12 ms·

SWATed streamer Keffals to organise protest in front of Cloudflare SF office

30 points by ksrm 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
IllIllIllIIlIll 4y ago
I would pay to hear eastdakota try to rationalize why protecting KF is a net good for the world. He professes to be a free speech absolutist, which is how they justified protecting controversial sites like The Daily Stormer and 8chan, but the purpose of KF is simply to harm specific, usually non-notable people through relentless doxxing (leading to relentless harassment or worse) usually only justified by them being transgender, or neurodivergent, or otherwise "cringe". There is nothing to debate in the free speech maximalist marketplace of ideas here, unless you seriously want to entertain the idea that vulnerable people deserve to be destroyed for the entertainment of psychopaths.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  - IllIllIllIIlIll 4y ago
    The specifics of how Keffals behaves or what she has or hasn't done are basically irrelevant, because KF would have done exactly the same things to her regardless of any of those factors. Being a prominent trans person online means there is a significant chance of your home address being posted on KF for absolutely no reason other than you're a prominent trans person online.
- bobsmooth 4y ago
  >I would pay to hear eastdakota try to rationalize why protecting KF is a net good for the world. Let me try. KF is a place to archive the publicly-posted online antics of people who willingly publish said antics to the internet. Interacting with the subject of a thread is against the rules and anyone bragging about doing so is banned. If you dislike the idea of people making fun of you for your actions, don't broadcast them to the internet.
  - IllIllIllIIlIll 4y ago
    You and I both know why details like home addresses and phone numbers are documented by KF threads. Interacting being against the rules is basic ass-covering, there's no reason for details like those to be posted unless the intent is for someone to harass them, whether that person is a KF user who knows not to admit it, or a drive-by reader who found the thread on Google. Nobody is buying the line that KF is a purely passive observer, when drawing their attention is so strongly correlated with receiving harassment, or that they only observe intentionally published information, when they scoop up so much obviously private information like addresses and deadnames.
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  As usual, it's a minority of users causing all of the problems. Most people on KF probably aren't doxxing or sending threats, but any time you get a group of people together to talk about someone, chances are some will take it too far. The ultimate example of this was Princess Diana (remember that?). The public was obsessed with her, and that demand fed a constant swarm of paparazzi which eventually led to her crash and death. If people were posting about her on KF, KF would surely be shut down by now. There need to he clear rules. If we shut down every forum where someone says something bad once, are we going to shut down Facebook and Instagram? Of course not, we'll stop short of that. So we give an unfair advantage to Facebook and Instagram, forever entrenching them as the only platforms where speech can happen? Getting back to the Princess Diana analogy, KF probably started as a harmless place to joke about public figures, but in the modern world where everyone is pushed to cultivate their own personal "brand", even someone as uninteresting as a nintendo emulator programmer, it puts regular people at risk of the worst kinds of stalking and harassment etc.
  - IllIllIllIIlIll 4y ago
    > KF probably started as a harmless place to joke about public figures There's no need to assume, we know exactly where KF started. It originally focused on one specific target before branching out, a severely autistic person known as Chris Chan who isn't notable for any reason other than being a target of incredibly intense stalking, harassment and manipulation. The site didn't need to "fall from grace" when its baseline from day one was stalking a random mentally ill person for amusement.
    - richbell 4y ago
      > who isn't notable for any reason other than being a target of incredibly intense stalking, This is demonstrably false. Chris Chan became the obsession of the internet because of his incredibly odd and anti-social behavior, such as plastering signs around campus looking for a "boyfriend free girl" and telling other men with boyfriends to go jump off a cliff (https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Attraction_Sign#The_Sign.2C_Mark_1 https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Attraction_Sign#The_Sign.2C_Mark_1). Calling him "not notable" is just not true. Down the Rabbithole has a good video about him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IPtLvxO8hs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IPtLvxO8hs
ksrm 4y ago
Some more information on what happened: https://globalnews.ca/news/9048763/trans-woman-twitch-streamer-keffals-london-police/ https://globalnews.ca/news/9048763/trans-woman-twitch-stream... This is the same group of trolls connected with the death of the emulator developer Near a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814
- richbell 4y ago
  > This is the same group of trolls connected with the death of the emulator developer Near a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814 Wasn't this proven to be a hoax?
  - iratewizard 4y ago
  - bageljr 4y ago
    Proof?
    - bobsmooth 4y ago
      There were no American expats who committed suicide during the time that Near supposedly took his life.
      - ksrm 4y ago
        The list doesn't appear to be exhaustive. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29066186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29066186
        richbell 4y ago
        > There are 50k US citizens in Japan - none dying for months seems impossible As far as I can tell that claim is purely based on speculation. It's possible that the death wasn't reported, or was somehow reported as "natural". However, it's impossible to know due to the lack of any basic information. (And I think improbable that Japan, of all places, would screw up the paperwork.) Not to detract from the overall point — I think there are many reasons to dislike Kiwi Farms — but making dubious claims muddies the water.
aaron695 4y ago
- iratewizard 4y ago
  The entire discussion here will devolve into why it's okay to use censorship against my enemy because they are evil and I am virtuous.
- richbell 4y ago
  Interesting point, though you aren't doing yourself any favours with your last sentence.
- bageljr 4y ago
  Damn there's alot of pro kiwifarms nutjobs here. It's a shame because I really like the kinds of discussions on HN.
- mort96 4y ago
  I think that tweet from Keffals was incredibly irresponsible and she was right in deleting it. I think trying to get Cloudflare to stop supporting Kiwifarms is good. You don't have to either deem a person purely good or purely bad, you can agree with some things they do and disagree with other things. It's not that hard.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    To add, protests like these (and thus posts sharing the planned protest) seem like they unintentionally end up 'feeding the trolls' - what are the chances KF sees 2x to 10x the amount of new sign-ups on days where they're in the news versus when they're not?
    - Fatnino 4y ago
      This round of attention is what got me to finally visit KF to see what the actual deal is. Didn't sign up of course. General impression is "yuck, won't go there again". I didn't see any dox but I did see reminders for readers to not pull KF into whatever mess they make in RL.
bitwize 4y ago
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  What you're suggesting is a federal crime, just as a sidenote.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    Refusing to peer with them is not illegal.

30 points by ksrm 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

I would pay to hear eastdakota try to rationalize why protecting KF is a net good for the world. He professes to be a free speech absolutist, which is how they justified protecting controversial sites like The Daily Stormer and 8chan, but the purpose of KF is simply to harm specific, usually non-notable people through relentless doxxing (leading to relentless harassment or worse) usually only justified by them being transgender, or neurodivergent, or otherwise "cringe". There is nothing to debate in the free speech maximalist marketplace of ideas here, unless you seriously want to entertain the idea that vulnerable people deserve to be destroyed for the entertainment of psychopaths.

shrimp_emoji 4y ago
- IllIllIllIIlIll 4y ago
  The specifics of how Keffals behaves or what she has or hasn't done are basically irrelevant, because KF would have done exactly the same things to her regardless of any of those factors. Being a prominent trans person online means there is a significant chance of your home address being posted on KF for absolutely no reason other than you're a prominent trans person online.
bobsmooth 4y ago
>I would pay to hear eastdakota try to rationalize why protecting KF is a net good for the world. Let me try. KF is a place to archive the publicly-posted online antics of people who willingly publish said antics to the internet. Interacting with the subject of a thread is against the rules and anyone bragging about doing so is banned. If you dislike the idea of people making fun of you for your actions, don't broadcast them to the internet.
- IllIllIllIIlIll 4y ago
  You and I both know why details like home addresses and phone numbers are documented by KF threads. Interacting being against the rules is basic ass-covering, there's no reason for details like those to be posted unless the intent is for someone to harass them, whether that person is a KF user who knows not to admit it, or a drive-by reader who found the thread on Google. Nobody is buying the line that KF is a purely passive observer, when drawing their attention is so strongly correlated with receiving harassment, or that they only observe intentionally published information, when they scoop up so much obviously private information like addresses and deadnames.
phendrenad2 4y ago
As usual, it's a minority of users causing all of the problems. Most people on KF probably aren't doxxing or sending threats, but any time you get a group of people together to talk about someone, chances are some will take it too far. The ultimate example of this was Princess Diana (remember that?). The public was obsessed with her, and that demand fed a constant swarm of paparazzi which eventually led to her crash and death. If people were posting about her on KF, KF would surely be shut down by now. There need to he clear rules. If we shut down every forum where someone says something bad once, are we going to shut down Facebook and Instagram? Of course not, we'll stop short of that. So we give an unfair advantage to Facebook and Instagram, forever entrenching them as the only platforms where speech can happen? Getting back to the Princess Diana analogy, KF probably started as a harmless place to joke about public figures, but in the modern world where everyone is pushed to cultivate their own personal "brand", even someone as uninteresting as a nintendo emulator programmer, it puts regular people at risk of the worst kinds of stalking and harassment etc.
- IllIllIllIIlIll 4y ago
  > KF probably started as a harmless place to joke about public figures There's no need to assume, we know exactly where KF started. It originally focused on one specific target before branching out, a severely autistic person known as Chris Chan who isn't notable for any reason other than being a target of incredibly intense stalking, harassment and manipulation. The site didn't need to "fall from grace" when its baseline from day one was stalking a random mentally ill person for amusement.
  - richbell 4y ago
    > who isn't notable for any reason other than being a target of incredibly intense stalking, This is demonstrably false. Chris Chan became the obsession of the internet because of his incredibly odd and anti-social behavior, such as plastering signs around campus looking for a "boyfriend free girl" and telling other men with boyfriends to go jump off a cliff (https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Attraction_Sign#The_Sign.2C_Mark_1 https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Attraction_Sign#The_Sign.2C_Mark_1). Calling him "not notable" is just not true. Down the Rabbithole has a good video about him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IPtLvxO8hs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IPtLvxO8hs

ksrm 4y ago

Some more information on what happened: https://globalnews.ca/news/9048763/trans-woman-twitch-streamer-keffals-london-police/ https://globalnews.ca/news/9048763/trans-woman-twitch-stream... This is the same group of trolls connected with the death of the emulator developer Near a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814

richbell 4y ago
> This is the same group of trolls connected with the death of the emulator developer Near a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814 Wasn't this proven to be a hoax?
- iratewizard 4y ago
- bageljr 4y ago
  Proof?
  - bobsmooth 4y ago
    There were no American expats who committed suicide during the time that Near supposedly took his life.
    - ksrm 4y ago
      The list doesn't appear to be exhaustive. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29066186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29066186
      - richbell 4y ago
        > There are 50k US citizens in Japan - none dying for months seems impossible As far as I can tell that claim is purely based on speculation. It's possible that the death wasn't reported, or was somehow reported as "natural". However, it's impossible to know due to the lack of any basic information. (And I think improbable that Japan, of all places, would screw up the paperwork.) Not to detract from the overall point — I think there are many reasons to dislike Kiwi Farms — but making dubious claims muddies the water.

aaron695 4y ago

iratewizard 4y ago
The entire discussion here will devolve into why it's okay to use censorship against my enemy because they are evil and I am virtuous.
richbell 4y ago
Interesting point, though you aren't doing yourself any favours with your last sentence.
bageljr 4y ago
Damn there's alot of pro kiwifarms nutjobs here. It's a shame because I really like the kinds of discussions on HN.
mort96 4y ago
I think that tweet from Keffals was incredibly irresponsible and she was right in deleting it. I think trying to get Cloudflare to stop supporting Kiwifarms is good. You don't have to either deem a person purely good or purely bad, you can agree with some things they do and disagree with other things. It's not that hard.
- judge2020 4y ago
  To add, protests like these (and thus posts sharing the planned protest) seem like they unintentionally end up 'feeding the trolls' - what are the chances KF sees 2x to 10x the amount of new sign-ups on days where they're in the news versus when they're not?
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    This round of attention is what got me to finally visit KF to see what the actual deal is. Didn't sign up of course. General impression is "yuck, won't go there again". I didn't see any dox but I did see reminders for readers to not pull KF into whatever mess they make in RL.

bitwize 4y ago

phendrenad2 4y ago
What you're suggesting is a federal crime, just as a sidenote.
- bitwize 4y ago
  Refusing to peer with them is not illegal.