Comment by altcognito
4 years ago
> The claim that there has been some “dangerous escalation” in the past 2 weeks is nonsense.
I don’t believe you have the same information as cloudflare and assuming good faith I believe them when they say there are legitimate threats to body and person.
They have a responsibility to their investors to insure that their brand isn’t used to coordinate violence.
Dont just shrug your shoulders while a small group invites violence because “that’s just too bad” We all have a responsibility to discern what is valuable speech and what is corrosive. Mentally ill people exist, and they are more than happy to use these forums, and they are often used in these forums as tools.
> I don’t believe you have the same information as cloudflare and assuming good faith I believe them when they say there are legitimate threats to body and person.
I don't believe that Cloudflare gathered the same volume of info that many others have about KF. OP's point is that behavior as bad or worse than what's been going on (yes, including super detailed doxxing, swatting, death threats, and the like) have all been going on for YEARS on KF, and Cloudflare paid no mind until a larger campaign got going.
Full disclosure: I'm actually disappointed that they made the decision to cut them off. Not because I'm pro-KF at ALL, it is absolutely abhorrent. But I do tend to peruse extremist circles on both sides to understand the radicalism a little better, and generally think that keeping these folks relegated to unseen areas is net-negative.
But to the original point, I think it's disingenuous to suggest that this decision wasn't primarily catalyzed by the PR calculus of more people being in the "shut it down" camp than the "leave it up" camp (which makes sense to me, as soon as the spotlight is cast, most people are going to say it's disgusting and should be taken down).
>Cloudflare paid no mind until a larger campaign got going.
You seem to think that is a criticism but it’s actually a pretty good description of how things should work: a problem got enough attention to rise to their notice and they dealt with it. I see no fault in cloudflare setting a high bar on this, for generally not paying attention to content unless it’s serious enough to really grab their attention.
The fact that there are other problems of various severity elsewhere doesn’t change that. The fact that not all targets have as large of a public voice to avoid harassment and potential violence is a tragedy, not a mark against cloudflare.
Left some more comments on this down-thread, but I really meant it neutrally. I don't know if I agree with you that it's how things SHOULD work, but it certainly is how they DO work.
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>I think it's disingenuous to suggest that this decision wasn't primarily catalyzed by the PR calculus
You seem be taking a very uncharitable view of CF here. Why isn't "the PR around blocking Kiwifarms made Kiwifarms posters more agitated until they did something that CF couldn't take lying down" an option? That's perfectly consistent with recent events and what CF posted in their blog (and frankly, more likely).
You should, as a general rule, never take a charitable view of the actions of businesses. If you start with the most machiavellian interpretation possible you will be more right than wrong. Not that you will be always right, but absent special information it is the presumptive default.
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I totally understand that reading, and I completely agree with you that it's consistent with their business goals and operating principles. I was just calling it out to the (admittedly minority) of folks in these comments that seem to view them as some sort of moral savior who's making these calls for the good of society.
CF no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=32705613
> But I do tend to peruse extremist circles on both sides to understand the radicalism a little better, and generally think that keeping these folks relegated to unseen areas is net-negative.
Why net-negative? If it is accessible online (and it must be, otherwise how do they communicate?) then one can still peruse, have a pulse on it.
> one can still peruse, have a pulse on it
Not without an invite to the private Discord / Google doc / telegram group / whatever.
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> I do tend to peruse extremist circles on both sides to understand the radicalism a little better,
Genuinely curious about what "extremist circles" you're perusing on the left that seem to fit into this category? Most of the big protest leaders in the various groups have always been and remain on twitter. Your text clearly implies there's some kind of secret conclave that the rest of us are missing, which is... not at all my experience.
What sites/communities/whatever are you talking about here?
I'll quote myself from this comment where I explain a little more about my social media habits in that space. I think you're right that a ton of them are on Twitter, I'd add Reddit, and also say I've never dared try and dip into the shitstorm of private Discord channels: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32156760
> ...far left filter bubbles--with calls for violence, personal attacks, doxxing, and all the rest of it--absolutely exist on Twitter and Reddit (among other places, I'm sure). In particular, just pop over to subs like /r/GenZedong, /r/COMPLETEANARCHY, /r/Anarchism, /r/AnarchismZ, /r/196, /r/2624, /r/JusticeReturned, or many many others.
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Leftypol anyone?
>I don’t believe you have the same information as cloudflare and assuming good faith I believe them when they say there are legitimate threats to body and person.
There are "legitimate threats to body and person." on every chat platform everyday. Yet they are still operating.
Could this offending content not be reported to moderators and admins?
Edit: Just flag and downvote me with no reply, good discussion. This site is turning into facebook/reddit.
I have the same information, unless CF pays someone to lurk the Farms more than I do. Unlikely. This is a pretext plain and simple. Prince is full of it. There was one fedpost and it was taken down. It happens. There's no machine learning algo scanning new comments to see if they sound like plausible threats.
Having never read Kiwifarms I don't know whether the threats are real or not.
But it's not like the person/s they are targeting, or their plans are secret
CF is making a specific claim that law enforcement is too slow against the escalting risk.
Why would this be true?
Kiwifarms seems like a big problem but it's a small fish in the total criminal pool.
It's not like a Kiwifarms post goes up and a bomb goes off 5 minutes later. If the police can send a swat team anywhere in the US within 2 hours for a hoax, I'm certain the same resource exists for actual threats.
We can't know, because Cloudflare provided no evidence (e.g. redacted examples) to justify their decision.
Then they should provide at least some basic details. Trusting them to be honest is silly. This sort of thing needs transparency.
> I don’t believe you have the same information as cloudflare
Yes he does - the activity of KF posters is public.
The amount of bullshitting going on here is insane. People are just making things up wholesale.
Cloudflare has probably more than one person now involved in monitoring with realtime tools what is being done on their network.
This doesn't take a lot of intuition to think that they have a better idea than a random person on the internet.
CF provided domain DDOS protection, not serving, for KF. So content/hosting isn't part of service CF were providing.
The posts are public on a public forum. You dont need an account. Like Twitter! :)
>realtime tools what is being done on their network.
That inspects every post? That sees some hidden forums for ultra doxxing and crime?
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When the topic under discussion are the contents of a publicly available website, unless you think that Cloudflare has some kind of tooling scanning for specific terms on the CDN origin (why?), no, I am pretty confident in saying they do not have any additional information. This is not some arcane matter of network management, this is the public contents of a public website that anyone can verify.
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> We all have a responsibility to discern what is valuable speech and what is corrosive.
That's not the internet I signed up for, and I don't agree with or support it. Very sad state of affairs.
>Mentally ill people exist, and they are more than happy to use these forums, and they are often used in these forums as tools.
I can say literally the exact same thing about twitter. This is extremely high bar you're setting for this one site, that you're not following for literally any other social media.