's jurisdiction to object to its contents and order it removed. Fortunately, it is American.
I hope this helps.
If you fix that, then people might take it more seriously. At the moment it looks more like you have an axe to grind.
Well of course they do. The whole point of the argument is that LFJ is so hellbent on trying to take Josh's site down in any and all ways possible, every single day, continually for years, and people are letting them get away with it. They both have axes to grind with each other.
He doesn't allow doxxing out of a commitment to free speech. The forum doesn't actually have that much free speech. If you criticize him you will get banned pretty fast.
There isn't much transparency either. Banned users aren't marked as being banned. And bans are often done without public notification. So unlike most forums, you can't tell if someone has been banned.
> He doesn't allow doxxing
Which is it? Not sure what you are getting at here.
To rephrase that sentence: Free speech isn't the reason he allows doxing on the forum.
An example: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/JcaLQ
I don't think a free speech absolutist would secretly ban people for criticizing him.
>If I ask Google Gemini to describe the Kiwi Farms in a sentence, it tells me “a controversial web forum known for its users' online harassment and stalking campaigns against various individuals and communities”, despite the Kiwi Farms having explicit and enforced rules against contacting people off-site (i.e. harassment).
Could you comment on the contradictory statements you have said elsewhere? Such as the ones where you admit that you turn a blind eye to harassment: https://old.reddit.com/r/keffals/comments/1bkp9my/proof_kf_h...
Why weren't these rules enforced against users such as "Not Based and Redpilled" when he hacked the game developer of Yandere Simulator? You were aware of it and described it as a violation of federal law. In fact, the only user who was punished was someone who criticized the hack: https://archive.is/dr0MR#10%
Aside from what you mentioned in regards to the court case, there's plenty of other issue with kiwifarms as well: https://old.reddit.com/r/keffals/comments/1bkp9my/proof_kf_h...
How have the complaints against him been tortious interference? As far as I am aware, they have been factual.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, he's allowed revenge porn (which is illegal in most of the usa) and hackers on his forum: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40396348
Revenge porn has gotten the forum dropped by some providers. One of the complaints Liz fong jones had about the forum was that her social security number was being shared on there: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/03/kiwifar... I think that has gotten kiwifarms dropped by other providers, since it apparently this came up in her leaked emails complaining about the forum.
Hackernews is totally at sixes and sevens about whom to believe or support.
The users claim they have rules against harassment and that they don't engage in it. But as demonstrated by the links I've posted elsewhere in this thread, that is not entirely true. The owner of the site has admitted to allowing harassment, and has even directed it on some occasions