Maybe we should shut down Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail et al. because they allow pseudonymous entities to say whatever they want until moderation addresses problematic posting (as Kiwifarms did with the bomb threat -- they deleted the post and banned the account of the user who made it).
Not trying to defend Kiwifarms here but looking at this an abstracted issue. The real reason why KF was kicked off of Cloudflare is because a lot of people told Cloudflare to stop hosting it, not simply because a bad actor made a malicious post.
> I've had people post phony bomb threats on my services in the past in an attempt to make my life more difficult. Do you think that I shouldn't be allowed to host services because I'm targeted by bad actors?
> Maybe we should shut down Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail et al. because they allow pseudonymous entities to say whatever they want until moderation addresses problematic posting (as Kiwifarms did with the bomb threat -- they deleted the post and banned the account of the user who made it).
> Not trying to defend Kiwifarms here but looking at this an abstracted issue.
By your logic, "Welp, there goes the internet because there are awful people." Welcome to reality. People are horrible. They have been horrible, this is not new. They will not stop being horrible. We maintain these systems in spite of them that the not horrible people may be able to achieve something they otherwise couldn't before. The problem, in my estimation, is people who are uncomfortable with other people organizing which in and of itself is the collective superpower of humanity. They would see that capability locked away, only to be approved by someone, but never taking into account that someday that ability to squelch organization may be applied to them.
I'm sorry, but no. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. The cost of Liberty is vigilance eternal. You may cower in fear at the prospect. Not everyone does.
If someone grabs your hair in a fight, you don't chop it off so they can't do it anymore. You adapt.
"By your logic, "Welp, there goes the internet because there are awful people.""
I don't want to nuke YouTube not because it has no hate content. I don't want to nuke it because the proportion of hate content is sufficiently low such that its contribution to the world is largely positive. Pragmatism is the virtue, and ideological possession is the vice.
Honestly, it sort of strains reason to argue that KiwiFarms has been making a good faith effort to prevent things like threats of violence or targetted harassment. Other forum providers clearly have, right up to the point of being regularly accused of censorship for their efforts.
In which case, wouldn't CloudFlare be right to disbelieve KF? The real reason it seemed to be moderating was because a lot of people told their hosting providers to stop hosting it, not simply because a bad actor made a malicious post.
Actually, I think there seems to be a misunderstanding of the nature of Kiwi Farms. I think people are tending to confuse it with a 4chan type forum, one that that is generally unmoderated.
Kiwi Farms has always had consistently good moderation.
Threats of violence and harassment have been instabans for a long time. Really, any attempts to interact with the subject of discussion are worthy of at least being reprimanded by moderation, if not a ban.
The site culture held by normal users (not just mods) is of a "look don't touch" approach. The people being discussed are interesting for their natural behavior on social media; it's less interesting when they're being prodded (at least not by the forum itself).
Occasionally 4chan types approach KF as if it's another imageboard, but there's some big culture clashes and they generally don't last long.
I'm sorry, but that's absolutely ridiculous and you know it. No one posting someone's address or geolocated data to KiwiFarms is doing so unaware of what is going to happen. At best, whatever moderation happens (I certainly didn't see much, but hey, you're the expert) exists to provide some kind of cover for the inevitable attention from law enforcement.
You know this. I know you know this. I just can't believe how many people are here on HN willing to make excuse after excuse for this site.
Yes please! Pretty please with a kiwi on top?
Whether or not you're trying to, you are.