- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
The endless battle to banish the world’s most notorious stalker website::undefined
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I don’t think we should ever celebrate people being deplatformed.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police-online-speech-no-matter-how-awful-it
If the content is illegal pursue legal means to punish the posters. But to create a layer of censorship on the internet, that is enforced by opinions of companies, is a terrible precedent
But let’s say they win, and they get the domain blocked everywhere. They’ll just launch a new domain, just like all the pirate streaming sites do.
If a telecommunications provider disconnect someone because of content, they should lose their safe harbor provisions as a telecommunications provider. They should now be responsible for all content on their wires because they’re now editorializing
To the ones down-voting this comment.
People keep piling up on the EFF without reading that article.
Once an ISP indicates it’s willing to police content by blocking traffic, more pressure from other quarters will follow, and they won’t all share your views or values. For example, an ISP, under pressure from the attorney general of a state that bans abortions, might decide to interfere with traffic to a site that raises money to help people get abortions, or provides information about self-managed abortions. Having set a precedent in one context, it is very difficult for an ISP to deny it in another, especially when even considering the request takes skill and nuance. We all know how lousy big user-facing platforms like Facebook are at content moderation—and that’s with significant resources. Tier 1 ISPs don’t have the ability or the incentive to build content evaluation teams that are even as effective as those of the giant platforms who know far more about their end users and yet still engage in harmful censorship.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police-online-speech-no-matter-how-awful-it
The EFF supports prosecuting Kiwi Farms, they are just opposed to the dangerous precedent an ISP block sets.
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Banning abortion information is not the same thing as banning a harassment network that’s causing deaths.
This sentence alone shows how short-sighted your point is.
“Abortion is the killing of fetuses. Providing women with access to information about abortion will lead to more deaths in just one year than Kiwifarms has brought about in its entire existence. ISPs have shown that they are able to block such sites. Given the higher level of harm abortion sites pose as compared to Kiwifarms, the Texas Court of Appeals moves that ISPs have to block all access to abortion information.”
You don’t have to agree with the paragraph above (I certainly don’t), but that’s exactly the point - if it can be used to block things you want blocked, there will be a way to justify blocking things you do NOT want blocked.
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Could you please read the whole article before commenting?
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.
No offense, but don’t pursue a law degree, that’s not how things work in the real world. The EFF has a long history of fighting these sorts of things in court, they have enough experienced people to know what they are talking about.
A state has enough leverage to push around an ISP to comply, and the ISP gains nothing in opposing.
The EFF deserves to be roundly condemned for this, especially as it has no obvious alternative.
There is. People can be prosecuted individually. This has happened in the past without ISPs blocking whole websites.
The position is intellectually dishonest unless you’re actually pro-killing-transgender people.
Speaking of fallacies…
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No offense, but keep your patronizing “Anyone who disagrees with me could only have just heard of this article I just skimmed, and not been discussing it in depth for the last week” bullshit out of my replies.
So, the EFF has 33 years of experience fighting in courts on matters of digital rights, and somehow you feel like you know both the current law and the legal consequences of court precedents better than them?
Based on how composed you’ve been in this comment section, I’m going to assume the EFF has been around longer than you have.
They are feeling personally attacked, by the content of the discussion, so they’re acting out. That’s completely understandable at a human level.
The reason we have these discourses is so we can hammer out our ideals, and see them implemented in different ways.
So let’s use other examples, so that people aren’t as emotionally invested in the particular discourse.
Telecommunication providers, at least in the United States, are given safe harbor from the content they deliver, so long as they don’t editorialize (select what’s allowed). If something’s illegal that’s up to the legal system to enforce. And if there’s a court order websites can be taken off, routes can be blackhold, links can be seized.
The United States government, and their politicians, have a long history of not cutting off the communication even of their enemies. We still maintained phone connections to the USSR during the entire Cold war. The internet was not shut off in Iraq during the Iraqi wars. Iran despite sanctions is still online. US certainly could bully many of the world’s interconnects to completely drop these countries. But they don’t. For a variety of reasons, but I think the most fundamental is you have to demonstrate that you believe in your free communication principles if you want everyone to mimic them. A secondary but still important reason, is to see what your enemies are saying. That’s actionable intelligence!
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I have written nothing implying that, no.
From the very first reply, you implied that the argument that the EFF made was wrong, and that this precedent could not be used to block women’s access to abortion: “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.”
I’ve said the EFF’s argument is bullshit because the US government cannot enforce the laws the EFF says could be used. Not that they don’t exist, but that this is an international network that heavily uses anonymity. The US government likely cannot at all, and if it can can only do expensively and slowly, too slowly to prevent deaths, ban this website.
If that’s the case, how did they get Ross Ulbricht? He ran a darkweb marketplace, in theory, harder to pin down than something on the clearnet like Kiwi Farms.
The same precedent that bans Kiwi Farms at the ISP level, could be used to block women’s access to safe abortion, causing deaths as well. And no, I’m not gonna take your word for it that it can be avoided in court in the future. You’re just some rando on the internet with no legal expertise, unlike the EFF.
I’m all in favor in prosecuting people responsible for peoples’ deaths and shutting down that website, but not by using something that could cause harm to others in the future.
“Why won’t anyone engage with my fallacious bullshit?” - pqdinfo “Well, this is why” - orizuru “BLOCKED” - pqdinfo
Removed as a protest against the community’s support for campaigns to bring about the deaths of members of marginalized groups, and opposition to private entities working to prevent such campaigns, together with it’s mindless flaming and downvoting of anyone who disagrees.
As a postscript for this discussion only, be aware that virtually all the replies to my comments quote me out of context, or claim I’ve made arguments I haven’t. It’s safe to disregard them.
Quoted verbatim here, just in case you choose to edit it again.
The only reason you got downvoted to hell in this thread is because you want to paint everyone who opposes corporate censorship as transgender murder supporters, in, what the article itself describes as a futile, neverending effort.
And now that you are time and time confronted with the fallacies you employ, you decide to edit all your comments “in protest”. Stopping only to call everyone who opposed you even in the slightest an accomplice to murder. Very mature.
Edit: Ah cute. They delivered another show of their good intent in my DM;
Fuck off and die you harassing, lying, piece of shit.
Everyone who disagrees with you must be pro-kiwi huh? I rest my case.
You should report that to the lemmy.world admins, that is against their community code of conduct.
I could, but it would only reinforce their belief they’re victim here. Nothing would change.
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.
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.
I agree with you in principle. My only concern is who is judging, and making the decision that someone doesn’t have any rights. If it’s private companies? That’s going to be very bad for all of us.
Imagine a small town power company turning off the power to a small town newspaper because they said something mean about their cousin the sheriff.
Hear hear. Obviously this site should be shut down. But it should be done so on basis of fair trial. Not because of mob justice, or corporations that answer only to shareholders.
Right now, this is analogous to having an active shooter walking around gunning down people, and a random person safely elsewhere saying ‘Don’t shoot him, he has rights!’. No, people are actively suffering and dying. Fix the emergency first, then consider the ramifications.
Right now, this is analogous to having an active shooter walking around gunning down people, and a random person safely elsewhere saying ‘Don’t shoot him, he has rights!’. No, people are actively suffering and dying. Fix the emergency first, then consider the ramifications.
The problem is that the ramifications are clear as day and imminent. Other parties have been calling for ISP blocks for the longest time.
Using your analogy, the active shooter is walking around holding a dead-man’s switch connected to bombs in a few other areas. People like you are saying “it doesn’t matter that bombs are going to explode, just shoot him!”
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It’s more like there’s an active shooter, and we know any violent techniques we use to stop him will immediately be seen by the right as fair game tactics against us in any context, and used against us in perpetuity.
They’re going to do that anyway
That’s no reason to make it easy.
Sort of. Corps have become bloated with power and this would just be another notch on the belt, however, if there’s an active shooter, it’s the police’s job to take care of it, not local businesses.
This should also be a government role to send people like this to trial. We already live in a surveillance state, use it to stop shit heads at least.
The right will make pleas that sound equally dangerous to the average fool. It’d be easy enough for them to try to get the very sites that exist to support trans kids and say “we need to shut these down because they’re harming/multilating kids,” like they always say. And then a sympathetic judge shuts them down, I hope you’re happy with the kids you saved now, because there will be so many you can’t.
You deserve rights so long as you respect the rights of others
This is the best approach and one had has far wider application beyond just the internet
Paradox of tolerance* in effect
See below for a smarter user than me
It’s the paradox of tolerance.
“A truly tolerant society cannot be tolerant of intolerance.”
Not, “A truly intolerant society cannot be intolerant of tolerance.”
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If the government can’t do anything about it, why should we empower corporations too? It seems the solution to your scenario would be a more elegant legal system that the government could use to go after people conspiring to commit murder. Which I’m pretty sure are two major crimes already.
But that’s moot. If you agree that access to communication and the internet is a basic human right, then somebody who is not been legally sequestered, should have access to their basic human right.
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The answer to international conspiracies are hard is not mob justice.
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You do realise the trans communities will be affected by this too? This isn’t some magic wand that only the good guys can use, republicans will be using it to ban LGBT information and support networks as soon as they can, they’ll wave that think of the children flag and it’ll be too late.
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‘organize the killing of trans people’
How far can this hyperbole go?
removed by mod
Just because a group of people don’t agree with you doesn’t mean they hate you. To use language accusing them of hating you, not accusing I’m sorry, asserting that they hate you just puts barriers up and prevents us from coming to a workable solution.
If we’re evil hate mongers why are you even talking to us?
Ha, are you calling me a transphobic right-winger? That really is funny.
What exactly are you claiming kiwifarms is doing?
They are not blocking the domain. They’re making people drop their nazi-ISP from the internet backbone.
They are not blocking the domain. They’re making people drop their nazi-ISP from the internet backbone.
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?
Good point.
At the geopolitical level if companies are censoring the West’s free and open internet, what grounds do our politicians have to pressure more draconian countries not to censor their internet?
We have to demonstrate our principles if we want them to be adopted globally. If we demonstrate censorship… We will have it
There’s a reason North Korea still has an internet connection
You are comparing the work of a mass of people to fight back against hate with the actions of authorities and institutions.
Can you see how the work of masses of people is more democratic?
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Great, most major ISPs now block all torrent, file-sharing and kodi sites because rightsholders paid them to.
Some ISPs are also blocking sites talking about abortion and LGBTQ issues because of pressure from certain states.
No thanks, I’d rather live in a world where the ramifications of far-reaching actions are considered properly. Next.
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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
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.
Who is “the rest of us”?
🍻
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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.
Edit: Nevermind. I see you’re also responsible for this wonderful gem:
The position is intellectually dishonest unless you’re actually pro-killing-transgender people.
There’s no point in arguing with you.
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Everyone here, including the EFF, has explicitly said the state should take action against people plotting to murder.
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Sure. Court gets together says hey this content’s illegal, you backbone provider terminate their access. As long as there’s a court and due process I’m okay with it.
Letting a corporation do an arbitrarily is the problem
“We should allow companies that provide what is almost a necessity in the modern world the power to decide who gets to use it and who doesn’t” is a hell of a take.
While we’re at it, I don’t think thieves deserve clean water. Utilities companies should shut off the water supply to households where thieves live.
To households where they suspect thieves live, but without any legal determination of such
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If you don’t nip it in the bud, it’s going to be really hard to close that Pandora’s box.
Once we allow utilities, power, water, telephone, internet. To have opinions about who they can service, then you’re going to have a very dystopian civilization. Poor credit score? Can’t get on the internet. You voted for the wrong political candidate? No Comcast for you. Don’t believe in Scientology? Sorry we only offer dial-up in your area
Allowing discretion by utility providers, public services, is not only a bad precedent, it’s a clear and present danger for everyone who has enemies which is everyone.
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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?
@L3s@lemmy.world - your bot seems to add
undefinedat the end of the text.Thanks, I’ll fix it later this week!
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.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police-online-speech-no-matter-how-awful-it
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!
It’s not the job of isp’s to block this.
It’s not the job of the road infrastructure companies to block bad (or somehow illegal) drivers.
Kiwi Farms was stalking and enciting hatred towards trans people. They had a body count. I am glad they’re offline.
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.
After all this discussion, I went to the site in question to see what all the fuss was about but I found a few things interesting.
The site, the site owner, is a known (with address and everything) US company. So fully under the jurisdiction of US courts.
They have a really interesting internet tier list, telling of all their history with different interconnects, isps, and other internet infrastructure.
I don’t want to link to them, given how contentious it is, but their internet history is really fascinating and relevant to this post about ‘wack-a-mole’ internet services. I’ve included a link below to a archive.is snapshot of their internet history, which has some trigger words, but is mostly technical
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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.
