Comments on: #CloudflareProtectsTerrorists

#CloudflareProtectsTerrorists

NoxAeternum — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 10:43:04 -0800

With the announcement by transgender activist Clara Sorrenti that she is leaving Canada in response to a coordinated abuse campaign directed at her by the notorious alt-right forum Kiwi Farms, there is now a call out for online DDOS protection service and web host CloudFlare to drop Kiwi Farms as a client.

This has not been the first time CloudFlare has been caught up in doing business with hate groups - the organization faced wide criticism in 2017 when it came out that they provided services to the anti-Semitic website The Daily Stormer and had doxed complainants to the same, and later faced similar criticism when it was discovered that notorious forum 8chan was one of their clients as well. CloudFlare has refused to respond to the press in regards to this, and has curtailed their corporate public relations communications.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 10:49:30 -0800

As Ian Fleming put it, "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action. This is the third time that CloudFlare has been caught in this particular situation. At this point, not only does CloudFlare need to uphold its terms of service and drop Kiwi Farms, but Matthew Prince - the company CEO who has argued that he is obliged to work with these groups for "freedom" - needs to resign.

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 10:58:06 -0800

I heard about this because of an apparent false flag set up by someone on Kiwi Farms to Swat MTG and blame Trans people. Kiwi Farms is a vile hotbed of scum and villany. See the wiki.

By: rmd1023

rmd1023 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 11:01:34 -0800

Yeah, KF is vile even by the standards of vile internet groups. They have an overtly stated goal of wanting to abuse and dox and threaten people and their families and their friends until they drive someone to commit suicide. And they've done it. Several times. Liz Fong-Jones did a few twitch streams talking about KF and Cloudflare. I'm not sure if she's got more coming up but I believe the ones she's done so far are available for viewing.

By: Frowner

Frowner — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 11:01:49 -0800

I just want to say that Keffals is great - when I started following her around the start of the pandemic she was a funny shitposter type who also talked about her transition and general life stuff. She moved over to streaming, where she has been really successful and has also talked a lot about trans issues, and has raised a huge amount of money for trans youth organizations. She has never been afraid to go head to head with real transphobic assholes and in general the ones who tangled with her did not emerge looking smart, suave or dapper. She is a good person and I'm really sorry that this has been happening to her. It's hard to imagine what kind of bizarre, gross person would have this kind of sustained and poisonous motivation to attack her. I mean obviously it's masculinity-issues posturing, misogyny and transphobia but it is still difficult to get my head around.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 11:11:43 -0800

The thing is, CloudFlare would be well within their rights to drop Kiwi Farms, given their repeated violation of the ToS. The fact they haven't is...telling, as is the fact that this time, they're not even trying to defend themselves here.

By: JZig

JZig — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 11:17:20 -0800

KiwiFarms is one of the most harmful sites on the internet. It's really weird that when Cloudflare decided 8chan was too awful to host, they were fine with KiwiFarms. I don't think the KiwiFarms people even have much money, so I would guess this is some sort of personal friendship with someone in CloudFlare or they're making some sort of ideological stand (but refusing to publicly say so)

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 11:18:33 -0800

To be fair, dropping KF would probably risk Piers Morgan accusing them of "wokeism", and we couldn't have that now could we?

By: Press Butt.on to Check

Press Butt.on to Check — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 11:21:28 -0800

I would guess this is some sort of personal friendship with someone in CloudFlare or they're making some sort of ideological stand I mean if we're just guessing, I'd guess CloudFlare has millions of customers and a huge administrative bureaucracy so it takes time for decisions to be made about single customer.

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 11:21:47 -0800

Is CloudFlare being petitioned specifically because they are particularly shitty in terms of who they host? Or because this violates their terms of service where it might not for other upstream service providers with shittier terms of service? Could there be better targets in KF's tech stack that aren't so shitty and would actually respond?

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 11:30:18 -0800

I mean if we're just guessing, I'd guess CloudFlare has millions of customers and a huge administrative bureaucracy so it takes time for decisions to be made about single customer. No, this is ideological for the CEO, who infamously ranted about how horrible it was for him to be pressured to drop the Daily Stormer. Prince is very much a "hate speech is the price of free speech" sort - which is why he needs to go.

By: jzb

jzb — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 11:33:44 -0800

I mean if we're just guessing, I'd guess CloudFlare has millions of customers and a huge administrative bureaucracy so it takes time for decisions to be made about single customer. Except as mentioned upthread, the CEO has publicly stated reluctance to shut down these sites + press have reached out to CloudFlare for comment - which, assuming a moderately functional executive team and competent communications team, means he's personally aware and should be taking action here. This isn't "a tiny site has horrible content and somebody submitted a ticket but hasn't gotten action" - this is "if the CEO isn't aware of this, somebody (up to and including the CEO) should be fired" and "if the company hasn't taken action, it's because the CEO has through inaction or direct action conveyed none should be taken."

By: CrystalDave

CrystalDave — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 11:35:29 -0800

I believe CloudFlare is being targeted because they offer hosting protection for KiwiFarms, such that if CloudFlare removed their shield the KF server would go down in short order. (And because CloudFlare is so large, they shoulder that hit by spreading it across all the other sites that are behind CloudFlare)

By: strange chain

strange chain — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 11:48:22 -0800

Cloudflare's corporate culture is broken and it starts at the top.

By: Kitteh

Kitteh — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 12:17:19 -0800

Thank you for elucidating what/who KiwiFarms is; I'd been seeing this story on my Twitter, and while I guessed KF was something vile, I really really didn't want to google it.

By: paimapi

paimapi — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 13:13:01 -0800

even if it weren't an ideological point for the CEO, expecting a corporation to drop a paying customer because of something as silly as historically marginalized people being specifically targeted for relentless harassment is antithetical to their purpose bureaucracy is an excuse - until they see negative press affecting their bottom line, most corpos will just not give a single fucking shit about implementing any kind of ethics, and I guarantee you their senior leadership view issues like trans rights/gun regulation/etc as things minor people care about that don't matter in the 'big picture' and really are just more annoying than anything else I say this working for a supposedly supportive, well-reviewed-on-glassdoor tech company whose CEO was all 'gun rights, abortion rights yayay' while simultaneously dropping millions in the coffers of horrendous, worst-of-the-worst candidates and PACs

By: shenkerism

shenkerism — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 13:42:38 -0800

Extra info for KF: originally created as a record of Christine Weston Chandler and the harassment thereof. It's probably for the best that there isn't really a previously on this one. Hard to say, as harassment for CWC came from various corners and pits of the internet, but could be considered responsible for driving that forward. A lot of practice harassing internet personalities spawned from her existence.

By: nosewings

nosewings — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 14:21:11 -0800

KiwiFarms truly are absolute scum. Even people who generally oppose "cancel culture" should be in favor of their removal.

By: atoxyl

atoxyl — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 14:48:31 -0800

vile human being possibly (on trial for something legitimately reprehensible, last I checked, which I assume is what you're referring to) but come on, in no way was that situation improved by years of stalking and manipulation of a mentally ill and disabled person, in no way does the fact that the story veered off into another kind of tragedy make the Kiwi Farms shit defensible not trans not particularly your call

By: sciatrix

sciatrix — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 14:50:27 -0800

I think we can all agree that Internet communities founded on harassing and tormenting individual human beings for the sake of entertainment are not a good thing to keep around--not least because learning to see human distress and pain as a source of accomplishment and amusement tends to create bad outcomes when, inevitably, subfactions get bored and start looking for new targets to harass. Which is literally what is happening here.

By: sciatrix

sciatrix — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 14:52:00 -0800

Also, it is gross to make respecting names and pronouns (vs deadnaming and using incorrect pronouns) contingent on what you think of the character of any given person. Straight up: it is disgusting to make respecting another person's gender contingent on whether you've decided they are nice enough to count.

By: mephron

mephron — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 17:13:57 -0800

Piers Morgan accusing them of "wokeism" Piers Morgan is one step short of a coprophage at this point. If I saw Kiwifarms catch fire I would bring marshmallows, and if I came across the bastard that ran it dying of thirst in the desert I would neither spit on him nor piss on him lest the moisture strength to crawl to water. As a trans person, this is a site that doesn't deserve to exist, having at least three dead on their collective souls, swattings, doxxings, and general abuse as their raison d'etre. And the fact they have attracted the ire of MTG and her declaration it needs to be taken down makes me think two things:

Even a broken clock like MTG can be right twice a day
The image of Dr. Serizawa from the 2014 Godzilla saying "Let them fight."

(I may have strong feelings on this.)

By: Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted

Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 17:55:49 -0800

As with all these bullshitty "freedom of speech is sacrosanct" policies, speech is only expected to be free until it targets or threatens someone who the ideologue considers to be "real people." The subtext of all this grand posturing is that they don't see certain people as people: their emotions are hypothetical, their pain is abstract, their suffering is shrugged off as an unfortunate happenstance of fate. All that vanishes the moment a "real" person gets hurt: their wounds are real wounds, their blood is real blood, their anguish and torment is profound and bottomless and sincere. Sure, it's only a papercut, but who could be so heartless as to refuse to empathize with the misery a papercut causes?? It's so much realer and more powerful than those happenstance suicides, which were only a strange byproduct of the mysterious machinations of history.

By: Slackermagee

Slackermagee — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 18:16:15 -0800

Political" pressure aside, Kiwi Farms violates Cloudflare's Terms of Use, which prohibits "illegal or harmful content," including "content that discloses sensitive personal information, incites, or exploits violence." So they're not holding this up as a free speech exemption, they're explicitly carving a pass out of their rules for KiwiFarms. That's collaboration not a principled stand.

By: tlwright

tlwright — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 19:57:37 -0800

Ugh, I use Cloudflare for my blog. I guess I'm going to have to figure out a replacement that isn't outrageously priced, since it's a book blog and writer platform, and it's not making any money right now. I may just use jetpack while I do some research. They offer a free tier that is actually really reasonable in the limits, and you'd need to be getting 100k daily visits I think to trigger the paid tiers.

By: bcd

bcd — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 20:20:01 -0800

Extra info for KF: originally created as a record of Christine Weston Chandler and the harassment thereof. It's probably for the best that there isn't really a previously on this one. If you want all of that horrible story there are a pair of Behind The Bastards episodes that detail it, and hence explain just how vile Kiwi Farms is:

Or, as they say, "wherever you get your podcasts". Seriously though, it's just bad, all of it. Including Chandler, not to remotely defend Kiwi Farms, but it's just a cesspit all around. The only good thing I took out of those episodes was the pointer to Margaret Killjoy's new series, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, which is basically the mirror image of Behind the Bastards.

By: bcd

bcd — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 20:31:19 -0800

Reading between the lines I realize there have been some comments deleted already and they may have been piling on Chandler in some fashion. I hope my one quip in the middle there isn't seen as such and if so I apologize. It might be worth noting they did that story with Margaret Killjoy as the guest for both episodes and I think it stands up well independent of my cishet privilege.

By: Dysk

Dysk — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 00:46:06 -0800

Well, except the 911 call from someone claiming responsibility, with reference to the site. The call sounds deeply suspicious and likely bullshit, but it comes across like KF internal Satan's playing out. So it's circumstantial evidence, not no evidence.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 01:01:10 -0800

bureaucracy is an excuse - until they see negative press affecting their bottom line, most corpos will just not give a single fucking shit about implementing any kind of ethics, and I guarantee you their senior leadership view issues like trans rights/gun regulation/etc as things minor people care about that don't matter in the 'big picture' and really are just more annoying than anything else Which is why groups like the ADL are signal boosting the push to force CloudFlare to take action - to generate that negative press. And again, I think it's telling that unlike the last two times, where Prince and CloudFlare attempted to play the moral scold, the reaction has been to just go to ground - CloudFlare has stopped responding, and CloudFlare employees have been blocking activists on Twitter. I imagine it's because Prince realizes he doesn't even have the threadbare leg to stand on he "had" previously - Kiwi Farms has been blatantly violating their ToS, and the reality is that the fact that CloudFlare has done nothing in response puts the lie to Prince's talk about "due process".

By: Merus

Merus — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 01:17:12 -0800

I have described Kiwi Farms before as The Worst Site On The Internet, and I stand by that claim, even though by doing so I have unfortunately introduced it to people who were unaware of its existence. Worse than white supremacist websites. Worse than whatever we're calling 8chan now. Kiwi Farms exists to cause targeted misery, followed by suicide, to specific targets. It is not a place where the vile gather to connect; it is a place where the vile gather to become more vile, and then make it other people's problem.

By: mbo

mbo — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 01:23:34 -0800

Coming from New Zealand the whole "kiwi" part of "kiwi-farms" has always been a bit of a head scratcher. So KF is apparently down at the moment, someone's getting past Cloudfare. For us here in NZ there's a big upside to them being down, a local neo-nazi group's web page is on the same net block (probably hosted by them) and is also down, KF have also previously hosted the Christchurch terrorist's snuff movie. Pretty horrible people. The other really weird thing going on here is that somehow KF are being blamed for Marjorie Taylor Greene being swatted (twice) they've sort of pissed of everyone, couldn't have happened to nicer people

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 01:26:11 -0800

Coming from New Zealand the whole "kiwi" part of "kiwi-farms" has always been a bit of a head scratcher. It's derived from their initial name, based on the initials of their first victim.

By: Candleman

Candleman — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 03:04:18 -0800

I don't think this has been mentioned yet - if you use the official report abusive content function on Cloudflare, they forward on your name and email address to the party you're reporting about. They are hardly innocent and just too overwhelmed with too many sites to keep up with some random innocuous sounding site.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 03:19:39 -0800

This comment though on HN yesterday makes an interesting point It's not interesting at all. Given how transgender people are treated, and how localities like Florida are working to make gender-affirming care outright illegal, it's not fucking surprising at all that transgender activists wind up supporting "back alley" care. Furthermore, this is coming from Hacker News, a well known hub of misogyny, transphobia, and harassment - though one protected by being the pet project of Paul Graham.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 03:29:10 -0800

They are hardly innocent and just too overwhelmed with too many sites to keep up with some random innocuous sounding site. CloudFlare going dark mediawise and employees blocking activists is not being "overwhelmed" - the company (and its head in particular) do not want to respond, in large part because they know that people aren't buying their arguments. Again, this is ideological for Prince - he has stated that he views that CloudFlare is obliged to work with terrorists, bigots, and fascists because he feels that it's not his place to "decide who gets to speak".

By: Braeburn

Braeburn — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 03:37:08 -0800

Yeah, that information adds an angle. It shows that Sorrenti is doing fantastic work that will actually help trans people deal with a broken system. Can't speak for the other claims, of course.

By: prismatic7

prismatic7 — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 03:37:36 -0800

Also, Hacker motherfucking News is not my first source for sensitive treatment of any gender issues.

By: Etrigan

Etrigan — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 04:09:56 -0800

This comment though on HN yesterday makes an interesting point: "Oh no the CHILLL-DRENNN!!!" is step fucking one in every shitbird's playbook on LGBTQ+ issues. It's not "an interesting point", it's the most boring possible attempt to justify harassment, swatting, and terrorism.

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 05:25:34 -0800

I have no idea who any of these people are, but "synthesizing estrogen in your bathtub" (or in any kind of home operation) is not a thing, and I doubt anyone making accusations of it needs to be taken seriously.

By: mscibing

mscibing — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 05:30:13 -0800

Keffals is the target of a harassment campaign. The people behind the campaign have obviously extended considerable efforts, it is quite plausible that they've posted various half-truths and lies in internet fora. I don't know much about Keffals, but no, she is not instructing minors on how to "synthesize estrogen in their bathtubs": that's not a thing.

By: rozcakj

rozcakj — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 05:37:59 -0800

Hacker News is not a good source of information for any "issue"; gender, race, culture, politics, income disparity, policing, governance. It is a cesspool of ignorant people who think they are the smartest person in the room and will constantly attempt to apply their "logic" to any human-factors discussion, or completely misread the topic - or attempt to solve everything through technology (i.e. "engineers disease"). It leans incredibly right-wing and pro-late-stage-capitalism.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 05:38:14 -0800

It's a post on Hacker News attempting to paint Kiwi Farms as the good guys. It's a load of bovine manure, but I repeat myself.

By: Dysk

Dysk — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 05:41:25 -0800

And like, if she has spoken about ways to get estrogen off-label, that just means she has existed in any community of trans women on the internet. It's so commonly done, everyone knows which pharmacies will ship to where, or has incredibly easy access to that knowledge. It isn't outright illegal in many places, either. It's the result of a broken, gatekeeping medical system, of making access to reasonable care so far outside of what a lot of people can access, or can access on a reasonable timeframe. It's not some fringe thing.

By: Dysk

Dysk — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 05:43:58 -0800

(I was self medding for a few years while I was on NHS waiting lists. I was lucky - the wait has since utterly ballooned. And we're lucky to have a public health system with vaguely progressive policies on this stuff, sometimes, if the stars align for you. A lot of people in a lot of places don't even have that luxury.)

By: JohnFromGR

JohnFromGR — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 05:49:48 -0800

I couldn't find any info one way or another, but is Matthew Prince any relation to the Eric Price/Betsy DeVos hive? His general sense of entitlement and gleeful sadism point toward the possibility.

By: Flight Hardware, do not touch

Flight Hardware, do not touch — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 06:07:31 -0800

And like, if she has spoken about ways to get estrogen off-label, that just means she has existed in any community of trans women on the internet Absolutely. The current state of healthcare for trans women is suffering from many of the same systemic issues as all healthcare for women, with an added dose of transmisogyny for good measure. Right now, the only maker of a primary option for injectable estrogen in the US has a shortage. My doctor has had to send me to an online compounding pharmacy in Texas (so ironic) to get mine. But if that didn't work, do you think I'm going to worry about legalities in order to simply exist? Just because I don't have ovaries? And to loop back around to the actual topic, I should point out the unique vulnerability to doxxing for trans people. Just posting this here on MF puts me at risk.

By: mephron

mephron — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 06:08:50 -0800

JohnfromGR: As far as I can find, no. They just both have similar Backpfeifengesicht .

By: Merus

Merus — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 06:48:07 -0800

It is important to know that anyone being targeted by a KiwiFarms harassment campaign is having disinformation being spread about them throughout the internet. They do not stop at merely ruining your sleep: their goal is to destroy you so utterly that you feel like there is no choice to but to commit suicide. Disinformation is a huge part of that effort; it's designed to cut you off from your support network because they suddenly "can't be sure" whether or not you deserve support.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 09:45:19 -0800

As with much in life, viborg, context is key. What's getting talked about is "back alley care" - the medical support of marginalized communities in light of official condemnation of such. Transgender advocates would love to be in a world where gender-affirming care is openly available and accessible to all who need it - but sadly, we don't live in that world. Instead, we live in a world where transgender individuals - and transgender teens in particular - are routinely denied access to the medical care that they need. And as such, advocates choose to work to give them the support that society refuses to.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 09:56:47 -0800

However the issue I specifically raised is about providing black market hormone therapy to minors. Which was addressed - what's happening is that activists are supporting transgender teens, who are one of the most vulnerable groups in the US, with a suicide rate several times greater than the average. As Etrigan pointed out earlier, you're falling for one of the oldest tricks in the Bigoted Shitheel's Playbook - to play up "for the children!" to spook people.

By: Shellybeans

Shellybeans — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 09:57:39 -0800

Do you think a seventeen year old cancer patient should need parental consent to get care? Should a pregnant seventeen year old be able to access safe and legal abortions without parental consent? Just because someone is a minor, that doesn't mean that their needs aren't real or that they can always wait until they reach majority to deal with them. The question of is it "okay" is a complicated one, and what "okay" means can be pretty different depending on whether we are looking at this through a legal, moral or ethical lens. I personally wouldn't send diy hormones to a minor for a variety of reasons, but I have nothing but sympathy for adolescents who are trying to access the care that could literally save their lives via any means available, and I don't think saying "wait until you are 18" is any kind of answer.

By: mhum

mhum — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 10:09:04 -0800

> I shot a fox in Skyrim and it made me sad: "I know only what I have read in the links in that comment, and i am in no way defending KF but the information adds an angle." I can't see that comment nor the links within (on HN it shows that comment as "flagged"). However, after poking around in that HN user's comments on that post, it seems pretty clear that they're just another transphobe (if anyone cares to check, it's stuff like this). So, if I had to guess, I would imagine that the angle it adds is... transphobia.

By: Glegrinof the Pig-Man

Glegrinof the Pig-Man — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 10:16:00 -0800

This is why I typically avoid these discussions. If you can't ascribe any motive to me other than malignant idiocy, it doesn't seem like there's much point furthering this discussion. What would have changed about the conversation with this apparently essential information? How is it at all relevant to whether or not keffals deserved to be harassed by genocidal maniacs?

By: agentofselection

agentofselection — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 10:17:31 -0800

If you can't ascribe any motive to me other than malignant idiocy, it doesn't seem like there's much point furthering this discussion. You do not seem to be acting in good faith, yourself. You are repeatedly using the same deliberately-inflammatory phrase, "asking a question" in a way that implies you are actually making a moral statement. If you want to make an argument, do so. If you're afraid that making that argument will result in people getting mad at you, consider why that might be.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 10:34:08 -0800

This is why I typically avoid these discussions. If you can't ascribe any motive to me other than malignant idiocy, it doesn't seem like there's much point furthering this discussion. I was actually showing you charity there, saying that you were misled. Your response shows that was misplaced, and what you're actually doing is "JAQing off" - trying to misconstrue and vilify in the context of "just asking questions".

By: Glegrinof the Pig-Man

Glegrinof the Pig-Man — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 10:39:08 -0800

Michael Hobbes:

Last week, Boston Children's Hospital was deluged with harassment after a misleading tweet from Libs of TikTok. This week, Bari Weiss's newsletter repeats the misleading framing and frets about the free speech rights of the people sending threats. I am without words. The [Intellectual Dark Web] crowd has always overlapped with transphobes of course, but it's stunning how vicious Weiss's newsletter has become on this issue. The increasingly blurred line between the far right and "respectable" conservative commentators is an extremely worrying trend. Weiss is laundering a false narrative about a stigmatized minority at a time of rising violence and threats against them. Even if this isn't your issue, it's time to pay attention. Weiss and the rest of the "I'm A Liberal But" crowd are translating the narratives of the far right into the kind of language you could hear at a cocktail party. This trend is not going to stop with trans people.

By: i used to be someone else

i used to be someone else — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 10:41:33 -0800

Would that violate federal law in the United States? estrogen is not a controlled substance in the united states, but there are reports of shortages of certain types of estradiol at retail pharmacies. this, of course, assumes that the pharmacist isn't in a state that has "conscience clauses" which means they can deny you your prescribed medication for any number of reasons, like - how much of a queer tranny do you look like, because maybe the pharmacist doesn't want your kind in the area, you sick freak. - is your deadname still the official one on your medication? because only a pervert would want to take the wrong hormones for their sex, which is immutable. testosterone is controlled as an anabolic steroid, which makes this worse for trans mascs, because it's harder for them to get regular doses, if they can even afford them. oh, and now with the dobbs decision, did you know a lot of people are suddenly very worried about testosterone's effects on fertility? but hey, if you're a 50 year old man whose dick doesn't get all throbby at the sight of young female flesh, have all the fucking testosterone gel you want. so, unless you're trans, shut the fuck up and stay in your fucking lane. i see you filled out that pronoun field in your bio. way to parrot anti-trans groomer paranoia, especially at a time when boston children's, pittsburgh children's, and lurie children's have all been targeted with it in the past two weeks. what a fucking ally!

By: Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted

Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 10:45:13 -0800

viborg, while I'm sure you have the best of intentions, it's just a little misguided to ask whether the person currently being driven aggressively towards suicide by the famous suicide-causer web site is themselves morally dubious. (And people are getting heated at you because a lot of transphobia masquerades as concern-trolling, which is 100% what's happening from that Hacker News commenter. But then, they seem like they're from the UK, where transphobia recently surpassed football as the most popular national pastime.)

By: Frowner

Frowner — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 10:46:36 -0800

However the issue I specifically raised is about providing black market hormone therapy to minors. Dude! I literally remember the exchanges that people are spinning as "providing hormones to minors". It was Keffals supporting information about gender affirming doctors which could be made available to minors. This is 1. Not providing anything to minors except access to a list of doctors who might be able to help them; 2. Not getting hormones involved at all. People really, really need to understand that even if you can get gender-affirming care from a good doctor, it is very, very, very unusual to get testosterone, estrogen, other gender aligning hormonest or surgery as a minor. This really does not happen, for reasons that are obvious. Puberty-blockers, a safe and effective treatment which has among the highest patient-satisfaction rankings in medicine, are what may be given to teenagers precisely because they block puberty changes while the patient continues to grow and mature. Picture this: you are a trans teen, you are pretty sure you want to transition fully. Your body starts to change further and further toward the sex you don't want to be. You picture yourself as feminine but your voice is deepening, you're growing a beard, you're getting chest hair. You picture yourself as masculine and whoops, you have a 36DD rack now. Not only are you moving further and further from what you know you are inside but you are actively growing into a body that feels wrong. You know that undoing all of this will be at best difficult, expensive and probably partial. This is one of the reasons that trans teens struggle with depression and anxiety! Puberty blockers manage and/or resolve these problems. What is more, if a teenager goes on puberty blockers and decides that in fact they want to develop along the lines of their gender assigned at birth, they go off the puberty blockers. A lot of malicious, disingenuous people like to prey on the ignorance of cis communities by pretending that this is "giving children estrogen or testosterone", knowing that most cis people are not familiar enough with transition care to understand the difference. I strongly, strongly suggest that if people want to have an opinion about Keffals specifically, they need to find out exactly what she said in context and they need to spend time acquiring background on trans healthcare and trans youth. ~~ Further, none of this has anything to do with whether it is acceptable to try to drive someone to suicide, to incite their murder through stochastic means or to try to get the cops to kill them.

By: aiq

aiq — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 10:47:03 -0800

My local TV news cannot say things like this, nor a newspaper. Media is regulated after a fashion. It is time for internet regulation.

By: i used to be someone else

i used to be someone else — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 10:52:33 -0800

but back to the actual op, before we got sidetracked with completely genuine and good-faith questions about how trans people groom kids and push them to irreversible damage: actually having known someone personally who's been targeted by that fucking site, i can say that even though i don't like that person at all, they do not deserve to have every. single. shred. of their life dissected and read and shared and twisted like the way people do on kf. the glee with which they share private photos and thoughts, the entertainment they get from just pushing and finding ways to needle their targets. it isn't just five minutes of hate that they heap on their targets. it's constant, participatory surveillance of the target from members of that site and days, weeks, months of hate, and if they take a particular shine to you, your friends, your family, your acquaintances, your roommates all become collateral damage too. fuck that site. and fuck cloudflare. the biggest reason they've got the marketshare they do is because they have a great consumer ux and a free tier that is easy to understand for everyone. none of their competitors come close, even those competitors have feature parity on the actual cdn/proxy functionality cloudflare does.

By: Stacey

Stacey — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 10:59:19 -0800

If by any chance this is one of those cases where hearing the exact same thing from a cisgender person somehow carries more or different weight: Hi. I'm a cis person, with a bunch of trans friends. I do not see any meaningful ethical or moral difference between finding a way to get gender-affirming care to minors, compared to getting it to adults. Probably there are additional legal issues depending on the details of any particular situation. I believe that the vast majority of people involved in back-alley care provision have decided that the legal risks are worth the "keeping trans kids and teens alive, supported, and affirmed" outcomes. Someone saying "oh, hey, but have you thought about whether it's ILLEGAL?" is not adding anything to the conversation. People have thought about it, I assure you.

By: Etrigan

Etrigan — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 11:14:35 -0800

I have no axes to grind anywhere. Then I beg of you to just back out of this thread, delete it from your Recent Activity, and go about your day as though you'd never participated.

By: mhum

mhum — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 11:21:15 -0800

> I shot a fox in Skyrim and it made me sad: "Do I use HN as a sole news source? No, just as I do not use any other single source." But, like Metafilter, HN isn't really a news source. It's mainly links to news/information found on other sites (and discussions thereof). Since the links that you linked to are no longer visible, I'm not sure how to evaluate the quality of those (actual) sources. These communities are made up of many people and just because some shout louder than others should not brand the others. Indeed. However, as I alluded to earlier, the specific HN user (deepdriver) who posted those links does seem to post pretty standard transphobic stuff which raises the question of how much of the benefit of the doubt we should grant here. And, to your point, other HN users do appear to try to push back against deepdriver's transphobia, indicating that HN is not monolithically or unanimously anti-trans. But in the case of deepdriver themselves or the links they posted that can no longer be seen, I'm not sure about what you've seen that seems credible to you.

By: i used to be someone else

i used to be someone else — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 11:21:39 -0800

I posted that 'different angle' I did not do so to inflame, anger or otherwise create drama. Fuck this bullshit. Maybe that wasn't your intent, but you can see how it fucking derailed the entire conversation. Or maybe it was, and you're just trying to be the "i'm just trying to be reasonable here" and "just asking questions" asshats, pretending full well that you don't know that this is a common tactic used by bigots to delegitimize trans people and raise their ire, to make trans people look unkind and perpetually angry. or maybe you really are, as you say, not trying to shit in the pool and stir the pot, but the problem is there have been so many people who act like you who have, that functionally, your motivates are impossible to distinguish and not worthy of the effort to do so. you've been here two years, yet never posted about trans people until now. "But then, they seem like they're from the UK, where transphobia recently surpassed football as the most popular national pastime." Oh come on. Sources welcome. source (xtra) source (opendemocracy) source (the outline) source (vice) source (nytimes) source (vox) source (usnews) source (them) source (pinknews) source (lux magazine) source (international journal of sociology) source (reuters) source (the sociological review) source (guardian us) source (jacobin) source (dazed magazine) source (council of europe) source (them) source (slate) source (medium, laurie penny) source (vanity fair) source (vice) source (left foot forward) even this, from novara media, points out it's on the rise. I have no axes to grind anywhere. I accept people as they are and yes, I have trans friends who I know are wonderful. Yes there are people do not accept, but I don't see them in this thread. uh-huh. sure jan.

By: loup

loup — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 11:28:23 -0800

[No comments removed (yet), BUT, there are several flags coming. Please note that if a comment is not removed, is not because we think it is totally OK, but because we believe it allows other MeFites to make informed decisions about the person posting said comments. Please avoid turning this thread into a heated discussion between a few members. Sometimes it is necessary to take a step back and let the conversation move on.]

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 11:29:42 -0800

That HN is being condemned in some ways, would you be happy if MF were condemned in the same way? Well no, but that's because MetaFilter and its staff do not behave in the same manner as Hacker News, and thus is not deserving of that condemnation.

By: hoyland

hoyland — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 11:31:59 -0800

For the record, in case there are trans youth reading this, youth can access hormones as minors in the US (typically sixteen/seventeen year olds), though it obviously requires support from their parents. This is not new. If anything, the availability of puberty blockers will have made it less common.

By: Frowner

Frowner — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 11:46:18 -0800

(I want to apologize for giving misleading information. I've talked to parent friends about this but I clearly misunderstood - their kids are in their tweens/very early teens. I should have checked that what I was hearing about very young teens applied to older ones as well. )

By: sciatrix

sciatrix — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 13:29:30 -0800

What gets me about the moral panic over the children is that so much of the hysteria over parental consent centers around the idea that parents essentially own their children, and that any body that interferes with the parental control and ownership of children is a basic threat to parental sovereignty. You see the same moral panics about institutions that allow teenagers access to things like birth control, reproductive care, and sometimes vaccination. (There are similar Internet networks that seek to help teenagers with anti-vax parents get access to vaccination against parental desires, incidentally.) It pops up any time you run into an initiative that exists to help teenagers control their own bodies in ways that their parents oppose, even ways that don't have long-term consequences for those teenagers or even actively protect those teenagers from long-term consequences. It really does seem to revolve around control and ownership, and that seems to me to be a very bad way to support teenagers trying to figure out how to practice taking ownership of their own lives as an adult. I can tell you now, there are absolutely people who believe very explicitly that they own their children and that they should have the right to veto any actions their children take about their own lives and bodies. When you're talking about people providing resources to distressed teenagers without parental consent, you have to understand that the world contains a lot of parent/child relationships that are inflected by that belief in parental ownership of children.

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 13:32:46 -0800

It is so important to understand whether victims of crime deserved it. Perhaps it was really just vigilante justice! We should consider whether the criminals' claims they were justified hold weight! This disgusts me.

By: plonkee

plonkee — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 14:25:16 -0800

But then, they seem like they're from the UK, where transphobia recently surpassed football as the most popular national pastime. Anecdata, but I live here and open my eyes from time to time. Can confirm it's a real and growing problem. It's like living in concern troll central.

By: i used to be someone else

i used to be someone else — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 14:33:29 -0800

Sometimes it is necessary to take a step back and let the conversation move on. i'd like to point out that ever since that first shit "think of the children" trans panic post, the thread has, more or less, ceased to be about cloudflare, kf, doxing, and online harassment, and is instead now just a bunch of people pushing back against hoary concern trolling about gender-affirming care. so like. yeah, i guess the conversation moved on, to repeating the same old shit that every other conversation about trans kids is about these days.

By: fragmede

fragmede — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 14:42:08 -0800

Condemning a site for a comment that site found reprehensible and deleted seems questionable, but debating "orange website bad" also seems like a derail. The right-wing Cloud services pile is growing. Truth Social is operational (even if they're not paying their bills) but let's say KiwiFarms gets dropped by CloudFlare. They then go find hosting that's sympathetic to their views. And then what? We can rage all we want about their new right-wing hosting company but I don't doubt it'll stay up. 4chan's still around after all. Don't get me wrong, I want CloudFlare to kick KiwiFarms off, but if they're just going to stay up, it feels like we have to try something different to address the issues of doxxing and swatting. Like, how is swatting still a thing? As a random on the Internet, I shouldn't be able to call a poorly hidden phone number, claim there's an active shooter, and then have a team of armed goons show up wherever. Even if it's MTG's house and I don't like her.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 15:11:47 -0800

The right-wing Cloud services pile is growing. Truth Social is operational (even if they're not paying their bills) but let's say KiwiFarms gets dropped by CloudFlare. They then go find hosting that's sympathetic to their views. And then what? We can rage all we want about their new right-wing hosting company but I don't doubt it'll stay up. 4chan's still around after all. CloudFlare doesn't host KiwiFarms as far as I know (though they have been caught out hosting hate groups.) Their main business is DDOS protection - if you're using CloudFlare, they stop DDOS attacks from downing your website. If KiwiFarms loses that protection, it will go down unless they have a replacement lined up, and given that they basically are a forum community mainly held together by attacking others, a shutdown of some time could splinter the community. Furthermore, it's worth remembering what happened with 8chan - they wound up being so toxic that when Epic provided them with hosting, the underlying suppliers Epic relied on noped the fuck out, cutting out Epic's legs. So yeah, getting CloudFlare to stop protecting hate would have a material effect, as those sites would now be vulnerable to retaliation. It's why Prince's arguments ring so hollow, and why there is a feeling that, as the lede says, CloudFlare defends terrorists.

By: plonkee

plonkee — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 15:41:21 -0800

Yes, without DDOS then they might get taken down by an unscrupulous actor. We probably need to try a range of things to address the issues of doxxing and swatting. Part of that is preventing the doxxing and the incitement to swat. Part of that is probably also something about police response. We shouldn't really have armed goons hanging about the place.

By: Merus

Merus — Sat, 27 Aug 2022 00:10:42 -0800

I appreciate that this is late and also there's been mod warnings but I have a slightly different, on-topic, angle on this: But it also seems like the consensus here is that it's okay to send black market hormone therapy medication to minors? One of KiwiFarms' favourite disinformation tactics is framing relatively harmless activities in ways that are misleading, by distorting what's actually going on through several layers of simplifications and distortions. I have seen it referred to as Ship of Theseus Arguments. It takes a serious effort to unpack what behaviour they are actually referring to, and in doing so you're investigating someone with bad faith framing, which invites a distressing level of scrutiny. For example, I have heard "giving medical advice" conflated with "providing medical products", and then that conflated with "providing medical supplements", and then giving advice to a couple of minors becomes "providing black market hormone medication to minors". Not that this is necessarily the distortion used in this case, but it's an example of the kind of bad faith framing that's used. We can rage all we want about their new right-wing hosting company but I don't doubt it'll stay up. Part of the reason people are incensed at CloudFlare specifically is that they're an industry standard provider. If the site was moved to a fascist-friendly provider, it'll be far more vulnerable because these providers tend not to have a lot of technical talent. It might stay up but its reliability would be much more questionable, which will drive people from the site. One thing we know about stochastic terrorism is that, if they're cut off from their community, many of these people recover.

By: Dysk

Dysk — Sat, 27 Aug 2022 01:03:32 -0800

But it also seems like the consensus here is that it's okay to send black market hormone therapy medication to minors? It's 'off-label' not 'black market'. Since estrogen isn't a scheduled drug, it's not a simple as "it's illegal without a prescription" (it's not legal to possess prescription drugs without a prescription in the US, but there are several categories of this crime that are de facto legal with how rarely the laws in question are enforced). But yes, the consensus here is likely to be that facilitating self-medding for a competent adult (not legally speaking - I count a lot of 16-17 year olds here, and not all 22-year olds, for example) is absolutely fine. And that you've got some kind of ulterior motive if you consistently insist on framing it as "black market hormone therapy medication". Not that the above is relevant to this thread anyway, what with keffals having done nothing of the sort. (And for wider context, I live in the UK and can confirm that football and transphobia are currently vying for the the honour of having the most media attention and approval. Off-label use of unscheduled medications is also legal here - it's illegal to supply them. The workaround is to buy from a pharmacy that isn't in the UK and doesn't care that it may occasionally be violating UK law.)

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Sat, 27 Aug 2022 09:40:29 -0800

Part of the reason people are incensed at CloudFlare specifically is that they're an industry standard provider. If the site was moved to a fascist-friendly provider, it'll be far more vulnerable because these providers tend not to have a lot of technical talent. It might stay up but its reliability would be much more questionable, which will drive people from the site. Again, when Epik took on 8chan as a client, the result was that their own providers, once notified of exactly who they were doing business with, pulled their business from them, causing Epik to go dark, along with their clients - which included the Daily Stormer. Which comes to one of the the big things that has activists angry - the fact the CloudFlare head Matthew Prince is more worried about the "free speech" of bigots than the harm their victims are suffering though. The fact that he routinely uses the free speech "absolutist" bad faith argument of "people/speech you don't like" is illustrative of the point, as his use of the argument shows that he is dismissing what people are pointing out about hate sites - that they do real harm to others. He also pulls out the "well, someone is going to provide them with service" argument as well - beyond the fact that Epik getting their legs chopped out from under them belied the point, there's the fact that it fails to answer the moral hazard question of "okay - so why does it have to be you?" Again, I think it's telling that unlike the last times Prince hasn't even tried to play the moral scold here, instead choosing to go dark in response. I think that's a confluence of several factors, such as not having any real grounds to stand on with regards to keeping KiwiFarms as a client (again, they've repeatedly violated the ToS, so CloudFlare has every right to give them the boot), and that he's likely in hot water with the board and trying to publicly argue "no, see, it's actually a GOOD thing that we do business with a forum that terrorizes transgender individuals" would most likely force the board's hands. Which comes to the point - Prince defines the term "so open minded his brain fell out." As CEO of CloudFlare, he has abrogated his duty to keeping the internet safe for the public by providing services to hateful predators. And as such, it's time for him to leave CloudFlare.

By: jimw

jimw — Sat, 27 Aug 2022 22:02:16 -0800

the biggest reason they've got the marketshare they do is because they have a great consumer ux and a free tier that is easy to understand for everyone. none of their competitors come close, even those competitors have feature parity on the actual cdn/proxy functionality cloudflare does. i am working on moving some stuff away from cloudflare, and so much this. all of the other providers seem to operate on the "please call us for a quote" model. ugh.

By: Eyebrows McGee

Eyebrows McGee — Sun, 28 Aug 2022 19:03:25 -0800

[Deleted several. Left a couple to show what people were responding against. MetaFilter is a trans-inclusive space and we are not here for people defending anti-trans activists or repeating gross anti-trans talking points. One person banned.]

By: bcd

bcd — Sun, 28 Aug 2022 19:16:21 -0800

Charming new details from last night:

Joshua Moon's company that hosts Kiwifarms is called 1776 Solutions, LLC. Before 2017, it was called "Final Solutions, LLC" a direct reference to the Holocaust.

Images of the official corporate filings and name change in the link above.

By: Dysk

Dysk — Sun, 28 Aug 2022 21:16:21 -0800

If they weren't so god damn bad at "staying crypto" the tactic of keeping everything plausibly deniable would be a genuinely concerning one. Thankfully a lot of them are idiots who think they're actually really fucking clever. "Final solutions LLC," I ask you.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 16:17:02 -0800

This tweet makes an excellent point as well - beyond the hate, sites like KiwiFarms serve as cybercrime hubs. If, as CloudFlare's representatives state, the company's goal is to "secure the internet", then providing protection to such companies makes no sense as it runs counter to that goal. Also, this piece from Time shows how the blind eye CloudFlare turns helps enable hate and bigotry:

But a new study suggests that Cloudflare also plays an outsized role in propping up sites that peddle hate and misinformation. The May 2022 study from Stanford University researchers analyzed which services hosted 440 of the most prominent misinformation websites in the world. They found that Cloudflare was a safe haven for toxicity. Although just one in five websites across the mainstream internet are hosted by Cloudflare, it hosts one in three websites known primarily for spreading hate speech or misinformation. That makes Cloudflare the main platform misinformation websites have used for hosting since 2015.

There is no neutral when it comes to hate - there is only opposition and support.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 10:11:44 -0800

Sorrenti along with technologist/activist Liz Fong-James have unveiled their next step - a formalized campaign to pressure CloudFlare into dropping KiwiFarms as a client, with details on KiwiFarms ' abuses to help people understand.

By: roolya_boolya

roolya_boolya — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 18:24:37 -0800

Kiwifarms seemingly are continuing their campaign of harassment in Ireland.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 21:51:12 -0800

And there was a bomb threat at Boston Children's Hospital tonight as well. This is why I am done with free speech "absolutism". Hate speech is not the price of free speech.

By: CrystalDave

CrystalDave — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 09:14:02 -0800

Looks like the answer from Cloudflare is... 'Us shutting down 8chan & the Daily Stormer was a mistake & we're not doing that again. There's lots of injustices out there, and we can't solve them, but we *can* protect them'. It'd be nice if, instead of dressing it up in lofty rhetoric, they outright said "We believe it's more important that nobody be able to be pressured in this way than any harms that come of it. Sorry, but the cost of your lives is what we're willing to pay." It'd be more honest, at least.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 09:26:25 -0800

This is an actual line from Prince's line there:

We believe cyberattacks, in any form, should be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Remember, this is being said in defense of retaining a client known for actively engaging in attacks online. Not to mention that people do remember how Prince and CloudFlare unceremoniously dumped as a client a Mastodon instance run by and used by sex workers to support each other, citing SESTA/FOSTA. As unintentional resignation letters go, that one's impressive in how firmly he stepped on the rake.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 09:39:04 -0800

Also, CloudFlare has transphobia offsets:

For instance, when a site that opposed LGBTQ+ rights signed up for a paid version of DDoS mitigation service we worked with our Proudflare employee resource group to identify an organization that supported LGBTQ+ rights and donate 100 percent of the fees for our services to them. We don't and won't talk about these efforts publicly because we don't do them for marketing purposes; we do them because they are aligned with what we believe is morally correct.

"See, it's okay that we work with hate, because we in turn provide free services to LGBTQ groups...to push back on the hate groups we have as clients... Are we in a Mitchell and Webb skit?"

By: rmd1023

rmd1023 — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 16:08:44 -0800

"We don't/won't talk about these publicly" has some definite "we support the lurkers in email" energy going on, there. Personally I like supporting causes I think are good *without* doing so to offset the fact that I'm helping enable swatting. But that's just me.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 16:51:46 -0800

"We don't/won't talk about these publicly" has some definite "we support the lurkers in email" energy going on, there. It's also a bald faced lie - CloudFlare was happy to talk about the program to Gizmodo when they came around asking about the hate sites the company hosted:

Instead of being deliberate about whose business they take, Cloudflare pivoted to providing free services to organizations fighting hate—like Bedayaa, which advocates for LGBTQI rights in Egypt and Sudan. Good speech, the company hopes, will win the day over bad speech without the need for corporate censorship.

I think the embargo on reporters is going to blow up in their face, because idle reporters get nosy and start snooping - and they find things like the Westboro Baptist Church being a client since 2014.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 20:05:17 -0800

Sorrenti and the Drop KiwiFarms Campaign have responded to CloudFlare's statement, showing how self-serving Prince's sophistry is.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 18:57:40 -0800

The story has now reached NBC News. If CloudFlare's strategy is to turtle until the story goes away - it's not working.

By: mbrubeck

mbrubeck — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 15:25:23 -0800

Victory! Cloudflare announces they have blocked Kiwifarms.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 15:34:46 -0800

On one hand, it's good that CloudFlare finally, kicking and screaming all the way, did the right thing when it was pointed out that the moment a murder could be tied back to KiwiFarms, it would be the end of CloudFlare as a concern. On the other hand, the fact that it took a sustained pressure campaign to get Prince to do the moral thing, and that his statement in doing so continues to engage in dishonest, disingenuous sophistry, demonstrates that Prince is manifestly unfit to remain as the CEO.

By: Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted

Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 16:08:20 -0800

Yeah, the takeaway here is that CloudFlare is cowardly and amoral. I'm glad that I'm in enough of a place of influence within my company that I can loudly oppose our using them and have my vote be worth a damn, because the thought of giving those fucks money makes my skin crawl.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 16:44:48 -0800

The Drop KiwiFarms Campaign has released their statement on the dropping of KiwiFarms.

By: bcd

bcd — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 17:08:26 -0800

Yeah. Better than nothing, certainly, but still a whiney, only-under-duress, decision. Glad KiwiFarms is blocked, but I've already moved the small services I was hosting at CloudFlare and deleted my account. I certainly won't be going back, and I expect there are lots of others who have made the same decision. And for the record, they have a bullshit "it might take 12 months to actually delete your personal information" warning at the end of the account deletion process.

By: bcd

bcd — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 17:26:47 -0800

If, like me, you were using CloudFlare's public DNS servers and nearly forgot to get rid of those - Quad9 seems the best replacement choice.

By: LostInUbe

LostInUbe — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 15:13:16 -0800

Ben Collins (who did the NBC story) on twitter: "Josh Moon, the founder of Kiwi Farms, said in a post on Telegram today that "I do not see a situation where the Kiwi Farms is simply allowed to operate." The site may be dead. Even Russian providers are bailing. "This meme about Russia being a free country is a joke," he said."

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 18:21:27 -0800

The Drop KiwiFarms Campaign releases a final statement on the site's collapse after even Russian "bulletproof" hosts dropped them. The site may be dead. Even Russian providers are bailing. Honestly, it's not that surprising that the Russian providers are bailing - for them, this is business, and it's bad business to keep on a client who costs you more rubles than they pay you,and who may bring unwanted attention to your business. But for Prince and CloudFlare, this was ideological. As Liz Fong-Jones notes, KiwiFarms was paying $20/month for protection, and the head of Patreon stated that Prince told him that he would rather lose an enterprise customer than drop free users who were scraping Patreon content. KiwiFarms was allowed to abuse, harm, and drive to the brink numerous marginalized people in large part because of one man's ideological belief that he was "protecting" marginalized groups by enabling their abusers. It needs to be made abundantly clear to the CloudFlare board that there is no path forward for them with Prince at the helm.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 14:57:30 -0800

And the Internet Archive's records of KiwiFarms have been purged. On one hand, this is a necessary and good step to curtail access to their dox logs. On the other, a question for Brewster Kahle to answer is why is the Archive not proactively removing such sites from the Archive, as for the marginalized these records are time bombs.

By: bcd

bcd — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 22:12:08 -0800

On one hand, this is a necessary and good step to curtail access to their dox logs. On the other, a question for Brewster Kahle to answer is why is the Archive not proactively removing such sites from the Archive, as for the marginalized these records are time bombs. Hard agree this is necessary now. There's an interesting side question of whether it would be possible to maintain some secure but not generally accessible archive of hate sites like KF as legal evidence and/or for future historians. It's a messy, quis custodiet ipsos custodes, sort of problem though. Some sort of write-only system, that requires a warrant from a court to access? Or IRB-approval for research on data that's been scrubbed of PII? Meh. Neither of those sound feasible, and I don't have better ideas.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 08:01:17 -0800

There's an interesting side question of whether it would be possible to maintain some secure but not generally accessible archive of hate sites like KF as legal evidence and/or for future historians. No, there really isn't, because whatever value might be derived from such an archive is vastly dwarfed by the danger and harm the very existence of the archive represents to the people targeted in It.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 09:11:11 -0800

And Prince is running his usual "wah I have too much power (that I refuse to cede in any meaningful way)" disinformation routine in which he argues that it's horrible that he was forced to make a stand on hate. I really wish the reporter would point out everything that KiwiFarms has done, all the harm they committed, all the lives they ruined - and then force Prince to defend why he abetted that.

By: Dysk

Dysk — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 09:31:21 -0800

No, there really isn't, because whatever value might be derived from such an archive is vastly dwarfed by the danger and harm the very existence of the archive represents to the people targeted in It. That's only true for a handful of decades at the outside. It should definitely not be publicly accessible for the foreseeable, but it should still exist for future historians.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 09:43:08 -0800

That's only true for a handful of decades at the outside. It should definitely not be publicly accessible for the foreseeable, but it should still exist for future historians. So, how long should those people live with a sword of Damocles over their head? You can't guarantee that this will remain out of the public - the fact of its very existence will make it a target - and to argue that living, extant people should be diminished in favor of future people, well...that's an argument that has been debunked elsewhere.

By: CrystalDave

CrystalDave — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 10:33:02 -0800

I'm reminded of the existence of & debate over retaining smallpox samples. There's two labs known to have it, under the strictest-defined safety levels. The US's CDC, & Russia's VECTOR institute. It was cut down to those two after the last outbreak & fatality came from an escape from a research lab in Birmingham. A couple years after that consolidation, the WHO recommended destroying all remaining samples. The date for destruction kept getting pushed back, as there was resistance to the idea. In 2010, the topic was reviewed, with the determination that no essential public health purpose is served by the American and Russian laboratories continuing to retain live virus stocks. And yet, they still exist. Here's a thread from an archivist, who was themselves targeted by KiwiFarms aggressively, on that topic going through what it might take. (I believe they were the one who made the most public request to IA to scrub it) Notable:

The people doxed by KiwiFarms did not consent for their private information to be archived by IA. Previously IA has had robust policies to ensure archived content can be removed if it validates the consent of its creators, but who gets to consent here, posters or victims?

I'm pretty sure the Internet Archive doesn't want to figure out how best to safeguard CSAM + PII (child sexual abuse materials + personally identifying information) + a whole bunch of questionable-at-best speculation & confabulation for future historians. I don't know who *would*, or what such a thing would look like. But I'm fine drawing a line under this and going "the harm of keeping this around outweighs the theoretical benefit to keeping it extant".

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 15:33:01 -0800

> Prince is very much a "hate speech is the price of free speech" sort - which is why he needs to go. Who else historically is in that crowd is the ACLU. Back when they did the unpopular thing defended some nazi's But plenty of people seem cool with a call to file bar grievances VS a youtubbing lawyer. His day 5 of the ban rant used racial/religious and sexual slurs so not sure he's helping himself. And plenty seem cool with a call to find every active user on the site and go after their jobs. Only a few people have bothered to point out a reason to kill off DDOS protection is to then use DDOS - a crime in many places. How comfortable are others going to be when such tactics are used VS something like abortion to "save the babies"?

By: eviemath

eviemath — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 16:28:16 -0800

Who's advocating killing off DDOS protection (in general)?

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 17:49:55 -0800

Who else historically is in that crowd is the ACLU. Back when they did the unpopular thing defended some nazi's Just because a position is unpopular doesn't make it right. The fact that we hold up allowing Nazis to terrorize Holocaust survivors through a show of force as a symbol of free speech is rather fucked up, in my opinion. Also, when the position reached its ultimate apotheosis with the murder of Heather Hayer, the left wing community responded by getting the ACLU out of the Nazi defending business. But plenty of people seem cool with a call to file bar grievances VS a youtubbing lawyer. His day 5 of the ban rant used racial/religious and sexual slurs so not sure he's helping himself. And plenty seem cool with a call to find every active user on the site and go after their jobs. Consequences for abusers and terrorists are good, actually. Only a few people have bothered to point out a reason to kill off DDOS protection is to then use DDOS - a crime in many places. Nobody's saying that, so you can put down the strawman, thanks. What people are saying is that bigots, abusers, and terrorists should not be protected because tolerance is a peace treaty, and those who won't abide by the terms should not be allowed to call on its protection. How comfortable are others going to be when such tactics are used VS something like abortion to "save the babies"? First off, you clearly haven't been paying attention, because they have been. Second, binding our hands will never bind theirs, as Sartre pointed out:

Never believe that anti‐ Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.

I find it ridiculous that when transgender people fought back against people who would see them dead and won, there are those who would argue they were wrong for doing so.

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 07:18:29 -0800

>The fact that we hold up allowing Nazis to terrorize Holocaust survivors through a show of force as a symbol of free speech is rather fucked up, in my opinion. Just the mere presence is a 'show of force'? If one considers the US law fucked up on the freedom of speech then work to change it if you truly believe that. But the cost of freedom of speech from government force may very well be having things you don't like. >>But plenty of people seem cool with a call to file bar grievances VS a youtubbing lawyer. His day 5 of the ban rant used racial/religious and sexual slurs so not sure he's helping himself. >Consequences for abusers and terrorists are good, actually. The level for abuse needing to lose your state backed license to practice your job is nothing more than using words here that would get me banned due to TOS? I'm all for a bar grievance as the management here knows by the number of times my mentioning it has resulted in a deleted post. But if the collective we is all in favor of attorneys being punished for moral turpitude, ok. Does that stop with just attorneys? What if, in a live stream you commit an actual crime no matter how minor. Is it OK for others to go hammer and tongs over that trying to get that crime prosecuted? What if they are shameless and brag about the crime? Now is it OK? > the left wing community responded by getting the ACLU out of the Nazi defA problem that ending business. That seems to minimize the statement made on PBS.org. After the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned deadly, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero told The Wall Street Journal that the group will review legal requests from white supremacist groups on a case-by-case basis, assessing more closely whether their protests would have the potential to be violent. Which is not the same as 'out of that business'. Of course when statements like > Second, binding our hands will never bind theirs, [I want to put forth right now I'm looking at this from the US POV even though this is an international forum with international users about a place causing problems internationally. The international laws that DID actually effect the place was taking the AS number with Australia.] At what point does the ACLU apply the 'no violence' rule to the next rejected protest permit to an unjust victim of police violence which had a riot declared in a different city predating the requested permit. The 'its OK to break the law' is how change can and does happen because many laws are unjust and the US of A has so many laws to count them Or as Mr. Gainer characterized this fruitless project: "[y]ou will have died and [been] resurrected three times," and still not have an answer to this question. In theory, there is a 'release valve' in the US legal system is jury nullification but that has gotten limited pushback by some of the 'we' here. If you are going to break a law just because others are breaking a law, own that. And while all cops are bastards and the DA want cases that are easy go read your state statutes on criminal procedures. There should be a way for you, the citizen, to file criminal charges about the crimes being committed VS yourself or others. It used to be on the federal level one could make direct grand jury presentments but this was changed after black men coming back on liberty ships from WWII had conversations learning about such presentments and started using them. >What people are saying is that bigots, abusers, and terrorists should not be protected because tolerance is a peace treaty, and those who won't abide by the terms should not be allowed to call on its protection. Seems like the position is the removal of the DDOS protection was so the site can be DDOSed. Is it bad to own that? If the 'grand hero' of the removal from cloudflare was saying things about ontological evil justifying all responsive actions then own that. Understand that ownership causes a downward spiral in conduct. > I find it ridiculous that when transgender people fought back against people who would see them dead and won, On the declared "we removed Cloudflare" yes, that was a win. Actual effective activism by people like lizthegrey (and others less public) using Australian law to have the AS number pulled or Yonah who wants to claim archive.org was their victory by getting the site removed there. But the site is still accepting new posts as I am lead to believe and I'm lead to believe it will be moving to Epik who as I understand host gab, stormfront, the daily stormer, and parler. The "win" may very well be no more postings of anything like a death threat and no posting of the address because if Keffals is to be believed the use of "assault" guns is an international problem. SWATting should be addressed because the person who was complaining about having that done to her was more than happy to hope the same fate on another showing the utter lack of self control "online activists" have and won't go away just because ToSes say 'no doxing'. But if KF sticks around and leans REALLY hard into what they claim about themselves 'pointing an laughing at others on the internet' and you really want to not have a site which collects things people want forgotten there won't be a memory hole for things to fall down. No actual right to be forgotten. IF KF had an enforced ToS that got rid of death threats and posting PI that is not also found in publicly searched data - are they now OK? Is that just OK enough for them to remain online because that seems to be their only option and Moon seems stubborn enough to do just that just to keep the place up.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 07:51:47 -0800

Seems like the position is the removal of the DDOS protection was so the site can be DDOSed That's not my position. My position is that Cloudflare should have dropped KiwiFarms as a client as soon as it became clear to them that KiwiFarms had no intention of making anything even vaguely resembling a good faith effort to comply with CloudFlare's stated terms of service. All the pearl-clutching horseshit that Prince has been spouting about Won't Somebody Think Of The Free Speech is completely irrelevant to evaluating the appropriateness of enforcing its advertised ToS. If Prince had genuine concerns about freedom of speech, then CloudFlare's ToS would never have included the provisions that it allowed KF to run roughshod over for years and years and years in the first place. The ToS are as they are because whoever wrote them understood that not including provisions of that kind in the ToS would make his business look like the kind of tinpot little shitbird outfit that no sizeable customer would ever want to do business with. But Prince is an arsehole, so he's trying to have it both ways and pretend that so is everybody else, and that the ToS as published are merely a virtue-signalling figleaf over what "everybody understands" are their actual terms of service, which evidently make murderers' money as good as anybody else's. I think it's not only quite wonderful but completely predictable that all his waffling on this is in fact starting to cost him customers. Turns out, not everybody is an arsehole. Who'd have thought? If I were a CloudFlare shareholder I would certainly be pressing the Board to sack him. He's clearly been promoted well past his level of incompetence.

By: Etrigan

Etrigan — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 08:16:20 -0800

oh no this slope its so slippery ahhhhh oh noooo Sorry, pal, but "What if the Nazis start HACKING people too?!?" isn't the slam dunk you seem to think it is.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 08:36:41 -0800

Just the mere presence is a 'show of force'? Why yes, that's how basic group dynamics work, especially in regards to hate and bigotry - a public assembly of a group is a show of presence. The whole point of Nazis marching through a heavily Jewish suburb of Chicago was to send a very specific message to that community to terrorize them, to let them know that they would not be allowed to peacefully exist. But the cost of freedom of speech from government force may very well be having things you don't like. Not this bad faith argument again. First off, let us note that we are not talking about the government here - we are talking about a private business which has every right to choose who they do business with. The whole issue is that Prince is engaging in dishonest sophistry to dodge the simple fact that he made the choice to provide protection to hate groups, because he knows he can't defend that decision. Second, "speech you don't like" is a bad faith euphemistic argument used to dodge the reality of what "hate speech is the price of free speech" actually means, because it turns out that particular argument isn't all that defensible for a number of reasons. You demand that we should own DDOSing hate sites (which I will, given the real harm these sites do to actual people as well as the blind eye law enforcement routinely turns in these cases - communities have the right to defend themselves) while in turn refusing to own your own argument. [I want to put forth right now I'm looking at this from the US POV even though this is an international forum with international users about a place causing problems internationally. The international laws that DID actually effect the place was taking the AS number with Australia.] Which is part of the problem - free speech "absolutism" is positively dripping with American exceptionalism. Many commenters here have pointed out that the discussion of free speech and hate speech winds up dominated by American views on the matter, with a refusal by many activists to consider that many other Western countries manage to balance free speech with opposition to hate speech. Not to mention that we routinely see free speech "absolutists" wax poetic about "chilling effects" while pointedly ignoring the way hate chills the speech of the marginalized. It is not terribly surprising that free speech "absolutists" have found themselves on the back foot as marginalized groups point out that they have the right to exist, and how they have gotten the short stick of the deal as they are done with being expected to take one for the team and shoulder abuse. But if KF sticks around and leans REALLY hard into what they claim about themselves 'pointing an laughing at others on the internet' and you really want to not have a site which collects things people want forgotten there won't be a memory hole for things to fall down. No actual right to be forgotten. IF KF had an enforced ToS that got rid of death threats and posting PI that is not also found in publicly searched data - are they now OK? Is that just OK enough for them to remain online because that seems to be their only option and Moon seems stubborn enough to do just that just to keep the place up. This is an insult to the victims of KiwiFarms, especially the people they drove to suicide. This argument of how we should take abusers, bigots, and terrorists at face value is patently ridiculous, and is a demonstration of why free speech "absolutism" is being rejected more and more.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 11:33:08 -0800

All the pearl-clutching horseshit that Prince has been spouting about Won't Somebody Think Of The Free Speech is completely irrelevant to evaluating the appropriateness of enforcing its advertised ToS. If Prince had genuine concerns about freedom of speech, then CloudFlare's ToS would never have included the provisions that it allowed KF to run roughshod over for years and years and years in the first place. One of the big points being made on the CloudFlare Reputation Rehabilitation Tour is that their hands were "forced" by an escalation in rhetoric and behavior at KiwiFarms. Of course, what they'd like us all to ignore is that this escalation happened right after their first statement, where they all but said that CloudFlare would retain KiwiFarms as a client. Why wouldn't they run riot after being told that there would be no consequences? Also, the media needs to do better and stop just regurgitating CloudFlare's spin. At least the Ars commentariat is calling out the response as the bullshit it is.

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 16:14:36 -0800

My position is that Cloudflare should have dropped KiwiFarms as a client as soon as it became clear to them that KiwiFarms had no intention of making anything even vaguely resembling a good faith effort to comply with CloudFlare's stated terms of service. And damn straight they should have. The internet is effectively a private network for the bulk of us. In nations where the State controls the internet they are commonly places like North Korea and Cuba. Those places are not the kind of places where the 'we' of Metafilter are found for a reason - the state control of the internet. That private control and US protection via 230 is why it seems the actual servers are in the US of A. > That's not my position. [DDOS concerns] But it has been the position of others who are offering up unquestioning support. Like the post of based_lefty on Twitter. Which used to be at https://twitter.com/based_lefty/status/1566357561489629186 So the text will have to do because no one here in this thread will want to go to the place which would have had it copied.

Easy set up pkg for anyone who's interested in DDÖ$ing Kiwifarms. ru.

(Windows treats as a botnet so you may have to temporarily disable realtime protection to use it.  Feel free to set up on a VM.)

(Ensure ONLY Kiwifarms. ru follows .py in the .bat!!)

So yes, a demonstrated reason for Cloudflare to be gone so some could DDOS. Assuming the code was "real" and the whole thing is not fake.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 17:27:00 -0800

So yes, a demonstrated reason for Cloudflare to be gone so some could DDOS. Assuming the code was "real" and the whole thing is not fake. All right, and your point is? Because what you're doing is trying to make the Robot Santa argument here while failing to acknowledge the ridiculousness of the situation which is the heart of the joke there, and why your pearl clutching over victims of abuse fighting back against their abusers also comes off as ridiculous. Because the reality is that KiwiFarms was emboldened by CloudFlare's protection that meant, in combination with the blind eye of law enforcement towards abuse of transgender individuals, that they could abuse with impunity. Again, it was completely unsurprising that when CloudFlare made their first statement where they all but said that no, they were not going drop KiwiFarms and said they regretted dropping the Daily Stormer and 8chan, that KiwiFarms took this as validation of their impunity and escalated. After all, they were told that they wouldn't be dropped. Which is why CloudFlare pulling a surprised Pikachu when the obvious happened is rather offensive and yet another example of the dishonesty of their argument. It also wasn't surprising when CloudFlare realized how fucked they would be if their name was tied to KiwiFarms when they finally got someone killed again, and they responded by dropping KiwiFarms like a particularly hot potato, nor that KiwiFarms went into total panic mode because without CloudFlare running interference, their victims could finally fight back. Earlier, you demanded people take ownership of people wanting to DDOS KiwiFarms - well, here's doing that, by pointing out that victims of abuse have the right to be safe and fight back to protect their safety. My question to you is that do you have an argument against them fighting for their right to exist that isn't just another appeal to the "greater good" that they shoulder this abuse? Or are you going to continue this false equivalency that victims fighting back against their abusers is morally equivalent to those abusers harming them?

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 06:27:06 -0800

pointing out that victims of abuse have the right to be safe and fight back to protect their safety. And under the rule of law, that right ends when one breaks the laws of the nation. If you actually feel the law needs to be broken there is a process called a jury trial and the 10th amendment exists with nullification as the way of supporting just violation of a law. Removing the DDoS protection was done to allow the breaking of ISP ToS contracts and various state and national laws to have an time and economic effect on the site. Earlier, you demanded people take ownership of people wanting to DDOS KiwiFarms - well, here's doing that Ok but ownership is not saying All right, and your point is? The arguments being about how speech needs to be further limited does require the removal of the speech clause of the United States constitution if one wants to turn square corners within the bounds of law. Because KF is still a functioning server and seems to actually be on US soil based on a comment by Moon about Russia VS US. I do not see advocates to a constitutional amendment nor do I see a groundswell for supporting jury nullification. And I do not see the removal of KF from user programmable internet accessing devices. Nor do I see doxbin (had to look up thought it was doxbox) or other sites removed. Telegram is still a thing. And the companies like a palantir who gather up location and profile information still exist. What has been done is KF existence is harder, the ease of access is reduced, and with the dot net being down they don't show up in some search engines. As a harm reduction effort it will have some effect. All the sound and fury has taken Moon from 2020 wanting to quit to him now buying more EQ to keep the site up along with the idea of making the whole site a torrent just to keep the data out there. The public victory laps with overblown claims about total victory appear to be driving him. Diving him to an update while writing this about putting KF on a whole bunch of 'bulletproof' hosting, give the list of the hosts and let the bulletproof marketing get tested.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 07:41:40 -0800

And under the rule of law, that right ends when one breaks the laws of the nation. If you actually feel the law needs to be broken there is a process called a jury trial and the 10th amendment exists with nullification as the way of supporting just violation of a law. First off, civil disobedience, where one breaks an unjust law to demonstrate the unjustness of the law and force action, is a thing. Second, let me ask you this: how many more transgender individuals need to be terrorized into committing suicide before you will acknowledge that the rule of law has failed here, and that they have a right to exist? This constant appeal to the "greater good" to argue that victims are wrong for fighting back against their abusers so that they can exist is morally reprehensible. The arguments being about how speech needs to be further limited does require the removal of the speech clause of the United States constitution if one wants to turn square corners within the bounds of law. Because KF is still a functioning server and seems to actually be on US soil based on a comment by Moon about Russia VS US. One, we are talking about private entities here - so the constant calls to the First Amendment are a complete non-sequetor, as it doesn't apply to them. Free speech does not mean that you are owed a soapbox. Second, it is telling that you keep waxing poetic about how DDOSing KiwiFarms is such a blow to free speech, and yet you continue to ignore the numerous victims of the site talking about how they had to hide themselves in order to avoid becoming a target for abuse, harassment, and terrorism - and how since the site was taken down, they now feel that they can be open and speak openly. Why don't you care about their speech and how it was chilled? And I do not see the removal of KF from user programmable internet accessing devices. Nor do I see doxbin (had to look up thought it was doxbox) or other sites removed. Telegram is still a thing. And the companies like a palantir who gather up location and profile information still exist. Ah yes, the perfect - enemy of the good since time immemorial. Deplatforming works - yes, Moon is trying to keep KiwiFarms up, but with the blows his site has taken, it has splintered the community and severely undermined their ability to abuse their targets. Furthermore, KiwiFarms relied on a lack of awareness about their existence to operate - they no longer have that, which increases their risk and further discourages people from joining up. Is it perfect? No, of course not. Is it a sight better than where it was? Very much so. So once again, I put the question to you - do you have an argument that doesn't just devolve to the transgender community shouldering abuse silently for the "greater good"?

By: Dysk

Dysk — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 07:45:52 -0800

This issue goes so far beyond US borders, KF is accessible internationally and neither the participants nor their targets are confined exclusively to the US (and nor are potential DDOSers). So like, argue about US law and morals relating to that all you want, but this is a bigger issue than "the nation" and its laws don't feel awful relevant to this situation for a lot of people.

By: rmd1023

rmd1023 — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 15:27:29 -0800

Apparently they're back at least for a while with a DNS name in a smaller country-code TLD.

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 08:45:16 -0800

This issue goes so far beyond US borders, Yes, which is why AU law is what was used to take away the AU assigned IPs. Humans are nasty, brutish things and the internet just allows for that to happen faster and with more eyes on the behavior. But US laws matter in this case given the off hand comment the servers are in the US and not Russia because of US law WRT Freedom. laws don't feel awful relevant to this situation for a lot of people. So it seems. And they can act in a lawless manner and hope they don't catch charges. and if they do, hope the jury sees things their way with the 10th Amendment. Apparently they're back at least for a while with a DNS name in a smaller country-code TLD. The site might only end up as a .onion. Or Moon will go heaver on moderation and be able to find a place that will keep the site on the clearnet. The site has a history going up and down so celebrating a 404 error at any instant in time appears to be a path to a roller coaster of joy and sorrow. What is not going to help the online hate mob must be stopped at all cost POV is things like The Hill points out or coverage like Blocked and Reported now has on the topic. And while The Blue will lecture on victim blaming the rest of the world isn't The Blue. And the rest of the world will judge a person who goes out of their way to pick online fights to the point where they will create a falsified tweet of someone else just to, I guess, own them. Link to a stream where the faker is being told the faking is bad as an example of shitty person doing a shitty thing to a shitty person while people around them are trying to tell them how doing such is bad. Like harm your future credibility bad with anyone who thinks conduct should have limits.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 12:44:26 -0800

Like harm your future credibility bad with anyone who thinks conduct should have limits. And yet you continue to carry water for a website that literally terrorized transgender people to commit suicide. The fact that you're more concerned about the behavior of victims of abuse that you are of the behavior of their abusers is telling, and undermines your own credibility. Humans are nasty, brutish things and the internet just allows for that to happen faster and with more eyes on the behavior. But US laws matter in this case given the off hand comment the servers are in the US and not Russia because of US law WRT Freedom. You keep talking about freedom, yet ignore all the people who have been pointing out how they were forced to live in fear of having their lives torn apart by the people on KiwiFarms for just existing and promoting transgender rights. Why is their freedom to be able to just live in peace not important to you, but the freedom of bigots to abuse and terrorize needs to be defended? This is why "hate speech is the price of free speech" is an indefensible statement - it is the argument that people's lives are the "cost" of a nebulous "greater good", and all we can do is to accept that. It is being a cheerleader for Omelas. It's also why CloudFlare's statements came off as so dishonest - because Prince (who, remember, is a lawyer by training) was very careful to engage in a lie of omission and never directly talk about what KiwiFarms did, only framing it in words like "reprehensible". Beyond that, trying to argue "but the law!" while ignoring how law enforcement routinely ignores the abuse of marginalized individuals as well as being completely unequipped to handle campaigns of online abuse, harassment, and terrorism comes across as a sick joke. It brings to mind Frank Wilhoit's famous statement about the definition of conservatism, and is an argument for the continued abuse of the marginalized, by arguing that victims of abuse are in the moral wrong for fighting back. The site might only end up as a .onion. Or Moon will go heaver on moderation and be able to find a place that will keep the site on the clearnet. The site has a history going up and down so celebrating a 404 error at any instant in time appears to be a path to a roller coaster of joy and sorrow. This shows a profound lack of understanding of how social dynamics online work,as well as being a continued argument of the perfect over the good. As Sorrenti herself pointed out in her final posting for the campaign, hate sites like KiwiFarms don't fully go away - but when forced into the darkweb or having to hop providers and registrars to keep ahead of them exercising their freedom of association (which is also a right protected by the First Amendment) and giving them the boot, they bleed the community that is the actual source of the site's clout and power. This is why deplatforming works - because it is in fact work to maintain a community, and making that work harder can break communities and thus their power. Arguing that it only counts if the site is fully removed is a ridiculous standard, as well as an insult to the victims who suffered from the abuse at the hands of the KiwiFarms community. So, the question remains - do you have an argument that isn't just demanding that marginalized groups suffer in silence for the "greater good", or are you going to continue to dodge the moral questions put forth with supplication to the law?

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 13:10:50 -0800

Even those who genuinely believe that there must be ingroups whom the law protects but does not bind alongside outgroups whom the law binds but does not protect should be laughed to scorn if they try to argue that KiwiFarms belongs in the first category, or that a service provider's ToS amount to law.

By: mhum

mhum — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 15:49:25 -0800

TBH, this feels a lot like the old "is it ok to punch a Nazi?" debate.

By: Ivan Fyodorovich

Ivan Fyodorovich — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 16:05:54 -0800

Yeah, but after the Nazi has already punched someone first. The doggedness in trying to somehow make keffals the bad guy here is really, really ugly.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 17:25:56 -0800

TBH, this feels a lot like the old "is it ok to punch a Nazi?" debate. There's been a sort of "party trick" with the free speech set, where they defend all sorts of hate and bigotry as a way to prove their bona fides - things like Twitter keeping up ISIS beheading videos, or Mark Zuckerberg refusing to remove Holocaust deniers, to name a few examples. It's sort of like eating ghost peppers, but for hate. And this has been defended with the argument that open discourse requires allowing hate. The thing is that as the marginalized have gained their voice in recent years, they have begun to point out the holes in the argument - that allowing hate a seat at the table incurs real costs, mostly borne by the targets and victims; that these "defenders" of free speech have turned a blind eye to how the speech of the marginalized has been chilled by fear for their own safety; that it is a form of abuse to demand that victims tolerate their abusers. And it's turned out that they don't have good answers to this, in large part due to a contradiction at the core of their beliefs - speech is powerful and needs to be protected...and yet it's meaningless and targets of hate speech should just ignore it. That contradiction is breaking down, and they don't have an answer to that, because treating speech as an act with consequences has been alien to them.

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 18:14:47 -0800

The doggedness in trying to somehow make keffals the bad guy here is really, really ugly. if one has the attitude that if the person being attacked is vile, nothing is off limits then I can understand why one might think faking someone's online identity is OK and the pointing out of behavior Keffals actual co-hosts sure did sound disapproving of at the very moment of it happening would have no meaning. In the case of the person who was having a faked image made he: * Had claimed he was having The Daily Stormer publish an article he wrote. * Has went after other people's sponsors but DID walk it back a couple of weeks later saying it was wrong. * is featured in multiple articles as an example of bad conduct. * has a subreddit saying he's a nazi * tried to use KiwiFarms as his attack army. According to a streamer known as Stardust Keffals did 'go after' fake DM target's sponsors. And Stardust mentioned that in terms of how doing that was in bad form. Stardust also had a comment about how a Ricky was being attacked up until he offered to get Keffals some kind of sponsorship hookup with MetaPC (who also is a sponsor of the very same faked DM subject) and the claim is with money on the table Keffals changed her tune. When members of your own stream, of your own community, contemporaneously are saying what you are doing is a bad idea, when members of 'your community' say your actions are things that are just not done, perhaps you ARE doing things that are bad ideas and the actions being taken have actual limits. VS what has been argued in this thread. One last data point on the 'nazi evil so all attacks are justified' scorched earth as a high and mighty principle case here. After the subject of the fake DM tried to use KiwiFarms as his attack dog he got himself a over 500 page KiwiFarms thread. And anyone who follows him knew he was moving to a new house. Somehow having a thread on KF and having to move means the farms had Doxed him and forced him to move and the highly principled Keffals then asked for the assistance of fake DM target to help her in taking down KiwiFarms. If the kind of person you claim to be is highly principled and evil must be fought with all tools and you had done the scorched earth kind of things in the past VS faked DM target, how principled are you actually to then claim a thing that didn't happen means you should now join your fight against doxing nazis? Oh and fake DM target later made a video where it would not be a bad faith argument of water carrying for KiwiFarms.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 18:51:25 -0800

if one has the attitude that if the person being attacked is vile, nothing is off limits then I can understand why one might think faking someone's online identity is OK and the pointing out of behavior Keffals actual co-hosts sure did sound disapproving of at the very moment of it happening would have no meaning. No, the point is that piling on to someone who is currently the target of character assassination is not a good look. Or as activist and Gamergate target Brianna Wu put it:

I don't want to hear this bullshit dragging up every questionable thing @keffals has ever done. It's not 2014 anymore. You should have enough media sophistication to understand when women speak out against internet harassment, the counterplay is to put the victim on trial.

The fact that you look to hold Sorrenti to task while in turn argue that all that Joshua Moon - a man who has operated a site that terrorized transgender people to the point where they committed suicide - would need to do is to "clean up" KiwiFarms pretty much undercuts any credibility your argument might have.

By: Dysk

Dysk — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 19:32:19 -0800

laws don't feel awful relevant to this situation for a lot of people. So it seems. And they can act in a lawless manner and hope they don't catch charges. and if they do, hope the jury sees things their way with the 10th Amendment. That is not what I said, and it is frankly bullshit to selectively quote like that. I did not say that laws don't feel relevant - I said that US laws don't feel relevant, as it's obvious if you don't cut the quote off weirdly mid sentence like you did. Do not put words in my mouth like that.

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 01:16:45 -0800

character assassination Definition of character assassination the slandering of a person usually with the intention of destroying public confidence in that person slander noun Definition of slander (Entry 2 of 2) 1 : the utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another's reputation The willingness to use whatever means they wish to online attack someone that is being represented as a bad look was at least 4 weeks before the event prompting this post to the blue. The faked DM is what "whatever means" in "self defense" looks like. Keep in mind here the "self defense" here is from a guy who's claim to internet fame is drunk peeing in his basement because his wife went out for pizza when he's not saying for $500 superchat he'd empty his bowels in the same drain. Using someone elses digital identity to create a false narrative about them causing them to delete months of their social media where presentation of the falsified DM is "making fun" of them is now character assassination of the electronic forger? This "whatever means" in "self defense" concept still looks flawed from my POV.

By: Dysk

Dysk — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 02:37:38 -0800

Your "arguments" are "not very convincing" when you fill your writing with "scare quotes".

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 03:08:00 -0800

The willingness to use whatever means they wish to online attack someone that is being represented as a bad look was at least 4 weeks before the event prompting this post to the blue. So, in other words, you're engaging in the exact behavior that Brianna Wu called out in the tweet I linked above - you're putting Sorrenti on trial to argue that she was wrong to fight for the removal of KiwiFarms - a website that engaged in the abuse, harassment, and terrorizing of transgender people, leading to at least three deaths by suicide that we know of (and the count is definitely higher.) You demand that we condemn Sorrenti for causing someone to delete their social media - yet you have no words for KiwiFarms literally driving a transgender woman to set herself on fire. And then you wonder why nobody takes your arguments seriously. The reality is that however much of a shitposter Sorrenti may be, that doesn't mean that she deserved to have people try to kill her via cop, or to terrorize and endanger not only her but her family and friends. And her actions aren't seen as "picking a fight", but as her fighting back against a group of domestic terrorists who were allowed to operate with impunity because the head of one of the largest CDN providers believes that he's defending free speech by turning a blind eye to hate groups, assuaging his conscience with literal hate offsets. So, once again, since you keep dodging this very simple question - do you actually have an argument that doesn't devolve to transgender people shouldn't fight back against the people who abuse and terrorize them for the "greater good"? Or are you going to continue to argue that victims of abuse are wrong for fighting back against those who want to see them dead?

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 09:42:14 -0800

KiwiFarms tried to sign on to a new CDN, DiamWall. When they were told about what KiwiFarms was actually about, the CEO pulled service, putting the lie to CloudFlare's self-serving statements:

The owner of Kiwi Farms came in need of DDoS Protection and because their website was offline due to DDoS, we didn't really know about their website's content. They had a PROBLEM and we had the SOLUTION. Soon enough the reports started to arrive and we started digging more and more about this website, soon enough we found that Kiwi Farms hosts a lot of revolting content. We do not think that is fair to terminate any service because of public pressure but in this case, we think there is some foundation behind all those requests and we really do not want to have anything to do with it. So, after careful consideration, DiamWall does not feel like Kiwi Farms is a good fit for our company, which means that today we are SUSPENDING their service inside DiamWall's CDN.

I don't agree with some of the points like arguing that public pressure is inherently bad, but unlike CloudFlare, they took the complaints seriously, investigated, and realized they did not want to be tied to this, and chose not to.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 10:06:57 -0800

Thinking about it, I feel that I misread his argument on public pressure campaigns - he makes the point that while they should not solely act on the public pressure campaign, they should not turn a blind eye to it either. Which is a position I can agree with.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 08:05:32 -0800

And it appears that KiwiFarms has been completely compromised with user info and passwords out in the wild.

By: Dysk

Dysk — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 20:04:56 -0800

Oh that is just some delicious irony. From the linked twitter thread: "It should be noted that a Kiwi Farms user posted a victims social media password on the site just yesterday, in a thread a few posts below the admin's post. The reasoning this has been okayed in the past is 'people should practice better security'." In this context, I am fully on board with a vigilante pulling their fucking pants down.

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 09:45:52 -0800

I am fully on board with a vigilante pulling their fucking pants down. What does this pantsing actual entail? Do you think that people shouldn't circulate breached data for things like this?

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 12:26:28 -0800

I think it's wrong to circulate breached data and would never advocate that anybody would do that. I also know that there are people who are going to do that no matter what I think about it. I can't find it in myself to be unhappy when things that I think shouldn't happen do happen to people with a history of doing those very things and advocating for their acceptability. There is some minuscule chance that one or two of those people might reflect on the resulting experiences enough to pull their heads out of their arseholes and learn a bit of civilization. As for the likely majority who remain uncivilized: fuck 'em. They've shown that they're not interested in civilization and I have no interest in forcing it on them.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 13:53:34 -0800

What does this pantsing actual entail? That a bunch of bigots who thought they could fuck around and terrorize transgender people with the intention of pushing them to the brink with impunity are now finding out that their own identities are exposed and as such they can be held accountable for their abuse. As I said before, consequences for abusers are good, actually. The SwiftOnSecurity Twitter feed had a good thread on how your OPSEC is only as good as your slipups, and motivated actors will use them against you. And there's no motivation quite like fighting for your life. Do you think that people shouldn't circulate breached data for things like this? To continue on a point flabdablet made, a regular argument that KiwiFarms users would make for their own disclosures of personal information was that their victims didn't practice proper security. So I'm not exactly torn up when their petard blew up in their faces, because I'm a firm believer in tolerance as a peace treaty. And one of the core points of that is that if you forswear abiding by the obligations of tolerance, you also forswear its protections. Or to put it simply - live by the sword, die by the sword.

By: Dysk

Dysk — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 22:10:18 -0800

What does this pantsing actual entail? Do you think that people shouldn't circulate breached data for things like this? Just asking questions!

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 22:35:42 -0800

Do you think that people shouldn't circulate breached data for things like this? Please clarify "like this." In the general case, I think people shouldn't circulate breached data. In this specific case, I am laughing like a drain. This is pretty much "should you punch people like this" for the video of Richard Spencer getting walloped. To put this another way, the lawful good answer to this question is no, they shouldn't, but the chaotic good one is "it's fucking hilarious when they do."

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 02:39:05 -0800

Please clarify "like this." Management - that was not a link, mea culpa. Can you correct? People shouldn't circulate breached data for things like this Perhaps you can go ask the original author what they met? He was, after all, good enough to be quoted in the last calendar gasp of this thread. To put this another way, the lawful good answer to this question is no, they shouldn't, but the chaotic good one is "it's fucking hilarious when they do." Yes, it is illegal. But I doubt that enforcement would care and can't imagine Moon pushing for enforcement AND the cred gathering may be different people/group than the logged 120K dump attempt. But the DDoSing effects others not tied to the DDoSing crime. Sitting in the system path for 1/2 a month harmed what outside party(ies)?

By: Dysk

Dysk — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 02:56:02 -0800

Are we supposed to be feeling much sympathy for anyone hypothetically sharing a host with kiwi farms?

By: Dysk

Dysk — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 03:04:16 -0800

Like, you seem incredibly concerned with the welfare of everyone but the actual victims here. If you're not a concern troll, your indistinguishable from one.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 03:22:29 -0800

Yes, it is illegal. But I doubt that enforcement would care and can't imagine Moon pushing for enforcement AND the cred gathering may be different people/group than the logged 120K dump attempt. But the DDoSing effects others not tied to the DDoSing crime. Sitting in the system path for 1/2 a month harmed what outside party(ies)? Hmm...that would be (checks notes) ah, yes - the New Zealand based neo-Nazi group that Moon was providing hosting to, most likely as a fuck you to NZ for blocking KiwiFarms in response to their refusal to stop hosting the Christchurch massacre video. Remind me why I should care? And again, you're so adamant - so concerned - about the "collateral damage" from the attacks on KiwiFarms (while ignoring that because of their nature, they use the sort of host that turns a blind eye to who they host), while not having a single word to say about the victims of the site, who had their lives upended, their safety threatened, and for several being pushed to the point where the only escape they felt they had was death. That's why nobody is taking your concerns seriously - because you have no regard for the people KiwiFarms victimized.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 05:21:58 -0800

The thing to bear in mind about the Devil is that his advocacy needs are already pretty thoroughly met.

By: Ivan Fyodorovich

Ivan Fyodorovich — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 06:17:15 -0800

Please, rough ashlar. You've made your point and the horse is thoroughly dead.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 10:45:40 -0800

Oh, and some more follow up on a previous comment: Keep in mind here the "self defense" here is from a guy who's claim to internet fame is drunk peeing in his basement because his wife went out for pizza when he's not saying for $500 superchat he'd empty his bowels in the same drain. Actually, it seems that his "claim to internet fame" is targeted bigoted attacks against sci-fi actors and projects, under a thin veil of "criticism". Which is most likely why Sorrenti went after him. So, why is it that that you're so concerned about the welfare of online abusers, yet have nothing to say about their victims?

By: i used to be someone else

i used to be someone else — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 08:53:11 -0800

rough ashlar, at this point, why should anyone consider you as anything but an apologist for the vilest of the bigots? are you worried that your account on the farms is about to be revealed?

By: i used to be someone else

i used to be someone else — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 09:02:59 -0800

maybe that last comment of mine was ungracious. but at this point this entire thread is you taking on all comers and trying to defend a harassment site on some muddled slippery slope/tu quoque principle. mind you, this harassment site is directly linked to at least three suicides, multiple people chased off of social media and isolated from their communities, high professional costs for other targets, and got its start as a running commentary on an autistic trans person who first gained infamy over a juvenile, childlike fanfic. it was a site that welcomed nazis and fascists and celebrated and hosted media from mass murders.