Comment by cauthon
3 years ago
Popular endorsement of harassment to the point of suicide seems like a worse sign, personally.
When it comes to threats to freedom of expression, I'm much more concerned about the religious right's abuse of government authority to censor education, ban books, and suppress the vote, than I am about private institutions taking steps to protect human life.
Private institutions have every right to stand behind whoever they choose. As a user, I have no intention of using Cloudflare because (even as a queer individual) I don't feel safe using a platform that would censor me if enough people were mad enough. I would much rather choose a platform that stands by their TOS as-written, instead of stepping in to arbitrate on a case-by-case basis.
Cloudflare has ever right to open Pandora's Box, but I want nothing to do with it. Much like Namecheap's fumble earlier this year, the way they handled this situation showed their true colors, and made it evident that I don't want to ever do business with them.
"I would much rather choose a platform that stands by their TOS as-written"
Terminating services to Kiwi Farms was completely in line with Cloudflare's TOS as-written.
OK, but there is literally no business in the universe that won't drop you as a customer if you cause them enough trouble.
You'd think that, but historically this has only encouraged niche businesses to crop up catering to that crowd. Look at Epik (or Vultr) for example, businesses that exist solely to counter this kind of threat. Yes, they still reserve the right to remove abusive users, but that's defined by legal statutes and technical limitations rather than 'icky feelings'. Both services have a surprisingly solid track-record servicing the roughest of customers.
Failing all that, KiwiFarms doesn't need a business to stay afloat. The endgame for all of these so-called 'abusive platforms' is retreating to I2P/Tor, or another internet-adjacent network. To stop KiwiFarms from existing, you need to literally silence the people using it, not just shut down their clearnet website. Websites don't harass people, people do.
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A website was bullied off the internet because it showcased the horrible activities of horrible people. I'm far more concerned that a handful of Twitter users can memoryhole an entire community.
You say that as if the people running KF didn’t know what the site was for. And a publicly known reason for that website’s existence is because bullies need a place to coordinate harassment.
Having the power to shut that place and therefore behavior down but choosing not to means they were complicit. Deplatforming works, the influx of new bullies shrinks when you make their place less public.
That was unequivocally not a publicly known reason. There were thousands upon thousands of “lolcows” documented in kiwifarms and the sites culture strongly emphasized not “disturbing the grazing lolcows” or “taking things IRL.” That much was obvious for me as somebody who only visited the site a few times a year out of curiosity.
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The removal in question is an archive. A read-only snapshot cannot be used to coordinate anything. But it can be used to view the documentation they have collected.
Therefore it would seem that this particular removal is motivated by erasing the documentation and performing a cover up.
How many times have people been ridiculed to the point of suicide by their peers on Facebook, Twitter, etc? Should those sites be taken offline too?
If the idea is to take down sites where doxxing and harassment occur, these should be the first targets.
KF has, at most, 3 deaths debatably attributable to them.
A dozen children died because of the Tide Pod challenge-- and that's just one campaign. We could talk about planking falls, cinnamon poisonings and more if you like. That's before we get to the rise in runaways and child exploitation directly attributable to the "legitimate" platforms. Kids are being solicited on Roblox FFS.
How does a community of bullies deliberately targeting (internet celebrities) have a lower kill count and merit higher priority than a handful of individuals conspicuously encouraging ignorant children to engage in lethal acitivities?
This is clearly a crusade.
Sure, words can't hurt you, but coordinated harassment campaigns can, and, for the mentally feeble, like CWC, words can coax you, over enough time, to act in your worst interests.
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