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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Kiwifarms, again

From the telegram, kiwifarms is back up at kiwifarms.top - in addition to the onion address. Their new IP seems to be from orcatech/vanwatech, who host 8kun - 8kun had trouble during the jan 6th hearings.

In a featured post, Josh is locking the threads of keffals and associates, and asking people to leave them alone for the moment. User responses range from "well, that sucks" to "yes, sir" to "probably the best move at the moment". Probably partially cope, but none of them want the farms to go down every two days.

Yesterday a discussion about this pitted "blocking some keffals posts strategically" vs "that's giving into the leviathan, never flinch, it's what they want". Ignoring the political violence detour, josh's probably making the right choice - and probably should've done something like it days ago. I'd still prefer lighter (very strict wordfilter? banning doxxing/anything implying violence or doxxing but allowing any other posts?) restrictions a week ago to banning the thread outright a week ago ... but if that wouldn't have worked, temporarily lock the thread outright might've saved the rest of the site.

They really shouldn't be doxing people on a public site. If they only shared dox with trusted associates thay could get their jollies without risking the wrong sort getting their hands on dox. But they've been posting it in the clear for nine years and that makes me think Null is not only ok with the consequences of public doxing, but actively encouraging it.

If there were a consistent rule on what "doxxing" meant I might agree. (Even edit, my typo some of the KF defenders weasel about the definition.)

Yesterday I thought of "posting the address enough where a pizza delivery guy can find it" is the limit. I just had the idea that it was specific enough that a third-party could find your doorstep it's too much. It was entirely coincidental that this is old-school way of harassing people.

But sometimes the "doxxing" is "here is this person's criminal record." We absolutely need some place on the internet we can discuss that.

There was no info that Kiwifarms considered off limits, was there? Any reasonable definition of dox most include 'the full set of personal information that can be had' right?

Just tell me the rule. You can even craft it right now post hoc to make sure KF violates it

Doxing: releasing personally identifiable information about an individual on the internet. An example would be someone's home address.

If we actually go with this definition, then most of the Internet is going to die. The New York Times needs to be deleted for posting Scott's PII.

NYT probably made the wrong call on doxing Scott, however I think there's a significant difference between an org that makes an occasional mistake versus an org which practices something as a matter of course.

Or: just because NTY doxed one guy does not mean Kiwi's use of doxing knowing full well the level of IRL harassment it tends to invite on its targets is ok.

I suppose it's not just the doxing that makes KF distasteful, but the doxing is a line they could opt not to cross and they'd have a lot more friends.

But the NYT continues to make the mistake to this day. Has their hosting provider terminated them until they delete the article?

And posting PII is pretty easy to do. NYT reports the names and cities of people every day. That is PII. Did they check on each one to make sure it is okay?

"Yeah but that information was already public" you will say, sensibly, but that is the typical KF response. In many cases they are just doing open-source reporting and find the account said their real name in public at some point. (This does not cover every thread. Some people there have access to PI databases, I think.)

If a real-life terrorist is captured and put in jail, even if he is the devil on earth, someone at some point should be able to name the crime he is in jail for, and not say "well if not this rule then probably some other one, who cares."

This is the problem with "you cannot post PII." I have suggested the rule being that you cannot publish the street address with enough specificity that a rando could walk up to their door. And I think that is a pretty objective and legible rule! (A lot of person-lookup websites violate the rule right now, but maybe that is not a big loss.)

But when I suggest that rule to people who want KF off the internet, they never seem happy to accept it. Perhaps because they want the rules vague.

they could opt not to cross and they'd have a lot more friends.

Sure. I do not expect any of the many people who have had threads made about them on KF to spend a single second carrying water for them.

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