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Comment by AllegedAlec

4 years ago

> But... sorry, that's as far as that kind of thing goes.

Not really. Among others you can find tweets saying shit like "no bad tactics, just bad targets". Keffals also rejoiced in taking away people's sources of income in the past, amongst others that of a streamer named Destiny. I also recall her being giddy about trying to get someone's nursing license removed, but I can't find an archived version of that.

> It's not remotely the same thing as calling in a bomb threat,

One person on a forum did. The post was removed as soon as it was seen by a mod, which was within 30 minutes. It was from an account that never posted otherwise. That's suspect.

> or providing a forum for volunteers to post home addresses,

Sleuthing and finding someone's address isn't in itself illegal.

> or SWATing people, or even doing a pizza flood. It's not, and you know that.

These are, and they explicitly say to not do any of that shit. When people do this or say they'll do it they get banned.

> you all find yourselves in this insane position of having to defend places like KiwiFarms because they're "on your side".

I defend them because while I think they're on or over the borderline of what is morally acceptable, that I find how they use their free speech to be objectionable doesn't mean I think it should be taken away from them. These people find joy, for whatever perverse reason, in finding out details about the weirdest e-celebs and sharing those details. I think it's not a good thing generally, but doing that is very much within the limits of free speech.

I do not agree with them from an ideological perspective, nore do I understand why they like doing what they do. However, I will defend their right to do so, because free speech is free speech, even when I disagree with it.

> You can't just... let them be?

It's very quickly becoming obvious that you haven't looked into the history of these terminally online mad-people. Some keywords would be 'DIY bathtub HRT' and 'Catboy ranch', in this particular case, though on the other hand, for your sanity I would suggest not to.

> One person on a forum did. The post was removed as soon as it was seen by a mod, which was within 30 minutes.

This seems revisionist to me. There was a whole thread dedicated to identifying every Belfast restaurant that serves Poutine because Keffals said something to that effect. People were talking about or implying bomb threats everywhere in that thread. I definitely saw it, but obviously I can't link it because CloudFlare.

It's just not true that KF engaged in serious moderation. If they had, they wouldn't be a community engaged in targetted harrassment, and they are very clearly a community engaged in targetted harrassment.

And to repeat: you seem really engaged in finding a way to make them not, or make their enemies just as bad. When... maybe you could just not defend them? If you want to make a 100% principled argument for Free Speech, go right ahead. But don't nod to the idea of moderation like you are here and then pretend that it works when it doesn't.

  • You know... I was typing up a reply to this, but I don't think we're gonna agree.

    I don't buy the narrative of "they do targetted harrassment as a community" because I haven't seen evidence of it except for the alleged victims saying so. There is no evidence either way, so I am gonna say that Kiwifarms isn't guilty of that. That's not to say I don't think people weren't swatted using info gathered there, but that's not the same thing as harrassment, because there is no proof that members of that community did so by urging of the community.

    • > I haven't seen evidence of it except for the alleged victims saying so

      CloudFlare says so too. Wikipedia has a whole "harassment" section in their page on them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms

      I mean, you're obviously free to believe what you want to, but it's not like there's a general lack of evidence here. You just don't want it to be true, which was sort of my point upthread: KiwiFarms is, in a real sense, "on your side", so you're not willing to condemnn their clearly bad acts. And that's upsetting.

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