> Even if CF is within their ability to censor KF, I think it's immoral for them to do so on the basis of freedom-of-speech as a doctrine, which I believe in myself. What speech does KF publish that is unacceptable?
Cloudflare isn’t censoring Kiwi Farms, but I’ll answer your question anyway. Kiwi Farms is a space for people to collaborate on the intimidation of others. It is an inherently anti–free speech project. It causes people to be afraid to post publicly online, for fear of malicious people stalking them. It causes people to avoid talking about the abuse, for fear of being targeted themselves. At worst, it caused people to take their own lives to escape the harassment — the ultimate in silencing someone else.
The free speech rights of Kiwi Farms’ victims are no less important than its users. Its removal from the Internet is a net win for freedom of speech.
It is not really CF, so much as it's the collective action of many internet monopolies. The content they are hosting is legal to the extent of US law, and no one is allowing them to host it.
>It causes people to be afraid to post publicly online, for fear of malicious people stalking them
When someone is publishing their personal information online, is it really stalking to republish that information? It is almost impossible to prevent such a thing from occuring. Either an individual is a public figure or a private figure. If someone (say, a politician or celebrity) chooses to become a public figure, then they should be held under the scrutiny of the public eye and they should be held accountable for their actions. If someone is a private figure, they should be responsible for securing their own privacy on the internet.
I think what we have on the current internet is a situation where a lot of internet celebrities (including KF's own operator) want all of the benefits of being a para-social public figure with none of the responsibilities of maintaining a public image that stands up to scrutiny.
In the case of the NES emulator developer who allegedly committed suicide, the KF had not published this person's actual real-life identity. They could have merely started a new pseudonym, or operated more privately under the current pseudonym, or ignored the KF altogether. The so-called "harrasement" and "doxxing" of this person is completely inconsequential to their actual life outside of the internet. You would not infer any more information on this guy from his KF "dox" as you would infer from almost any pseudo-anonymous furry on any social media website. But instead, this figure tried to leverage their own suicide threat to take down the kiwifarms website and extort them by offering money in exchange for their article to be taken down. In the end, their suicide remains completely unconfirmed apart from a single, unbacked testimonial.
You’re misrepresenting what happened. Keffals didn’t post the address of the hotel she stayed at after being swatted, for example. Kiwi Farms found it from the bedsheets in the picture she posted [0]. That is stalking. Then they sent her pizzas at that hotel, which is harassment.
So anyone who is an ARIN representative deserves harassment? Anyone who holds an FCC license? Anyone who owns any land? All three of these effectively put your name and address into public knowledge. Your definition of "public figure" needs work, because at the moment it's frankly ridiculous.
The GP's attitude is why a lot of people are afraid of trying amateur radio: when you apply for a license in the US, your address is published. It doesn't have to be your home address and can be a post box, but you do have to be able to receive mail there.
When you apply for your license in Germany, you can elect to not have your home and secondary station addresses published. While looking up potential callsigns for my application, I noticed that about half of the female-looking names chose not to publish their addresses.
I wonder how many women and other vulnerable people are staying away from amateur radio in the US because they can't take the risk of publicly revealing any sort of address they can receive mail at.
Cloudflare isn’t censoring Kiwi Farms, but I’ll answer your question anyway. Kiwi Farms is a space for people to collaborate on the intimidation of others. It is an inherently anti–free speech project. It causes people to be afraid to post publicly online, for fear of malicious people stalking them. It causes people to avoid talking about the abuse, for fear of being targeted themselves. At worst, it caused people to take their own lives to escape the harassment — the ultimate in silencing someone else.
The free speech rights of Kiwi Farms’ victims are no less important than its users. Its removal from the Internet is a net win for freedom of speech.