[logicalmonster]

> This wasn't just due to Twitter outrage. People are actually being targeted and harmed through this site.

I'm saying the following comment without knowing much about Kiwifarms and the back and forth drama about it other than some of the surface-level accusations. If people there were engaging in false swatting or other crimes, sure throw the book at those individuals. That's reprehensible behavior, and should be treated about as harshly as attempted murder IMO.

But one big reason that I think taking down a website like this is very morally questionable without a court order is that there's no way for the public to know what really happened. Was Kiwifarms the site engaging in bad behavior, or were a few individual users there guilty of crimes? It's almost impossible to get an unbiased accounting of what actually happened there, and there's no way for an outsider to research this after the fact with the site down. I can't just trust a big corporation's word on what really happened here.

Additionally, who really committed crimes? The level of drama around what happened there seemed personal and insane from the little I saw about it. If you were an unhinged person who was willing to take a "the ends justify the means" to "win", you'd probably be willing to create fake accounts on that site and engage in illegal activity to try and get a site shut down that you hated. I have no idea if this is the case, but it's hard to rule out anything when it comes to the level of personal drama that seemed to be going on there.

> Hate and harm are not covered under free speech.

Organizing harm against others probably isn't considered free speech by most legal systems or philosophers, but an expression of hate in and of itself is absolutely covered under free speech.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> But one big reason that I think taking down a website like this is very morally questionable without a court order is that there's no way for the public to know what really happened. Was Kiwifarms the site engaging in bad behavior, or were a few individual users there guilty of crimes?

Kiwi Farms exists solely to serve as a breeding ground for harassers.

This is not a case of some bad actors on the forum and mods/admins aren't doing anything about it because they're either, lazy, incompetent, or simply can't keep up. That would be true in the case of a site like reddit.

No, the owners of Kiwi Farms are actively malicious and encourage bad behavior.

Honestly, your comment feels like bad faith. It could be summed up as "I don't know anything about Kiwi Farms, therefore, nobody else does either, and they could be being unfairly targeted just because of a few bad actors on the site."

> Organizing harm against others probably isn't considered free speech by most legal systems or philosophers

Organizing harm against others is essentially the mission statement for Kiwi Farms.

[logicalmonster]

> Kiwi Farms exists solely to serve as a breeding ground for harassers.

> Organizing harm against others is essentially the mission statement for Kiwi Farms.

How are you such an informed expert in Kiwifarm's culture and mission statement?

Your opinion may or may not reflect reality, but you don't sound the slightest bit objective about this at all.

And given all of the censoring and deplatforming that has been done in the last few years, how can an outside observer take any of these types claims at face value? Whatever marginal trust I've had in taking these kinds of claims at face value has been squandered by censorious pricks.

> No, the owners of Kiwi Farms are actively malicious and encourage bad behavior.

First hand citations in context that can simply be judged for myself?

[Sohcahtoa82]

You're commenting as if your ignorance on what Kiwi Farms is gives you some sort of moral high ground.

As much as I hate to say "Do your research"...well...do some research.

Start at the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms). Check the sources for the article and make an actual informed decision rather than just acting like it's impossible to know and then acting like such a position is somehow virtuous.

Kiwi Farms started as a forum created for the purpose of trolling and harassing the creator of a webcomic and escalated from there. This is easily verifiable information.

[logicalmonster]

Ever observe a certain level of intense personal drama in real life where people start getting unhinged and start getting into the slashing tires, keying cars, jumping the other with a weapon, or setting others' property on fire phase of conflict? You have 2 sets of friends both telling you that the other side did X,Y,Z because they're evil and insane. You can sort of parcel out the gist of what might have happened with enough investigation, but ultimately you weren't there and making a concrete decision on whose fault the drama was involves making a judgement call after talking to friends who are all biased about what happened and knowing that each side is trying to be persuasive towards their side.

That's sort of where I am stuck right now.

Wikipedia and the mainstream news sources it links to are absolutely not trustworthy, unbiased sources or interpreters about anything like this event. Asking me to look at Wikipedia links for the best objective interpretation of this mess would be like asking me to ask the best friend of a jilted lover in the middle of intense personal drama and assuming that I'm getting a purely accurate portrayal of events.

I'm not claiming any sort of moral high ground here. I'm only claiming 2 things.

1) Ignorance about Kiwifarms. I never followed that drama to begin with or knew about that site's culture and activity. Maybe they're very guilty, I just can't prove that with what I know.

2) Wikipedia and the media are horrendously awful sources for this kind of drama.

Please note: I'm not claiming Kiwifarms is innocent here. I acknowledge that they could be very guilty. I think it's reasonable to guess that they probably are. I just can't reasonably make a concrete judgement like that without seeing first-hand info in context that illustrates this clearly.

It's an important detail to me that the Kiwifarms site is down and can't really be researched very fully outside of perhaps some Archived links. And even if the site was up, you'd miss out on what was deleted by admins or not in real-time...which is very important to this case. Was Kiwifarms trying to remove illegal content? It's hard to say after the fact with this level of drama unless you were in the middle of it and following posts and how they operated in real time.

All I'm going to do from now on is keep my eyes open and try and learn more about Kiwifarms if I come across any reasonably trustworthy looking articles that aren't obvious polemics.