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Kiwifarms is probably done for. Null is unable to get legal representation because his lawyers dropped him after five years of business for "ties to russia" and his mailing address has been terminated for unspecified reasons. Tor is inaccessible because of DDOS attacks. The site has had a security breach and user data has possibly been leaked. This is probably the most complete deplatforming anyone who hasn't actually committed a crime yet has ever experienced.
I believe that KF has significant value in the culture war for the red team and it seems strange to me that not a single person with any financial power has stepped in to help. For most people, KF is seen as a evil nazi website and at best a shitty gossip forum, but it did contain a lot of useful information and opposition research on highly prominent people that will be memoryholed forever if the site goes down (Even internet archives are being purged). Keeping it alive on the clearnet would require a substantial investment, but it wouldn't be impossible to do.
Where is the red/grey team version of George Soros? Peter Thiel?
Are there any options for a completely legal (in the United States) site like KF to stay online? What will themotte do if they ever make an enemy that understands how easy it is to wipe them off the net?
When Gawker outed Thiel he did a damn good job of deplatforming them. I do not think Thiel & Co have any interest in supporting KF. And KF has too much of a tendency to go after Autistic people for the Gray tribe to really feel comfortable with them.
While strictly speaking 'legal' they encouraged and enabled illegal acts. Also, again while not a matter of US law, doxing is the closest thing the anglophone internet has to a prohibition by law. Since TheMotte isn't... about that life, I doubt we have anything to worry about.
A version of KF that scrubbed information that could be used to track down the individuals would probably still be online. Also, private harassment and doxing IRC channels will continue to exist. KF was a unique combination of both, trading private information for internet clout. Devil's bargain and all that.
Neither the administration or users encouraged illegal acts. The admins of the site were quicker to react to rule breaking posts faster than the Facebook team could take down mass shooting livestreams. Null has cooperated with US law enforcement on every occasion and replied to takedown requests.
Doxxing is not illegal. Law enforcement has never pressed charges agaisnt KF. KF has won every single lawsuit it has been involved in.
The two incidents that cloudflare cites as a reason to take KF down were:
Obvious low effort false flag bomb threat email against US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene
A screencap of a post threatening violence from a user that has never posted before (taken down in 20 minutes)
It would be trivially easy for anyone to do the same to themotte or any independent forum. How can you have faith that people will critically examine the evidence if themotte is accused when nobody bothered to do so for KF? This community already gets smeared as a nazi website.
Yes, it's just a scary sounding word for "looking someone up on the internet."
There is a motte and bailey about doxxing.
I think a rule against publishing
someone's home address with enough specificity that a crackhead can go knock, or
someone's phone number, or
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
the real name of someone posting under an alias
the prior legal names of someone
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.
Can you elaborate on what things in society would just break down if
Were published?
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