InfoTeddy
9mo ago
It really does strike me that Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Aella et al are putting on the kid gloves tight when it comes to the proposals of transgenderism.
Take Scott, for example, responding to the 4chan post about trans-Napoleonism. He basically says "just let him wear the silly bicorne hat" and points to "Emperor" Norton of San Francisco as a happy-go-lucky story of just going along with what a trans-emperor says because it's easier. But he doesn't ever adequately address the hardball arguments - a Napoleon-gender that demands absolute power over the French Empire and its satellites in Europe (as the 4chan post said), and a Norton that demands the head of President Rutherford B. Hayes (as you, Zack M. Davis, point out). As far as I can tell, Scott's response to people pointing out the demands for a French Empire and Hayes's head - although he doesn't explicitly state this - is "lol, that just doesn't happen".
This is a very troubling dismissal, because there are a lot of Rutherfords in transgenderism. The reason why people point out President Rutherford Hayes and demands for a French Empire is because transgenderism affects others - it has externalities - and attempting to cure someone's distress by agreeing to their false map of reality is not a cost-free action and is not something with no meaningful consequences to other people (hence, the story about putting the hair dryer in the passenger seat is simply irrelevant). In other words, "just be nice" is a really bad argument.
For example, the inclusion of trans athletes in women's sports, or the inclusion of trans people in women's bathrooms, or the inclusion of trans people in women's prisons. Everyone seems to agree that it would be a very bad thing if a trans-Napoleon today gained control over the countries that used to make up the former French Empire, or if Norton was given the head of Rutherford B. Hayes, so they just... dismiss those and say it could never happen. They say they would never demand Rutherford's head and that it's absurd to even consider the possibility that Rutherford might be decapitated to fulfill the desires of an Emperor Norton.
And then when those externalities do happen, and a male-born trans person wins against a female athlete (inherently, unfairly), or a trans person assaults a woman in the bathroom, or a trans prisoner impregnates a woman, those objections are at best handwaved away and dismissed as outliers or discredited, or at worst labeled "transphobic" and censored.
In my opinion, the refusal to honestly engage with these arguments reflects poorly on the leaders - or otherwise influential figures - of the rationalist community. To put it lightly, it's unbelievable how they make a simple mistake - that their own foundational writings (the Sequences) warned about - and how they have failed to correct their own mistake (at least, they haven't corrected it yet, although I'm not optimistic about their chances of doing so).
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
The most disturbing thing about all this to me is how easy it is to prop a blatant falsehood via "citogenesis". Multiple reputable sources have claimed that KF drove three people to suicide, therefore it's on Wikipedia as established truth. As far as I know, this is false.
Just a primer for those not in the know (since the primary source for these is, well, down right now):
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Chloe Sagal self-immolated as an act of protest against the sorry state of mental healthcare. She repeatedly tried to go to other people in the LGBT community for help and housing, but for various reasons (it's a long story), they did not provide it to her. She was holding a manifesto but it flew away when she set herself on fire. Many people blame her death on the Farms despite there being no evidence for this (besides her having a thread), and doing this cheapens her death while letting systemic societal issues go by without scrutiny.
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Julie Terryberry was abused for years by her significant other. Notably, Julie was not trans, and anyone reporting her as trans is spreading misinformation and should not be trusted. As a result of the abuse, when her S.O. left her, she killed herself. This is tragic, but pinning her death on a website (just for having a thread) is a disgrace to those who are in abusive relationships and does nothing to combat the true cause of her death.
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Byuu/Near emailed Null and threatened to commit suicide if his 13-page thread that had been dead for months wasn't taken down. He did not take it down (and anyone doing the tiniest of game theory should know that if he did, it would have set a precedent incentivizing more people to threaten suicide to take threads down). Shortly thereafter, he posted a suicide note, and then his death was "confirmed" by a claimed friend of his (who no one knew was his friend) who claimed to have direct contact with the Japanese police, despite Japan having strict privacy laws and that no police department in the developed world would ever willingly give out information to people who are not close family members of the deceased. There remains no proof of his death except for a statement by another third-party claiming to be his employer. And yet despite the outrage there hasn't been much evidence of him ever being harassed by the site (no, criticizing him on your own forum is not harassment). Every time people claim this, they speak in general terms and vague vibes, but never give any specific details as to what happened, and certainly don't provide enough substance to link the Farms to it.
The most infuriating part of all this is that it is trivial to point to actual instances of the site acting against the subjects of its threads, or in their terms, "poo-touching". All one needs to do is point to any of the many zoosadist threads on the site (zoosadist meaning a zoophile who has abused animals) who have ended up in jail. But that would paint the site in a good light, and they don't want to do that.
InfoTeddy
10mo ago
An interesting tweet from Elon Musk: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1671370284102819841
Repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions.
The words “cis” or “cisgender” are considered slurs on this platform.
My initial reaction to this was that "well, aren't you already allowing slurs on Twitter, Elon?" But then I realized that there's a distinction here - slurs may be allowed, but harassment is not. After all, he used the words "cis" and "cisgender" without any censorship, much like many would censor a typical slur such as "nigger" as "n*gger" or "n-word". You may be allowed to use "cis", but you're not allowed to directly call someone "cis" on the platform.
More to the point, I think it's very valid to describe "cis" and "cisgender" as a slur, insofar as a slur is something you call a group of people who don't want to be called that (similar to the "'TERF' is a slur" debate). Certainly, "cissy" is definitely a slur (which the person Elon Musk was replying to was called). So why don't people want to be called "cis"?
I think it's because labeling the vast majority of the population (something like 99%) and making them have to use a qualifier to describe themselves is a systematic effort to make them seem more different from the norm than they really are. For the vast majority of human existence, a woman would be described as "a woman", until suddenly (around the late 2010s or so), she would now have to be described as "a cis woman", to distinguish her from "a trans woman". The implied argument seems to be that "a woman" is now suddenly ambiguous and one does not know whether one is referring to a woman in the classical sense, or a trans woman.
I would agree with this, except that I still see many instances of "women" being used when it's really being used to refer to trans women. If a qualifier is needed now, why not just keep saying "trans women" all the way through? So the "cis" terminology seems to just be a ploy to redefine "woman" to by default mean "trans woman", thus making the "cis" qualifier necessary to refer to a woman in the classical sense. But this would seem to contradict one of the supposed goals of the trans movement, that trans people should be treated the same as non-trans people. Why not refer to trans women and "cis" women equally, without the qualifier?
And it's not like it's impossible to refer to non-trans people either. I've seen many terminologies used that are much more acceptable, such as "biological women", or "non-trans" as I've been using. There's also "assigned female at birth", but I feel like that's much more of a misnomer, as it implies that gender/sex is something you're "assigned" rather than a fundamental property that is immutable (at least with today's primitive technology).
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
Not to be uncharitable to Freddie, but it seems to me that he's toeing the line here because he's blood-related to a trans person and trans activist. (Giving details about this person is probably against the rules, so I won't.) So, he simply doesn't want to be cut off from them. It's why every time he writes something about trans people, it just seems so intellectually hollow, like he's fundamentally refusing to question any of his assumptions and preconceived notions about trans people and trans activism, and just wants to go along with the flow to keep them happy. For example:
I also just don’t agree with the conclusions drawn from some kinds of evidence. For example, it’s entirely possible for clinics that specialize in adolescent transition to be mismanaged or otherwise imperfect. That’s simply the reality of medical care at scale. What I don’t understand is why this would be uniquely disqualifying; there are no doubt dialysis centers and radiology labs and pharmacies that have serious operational problems, but no one thinks that this discredits those kinds of medicine.
No, it doesn't discredit dialysis centers, radiology labs, or pharmacies in general. But, the first objection people take here is to the existence of adolescent transition in the first place. Ignoring that though, the bigger objection is that there's no feedback mechanism to root out and address these mismanaged clinics, and not only is there not one, people are discouraged from doing so and branded as "alt-right fearmongerers" if they ever attempt to call them out. It's a self-coordinating conspiracy (prospiracy?) that Big Pharma can only dream of. Big Tobacco is wishing people would've done the same for any anti-tobacco talk in the '90s.
And in general, it's like this for any proposal of the trans movement. You ask, what if men take advantage of trans identification to creep on women in the bathroom? You're told that that's not going to happen and you're just repeating a scenario that only originates in the minds of alt-right Nazis. Okay, then some men end up doing exactly that, so you ask what will be done about them, and then you're told that you're just making up lies and that they never actually creeped on women. Or, my favorite, that man is actually just a right-wing psyop to discredit trans people... so it did happen, but it doesn't reflect bad on the trans movement. Which is a really convenient way to avoid any blame for any of your implemented proposals. How about another one: You object that normalizing policing behavior against anyone deemed anti-trans (i.e. being a cop) is simply harassment and bullying that is legitimized under the guise of trans activism. "Well, uh, we tell them not to harass people, we don't condone harassment!" Okay, so a VTuber announces her intent to play Hogwarts Legacy and is immediately dogpiled to the point that she quits streaming. "All those harassers are just right-wingers in secret trying to discredit and kill trans people!" and "She deserved it anyways." You point out that detransitioners exist and go over why they detransition, and then:
Worse, right-wing fixation on detransitioners has had the ugly side effect of making some people who are supportive of trans rights suspicious of them, when they should be treated with respect and understanding.
Sigh. Should I go over how trans activists treat detransitioners in the first place? (Spoiler alert: Very poorly.)
Trans activists always react like this when something bad happens. Every single instance of trans policy producing bad outcomes is ignored, dismissed, or discredited under the fear that this legitimizes opposition to trans people and will threaten their lives. There's no mechanism in the movement itself to stop bad behavior, proactively or reactively, so the brakes are ripped out and the foot is pushing the accelerator to the floor. If that doesn't give you pause at agreeing with shibboleths like "trans rights are human rights", then I don't know what will.
I don't really want to blame Freddie, because no one is perfect at everything and there will always be some blind spot they'll miss. Still, for all his dissident writing, it's a shame he fell in line on the trans issue. For some far better dissident content on the excesses of the trans rights movement, I recommend Sophia Narwitz's video "Trans Activists Are STILL Their Own Worst Enemy".
The take I'm seeing is that this is moreso the fault of Jones and his lawyers rather than the actual reprehensibleness (or lack thereof) of his speech. Specifically, this verdict was a default judgment and only happened after Jones missed scheduled court dates, refused to comply with the discovery process, and his attorney simply didn't present any sort of First Amendment defense at all. (And that's not even covering the lawyer sending his text messages, allegedly on accident, to the opponent's lawyer, nor the failure of them to identify it as protected or privileged communication.)
Now, I don't know if that's accurate, but if true then it means free speech isn't legally in danger. Probably.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
EDIT: Lmao we're such pedants around here. I'm only the fifth person to just have to correct the life expectancy thing
That's a good thing. If there are five different comments pointing out the same basic, fundamental error that completely invalidates someone's conclusion, that's a sign that this person really messed up in their reasoning. It's like Twitter ratios but in Motte form.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
Imagine an alternate world where any time a kid expressed suicidal ideation, government employees would firmly nudge them towards euthanasia, and would jail you as a parent for protesting.
Just to note, this isn't really a hypothetical anymore. Canadians are nudged towards euthanasia after being told how much they cost the healthcare system and a survivor of the Belgium airport ISIS attacks in 2016 was euthanized this year after expressing suicidal ideation. The only difference is that this is not happening to kids and people protesting it are not jailed by governments. Not yet, at least.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
Now, of course, the fork is embattled by another "opinionated lead developer" -- who I understand was relatively inactive for a long period of time -- who has seized control of the project and removed the CoC.
My understanding is that Lenny owned the PolyMC organization on GitHub and was thus able to oust all other maintainers that way. And he owned it because he started the fork. People have been passing around the commit graph chart on the PolyMC "Insights" page and saying "look, he didn't even do jack shit for the project!" but that's misleading because (a) every contributor's graph will look like that because PolyMC only forked from MultiMC in December of last year, and (b) GitHub is weird about crediting people on the graph if a commit was authored by person A but committed by person B, plus there are several merge commits that were made by multiple people who may or may not get credit for it on the graph, etc.
I originally learned of the change due to an update message when I recently upgraded the flatpaks on my personal system:
This package is currently read-only until situation around OVE-20221017-0001 clarifies.
So for those not in the know, this "OVE" is basically trying to mimic what is called a CVE report, and fake it enough such that maintainers get scared and take action to deplatform the package, despite it not even being a real CVE report. I'd go as far to say that calling it merely a "fake CVE" is being too charitable. That's how much this abuses a process that is (nominally) politically neutral and objective.
The package managers aren't the only thing PolyMC has been kicked out of. The user agent string it uses to fetch mod updates is now banned by CurseForge, so users have to change the string around. The API key they use so people can sign in to their Minecraft accounts has been mysteriously and silently deleted (allegedly, because a previous ousted maintainer owned it). Every single Minecraft-related Discord server has sent announcements fearmongering about the project, as well as respected figures in the community like KingBDogz, a Mojang developer, repeating the message that people should stop using it immediately "because he is promoting bigotry". Basically, everyone has done everything they can to screw over the project, all over allegations that it was "hijacked" by a "right-winger" for "malicious purposes". I get the sinking feeling that if the situation was reversed and it was instead a left-winger taking over to own all those Nazi chuds, people would instead be cheering them on (and any objections that the takeover now means they could install malicious files onto people's computers would just be dismissed as right-wing talking points). Just goes to show you who's truly in power.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
The site is down now so I will have to recall from memory; excuse any errors I make.
The abuses of Yaniv; the fact that a prominent transgender streamer ran a Discord server with sexual interactions with minors and sponsors a website dedicated to supplying DIY homemade cross-sex hormones to minors explicitly without their parents' approval (this isn't just "trans healthcare bad" as the woke might have you believe; there is a very good reason why it's illegal to make and distribute your own medical treatments, i.e. it is very hard to do even if you have the right equipment and you can fucking die if you get it wrong; it reflects poorly that people will sincerely defend this); the boyfriend of the girlfriend of a prominent online artist had sexual interactions with minors and groomed them into sexual intercourse with dogs; people running Discord servers and sexually interacting with minors in them (a common theme on the forum is that kids should never be anywhere near Discord); the zoosadist threads (zoophiles abusing animals); anything Ethan Ralph (notorious right-wing political commentator) has done (they have a whole subforum for him); anything Nick Fuentes has done (a whole subforum for him and America First too); hell even the person who, ahem, "guided" Chris-chan into sex with his mother being a sex pervert, pedophile, having done animal abuse (on Discord, what a surprise) and whose father is a former Navy SEAL and owner of a cybersecurity company. And that's not even scratching the surface of the endless amount of threads on that site.
I haven't seen the Buffalo shooting posts you're talking about but Kiwi Farms routinely mocks mass shooters. One of their own users (and also Encyclopedia Dramatica admin) was William Atchison, a person obsessed with mass shooters his whole life to the point where he decided to shoot up a school himself - only for it to get unceremoniously stopped by a teacher blocking a classroom door with a couch, before he killed himself. He is forevermore known as "couch cuck" and ever since his death, his user page on the Farms ("FuckYou") is frequently posted on by users mocking and ridiculing him. He is memorialized in one of the comics of the site's background, which depicts him in less than flattering terms (he is stopped in the bathroom by a couch with arms and is dunked into the toilet). Obviously that's an exception because he was one of their own, but in general mass shootings (and fedposting activities in general) are treated as not cool and something only braindead idiots do.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
Well, it seems like they are implicitly admitting that open, uncensored discussion of the transgender movement with the possibility to criticize it is toxic to the transgender movement.
Shame, then, because I'm trans and found this space perfectly welcoming.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
Null is unable to get legal representation because his lawyers dropped him after five years of business for "ties to russia"
Just to be clear, this is referring to him saying:
Lolcow LLC's agent from WyomingAgents.com - which I have used for half a decade now - is terminating me. Their reason for this is a bullshit "ties to Russia". Their cited sanction only applies to forming businesses for Russian citizens/companies, which I am not. My only ties to Eastern Europe at this point are in Kyiv.
So it seems like his company, Lolcow LLC, doesn't have an agent anymore? I'm not sure if this means he's completely devoid of legal representation. IIRC he hired a different attorney to fight several different frivolous lawsuits filed by Greer and Scott (can't confirm the name), so I'm not sure if his own attorney has terminated him.
Either way, this is extremely worrying and quite frankly, disgusting behavior. The right to have legal representation is quite literally a fundamental right, and it reflects poorly on those who attempt to take it away from others. These people are short-sighted and don't fully comprehend the consequences of enshrining the tactic of "go after people's lawyers" as a legitimate tactic that should be used. The only silver lining is that sooner or later, the harassment mob will probably run up against breaking an actual law in such a legible way as to fully suffer the consequences in court (I'm not a lawyer, but tortious interference probably fits the bill here).
What will themotte do if they ever make an enemy that understands how easy it is to wipe them off the net?
Well, the way I see it, there is probably nothing that can be done unless fundamental internet services are regulated as common carriers. The only defense is that we're small, not notable, and talk in complete sentences. However we've already ended up on a "hate list" by association with TracingWoodgrains, and we've already been ousted off Reddit, so time will tell.
Update on Kiwi Farms:
It's not looking good. DDoS-Guard dropped them without warning. There has been no communication from them to anyone explaining their decision. (EDIT: See below.) Some speculate it was because of yet another false flag fedposter who lurked for 3 years before posting a blatant bomb threat that was promptly deleted by moderators in less than 20 minutes, but not before being screenshotted and posted to Keffals's Twitter.
Regardless, the site is off the clearnet and is now only accessible through Tor. Site owner Null has released a statement that says, among other things, the current host will likely give up too, along with the other two potential hosts he's looking at towards for moving.
EDIT: DDoS-Guard have released a statement. They were getting tons of complaints from users that it violated their acceptable use policy and thus found it fit to take matters into their own hands instead of waiting for law enforcement to tell them. Not surprising, tbh.
InfoTeddy
10mo ago
I've never understood how people who are, essentially, less than 0.01% of the population have gained a comparatively much higher proportion when it comes to their representation in the popular conscience. Trans rights activists don't like the 0.01% argument, which is fine - but then they turn around and use it themselves by saying that a people that is 0.01% of the population is harmless. Which, besides being not how things work in any capacity, is having it both ways.
InfoTeddy
9mo ago
(reposting because new thread)
Is Twitter finally dead yet?
Usually, I'd be the last person to ask such a provocative question. I used to be one of the people who rolled their eyes or otherwise ignored sensationalized media stories surrounding Elon Musk and his takeover of Twitter, stories which have plagued the news cycle for the better part of almost a year now. It felt like you couldn't go a day or two without an article on the most mundane of things that were only remarkable because of Musk, like him going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
But I have to - reluctantly - admit, maybe all the media's negative hype had a point.
The latest decision Musk has made is to rebrand Twitter to "X". The URL X.com will automatically redirect Twitter. Twitter is changing its logo from the iconic blue bird into a white "X". Apparently a tweet should now just be called an "X".
The obvious question is: Why? Musk's answer seems to be that he wants to change Twitter into some sort of "super-app" where one can do everything on it, similar to the WeChat app in China. This only raises further questions, like why people couldn't just use other apps, or why it had to be done in this why, or why they couldn't even just go the Meta approach where the company is renamed X (in fact, it's already been "X Corp." for a while) but Twitter gets to still be named Twitter and keep the blue bird logo.
The one thing that everyone in the Musk-Twitter discourse seems to agree on is that Twitter has significant value in its brand. Now, it might not even have that. Who really wants to talk about "'X'-ing on X" when it's far more idiosyncratic to say "tweeting on Twitter", which people have done for the better part of the decade?
But to answer my own question: No, I think it's the wrong approach to look at each change as potentially an outright Twitter-killer. I think the bigger picture should be looked at, and that in the long run, the demise of Twitter will be a death by a thousand paper cuts, where each change isn't quite so negative to kill it entirely, but it keeps Twitter on a downwards and downwards trend. And there's already been several paper cuts - fleeing advertisers, ratelimits, restricted guest browsing, etc.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
As I understand it, he apologized not because he went to a lawyer, but because Rowling went to her lawyers who served him a notice. It is my understanding that it is extremely easy to prove libel/defamation under UK law, so he made the (wise) decision to apologize and retract in response to that.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
It's especially bizarre to me, given the origins of the open source software community lie in techno-libertarians and vague communo-anarchists who eat shit off their feet.
You link to a video of Richard Stallman here, which is fitting since a couple years ago he was more-or-less cancelled for having made comments about one of his former coworkers in a private email chain that fell short of condemning and demonizing him. I think at this point the open-source community more-or-less fell into some form of gentrification where now any difference is no longer seen as worthy or at least tolerable for the bigger goal of giving every user freedom over their own devices (which, sadly, has only gotten worse in recent years), but now a liability that "discredits the movement" and is just plain unpleasant, no matter how valuable they may be to the movement (I mean, he's literally Richard Stallman for god's sake).
InfoTeddy
4mo ago
That's true, but I see this as a form of evolution, the same way that 99.99% antibacterial soap ends up producing superbugs through natural selection. It's just a matter of consequence that trans activists' deplatforming efforts would end up hitting on one guy who just happened to have the smarts, wits, etc. to figure out how to effectively resist censorship and would want to dedicate enough time and effort to doing so.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
Florida governor Ron DeSantis will not assist with extradition: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/desantis-trump-charges-are-un-american-says-florida-will-not-assist-in-extradition-request-by-manhattan
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
Trans activists are already way ahead of you on this one. They have argued many times in the past that transgenderism is not a mental illness, and any law that would consider transgenderism a mental illness in regards to being disarmed would be immediately ridiculed and shot down by trans activists.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
Shipping companies banning firearms parts may be unjust (and I agree), but I think the frustration that Null has is that he keeps getting booted off places for reasons that don't match up with what he's actually done. It would be one thing if these companies would simply be honest and just say "Okay, you know what, we have a new policy that criticizing other people on your website is banned due to the many externalities, that's why we banned them." If they were common carriers, they wouldn't be able to come up with bullshit justifications for booting them off. To analogize this to shipping, it would be like if shipping companies secretly decided to ban firearms, but never published a formal policy stating it, and they enforced their policy by banning people known to sell firearms under vague pretenses like "they assaulted and harassed someone to death" despite there being no evidence for that. It's what Cloudflare said about needing to follow the rule of law, before of course they became dishonest, bent the knee to the harassment mob and rendered their own word worthless.
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
To kinda tie it back to this site, I feel like we could easily gain the same level of harassment just for hosting wrongthink, but the only reason we haven't is because we have stricter standards on behavior and we write long and nuanced posts that are hard to take out of context (compare Kiwi Farms which, while they might not harass people themselves, will routinely dox people who have no opsec). Still, though, there are already communities dedicated to do, well, exactly that - take nuanced posts out of context and paint us all as some sort of menace to society. But Kiwi Farms is a good example of what a completely legal site needs to do if it wants to stay up. Null has had to move hosts and VPSes countless times, move domain registrars, spend thousands of dollars on hardware and DDoS mitigation, move to Ukraine (and later Serbia) to reduce personal expenses, hire lawyers and pay thousands of dollars in legal fees to fight several frivolous lawsuits, and do it all while he's been banned for most of the time from using Visa and Mastercard. The site's history is a harrowing tale of what harassment mobs can do if they just yell at someone for long enough, and I hope we never have to go down that path. We've already had to move off of /r/SlateStarCodex and now even our own subreddit due to the increasing tension of people who just can't stand living in the same world with people whose speech they don't like.
InfoTeddy
10mo ago
At some point you would think studios would learn this is Shit Nobody Wants, and yet...
It's a symptom of a broader failure to be creative in entertainment nowadays. Studios are too scared to take risks with a new IP that might fail, so they (mistakenly) believe that the best course of action is to remake what already exists because "it should be a safe bet".
InfoTeddy
1yr ago
I'm not sure if "Mass Formation Psychosis" explains it. I think a better fitting explanation is simply the shifting of the Overton window. Another pandemic-related example is the proposition that the virus escaped from a lab (note, not arguing about whether it was created in a lab or arose naturally, just that it escaped from a lab) being first branded as a nutjob conspiracy theory that only the crackiest of crackpots would believe in, before it eventually turned into something that you could reasonably discuss without fear of being censored. The vast majority of people are concerned about their reputations and will only discuss something once it becomes socially acceptable to do.
The War on Kiwi Farms: The Kiwis Fight Back
I'm sure everyone here knows of the controversial site Kiwi Farms, which has been endlessly accused of facilitating online harassment, and endlessly deplatformed. The site's defense has always been that it doesn't do that, the content is completely legal in the United States, and it's just a neutral observer, and with very limited exceptions (namely protecting Chris Chan until 2021, and interfering with zoosadists), I've found that to largely be the case. But I always wondered if this attitude left them vulnerable to just being attacked endlessly like this. Like, if bad actors know that this site won't actually fight back in any way, wouldn't you expect that they would just relentlessly attack it, since they're more-or-less free to do it?
Well, recently, they've actually started doing it. They're using the tactics that have been most effective in deplatforming them, and turning it on others. Namely, filing abuse complaints with upstreams and accusing sites of violating their AUP (which stands for Acceptable Use Policy). Their first target, thematically enough for an anti-trans site, is DIY HRT, as in HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) that isn't dispensed directly from a licensed pharmacy, often homemade and imported in to the country from shady international sources.
DIY HRT sites exist in a very legal gray area, because they more-or-less undeniably facilitate the sale of unlicensed pharmaceuticals. There have been credible reports of the drugs being manufactured in really unsafe and unclean conditions, leading to issues like clearly visible human hair in a vial that's meant to be injected into your bloodstream. Furthermore, the demographic they serve raises child welfare concerns - children are the demographic most likely to be unable to access legal HRT and/or want to keep their HRT on the down low from others - and some of the marketing/labeling on the items is quite blatant (in one case, text reads "Keep away from parents" and the image is of a childlike figure). Naturally, these are the reasons Kiwi Farms uses to file abuse complaints with upstreams. And they're doing it quite openly - there's a public thread on the site where they coordinate and give information on filing abuse complaints. So has it worked?
Looking at the DIY HRT wiki, they list several DIY HRT sites that have been taken down by complaints, so certainly looks like it has. It's gotten to the point that I had to look through an archive of the DIY HRT wiki, because I couldn't connect to the live site. The irony is that, just like Kiwi Farms themselves, the sites haven't actually been taken down for good - they just hop to another web host, domain registrar, email provider, and they're back in business. And the biggest irony of all is that the DIY HRT camp don't have any recourse for this. On their subreddit, one person asks "What is stopping doing the same to KF?" and the answer is "It has been done to KF already." What are they going to do exactly, attempt to take down a site that has spent years hardening itself against being taken down? One is reminded of the Chinese parable where the penalty for being late is death. They can't be more mean to Kiwi Farms, because trans activists have already spent years being as maximally mean as possible to Kiwi Farms, kicking them out of almost every single web host and domain registrar in the world, and all that has resulted in is a horde of people pissed off that their site is being taken down by trans activism, now radicalized against the trans movement. They've been put in a situation where they can either lose, or lose but also take down others with them, and in that respect I don't blame them for finally, finally, starting to fight back.
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