We filed a complaint with the Washington state AG over their actions. HE's response was more or less technically obtuse garbage and, "You're not our direct customer" (paraphrasing, of course).
So what they did, was take it upon themselves to prevent access to an entire /36 subnet of IPv6 that our customer had announced downstream of us. Not once did an abuse report get sent to us, or our upstream from HE. Nor did we receive any credible abuse reports sent to us directly from those upset that the site exists. Meanwhile, this actually has no direct impact on the website in question's existence as their opposition has learned by now, it's never been truly offline. Just temporarily blocked from certain ISPs.
From an ISP point of view, it's worrying that a transit provider like HE can arbitrarily cancel a customer of yours, or a customer of a customer (, etc) over legal, protected speech. So, from a business standpoint, what does HE have to gain? The people complaining about the site aren't their target market, they're mostly Twitch streamers, Twitter personalities and folks who have a following on popular platforms that already exist. They're not the types to be self-hosting a streaming service who'll need rackspace and transit. So, what is there to gain by bending the knee to them? The safest business decision would be to remain neutral, respond to law enforcement requests if presented with one, and otherwise do the job you're paid to do. The worst business decision is moderating the content of downstream customers, which is what we're seeing now.
It was later in July. To be clear, filing a complaint is simply an online form. This does not involve or require lawyers or any expense.
The TLDR version is: We filed it as a violation of HB2282, Washignton State's Net Neutrality / Open Internet laws, the AG thought it was an appropriate complaint and forwarded it to HE. This gives them 21 days to respond. They (HE) responded relatively quickly, basically saying, "Nah, no we didn't and no we don't block access to it". At this point it'd be up to us to fight it further. We're not their direct customer, nor will we ever be (now). With that said, they very much WERE blocking access to the subnet as seen here ( https://images2.imgbox.com/b2/ed/Nc8NLQl2_o.png ) and here ( https://images2.imgbox.com/58/e1/1ZIn3YbZ_o.png ).
If HE is lying in response to a complaint forwarded to them by the AG, that seems like something the AG really should investigate.
Edit: It's odd to see this downvoted. I don't care about Kiwifarms or all the other random crazy crap being discussed in this comment thread. But I do feel that companies should be honest in their communications. I'm surprised people here disagree.
A lot of the "people here" are from Kiwifarms because this thread got linked to from their site. So a lot of untrue claims are being made about the facts of the situation.
> A lot of the "people here" are from Kiwifarms because this thread got linked to from their site. So a lot of untrue claims are being made about the facts of the situation.
I went looking for this out of curiosity. It seems to be a thread from 2022 with only 10 pages, and only about 10 total replies this year. Is this really your basis for claiming that "a lot" of people are coming from Kiwi Farms?
Attacking another user like this will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. You've been breaking the site guidelines so frequently that you're already over the line at which we'd normally ban an account, but I'd prefer to ask you to follow them first.
So not knowing either company, is IncogNet and CrunchBits related companies in some way? I ask because the article just talks about Crunchbits, which I didn't know about. I tried to look looking up CrunchBits, but that's not really possible on Bing based search engines.
There are a few links to reviews, but the Crunchbits website seems to have scrubbed from Bing.
While it's certainly a comical thought to imagine a business opening their doors and waiting years to onboard a single customer, that an upstream swiftly cancels on their behalf, it's nothing more than a far-fetched story that you're telling. Do you genuinely believe that both of these businesses exist to support a single customer?
Abuse complaints have to be valid. Submitting opinion pieces to our inbox is good reading, but beyond that, relatively pointless without links to actual unlawful content. I can't speak on behalf of Crunchbits since we simply lease hardware from them, but they likely subscribe to the same policy that most service providers do.
It would be better to call a lawyer or the police. There's no AUP or TOS for the entire internet (aside from stuff that endangers the network itself), and I'm strongly opposed to any efforts to create one.
To be clear: death threats are not protected free speech.
But yes, it's inevitable due to the global and gargantuan nature of the internet that enforcing consequences against hate speech and harassment for any single govy. is extremely hard, even for countries that unequivocally outlaw it.
> The safest business decision would be to remain neutral, respond to law enforcement requests if presented with one, and otherwise do the job you're paid to do.
Have you considered that it might not be about money? What if the decision-makers and operators of Hurricane Electric just have certain people they just want to censor, and use their position to do it at the expense of money. Money is just a means to the end, and if they're getting to that end by foregoing money in business rather than spending it, that seems logical enough to me.
And if the government is ideologically aligned with the operators of the company, you won't find any protection from them. And in many cases it's just the government and large companies working hand-in-glove to get to their ends. Some political outsiders threatening your political monopoly? Pull some strings and have their social media accounts removed and banking taken away; but there's no recourse since "muh private company" even though they're getting direct orders from government officials.
So a good reason to be on the side of "free political speech" is that we don't want the people with the most money controlling what we can and can't say, and we don't want the government to have free reign to shut down criticism or challenges.
I want to propose a way it can be both money and ideology.
Let’s say you were the governor of a very large state. You have a ton of influence if not sold discredtion on how your state’s $500 billion pension fund is invested. You are an ideologue puppet put in place by people desperately trying to reset the world in their image.
Now… let’s the banks and companies don’t care about your cause - but you have disproportionate sway over them. It can be about money if that is your leverage.
If they choose not to host a platform that they don't like, isn't that free speech? Ironically, appealing to authority to enforce an internet service provider to provide speech they don't want to transmit seems like an imposition on a private entity operating freely.
> Ironically, appealing to authority to enforce an internet service provider to provide speech they don't want to transmit seems like an imposition on a private entity operating freely.
They get to make that choice when I get more than 0-1 alternative choices on which ISP I can use the access the internet in my area.
Until then, saying their actions are "free speech" isn't too different from the days before water and electricity were owned by private corporations. I strongly believe primary ISP tubes should be a public service instead of owned by private corporate interests.
This isn't a consumer ISP like Comcast where there's an effective monopoly over the underlying physical infrastructure. Hurricane Electric is a wholesale IP transit provider. Any datacenter worth its salt is going to have several independent IP transit providers on-site, competing for your business.
Absolutely false. We are in no way a 'bulletproof' hoster. You're free to review our IP subnets in use and compare them to actual bulletproof hosting providers. We actively and swiftly remove users engaging in ILLEGAL activity, such as malware, warez, etc.
We're an American based business, registered in Wyoming, and abide by American law. No 'bulletproof hoster' is going to setup shop in America.
Archiving what other people do and say online on and making fun of them on a forum may be mean, but it's not illegal.
With that said, we host many types of clients, including LGBTQ organizations. Privacy and speech is for everyone, that has always been the stance. Our policy is and will remain to be neutral on content, so long as it abides by law.
You host death threats and leaked PII, and the forum owner explicitly encourages his followers to harass specific people he has a personal grudge against. He names entire sections of his forums after his victims and encourages people to post about his victims. You're lying. He's not running a neutral operation and neither are you.
The forum doxes employees of their hosting providers. Even Russian hosters terminated kiwifarms. Russians don't even terminate malware. You are dishonest to argue that this is about free speech.
Even the EFF acknowledges the activity on your forum is illegal and called on the cops to prosecute. it means the EFF won't protect kiwifarms when the cops come for you and Josh.
Except, we don't host them? Didn't you hear, Hurricane Electric didn't allow us to host Kiwifarms.
I haven't followed up with our customer to see who their new hosting provider is.
If you believe we're hosting something illegal, I do encourage you to message our abuse department so we can review it and take appropriate action if deemed necessary. I understand you feel strongly about the issue but we run an honest business and have no hesitation to boot people from our network doing things that are unlawful.
How come no one ever posts any links to any of this (or at least archives of said links), whenever this site is discussed? Instead we get DailyDot and Vice articles, or a wikipedia entry quoting those articles, and little else. If the site is such a clear and present danger to public safety, why is the proof to that effect never provided?
Kiwifarms, now banned, official twitter page said their goal was “exploitation of the mentally handicapped for amusement purposes”. ( Source: https://archive.is/jYp5p ).
I think Kiwifarms is (borderline) criminal. Null, the admin of the site, outright said he was ok with users posting stolen financial information, such as Social Security Numbers and Credit cards. Source: https://archive.is/0fOcS . There are many examples of private financial information being posted on the site.
I would describe them as operating with a paper thin layer of "plausible" deniability. Officially you aren't allowed to harass or interact with the targets. But posting their home address, stolen passwords, phone numbers, and information about relatives is all allowed.
But even the rule against interacting with "lolcows" (called "cowtipping") is haphazardly enforced. For example, one user had sex with a "lolcow" and posted photos. The admin explicitly said they would allow the content to remain up: https://archive.is/zYnpK#35%
> Kiwifarms, now banned, official twitter page said their goal was “exploitation of the mentally handicapped for amusement purposes”. ( Source: https://archive.is/jYp5p ).
I made the mistake of visiting the (archived) page linked to by the second Tweet from that (archived) feed announcing the conviction of someone of interest to them on several criminal counts, and what I read there was nightmare fuel potent enough that if these are the kind of people the site "stalks," I can't say I'm sympathetic. (Seriously, don't read it.)
They just bring up the unsympathetic ones as a defense for what they are doing.
A lot of their targets are more sympathetic. For instance, the moderators have said they are ok with doxxing children: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/DSt5K
Because it's linking to victims dox which would get your account banned on any reasonable website. The homepage is kiwifarms.st currently, and if you're on the fence I would encourage you to check it out for yourself and ask yourself if this is OK, and if a provider should be forced against their will to support this.
and you're not going to address the fact that you're making false accusations against someone for hosting content that they claim to not host? You're not making the best case for yourself here.
These death threats are not true threats and hosting PII is not illegal. Nor is encouraging "harassment" because what's encouraged is not actual criminal harassment. Every victim of a social media mob claims harassment, including Joshua Moon. When the good guys do it, of course, they just call it "consequences culture".
>Even the EFF acknowledges the activity on your forum is illegal and called on the cops to prosecute.
Which is a cowardly attempt at playing both sides. By juxtaposing "KiwiFarms users do bad things" with "criminals should be punished", the implication is that those bad things are criminal but the EFF maintains plausible deniability, which is wise since to do otherwise would constitute defamation. The important thing is that criminal activity should be determined through judicial proceedings, not armchair lawyering from midwits who likely think that there are laws against hate speech.
Kiwifarms, now banned, official twitter page said their goal was “exploitation of the mentally handicapped for amusement purposes”. ( Source: https://archive.is/jYp5p ).
I think Kiwifarms is (borderline) criminal. Null, the admin of the site, outright said he was ok with users posting stolen financial information, such as Social Security Numbers and Credit cards. Source: https://archive.is/0fOcS . There are many examples of private financial information being posted on the site.
I would describe them as operating with a paper thin layer of "plausible" deniability. Officially you aren't allowed to harass or interact with the targets. But even the rule against interacting with "lolcows" (called "cowtipping") is haphazardly enforced. For example, one user tracked down, and had sex with a "lolcow" and even posted photos of this. The admin explicitly said they would allow the content to remain up: https://archive.is/zYnpK#35%
>exploitation of the mentally handicapped for amusement purposes
Edgy, not criminal.
In the posts you link, you can see Null obviously wants to allow basically anything but is still responsive to legal considerations. Maybe he's right and maybe he's wrong about the law. He responds to legal notices that he considers valid, and this has kept him out of real trouble so far.
I think "borderline criminal" is a fair characterization, but I'd point out that lots of sites are "borderline criminal" in the sense that there are often public statements of "we would like to allow this but legally we cannot." It's not that scandalous.
Harassment campaigns by Kiwi Farms users are known to have contributed to the suicides of at least three individuals.[15] The Kiwi Farms community considers it a goal to drive its targets to suicide, and has celebrated such deaths with a counter on the website.[22]: 55, 61 They have used social media reporting systems to mass-report posts by harassment targets in which they have expressed suicidal thoughts or intentions, with the goal of reducing the possibility their targets receive help.[22]: 91
I went down this rabbit hole before, and that wiki page is such a mess of self-referencing articles and recycling outrage in various forms and using one to build on the other. Whatever the original thing is that Kiwifarms did is long lost in this sea of recycled articles, as they're now forever "the site that helped bully and 'contributed' to some people's suicides".
It's sloppy at best, and a coordinated and vindictive smear campaign at worst. And like seriously people, I'm not defending bad things, but we have to have an honest discussion. This is like the website/org equivalent of a "rape accusation", that's never been formally "proven" in a court, yet will follow them forever.
If you went down a rabbit hole and done research, you should have been able to find evidence of such things. And there is a lot of bad stuff they've done that hasn't gotten mentioned by their Wikipedia article.
Kiwifarms, now banned, official twitter page said their goal was “exploitation of the mentally handicapped for amusement purposes”. ( Source: https://archive.is/jYp5p ).
I think Kiwifarms is (borderline) criminal. Null, the admin of the site, outright said he was ok with users posting stolen financial information, such as Social Security Numbers and Credit cards. Source: https://archive.is/0fOcS . There are many examples of private financial information being posted on the site.
I would describe them as operating with a paper thin layer of "plausible" deniability. Officially you aren't allowed to harass or interact with the targets. But posting their home address, stolen passwords, phone numbers, and private information about relatives is all allowed. (Which would have no use if they were simply a gossip forum).
But even the rule against interacting with "lolcows" (called "cowtipping") is rarely, if ever, enforced. For example, one user had sex with a "lolcow" and posted photos. The admin explicitly said they would allow the content to remain up: https://archive.is/zYnpK#35%
None of the KF "victims" have been confirmed, and even so, it would be hard to legitimately claim that KF caused their deaths. People just hate that site because it's a gossip forum that exposes a lot of scummy behavior
Meanwhile, people have doxed others on Twitter, blown their heads off on Facebook livestreams, and posted manifestos on 4chan before slaughtering bystanders, yet nobody calls for any of those sites to be taken offline
Wikipedia is essentially useless for anything politically related due to how badly biased it became, one its own founders nowadays says this. Their "authoritative sources" policy pretty much assures whatever CNN and New York Times say is the unquestionable truth.
I found it useful context. I would’ve previously perhaps been curious but if these guys are related to those suicide promotion sites, then I’m happy to set the bozo bit and walk away. Those people operate on the edge of legality and I’m not really that interested in examining the sorites paradox in this context.
We are currently considering HE vs some other providers for interregion cloud to cloud and I was concerned for a second. Not so much now.
fallacy of assossiation? It's not even a valid misalignment. "Oh they host servers and are in the same seller's circle as other server sellers". Yeah, we were all on Twitter at one point, guess we are all culpable for the terrorism there?
If you're going to make accusations, at least make them sound, let alone factually correct.
>But, what is clear is right around the time Sprint data center kicked Kiwi Farms off their network (according to Joshua Moon, founder of Kiwi Farms), Lolek Hosted was seized by the FBI
>Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
If you want to argue that internet infrastructure providers should be blocking access to areas of the internet due to bad consequences and "being able to sleep at night", then there many more obvious and larger targets.
The amount of attention KiwiFarms gets is ridiculously outsized for what it is: a fairly small forum with a bunch of mean-spirited people telling mean-spirited "jokes". It's a very odd target for all these free speech issues.
- Corporations that obtain your data and then sell it or abuse it even if said abuse is permitted in some fine print.
- Countries that commit crimes against humanity but those should be fully physically blockaded rather than just blocking their internet.
- ISP's and ISP resellers that aid and abet watering holes, phishing sites, scams, etc... and probably also entire countries that refuse to lift a finger to stop scam call centers should be globally BGP filtered .
Blocking a country due to scam call centers is kind of horrifying collective punishment.
The argument in the article is suggesting that blocking something so bad they will not defend it nor do they even want to look like they are defending it should not be done because of the slippery slope, meanwhile you've leapt straight to partitioning the internet cutting off billions of people.
Blocking a country due to scam call centers is kind of horrifying collective punishment.
That it is and that is the point / goal. It would be in place about a day if even that long. Their government would go round up all the scam center scammers as they already know who and where they all are and the block would be lifted assuming it even managed to escalate to that point.
FWIW I was just answering the question of who who deserves some attention prior to doing anything with the unhealthy trolls at KF. This is assuming anyone even had the ability to do anything I suggested. I would honestly prefer sites like KF stick around so they can be infiltrated by law enforcement to watch for the planning of bad things and I am making a massive assumption that glowies won't instigate the bad things to justify budgets but that's also a big topic in and of itself.
1) They clearly are able to tolerate being locked out of the internet at least in limited fashion, this is regularly being used to control domestic protests.: https://internetshutdowns.in/
2) If an external party imposes a constraint on a nationalistic government the govt can use this external attack to help bind their country together.
I am not aware of the US enslaving and mass executing people of particular ethnic backgrounds. There are certainly some awful people that do awful things but they are not the majority and not backed by the majority of the leadership. The internet will catch up to them. If there is evidence of mass enslavement and executions then absolutely all of those leaders must be brought before the Hague.
Good, let's further isolate the population from independent sources of information and leave them completely in the dark about what's happening both in the outside world, and in their own countries. I often wonder who and for what purpose posts comments such as this one because they play so well towards what these dictators want. Or is it just ignorance coming from those who has never lived in a dictatorship.
I will also let you know that many neutral countries receive our internet through some of those you imply by your statement. You would cut significant chunks of mostly poor population off the internet. We have some connectivity through other countries, but it will be back to the dial-up days for at least 5-10 years until more fiber is laid out.
Good, let's further isolate the population from independent sources of information
I used to think this as well and even offered suggestions on HN for countries that were being blocked. In hindsight I feel that may have been a sub-optimal decision on my part. They need to first communicate with one another in their nation and find a way to rise up above the tyranny. The outside world will do little help with this. Physical blockades will make them desperate and force hard decisions and sacrifice. Every nation has to go through these awful growing pains. But ripping off that bandage is a big topic for another thread I think.
> They need to first communicate with one another in their nation
This is misguided, naive, and even arrogant. Instead of playing the group identity game and anthropomorphizing lawnmowers, imagining what someone must do, you need to understand how totalitarian systems work, there's no "government" and "people" as separate entities to clash, and no "dictators" either. There is simply no "they" to communicate to one another, and there's no communication/organization possible, as the system removes any means for doing that. Paradoxically, any totalitarian system is decentralized and stuck in the local optimum.
Totalitarian systems are perfectly in balance while being isolated, and in fact always move towards self-isolation - take imperial Japan, USSR, or any other similar society. When your goals are the same as those systems', you should take a long look at what you're doing. It's often said that "Jeans brought USSR down", meaning the cultural influence of outside world. Discarding that is just stupid, it's the most fundamental leverage you have at your disposal.
Not exactly. It's fundamental to specific flavor of western democracy that has become common in the world, at least on paper.
But you can have democracy without it. In fact you can have democracy with lot of other characteristics that seem weird today, like randomly chosen representatives, slavery, exile etc. It's largely orthogonal.
Dude, stop repeating this same thing. Everyone disagreeing with anti-kiwi farm stuff is immediately a "common Kiwifarmer tactic" according to you.
I count at least 9 similar comments made by you in this thread alone. I don't even know how someone can spam a thread with 9 comments without being throttled.
@dang - please have a look at this spam? This is an important discussion to be had and having this kind of inflammatory stuff is not productive.
>a fairly small forum with a bunch of mean-spirited people telling mean-spirited "jokes".
That is true, but that is only part of the story. If that was all, the website would not be so notorious.
Kiwifarms, now banned, official twitter page said their goal was “exploitation of the mentally handicapped for amusement purposes”. ( Source: https://archive.is/jYp5p ).
I think Kiwifarms is (borderline) criminal. Null, the admin of the site, outright said he was ok with users posting stolen financial information, such as Social Security Numbers and Credit cards. Source: https://archive.is/0fOcS . There are many examples of private financial information being posted on the site.
I would describe them as operating with a paper thin layer of "plausible" deniability. Officially you aren't allowed to harass or interact with the targets. But posting their home address, stolen passwords, phone numbers, and information about relatives is all allowed. Obviously, if they didn't want their targets harassed, they wouldn't post that.
But even the rule against interacting with "lolcows" (called "cowtipping") is haphazardly enforced. For example, one user had sex with a "lolcow" and posted photos. The admin explicitly said they would allow the content to remain up: https://archive.is/zYnpK#35%
> The amount of attention KiwiFarms gets is ridiculously outsized for what it is: a fairly small forum with a bunch of mean-spirited people telling mean-spirited "jokes"
The site is probably one of the only sources of actual gang stalking on the planet, and when it isn't stalking and harassing people on an industrial scale, it also moonlights as a suicide factory. The psychopaths that run and participate on the site are proud of their body count.
> There are dozens of sites like the Kiwi Farms, many even have "farm" in their name.
I'm aware. The OP is talking about KF.
> There are also completely unaffiliated sites such as Doxbin, which were responsible for a large amount of the harassment and doxing against Keffals. There's a tweet (xeet?) somewhere where she acknowledged that she knew Kiwi Farms wasn't actually responsible, but didn't care.
I have no idea who Keffals is or why you'd think I'd care.
> I have no idea who Keffals is or why you'd think I'd care.
Keffals is one of the people responsible for the chain of events leading to what is happening. If you aren't familiar with the context and don't care to learn about it, what is the purpose of commenting?
You do realize there are other people the site has harassed and killed, right? And afterwards, things just like this took place?
You seem obsessed with this Keffals person, it looks a bit unhealthy to me. Look beyond your obsession at the other people who were affected by these psychopaths.
> You seem obsessed with this Keffals person, it looks a bit unhealthy to me. Look beyond your obsession at the other people who were affected by these psychopaths.
I'm not sure how mentioning a person directly relevant to the linked article in a single comment counts as being "obsessed".
> You do realize there are other people the site has harassed and killed, right? And afterwards, things just like this took place?
Allegedly. I have yet to find a claim that stands up to scrutiny as sites either link to news stories repeating unsubstantiated claims made by someone (alongside factual errors like that the owner of Kiwi Farms lives with his mother, or that he is wanted by law enforcement) or provide no sources whatsoever.
As someone who agrees ISPs shouldn't get to be judge, jury, and executioner on censorship, I find it really odd when people go out of their ways to defend absolute cesspits every time the censorship issue comes up.
Kiwi Farms is an irredeemable cesspit by every measure I can see, and accepting that makes your argument stronger. Trying to act like it's an innocent place, or this place is ok because you're familiar with 100 even worse places just makes you look unreasonable. All it serves to do is muddy the waters between being anti-censorship and being pro-cesspit, and I'm not the former.
It's far from innocent. But they also talk about some things that others aggressively try scrubbing from the internet, which shouldn't be scrubbed from the internet. Cesspits suck, but if a cesspit is the last place you can talk about, say, the criminal indictments of a powerful influencer or moderator, then we have bigger problem than that the place stinks.
But this is a very dangerous argument you're making: "who cares if people are making up complete nonsense about them, they're bad anyway?!" I'm not trying to be uncharitable, but that is more or less the core of your argument.
I don't want to "defend" anyone; I just want to have an accurate understanding of the truth, insofar that's possible. It bothers me so much misinformation is being spread about this and I think this is also harmful overall for many reasons.
This was, IMHO, also the problem with Stallman: yes, Stallman was/is not good and should have stepped down a million years ago (in my opinion, anyway), but no, he's not a transphobic sexist nonce and most of those claims are complete bollocks. But hey, who's going to defend an asshole like Stallman? Especially when a significant section of his more fanatical fanbase is so ... unpleasant (in my experience, anyway)?
It's infinitely more dangerous to reduce the world to the kind of logic that underlies implying "if you feel a way about one case of X you must feel the same way about all cases of X ever in every context".
If someone bad mouths a cesspit by mixing up which stalking cases they're involved with, when said place was literally founded and named around stalking someone... I reserve the right to say that's an acceptable mistake of absolutely no consequence to a conversation about censorship.
I also reserve the right to do say so without unilaterally declaring that it's ok to make up facts about anyone in existence the moment said they're deemed to have done something wrong. That's the kind of nuance in thinking we aim to instill in children from a very young age.
> reduce the world to the kind of logic that underlies implying "if you feel a way about one case of X you must feel the same way about all cases of X ever in every context".
I never said any such thing or made any such argument.
The disagreement is about which events have occurred at all, and it's not about "mixing up" minor details.
I don't care if they got things wrong on which exact people got stalked. You twisted that into:
> But this is a very dangerous argument you're making: "who cares if people are making up complete nonsense about them, they're bad anyway?!"
So either that's the argument that you're making... or you genuinely believe that it's dangerous to say a place is a cesspit "just" because they stalked a lot of people (and drove a brilliant person to suicide, then celebrated)
Also, for posterity:
- If you're not a stalker and someone says you stalked someone: that's making things up.
- If you're named after the first guy you stalked, and you've stalked so often there are academic papers written on it, if people mis-attribute a stalking to you: that's a mix-up.
In their speak, "Is this the hill you want to die on". In other words, if there's something redeemable going on on KF, do you really want to even know? Because then your options are to stick your head out for unsympathetic people, or feeling bad about what's going on.
KF is an irredeemable cesspit but so is Twitter and so is Tumblr, if you know where to look.
There's no difference between what progressives do freely on Twitter/Tumblr and what Farmers do. KF worst actions are only possible because they amplify their harassment of targets by using "woke" optics on twitter to draw corporate backing and media attention against their victims.
The conversation is anti-censorship, and your hill to die on is the place named after the person they were trying to bully is just like the place where if you dig across the 450 million monthly users you'll find bad actors.
At the end of the day you're just elevating a sideshow above the actual anti-censorship argument at the cost of the former, but honestly it's not much sweat of my back. At the end of the day censorship is just the next net neutrality: sideshows based on the most useless cases of its risks burn all the oxygen in the room, no action against it taken, and the world moves on.
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
— Commonly attributed to H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Also the person the quote is attributed had some abhorrent views most people who share them have the good sense to only vaguely alude to through veiled references to Ayn Rand and questionable race science articles. He was not exactly a defender of democracy and equal rights.
"Unlike other sites dedicated to harassing Internet users until they commit suicide, KF is public and has a rule against harassing Internet users until they commit suicide" isn't the defense you think it is.
It's perfectly reasonable to push against censorship, but KF being censored isn't a reason to portray them in any sort of favorable light.
> KF is public and has a rule against harassing Internet users until they commit suicide
You're putting words into my mouth. Kiwi Farms has rules against harassment and bans anyone who does.
There is a long history of communities organized specifically to troll people in real life (Something Awful, Sons of Kojima, The Idea Guys, etc.) Kiwi Farms is explicitly not that. Do people say mean and hateful things on it? Sure. But I've yet to see any actual examples of these alleged harassment campaigns, which should be easy to find considering that the site is open.
You will have a very hard time convincing folks that KF should not be censored because they aren't as bad as other sites. As someone who doesn't frequent these places, I will concede that you may be right, but the point has sailed over your head and into outer space.
> As someone who doesn't frequent these places, I will concede that you may be right, but the point has sailed over your head and into outer space.
I disagree.
The entire impetus behind getting Kiwi Farms removed from Cloudflare, having their domains revoked, having their phone numbers and registered agents cancel service, attempting to blackhole them from the Internet, etc. is that they are literally the worst website, so there is no need to feel bad or give them a fair "trial".
If such outrage can be wielded to completely deplatform Kiwi Farms extrajudicially, it sets a terrifying precedent for the future.
And also, you're not allowed to see for yourself. You must take on faith that KF is pure evil, if you want to look and see if they do anything that should possibly be protected speech, then you're one of them and must be banned too.
Sure. And the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic because it says so in the name.
I've personally seen the doxxing threads before and throughout the entire Keffals drama that got KF banned from so many platforms and services. There are videos out there of people going through those threads. The threads were pages upon pages long and KF regulars actively participated in them and cheered on the doxxing attempts.
Trying to whitewash Kiwi Farms as just a site people go to have fun is pathetic. Especially to do so in a place like HN where people likely are aware enough of online drama to be able to call you out on this.
> Sure. And the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic because it says so in the name.
> I've personally seen the doxxing threads before and throughout the entire Keffals drama that got KF banned from so many platforms and services.
The thing is, that isn't what this is about. Doxing is completely legal[0]. That's why people are making up grandiose claims such as "Kiwi Farms exists solely to bully trans people into suicide".
[0] not defending the act in any way or saying that I like it. It's just how things are.
Sure, and telling a provider, even as a group, that continuing to do business with someone you deem undesirable is detrimental to their reputation is also legal. That's not what the EFF takes offense with. The EFF takes offense with a tier 1 ISP cutting off traffic from a provider because some of that traffic goes to KF.
I haven't seen the claim you speak of but I have seen the claim that Kiwi Farms has a history of doxing trans people for no stated purpose other than to implicitly condone harassing and bullying them into suicide. The doxing against Keffals led to multiple instances of targeted harassment offline and KF members positively responded to this while continuing to support the doxing.
If a book club mostly meets to discuss recent NYT bestsellers but occasionally serves to organize bank heists, it's entirely fair to describe it as seemingly solely existing to do bank heists because there are plenty of other book clubs that don't do this and this is its distinguishing trait.
Yeah, sheesh. KF is a website that gleefully reposts terrorist murder videos treated with the same legal penalties as CSAM in other countries, and during the reign of ISIS and the Taliban I don't recall people sitting around defending the need for that particular free speech.
edit: By the way, for all those people ripping on the ACLU and saying "they lost their way" below, they're actively defending 230 against claims of online-terrorism-by-proxy.
> Yeah, sheesh. KF is a website that gleefully reposts terrorist murder videos treated with the same legal penalties as CSAM in other countries, and during the reign of ISIS and the Taliban I don't recall people sitting around defending the need for that particular free speech.
Do you genuinely not see a problem with the New Zealand police ordering websites to remove content they dislike and hand over user information about anyone who so much as discussed it? Christchurch was a horrific act of terrorism; that doesn't make attempting punish people for hosting or discussing content related to it justified.
There is not a country in the world that does not believe some forms of speech are worth censoring. In most of the world, CSAM is treated similarly because they don't believe people should spread depraved images of other humans being harmed. US Federal law treats animal abuse imagery in this way: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/48
It is irrelevant whether what other countries believe. Attempting to equate this with child porn (yes, call it what it is rather than the euphemism-du-jour CSAM) does not make your argument stronger, and indeed will just lead most people to distance themselves from you. They aren't providing material aid to terrorists, nor did they engage in those acts themselves. They're reporting on it (and in some cases reveling in it)....... but that is not illegal, nor should it be.
People really should stop trying to be the mutaween of the internet. It's getting tiresome.
> Attempting to equate this with child porn (yes, call it what it is rather than the euphemism-du-jour CSAM)
The reason the world has moved on from calling it "child porn" is
- because the world has generally moved on from thinking consensual pornography is always morally indefensible
- because consensual pornography is generally legal
- and so because "porn" doesn't truly describe what is happening
It's not a euphemism. It's a clarification. A minority of pornography with adults involves abuse. But _all_ of the material you think should not be "euphemistically" called CSAM intrinsically involves abuse.
"The world", being random individuals, still overwhelmingly calls it child porn. Organizations in the field call it CSAM
It's just like "ISIS". Every organization had an opinion on whether to call it "ISIL" or "the so-called Islamic State" or "Daesh", but the fact is everyone not making a press release just called it "ISIS". Nobody thought that that name was endorsing their self-claimed statehood, and nobody thinks "child porn" somehow justifies it. But using constantly-changing ("CSAI", "CSEM") jargon just confuses anyone not in the know and makes the topic harder to search
_All_ revenge porn involves abuse, but that's still the common term. It's still porn, in the same way that rape is still sex
I don't like the term CSAM because I've seen it lead to such tortured and misleading terms as "CG-CSAM" (computer-generated child sexual abuse material), suggesting that an AI model generating images of naked children is committing sexual abuse. The already-existing concept of "simulated child pornography" actually describes it better.
Do you have sources to back up the fact that "it encourages and is often found coincident with real CSAM"? You can't just claim that it's common sense that an AI-generated image of a child is encouraging real child abuse. Generative AI hasn't even been around for long enough to be part of common knowledge.
Again: it's you that has put the specific "AI" projection onto "CG".
As I say, this term appears to be used in the past broadly to include the kind of 3D animations that appear in conventional porn adverts, and also to face-swap and other Photoshop-type edits.
All I can say is that prosecutions in the UK for example have often mentioned such material alongside conventionally shared material.
I don't think I've read about any prosecutions where fake material was the only material justifying prosecution. But I could have missed that.
I have absolutely no interest in getting into the rest of the argument, which is tedious and IMO kind of obvious on many grounds.
Calling it Child Sexual Abuse Material is doing exactly that.
That is what is depicted, that is what has taken place to produce the material. It puts front and centre that this is abuse, categorically and by definition, not 'porn'.
Why would that not be "porn"? I would define that as "material intended to sexually arouse the particular audience". Merriam-Webster appears to largely agree
The material being harmful and produced via abuse doesn't remove it from that definition, in the same way that rape isn't removed from the definition of "sex"
‘Porn’ these days generally implies legal and consensual. Reflect as you will on what that means about society and the pervasiveness of porn as compared to a few decades back.
Regardless, calling it CSAM puts the abuse aspect front and centre, and puts it in a separate category to that, it avoids euphemism rather than adding to it.
To say “child sexual abuse material” is a euphemism for “child porn” is to misunderstand the meaning of the word “euphemism”.
Which is more mild? “Sexual abuse material”, or “pornography”?
Anyway, the point of bringing up CSAM or child pornography is to point out that you don’t think it’s bad idea to allow “the New Zealand police ordering websites to remove content they dislike and hand over user information about anyone who so much as discussed it” in every context. In some cases you (or if not you, then at least the vast majority of society) thinks it’s appropriate.
So, now we know that there is line, and it’s a matter of discussing as a society where that line should be. I happen to agree that we should keep the government very far away from regulating speech, as much as possible, but I don’t view your argument as the best way of getting there.
> In some cases you (or if not you, then at least the vast majority of society) thinks it’s appropriate.
Children cannot defend themselves. Adults can. No one is particularly interested if this fine line escapes you. The line exists, no one is interested in changing it (other than pedophiles, of course), and the proletariat would quite like it if the bourgeoisie could leave us the hell alone, thank you very much.
Also, allow me to clarify one point: I don't have an argument. I have a class interest. I am not interested in convincing you one way or another. If arguments actually worked to protect our rights then we wouldn't have to go through this merry-go-round of nonsense every few years. I am stating quite simply that the proletariat has certain rights and attempting to infringe upon the same as the bourgeoisie has done for the last decade is a sure-fire way to result in the same being subject to boycott and ruin... and if you don't think that is the case then ask Budweiser how they're doing at their next quarterly earnings report.
My only message is for bourgeoisie who may be reading: If you value your profits then maybe you should consider leaving your customers the hell alone, because the incident with Budweiser shows that customers incensed with your manipulations can and will stop doing business with you. No one is exempt from this fact, including ISPs, NSPs, payment processors, or other intermediaries who perhaps justifiably think that they are untouchable.
Lest there be any room for doubt: KiwiFarms has been under assault for the better part of a year and change... and now we're talking about it on Hacker News. This story is being talked about here and now because some people have had enough of this nonsense. Maybe everyone should take a break... pause, reflect... and ask whether trying to manipulate their customers to their own financial ruin is really something they want to pursue to the bitter end.
Given your framing of this in terms of class warfare, I'd remind you that Marx described capitalism as a major positive force because it "by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation". He went on to describe specifically xenophobia ("The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate") but he went on to argue its transformation is deeper ("It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.")
This is part of him exalting capitalism for laying the groundwork that he believed would make socialism possible. E.g. later:
> The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
So this notion of making an argument that it is about class couched in left wing terms does not change that by that same left wing thinking, this process is progressive. Not by intent, but firstly because bigotry and hate is bad for business, as your yourself point out when you talk of Budweiser boycott (ironically mostly benefiting a more progressive company), and so while some short term losses will be had by people pushing to hard too fast, the regressive parts of the working classes will not just be left to its own, but will be battered over and over by both the bourgeoisie and the progressive parts of the working classes, because bigotry and hate is bad not just for business but also for people.
> Given your framing of this in terms of class warfare, I'd remind you that Marx
Class warfare predates Marx by roughly two thousand years (if not longer). I am not interested in what he has to say on the matter. It was sufficiently described by greeks, along with where it ultimately leads, as the Kyklos or Anacyclosis.
> So this notion of making an argument that it is about class couched in left wing terms does not change that by that same left wing thinking,
Class warfare is not a left wing concept. The left and right wing are a result of class warfare, which predates Marx and the rest of his gang of thieves masquerading as revolutionaries.
TL;DR I don't care about your bourgeoisie rhetoric of who said what. The proletariat has an absolute right to freely speak its mind without your interference. Deal with it.
It's interesting that you're reacting this way to Marx being brought up when the language you're using is straight out of the Marxist school of thought.
It's also fascinating that you favour the idea of cycles, as in that case trying to fight the bourgeoisie is an inherently lost cause and you'd be better off trying to become part of it.
But in any case, the major point was that while you may be free to speak your mind, so are others, and they are also free to choose to not want to associate with people who want to spread hate and bigotry, and you're facing a losing battle. Doubly so if you believe in social cycles (an utterly idiotic concept to buy into today given the amount of change since it was conceived), in which case you're doomed to keeping losing this battle forever.
It's called the kyklos because it is a cycle of human civilization: we go forward, we go back. Over and over without end. The struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie is an inevitable part of that cycle. There is no 'losing' this battle. There is nothing idiotic in pointing out that we're still facing the same struggles because human nature hasn't changed and no one learns from history.
In any case: Marx is irrelevant, these people are on the wrong side of history, as is anyone who sides with them. Have fun screaming at a wall.
So your argument is that private individuals, dissatisfied with the behavior of an organization, may choose to take their business elsewhere?
Because business is a two-way transaction. This sounds like an argument in favor of HE's position. If their owner finds KiwiFarms' behavior reprehensible, They're not obligated to do business with it.
> So your argument is that private individuals, dissatisfied with the behavior of an organization, may choose to take their business elsewhere?
Yes.
> Because business is a two-way transaction. This sounds like an argument in favor of HE's position.
Only because you are deliberately mischaracterizing it. No man has the right to void a contract without just cause, nor interfere in the contractual relations of others. When Hurricane Electric unilaterally decides that someone downstream of them has violated their terms of service that is precisely what they have done. Furthermore, someone holding themselves out as a business does not have the right to arbitrarily refuse service to anyone... that much has been made abundantly clear over as many decades of the struggle for civil rights.
Put simply: customers can freely choose not to do business with you. You, however, generally do not get to choose who your customers are. Green is green. This is the system you and yours have designed, and you are free to choke on it.
> someone holding themselves out as a business does not have the right to arbitrarily refuse service to anyone
Sorry, but with respect: you misunderstand the Civil Rights Act and its peer legislature.
CRA and its peers carved out specific categories in which service, if provided at all, must be provided, more or less centered on intrinsic properties that do not impact or reflect the content of one's character. That carve-out is as exceptions to the default common law sense that any company may choose to refrain from doing business at any time. That's the bedrock and we make exceptions.
A cop was recently refused service at a bakery because they have a no open weapons policy (https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4174109-san-francis...). "No shirts, no shoes, no service" is pretty bog-standard recognized restaurant boilerplate. In most states, bartenders can kick out someone who's dressed like a Nazi. And in HE's case, their terms of service refuse use of their services for illegal activity. In their opinion (and this could, perhaps, be tested in a court of law), this includes providing service to a company that is allowing illegal activity through its network and looking the other way ("data laundring," if you will).
You're right that green is green, and that generally serves as a practical counterweight for abuse of this privilege. But the privilege stands, and if a company decides the money isn't worth the loss to reputation or anything else they value, they may, with few carefully-carved exceptions, leave it on the table.
It's a high hill to climb to justify why we should stud these ground rules with an additional civil rights exception for the likes of KF. What societal benefit? Because it's pretty easy to see the content of their character, and their state of being isn't intrinsic to them and inextricable from their character ("just stop being cyberbullies").
It should be mentioned that some intelligence agencies have an involvement in extremist groups. Like the Soviet Union supported urban guerillas in the west or Russia dumping its Neonazis (who happened to kill Kremlin-critical journalists) into the Ukraine. With them then purposefully spreading stuff like Christchurch manifest translations through people involved with Azov to pump their "international far right" image.
Trying to solve that problem through attempts to quell public discourse and dictate limits of conversation are misguided and self destructive. Its a race to the bottom as a byproduct of short term power politics. Its not like western actors arent also doing it, strategy of tension in Italy for example. Having a bogey man can be quite beneficial.
There being a communication channel with reduced moderation is hardly the root cause. I would argue its quite the contrary, the heavier you get involved in controlling discourse, the easier it becomes to saw tension.
edit: As an example
>Russia dumping its Neonazis (who happened to kill Kremlin-critical journalists) into the Ukraine
>In an interview published by Azov’s online podcast in May 2015, Korotkih fawned over the Islamic State, and compared the Azov Regiment to the group.
>“I can’t accept ISIS ideology but they’re awesome in what they do. I enjoy their movies very much. I drool over what’s going on in the territories they control”, Korotkih proclaimed during the interview (00:32:45 into the interview), in which he also characterized ISIS as “heroes of that time.”
Ross Kemp (introduction in the gym to the NSO in the first few minutes. In case you watch it, the badly faked videos they made were a cover for the police to not investigate attacks on migrant workers. Tesak grew a concision in prison and got tortured and executed through "suicide".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv1q3pCfed0
Before Tesak was famously used as a bogeyman for Russia's liberal opposition when he came to a book club where Navalny held a discussion.
If you sleep tight in a censored echo chamber you might be in for a rude awakening once you realize what atrocities that enables. But luckily you will only find out once you are at the receiving end of it?
Nobody is expecting you to pay for server costs and your opinion on the righteousness of your action doesnt absolve you of the responsibility for the delete function that was just created. Or gets you out of the predictable consequences. Old fashioned stuff like checks and balances werent around for fun and censoring stuff doesnt make it go away. Neither is a mob level targeting mechanism a good or safe idea.
Creating means to create holes in the public discourse is utterly reckless as you have no means to tell how big they have become. And no means to address them. You just punched your eyes out because you didnt like the sight of something. The potential to create human misery with this is hard to overstate when people blatantly ignore the consequences. This is a nobody is going to hear you scream type of threat. Its also not a novel risk, we know how horrible attempts to dictate public discourse went in the totalitarian systems of the past. Not because of some evilness, but systemic inertia and no longer functioning breaks. Without the ability to communicate, we are screwed.
> Neither is a mob level targeting mechanism a good or safe idea.
I think we agree on this. Which is why I'm in favor of giving no online quarter to KiwiFarms, a notorious site for organizing mobs.
KF supporters and users are free to say whatever they want in their own forums. The freedom of speech has never implied an obligation for people to listen. And freedom of the press does imply a freedom to refrain from serving as a conduit for someone else's message, as does freedom of association.
Nothing of what KF is doing or saying obligates anyone to provide them the tools to do or say it. They're as free as everyone else; they can print their own leaflets and stand on their own soapboxes. They don't have the right to obligate HE to facilitate them, directly or by proxy.
>KF supporters and users are free to say whatever they want in their own forums.
Thats exactly what is no longer the case. We just created the method to even prevent self hosting.
edit: Its also why this is such a big deal. They were a canary and with how they were dealt with its extremely likely that that was a domino. Because there is nothing stopping people from exploiting this now that its here. How ever justified or well intentioned this was, it wont matter for the cases to come.
Oh, they can self-host. They just have to go the long way around to get their message to anybody because the internet is a network. They can send paper letters and provide dialup BBS.
Networks always imply at least two parties. What they don't have the privilege of is access to a carrier willing to devote their privately-owned bandwidth to transceiving the message.
The fact you're publishing a paper doesn't imply that paperboys will carry it for free. Or that they'll even take your money to carry it.
Now, the notion they can self-publish (via mail) and self-host (via BBS) does rely on common-carrier protections (and mail anonymity). One can make the case (as EFF does) that by extrapolation we should give the same general-use protections to the Internet.
I'm not inclined to agree-by-extrapolation. The Internet is far more powerful and far harder to regulate. I think the burden is on those who think it should be a common-carrier system to justify why that's societally beneficial (over the status quo of "it's a federated network of peers, with service provision balanced between people's freedom to carry or not carry traffic and the incentives to get paid to carry").
1. Run your own server, because you've been pressured out existing sites.
2. Run your own data center, because you've been pressured out of existing data centers.
3. Run your own ISP, because that's the only way you can get connectivity.
4. Run your own payment processor, because you can't get a bank to serve you.
5. Run your own government, because you can't just start up your own bank.
6. ???
7. Profit? Wait, I think that started when you took control of the government.
If you run infrastructure, not a destination, then you should be a common carrier. Because freedom of speech is more than just the First Amendment. It's not just the government can't tell you what not to say (that's just the 1A). It's not just the ability to speak, but also the ability to be heard. Because for infrastructure, only loons would believe that you actually are responsible for the speech that you care across your lines.
We arent discussing technicalities here but actual consequences.
>I think the burden is on those who think it should be a common-carrier system to justify why that's societally beneficial
Thats a really easy way out of having to address how this isnt going to end in a totalitarian echo chamber. Unfortunately just ignoring it and feeling right isnt a promising strategy.
Because an organization can always keep seeking someone who will host them.
And if nobody will host them, it's not a totalitarian echo chamber, it's just "the people's will."
There is some risk of cleaving along ideological lines (so you end up with, like, "corporate Internet" and "KF-friendly internet").
I expect that process is currently in progress and I'm not convinced it's a bad thing. Maybe putting everyone on the planet on a flat communications plane was never an experiment that was going to succeed. Maybe we have countries and individual and collective ideologies for a reason.
>And if nobody will host them, it's not a totalitarian echo chamber, it's just "the people's will."
Thats framing that doesnt change the end result. There wont be any cleaving but anything differing from dominant doctrine no longer available. With no regard for who determines that other then the currently loudest screaming mob. That describes a totalitarian society in which truth has lost all meaning because people favor signaling despite knowing better.
I find it highly irresponsible to push for defacto censorship with a complete disregard for very clear threat, namely the power to censor not only getting abused but being by its very nature uncontrollable. Especially in this form. Nobody being able to even describe how this could function without ending in tragedy means its likely impossible. Which should surprise nobody.
edit: China described it as the peoples will as well if i am not mistaken. Which meant having a set ratio of the population that had to confess their reactionary thoughts in front of a screaming mob before being thrown into Gulags.
By definition totalitarian and will of the people are disjoint. Totalitarian systems are centralized. The people deciding, each of their own, to shun that which their consciences tell them is harmful to their society is the opposite of totalitarian. If KF can't find a home with any provider, and if providers they do find a home with are themselves shunned... That's just two tribes circling the wagons. Totalitarianism would look a lot more like some force external to those operators stepping in and forcing them to interact, regardless of their will.
And that's the rub. If we don't trust the owners of the machinery to decide how it is used, what's the proposed alternative?
If we pass laws to tie the hands of corporations on who's data they must carry, then we've taken the cudgel away from the Hurricane Electics of the world and given it to the Richard Blumenthals.
I trust corporations about as far as I can throw them, but I trust them more to decide what bits are on the wire than I trust governments.
Making sure that we have robust system in place that makes silencing dissenting voices impossible. Because it does not work, you have nobody (and no institution) competent enough to decide this. And we will have to rely on this system if history is any measure.
Just wanting this to work is not a valid strategy. You can and should know better.
So your alternative to distributed corp-by-corp decisionmaking is... A centralized set of rules, from a central authority, that corps must abide.
That looks a lot closer to totalitarianism than "KF has to keep changing who it works with because individual companies think they're not a good client."
The only way you can equate censorship with banning censorship is if the death penalty and the bill of rights are also both just laws.
The difference here is that its impossible to push society into a censored echo chamber through banning censorship. You cant create the dangerous blind spots this way that are at the core of totalitarian risks.
You really should read up on totalitarianism. Your definition is quite distorted and you hit a lot of the marks when ignoring consequences in favor of frames. I can recommend Meerloos Rape of the Mind.
You're treating freedom of speech as something beyond what it's protected as.
I fundamentally don't see it that way. It's a useful tool to promote good governance. It's a constraint upon the government's right to build an echo chamber around the leadership, which is comfortable for leadership but eventually leads a government to topple for failure to address the needs of the people.
The natural right that exists in the absence of a Bill of Rights is freedom of association - you can say what you want, and someone can tell you to piss off and go away for your trouble. They can also ignore you. And they are definitely not obligated to echo you, nor to do business with those who listen to you. That's the natural order you're alluding to by suggesting I'm saying the Bill of Rights is "just laws."
> The difference here is that its impossible to push society into a censored echo chamber through banning censorship
a) government bans censorship
b) people can say whatever they want
c) people use that liberty to conspire to commit crimes
d) the commission of those crimes, at scale, overwhelms the state's ability to enforce
e) totalitarians exploit this arrangement to depose the previous emasculated government and install their own... Which includes establishing rules to disrupt conspiracy to commit crimes so they are not themselves deposed.
f) society is now a censored echo chamber
The US does not currently protect freedom of speech to the level you're describing. No large functional government does.
There is no evidence such blanket, wide-open protection is actually a virtue for a functional government or society.
I dont care what it is protected as, i am telling you what automatically happens once you try to poke holes into it. It shouldnt be a surprise to anyone with a functioning relationship to reality. Picture it as a shared communication bus everyone uses for navigation where somebody added a hidden packet drop you cant compensate for or detect. If you try to use that thing you are going to crash. Because you have no ability to determine how much gets dropped. And how much bullshit cant be challenged anymore. Thats the line in the sand for cascading failure.
It cant work. Those blind spots cant be detected, managed or compensated for. They are like a metastasizing cancer.
That blind spot is at the core of totalitarian regimes. Group think sets in and suddenly your farmers are told to plant the crops closer together to utilize the proletarian solidarity between the plants. Anyone who doesnt gets gulaged and the rest starves.
Its worth mentioning that my local constitution has a clause that simplified means anyone trying to get the society to e) can be shot by anyone. How ever much of a paper tiger this is, having had two murderous totalitarian regimes in the last 100 years its generally considered a good idea and the way back out.
That you have to rely on a extremely thin argument like it probably being necessary to uphold the rule of law should have you reflect. You are arguing with an abstract model of what ought to happen according to your favorite ought-to-be model while i am telling you what will happen if you dont prevent it. We have seen it times and times again, if you dont try something different the results will replicate. Acting in denial of reality is totalitarian. Thats how we got all those mass graves. They werent created by evil caricatures but stupid people caught up in a drunk fever and Zugzwang with disabled breaks.
If I understand you correctly, you appear to be making the argument that if we kick certain groups off the public communications fora, they will meet in secret and become an unseen force that overthrows society.
Even if that's true, I don't think you've made the case that allowing them room in the newspapers to coordinate doesn't just give them the opportunity to amass like-minded supporters and overthrow society faster. Forcing the opinions of fringe groups into privately owned newspapers, for example, gives them an air of legitimacy that they don't have if the same information is printed on self-published pamphlets that they're handing out on a street corner.
You are also claiming that you are arguing concrete scenarios and I'm arguing abstractions. I'm unaware of any government overthrows that occurred because some people were unable to use the internet due to their past use of it being so heinous that nobody wants to do business with them, and I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened; internet is too young.
>You are also claiming that you are arguing concrete scenarios and I'm arguing abstractions. I'm unaware of any government overthrows that occurred because some people were unable to use the internet due to their past use of it being so heinous that nobody wants to do business with them, and I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened; internet is too young.
I gave you are very direct example for a totalitarian echo chamber becoming murderous. The Soviet and Chinese famines. The officially dictated story became beyond critic and millions died as a result.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
I also mentioned Dallaires pleas to the UN for access to radio equipment to be allowed to air a counter narrative to the genocidal government aligned ones. Something he addressed special weight to in his "Shaking hands with the devil". Which should say a lot about its importance.
>If I understand you correctly, you appear to be making the argument that if we kick certain groups off the public communications fora, they will meet in secret and become an unseen force that overthrows society.
No, quite the opposite. Trying to ban people you dont like from communicating will result in a totalitarian echo chamber. Thats a slope and you willfully ignore the need for breaks. That quickly turns murderous. Because determining what should and shouldnt be censored and its second and third order effects is an infinitely complex problem that you cant address with intention alone. And will quickly be exploited for monetary/ personal / political / tribal profit. Trying to control discourse is a slope and by making self hosting impossible you are destroying the possibility to erect warning lights. You are willfully heading for a cliff.
Your error stems from being focused on the who of the story and at the same time ignoring practical limits. I am telling you if you are at the point in which communication is restricted enough, there will soon bee armed men and horror if your only safeguards are good intentions. There is a causal relationship, power becomes uncontrollable and slip from your hands as the official story and reality collide more and more and you become incapacitated by it. You trying to solve this with feeling competent enough and more armed men / state control is how that always works. Those are usually the same people who drag you off into camps. After all, you ignored safe use in favor of feeling good about the story and somebody like Stalin or Hitler doesnt mind taking over. The German justice system is a great example, many judges just continued to do their job with their career spanning Weimar, the third Reich and West/East Germany.
Even if you are delusional enough to think that your totalitarian echochamber will be the first one able to overrule reality, people will reliably react and that reaction being unguided as well can easily turn fascist. It was already visible with the various stay behind organizations throughout Europe that were intended as a safeguard against a totalitarian power grab. Or with the KPD as a major topic for NSDAP election run up. Caricatures and bogeymen pose the threat of becoming the lesser evil if the situation deteriorates enough. This isnt a matter of tribalism but one of guaranteed conflict and atrocities. There is no acceptable or safe version of totalitarianism, its by its very nature corrupt, self destructive and brings out the worst in people. Even if "your side" ends up on top, it will be a distorted, corrupt and dysfunctional monster. Or do you think there are many fans of Göring even among Nazis? Large parts of the admiralty of the soviet pacific fleet dying in an overloaded smuggler plane is another good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Pushkin_Tu-104_crash
I think we disagree on the totalitarian aspect of the echo chamber. I agree with you that letting companies have freedom to peer encourages echo chambers. For them to become totalitarian, it'd have to be power flowing from the government. The status quo is that individual companies may choose their digital neighbors. That creates echo chambers but not ones that can hook the levers of power. It enhances tribalism, not totalitarianism.
Coupled with a healthy democracy, it if anything makes it harder for a zeitgeist opinion to become entrenched permanently in leadership when the nation's thought is composed of separate tribal opinions.
The EFF is advocating government saying who must and may not peer. Currently, corporations may say. The status quo is diffusion of power, not concentration.
>I think we disagree on the totalitarian aspect of the echo chamber.
That distinction you hope for does not exist. We arent talking about your frame of digital neighbors but an end to self hosting. How ever nice your story sounds isnt more important then its predictable consequences.
Authoritarian means with righteous sounding justifications safeguarded by only good intentions and an assumption of competence arent safeguards against totalitarianism, its its description. You cant create an authoritarian entity where you just keep the mean people away from the wheel. Thats how almost all totalitarians describe their perspective, including when some of my older relatives can be believed my great grand parents with NSDAP membership cards. You are making the exact same argument. By insisting on how competent, well intentioned and justified you are, you verifying this assumption. You acknowledge that you are unable to recognize that that isnt enough. Which means less and less people are going to tell you this. Because its really dangerous, on an individual and a societal level.https://sproutsschools.com/bonhoeffers-theory-of-stupidity/
When the acoustic breaks are gone the kinetic ones will need to be engaged. Thats not a bug, they have to, there is genocide and existential risk waiting at the bottom of the slope and you dont have the ability, let alone intention, to break yourself. Which is really bad as its a very safe indicator that stuff is soon to become horrific. With anyone who tried the acoustic breaks unable to engage the kinetic ones. Which means fewer and fewer will even try communicating this. We cant allow that to happen. There is no way totalitarianism isnt going to end horribly. If we loose the ability to communicate we are collectively done for.
The only thing your intention influences here is your feelings about yourself. Which when coupled with an echo chamber gets you the typical righteous totalitarian fever that allows ignoring the costs and risks in favor of the nicely painted frame. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
Please listen to the panicky sounding German, what ever you think you are trying to do here, do it without destroying the acoustic breaks. You not liking the sound they make doesnt mean we can do without them.
You're using a lot of words to make a slippery slope argument. It requires a lot more defense than your providing. From my point of view, the slope if anything points in the other direction.
What you are arguing for leads to totalitarianism. Here's how:
* We decide as a society that private peering decisions are unacceptable and the government must regulate them. It starts innocent enough; we pass a law that says if you try to de-peer for reasons of your corporate policy were no law was broken, as is the case here, you can't.
* In so doing, we've now opened the floodgates on government, not private corporations and organizations, controlling the shape of the internet
* A subsequent government comes along and, since they already have the authority to regulate peering, passes the law that you must de-peer from sites that encourage cyberbullying. Nobody bats an eye because the government already regulates peering. The key difference here is that since this is now government policy not the policy of a private institution, citizens don't have somewhere else to turn; KF can't find a new host. Their speech has been actually criminalized.
Now we are on the slope with no breaks. Subsequent governments pass laws that you have to de-peer from sites that tolerate racism. The tolerate discussion of self-harm. That tolerate criticism of public health policy. That tolerate criticism of public policy in general. That tolerate criticism of the government. That tolerate criticism of politicians. And now all the gunpowder is piled in the corner waiting for a match.
The power to force a shape to the network is a double edged sword, and I trust it far more in the hands of private actors than in the hands of the government. Even if, in the hands of private actors, It can lead to tribalism and balkanization of the network. Forcing people to carry a message they don't agree with is every bit as totalitarian as forcing people into silence.
The law in the state they operate _literally defines_ it as a common carrier system.
That's the basis of the case being argued here (that the ISPs blocking is literally unlawful due to the common carrier legislation which prevails in the state in which they're operating.)
I'm not generally inclined to assume laws are passed on sound philosophical backing (I've seen too many laws passed that aren't only poorly-grounded, but actually grounded in counterfactual to believe one follows from the other).
But from a mechanical standpoint that is an interesting fact and I'll be intrigued to see how HE defends itself here, should the regulators choose to step in.
(They may not. The text of the law says HE may not drop lawful traffic. To a cursory read, it's unclear if that means they can't drop lawful traffic bundled with unlawful traffic, i.e. if criminals start slipping criminal activity into lawful activity, is the whole channel drop-worthy?)
I think it's good to get a case like this on the books and a precedent established because I think the enthusiasm with which some entities are embracing 'deplatforming' is a bit disturbing and some pushback is well overdue.
We filed a complaint with the Washington state AG over their actions. HE's response was more or less technically obtuse garbage and, "You're not our direct customer" (paraphrasing, of course).
So what they did, was take it upon themselves to prevent access to an entire /36 subnet of IPv6 that our customer had announced downstream of us. Not once did an abuse report get sent to us, or our upstream from HE. Nor did we receive any credible abuse reports sent to us directly from those upset that the site exists. Meanwhile, this actually has no direct impact on the website in question's existence as their opposition has learned by now, it's never been truly offline. Just temporarily blocked from certain ISPs.
From an ISP point of view, it's worrying that a transit provider like HE can arbitrarily cancel a customer of yours, or a customer of a customer (, etc) over legal, protected speech. So, from a business standpoint, what does HE have to gain? The people complaining about the site aren't their target market, they're mostly Twitch streamers, Twitter personalities and folks who have a following on popular platforms that already exist. They're not the types to be self-hosting a streaming service who'll need rackspace and transit. So, what is there to gain by bending the knee to them? The safest business decision would be to remain neutral, respond to law enforcement requests if presented with one, and otherwise do the job you're paid to do. The worst business decision is moderating the content of downstream customers, which is what we're seeing now.