The endless battle to banish the world’s most notorious stalker website::undefined
@L3s@lemmy.world - your bot seems to add undefined at the end of the text.
The endless battle to banish the world’s most notorious stalker website
Submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/03/kiwifarms-website-offline
Comments
rikudou@lemmings.world 1 year ago
L3s@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Thanks, I’ll fix it later this week!
seeCseas@lemmy.world 1 year ago
For a site filled with users who are more tech-savvy than the average person, I’m surprised there is such a big dichotomy in views here. Or maybe it’s just one or two really vocal individuals.
I think everyone is agreed that the site is a cesspool that deserves to die. The issue is that getting ISPs to voluntarily block sites based on advocacy is bad. As the provider of a “digital human right”, ISPs should NOT get to decide who gets their service and who doesn’t.
The EFF isn’t supporting hate groups. What they’re saying is that an ISP block is a dangerous precedent.
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 1 year ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Founded in 2013, Kiwi Farms has been used to organize vicious harassment and stalking campaigns against targets including Clara Sorrenti, a transgender activist known as Keffals, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), a far-right Republican.
Over the past year, their little group of internet sleuths, trans engineers and activists has methodically chased Kiwi Farms across servers and networks around the globe, successively persuading more than two dozen companies to drop the site.
Sorrenti, a Twitch streamer who became famous as a news star for trans youth, had been under attack for months by Kiwi Farms users, who she said doxed her address and “swatted” her home, filing a false crime report that drove police to her door.
After earlier attempts to take down the site, he incorporated as his own internet service provider, acquiring his own physical hardware, network resources and a block of IP addresses, making Kiwi Farms much more difficult to dislodge.
The group slowly discovered a network of what they called “sh–hosts” — low-end internet providers who work with disreputable sites that spread malware or offensive content, arguing that they have a right to free speech.
Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published an opinion piece arguing that Tier 1 ISPs should not bow to pressure to drop Kiwi Farms, calling the move “a dangerous step” toward censorship.
The original article contains 1,936 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 89%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
FiskFisk33@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s not the job of isp’s to block this.
It’s not the job of the road infrastructure companies to block bad drivers.
ameliawilliams@leminal.space 1 year ago
Kiwi Farms was stalking and enciting hatred towards trans people. They had a body count. I am glad they’re offline.
pqdinfo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This discussion is a shit show.
The EFF article has been discussed to death over the last couple of weeks. Their argument makes no sense: they claim the government isn’t enforcing the law, but do not address why, instead demanding it does it. They claim ISPs shouldn’t ever block anything without a court order, but do not explain why except in handwavey frozen peaches ways.
The government(s) cannot enforce any laws here because they do not have the privacy-invading, international, powers they need to actually determine who is doing this. And a good thing too.
People here are literally making up shit to defend the EFF’s position. Most often it’s the slippery slope: if Hurricane Electric can block ISPs when lives are on the line, then surely Comcast can block ISPs when IP rights are on the line, or Texas can when abortions might happen.
None of these are connected. Comcast can, and does, actually block IP infringing content, so I guess a better question might be “If Comcast can block IP infringing content, why can’t HE block attempts to kill transgender people?”
Texas was already proposing laws against abortion information being online, and the US Congress is actively discussing a law that’ll make it illegal to, by implication, put information on LGBT issues online. Hurricane Electric blocking attempts to kill transgender people isn’t a factor in either of these.
Hurricane Electric doesn’t have some history of blocking things it doesn’t like. This is clearly a last resort for an ISP that doesn’t want to be partially responsible for the deaths of innocents, whether it’s legal for them to be a part of that or not. Demanding “the government” be responsible for all Internet blocking ignores the fact the government is not always a positive entity, and that establishing a precedent where the government is responsible for blocking things, and can use that power, is a genuine non-fallacious slippery slope: a fascist government is going to use the tools it’s given to ban content that a left wing, liberal, or mainstream conservative government wouldn’t, and is going to use that to harm people.
And sure, the fascist government will do that anyway, but it’s a hell of a lot quicker if you have the laws the EFF claims should exist by implication already exist.
hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
The question here comes down to 3 choices
Do you want a corporation to be able to decide what you can’t look at?
Do you want your government to decide what you can’t look at?
Do you want to decide what you don’t look at?
And, like most things, people are going to want a little from each column. Figuring out the proper lines is the tricky part. The EFF stance is the net neutrality stance. Your stance is the Section 230 stance. Both are good things in different situations.
In this case, because there is most often no consumer choice in ISPs, net neutrality is the EFF-preferred position when dealing with them. This leaves it to the government (and society at large) to craft and/or enforce specific laws to control the undesired behavior, which is often a mistake, too. But it’s generally a better societal moderator than a single monpolistic corporation is.
jet@hackertalks.com 1 year ago
OP this was a really good discussion. I think the comment section below demonstrates why fighting never-ending battles isn’t the approach to solve systemic problems. Systemic problems need systemic solutions.
jet@hackertalks.com 1 year ago
I don’t think we should ever celebrate people being deplatformed.
orizuru@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
People keep piling up on the EFF without reading that article.
eff.org/…/isps-should-not-police-online-speech-no…
The EFF supports persecuting Kiwi Farms, they are just opposed to the dangerous precedent involving ISPs causes.
pqdinfo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is called the Slippery Slope fallacy, as opposed to Slippery Slope fact, for a reason.
It’s incredibly easy for an ISP to point out that they’re not going to block a network for a different reason by pointing out it’s… not the same reason. Banning abortion information is not the same thing as banning a harassment network that’s causing deaths.
The EFF deserves to be roundly condemned for this, especially as it has no obvious alternative. Claiming the authorities should do it while ignoring the fact that draconian laws would be required to actually enforce the laws here, that the EFF would (I assume) be opposed to, is handwaving at best.
The position is intellectually dishonest unless you’re actually pro-killing-transgender people. I prefer to call the EFF’s position intellectually dishonest, because the alternative is even more horrific.
Balinares@pawb.social 1 year ago
Friend, you do you, and in the meanwhile the rest of us are in fact going to be right there celebrating the fuck out of the deplatforming of a bunch of horrible people whose pastime is literally to drive trans kids to suicide.
GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network 1 year ago
🍻
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Who is “the rest of us”?
jet@hackertalks.com 1 year ago
To those down voting, you have to decide if the internet is a human right or not. If it is, it must be for everyone, or it is for no one. As soon as we make exceptions to basic rights, those rights get eroded for everyone. Because people in power will bend the exceptions to political expediency.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access
wahming@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I believe in the tolerance social contract. You deserve rights so long as you respect the rights of others. Kiwi farms has absolutely no respect for anybody’s rights, and hence does not deserve any themselves.
GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network 1 year ago
Paradox of Intolerance in effect
pqdinfo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
We are literally talking about people using an Internet service to kill people, in a way the government cannot do anything about without draconian privacy-invading powers.
You do realize this right?
Or do you just not care when it’s trans people?
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
They are not blocking the domain. They’re making people drop their nazi-ISP from the internet backbone.
eee@lemm.ee 1 year ago
That’s fantastic news, I agree.
But who decides what should ISPs block next? Should Florida pressure American ISPs to block all abortion-related sites? Should Disney pressure ISPs to block all torrent sites?
jet@hackertalks.com 1 year ago
Sure, the net effect is the site won’t load.
Their onion site is still up, so not all of their data center links were severed
pqdinfo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“We should force ISPs to carry a service that’s designed by and used by Neo-Nazis to kill people because governments around the world are unable to stop it because they don’t have the draconian laws necessary to shut down an international neo-Nazi network” is a hell of a take.
sab@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No, the whole point is that an isp should not be forced to do anything, unless ordered to do so by a court.
As the title mentions, this an endless chase if you approach it like this. Vigilante mobs aren’t going to solve this, it’s going to take specialist agencies with mandates to request data civilians can’t. Crimes are being committed there (not murders, but a good way to get the scare votes, I suppose), and there are laws in place to deal with that.
As mentioned several times in this thread, shifting the responsibility for what is allowed to be said on the Internet from governments to corporate entities is a terrible precedent.
Meowoem@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
The levels of exaggeration about kiwifarms is getting a bit much, of course everyone uses emotive language but this is just getting wild.
How many websites do you think should be blocked, all the ones that are as bad or worse than kiwifarms? Because there are a lot, so you want sweeping measures to restrict the internet and you don’t see that having any problems or negative affects?