Devonshire
2yr ago
Marc Randazza does a bunch of first amendment lawyering, including for porn companies, and says this is a dumb scheme that would fail really fast.
Devonshire
2yr ago
I would love to hear recommendations for it. In my experience it is a "use once and then put away" game.
Devonshire
2yr ago
I am liking Andor. It is relief to watch something Star Warsy and not have exposition shoved down my throat, and instead just let the story slowly seep into me.
Devonshire
2yr ago
The pattern of younger-woman with older-man is very common in history, and both parties often prefer it.
But in the modern day it often looks pathetic to be fishing from the kiddie pool, like an adult showing up to a kids' sporting league and winning. Wow, okay.
Devonshire
2yr ago
I want to go all the way around the circle and say it was inappropriate because of the power imbalance because he could destroy her career by calling her racist.
Devonshire
2yr ago
Devonshire
2yr ago
And after 20 years they are middle-aged. Definitely not impossible to commit crimes of violence any more (and if the original crime was against a small child or an elderly person, sure, this does not apply) but if they hang around any criminal elements in an attempt to, say, get an illegal handgun or fence some goods, they are likely to just become another victim.
If someone's an annoying sex pest online, yelling that they're an annoying sex pest and here's their real name doesn't actually protect the online spaces they've been preying on --
There is an approach to alleged abusers that is nuanced but might be the right thing to do: they are removed from positions of power, but just that; you do not need to unjob them or take away their phone number or anything else.
Say there are adults modding subreddits for teenagers that have a record of violating sexual boundaries and thinking that kids ought to be able to consent to sex. Them having a position of power is the issue.
but I find it easier to model the doxxing entirely separately from the cancel culture entirely separately from the harassment itself
I think you are right that there need to be separate, but related, discussions
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when you can/cannot break anonymity (many times you can, maybe times you cannot)
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when you can/cannot reveal specific personal information (this probably never a reason to post someone's street address, SSN, phone number, or anything about their family members, unless the subject is trying to say that they are not the same John Smith)
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when you can/cannot reveal less private but still sensitive information (in this case I specifically think "their employer" and this would only be relevant if their specific job is a problem that puts them in a position of power over vulnerable people -- and "oh I just saw their linked in page" is not a sufficient reason to post it)
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maybe distinct from the above, or maybe not: when you can actually contact their employer (and this is really easily abused with the bullshit of "hey I am just letting you know." If your reasoning would enable you to just letting the boss know that an employee of theirs was gay in the 1980s, your reasoning is probably wrong) or any business partners or family members
As a metaphor, compare breaking the lock to someone's front door. On its own, the damages aren't that severe
"Irreversibly breaking the lock on someone's front door" is a good analogy and I am going to start using it.
Is there any kind of portable fossil-fuel heater you roll out for emergencies?
Massachusetts is giving incentives to install heat pumps as part of the HVAC unit when it is time for replacement. It has been going on for a few years so there has to be some data on how it works.
Devonshire
2yr ago
My priors were:
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because of the vagueness of laws, every business that actually does anything can be found to have violated some rule by an aggressive enough official
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Trump's businesses seemed especially likely to cross both the letter and the spirit of the law so it would not be that hard to find something
And it took three years of specifically investigating Donald Trump's businesses to come up with something? This is extremely low performance.
Devonshire
2yr ago
One classical response is "since X are paid 10% less I am going to hire all the X at what their wages 'should' be, and end up with an awesome and overlooked workforce."
Devonshire
2yr ago
Thank you for the incredibly detailed reply! I do not think I will get a chance to completely digest it in one go.
Everyone does a Russel Conjugation on doxxing. "I am exposing bad actors, you are threatening people's lives." It is a quagmire trying to figure all this out. And my own position is probably inconsistent.
this means you could say a specific powermod was convicted of a domestic violence assault, or you could link to the conviction records in a talk not specifically focused on individual powermods and say that the person was a powermod
You know, I think this might work.
"Reddit has a powermod running over 200+ subreddits. * This powermod has restraining orders against them. Here is the text of the restraining order, with the names of the perp and the victim irreversibly blurred out."
And there is also a Streisand effect defense here. If I post the above and its gets deleted, that is evidence that I am actually hitting close to home, and evidence my accusations are right.
((* There should be ambiguity here, where you do not pretend to not identify the user while doing a "L Simpson, no, no, Lisa S" trick.))
Would this still allow people to expose Aimee Challenor **? Raise an alarm about a specific person about to get a position of power?
(( ** I forgot Aimee's name and looked it up as "aimmee chandler" on Google and Bing, and Google only directed me to a thread that specifically had the same misspelling I did. But Bing -- fucking Bing, otherwise incredibly bad at finding stuff -- knew what I wanted and directed me to the Wikipedia page. Someone at Google has to be turning these results off specifically.))
But my criticism is that this was about the least productive uses of the underlying weaponized autism available
I am not fully understanding your point and it is my fault. Do you mean KF was often inefficient or did a lot of crap distinct from this pure mission? I agree and I talk about how a "steelman Kiwi Farms" deserves to exist, which is different than the actual Kiwi Farms.
Police aren't going to care about someone's Twitch account,
I do not think the only value is in getting police attention. A big point of #MeToo, for all its problems, was that people could raise concerns about not-illegal-but-annoying sex pests. (This whole discussion is drowning in irony and here is some more: the KF position in the Weeb Wars was that if Vic really did something the cops should be called, and since there was no police report, that proved his accusers were lying and therefore should not dare discuss their alleged experiences at all. No wonder Josh put the Weeb Wars into its own ghetto-within-the-ghetto on KF.)
And even though #MeToo often was just a mob, I cannot figure out a way to say "you are not allowed to post your (alleged) personal experiences."
[Doxxing] is a tool that's exceptionally dangerous, even when used with the best of interests, just because there are too many nuts around.
I agree with this part. People seem perfectly happy to say "oh, it just other people using my true information to phone bomb that person's employers, not my problem" and/or "chickens are coming home to roost" or "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" when it is one side, but suddenly remember "stochastic terrorism" when it is the other side.
How much should the behavior of third parties restrict my actions? My default was "not at all" but the internet has proven extremely good at manufacturing schizophrenics and has consistently and deliberately refused to develop antibodies against "wait should we really destroy Justine Sacco's life just because it is fun to do that?" So I am prepared to move off this ground. I just need to figure out what the new ground is.
This sorta near-schizophrenic nutjob is an extreme variant,
I read through that whole thing. (It really reminds me of Vordrak's campaign against Josh Moon and Josh's mom. I am not trying to say either is okay or not okay, just acknowledging this is all a giant spiral of meta-issues.) It takes very few people ganging up to destroy someone online. In this case, just one person! I would like to say we should adapt in other ways, like people not believing internet bullshit, but we seem to have refused to do that.
Thanks for the in-depth comment, and your old one on the subreddit.
There is a motte and bailey about doxxing.
I think a rule against publishing
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someone's home address with enough specificity that a crackhead can go knock, or
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someone's phone number, or
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someone's social security number (edit or license plate number, or other really specific things that are not part of a public database)
are perfectly fine and coherent rules.
(And I think KF did avoid doing the last two. But one time Br!anna Wυ proudly posted a document with her own SSN to her Twitter. And KF archives all the pictures she posts to Twitter as a matter of course. So 🤷🤷🤷🤷🤷🤷🤷🤷🤷🤷🤷🤷🤷🤷)
But people also want a rule against publishing
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the real name of someone posting under an alias
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the prior legal names of someone
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the restraining orders and criminal records of someone
Those last can certainly be considered rude but if no one can ever post that information, there are certain things in society that just break down.
(Too often KF's defenders insist KF only archived the published things one of their subjects did. For some subjects this was all they did because the people involved in the threads were lazy and had a "if it does not exist on the web it does not exist any place" attitude.)
I do not even know my definition is right, and I am probably not self-consistent. Part of posting this is to figure that out.
But I do want a coherent rule.
Devonshire
2yr ago
I just did some corporate training about data retention, and only retaining what is absolutely necessary. Nearly every time you throw out or never collect data that is irrelevant. But one point that jumped out at me is that "throw away the data about race in our AI model" is the wrong answer as far as HR policies are concerned.
Devonshire
2yr ago
I think Near was hoping for a narrative of "I even offered 100K and they still said it was not enough." When Josh started negotiating in earnest, Near panicked.
Devonshire
2yr ago
Sure, they could have done it.
CloudFlare could have said "you can stay on our service as long as you do not post a home address." That is a rule that could have been followed! It is easily understood and enforced! If you read what he writes, Josh really did want to keep the forum online.
(Josh would upfront ask service providers what was and was not allowed, and no specific lines were ever given. Just vague handwaving at the ToS. Like reddit admins refusing to give answers on what we could have done to avoid AEO attention.)
If we can agree on the rule of "doxxing is posting the home address and if you do that you get kicked off the internet, but if you do not do that (or otherwise cross the grounds of criminality that get the police involved) you stay on the internet" that is great.
Now we need to get most other people to agree to it.
Do you think we can get people on board with our rule? Keep in mind that with this rule in place, someone could set up the successor to KF that posts all the same soft of things, short of someone's home address, and people could not take it down.
EDIT I will also say phone number should be considered dox, based on your comment in the other thread.
Devonshire
2yr ago
I am confused, too. Dilbert makes fun of ESG and then a different comic strip gets dropped from papers?
(FWIW I have expected Dilbert to be canceled long ago.)
Devonshire
2yr ago
emailed Null and threatened to commit suicide if his 13-page thread that had been dead for months wasn't taken down
Null has taken down threads. The number one reason he does not is that the users will immediately notice and just put the information back up, and while he could of course ban the users for doing that, it just paints a big Streisand-mansion-sized target on it, completely backfiring any attempt to remove it.
Quietly delisting and then deleting a thread that has been dead for a while was likely to work and Null might have done it, especially because Near was offering a big pile of cash. But in the middle of talking Near said "fuck it I am killing myself" and then ghosted the world.
Devonshire
2yr ago
Literal terrorists get legal representation.
In a recent thread about illegal immigration, I got super-pissed at the idea that we should hold the illegal immigrants' lawyers responsible for their behavior. Because it is a direct strike at the heart of liberalism. Yeah, yeah, going after the other side's lawyers is effective. Obviously. Because without legal representation you are SOL.
Same thing here. If the redcoats who did the Boston Massacre get lawyers, so does a guy running a website.
Devonshire
2yr ago
but every high profile KF target I know of like Chris Chan has gotten harassed.
You pick a bad example by focusing on Chris. The letter and the spirit of the law on KF was that people interfering in Chris's life got ruthlessly mocked and doxxed themselves. And there are lots of people besides KF who document Chris.
Devonshire
2yr ago
Should KF have been allowed to report on the criminal records of reddit powermods?
I want to know what the line is on doxxing, because right now, whoever says it, it seems to be "someone on your side posted true information about someone on my side that they did not want publicized."
Maybe the definition is literally posting a home address. That is one that works and would still allow for posting the criminal records of trans people.
Devonshire
2yr ago
While what's wrong with kathryn gibes or chris-chan is related to what's wrong with 'the left' in some senses i guess,
For all the weird stuff that KF has done, what actually got them taken offline was posting true information about trans people.
KF did a lot besides that, but this is what I call "steelman Kiwi Farms." That is the site that deserves to exist but cannot.
Devonshire
2yr ago
I saw the narrative moving towards whether DeSantis had true spending authority from the state of Florida, and if that is the current mood than all the more serious things are already off the table.
Devonshire
2yr ago
The point of the ad seems to be getting liberals to agree that free speech & liberalism are still good ideas.
There are lots of bogus or even downright fraudulent signatures on any signature-gathering mission. People will put bogus information on your petition to deliberately fuck with you and you cannot stop them.
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