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I personally dislike Josh (moreso the ugly parts of the farms, actually), but strongly agree with him on this particular issue. The open Internet is extremely important to civil liberties.

Exactly. People seem so worried about governments controlling public discourse for their own nefarious ends, that they don't even seem to be aware that private individuals are controlling public discourse for their own nefarious ends.

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?

There's also the issue when private companies just do what the government expects of them, or even pressures them to do. There was a brief controversy (canonized by CBS news) when the current administration ordered social media sites like twitter, youtube, and and facebook to remove posts that they thought were false or painted them in a bad light. What is the point of placing restrictions on government if they can just have a private company do it?

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.

> 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.

> What is the point of placing restrictions on government if they can just have a private company do it?

"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.

They realize it, they just don't want it to exist, and have a vested interest in muddying the waters of discourse such that most people remain unaware of it, or mistrust it in principle. For a few years they've been actively campaigning to have protections like Section 230 repealed and have all social media platforms (with some arbitrary number of accounts) be taken over and regulated as utilities by the government.

I disagree: I think people genuinely do believe their own opinions, and politicians are also human....thus delusional, and corrupt, necessarily. But they ain't stupid (or at least their PR folks aren't): a well done (mis)representation of reality is well known to be more than adequate to fool most people most of the time, and misrepresenting reality is at the core of "successful" (depending on your perspective, I'm talking electoral and financial success) politics.

It is nearly impossible to make a man understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.

Under conventional approaches, agreed!

When someone says "It's a private company, they can do what they want" in defense of a company doing something, it's probably because in that case they like what the company is doing, and they're probably not being "taken for a ride" by them.

Not your average private individuals either, but incredibly wealthy and well-connected private individuals.

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.

> 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.

Folks in the hacker community have a long history of being too forgiving of what should be hard-avoid character flaws.

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.

> Folks in the hacker community have a long history of being too forgiving of what should be hard-avoid character flaws.

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?

> 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.

A couple podcasts on the person they are referring to:

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/

When you know, you know. :)

Also, I can only rely on memory here, but I believe that Ollam only deleted his tweets with Keffals in the previous few months since Mutahar announced publicly that he was investigating Keffals for a video.

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.

He's somewhat misrepresenting the content of his forums: https://old.reddit.com/r/keffals/comments/1bkp9my/proof_kf_h...

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

I read the farms (mostly CWC's thread, some absolutely phenomenal original research), I'm aware of what generally happens there. The only real rule is that porn can't be posted for its own sake. It exists and has a right to do so.

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.

There are things on the website aren't legal speech or are at least legally questionable. Harassment is illegal for one.

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.

Revenge porn isn't generally illegal to post. Posting pornography as revenge is the illegal bit, generally speaking. 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.

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.

>Revenge porn isn't generally illegal to post. Posting pornography as revenge is the illegal bit, generally speaking.

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%

Subsection 3 in the Nevada law is pretty broad, likely protecting the farms fully.

> 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.

That page I linked lists all of the laws in the usa about revenge porn. Kiwifarms isn't based in nevada as far as I am aware, I believe it's west virginia or florida.

It is West Virginia. West Virginia's statute protects against illicit recordings in places with a reasonable expectation of privacy. It does not penalize someone who runs the platform where it is shared.

>(b) No person may knowingly and intentionally disclose, cause to be disclosed or threaten to disclose, with the intent to harass, intimidate, threaten, humiliate, embarrass, or coerce, an image of another which shows the intimate parts of the depicted person or shows the depicted person engaged in sexually explicit conduct which was captured under circumstances where the person depicted had a reasonable expectation that the image would not be publicly disclosed.

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.

> he won't ban users who commit illegal acts

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.

I don't think he'd qualify for the good faith moderation mentioned in section 230.

He's only won cases against Melinda Scott.

What cases has he lost then? Can you cite specific examples?

He also hasn't lost any cases yet. Other than Melinda Scott, all the other lawsuits against him are ongoing.

These are all from 8-10+ years ago and your first example doesn't say what you think it does. Everyone's said questionable things online. That was a catalyst of the deplatforming campaign if you read TFA.

Plenty of that stuff is more recent.

>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.

> how kiwifarms relates to the open internet that Null allows a lot of questionable things

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.

>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 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.

I remember the FCC well enough to be very, very wary of a government-regulated internet. I'd personally rather see the internet become ungovernable - if everybody ran Freenet, Tor and I2P, there'd be nothing to censor, but too many people prefer the illusion of selective censorability for me to believe that will ever happen. What the government _can_ do without nationalizing the internet infrastructure is provide legal support for entities that want to do so in an open way by indemnifying them from "harm". I'd like to see section 230 not repealed, but made more explicit - "no forum can be held legally liable in any way for any content hosted, only the original poster".

idk, this is all appealing in an abstract way, but I don't think it results in a world most people want to live in.

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.

The issue is, well, let me count the weasel words .. "most would agree", "some subset", "some sort of safe harbor", "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.

Are you saying that because most people don’t agree on exactly what should be done then nothing should be done?

I'm not writing a public policy proposal here. if you want a rough estimate of "most", you can take the percentage of libertarian- and anarchist-aligned people and subtract that from 100%.

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.

>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.

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.

I don't know the veracity of the claim, but Josh basically claims the EFF has been useless on this topic.

> 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!

He did correct the record on Byuu with a featured post on his forum and he talked about it in his podcast.

It was relatively recently, in the last few weeks if I recall.

One of his forum users posted the official death report (from 2021) in April 2024. He came out of nowhere to announce that, yes, he already had that report, he obtained it last year, and words words words about how right he was to not even mention it until his hand was forced.

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.

Why don't you ask him about it instead of assuming an ulterior motive? I believe he did state that he could not verify if the records were real/accurate or not and questioned it himself, and only published it after that other user obtained one of the same documents via FOIA request (maybe this was enough "proof" that Josh's documents were likely genuine). I may not be 100% accurate on that but that's what I recall happening.

Service providers have already been policing websites. It didn't start with kiwifarms.

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.

> Courts and judges seem slow and fuddy-duddy, but they're conducted in public...

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.