EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

So the EFF posted an article calling out Hurricane Electric (an ISP) for cutting off Kiwifarms, arguing that cutting off sites should never be possible: eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps

... and it's the most privileged, liberal shit I've seen in a while. Let's go into why.

As a refresher: KF is a community of harassers; people whose main goal is harassing particularly marginalized people, frequently to the point of actual death. They have a number of murders on their name, and they are only legally not murders because they were driven to suicide through harassment.

It's hard to get across how relentless this community can be. There have been attempts to get them cut off from internet service providers for quite a while, because "just ignoring them" clearly doesn't work, and they will go out of their way to harass people wherever they go, using their site as an organizing platform.

So: actual, real people are being deliberately and constantly harmed by them, to the point of trauma and death. The only defense against this that has had some effect so far, has been to get their service cut off.

It's under these circumstances that the EFF made a couple of arguments:
1. This blocking might cause collateral damage for other things hosted under the same organizations.
2. This creates a slippery slope; they might also start blocking other things, like marginalized people.
3. Prosecuting KF members is the job of the cops and the courts, not of an ISP.

The first one is an easy one; if organizations don't want to be caught in the crossfire, they shouldn't knowingly associate with a community of bigoted murderers. 11 nazis at the table, etc., you know how this goes.

The second one is deceptive, however; it *sounds* like a credible issue, and it's consistent with what the EFF has campaigned for before.

Slippery slopes can be a real thing where legislation and court mandates are concerned. If an ISP is compelled to start blocking one thing, and all the legal legwork is done to make that happen, then it is indeed very likely that this will experience scope creep, and blocks of other things start being demanded.

However, this isn't about government policy. This is about a first-party decision by a corporation to block using existing means. In other words, something they could've already done for anything anyway - this decision doesn't make anything possible, it doesn't remove any barriers, it's still just as possible to block stuff as it was before.

There is no slippery slope.

The third point, however, is where the privilege really shines through. It's the job of the cops, right? Sounds very principled and reasonable. But what if the cops just... don't?

KF has been around for a long time now. Authorities know about its existence. And yet, it's still untouched - clearly the cops and courts cannot be relied upon here.

A recurring problem with liberals is that they assume that the systems are there to serve them, and by extension, to serve everybody - even when there's clear evidence that they don't, like is the case here. Those legal systems aren't serving the many marginalized targets getting harassed and murdered by Kiwifarms.

Saying "the cops should handle this, not corporations" under circumstances where they clearly don't, is functionally equivalent to saying "this should not be handled at all". It doesn't matter what you *think* cops should do, what matters is the practical effect, and whether it prevents or perpetuates harm.

The reality is that *something* needs to be done - immediately, not in some hypothetical future - to protect marginalized folks from Kiwifarms. They are getting harmed *now*, it's not hypothetical. If the cops don't do that, then the job is unfortunately left to everybody else, whether you like it or not.

And the EFF's stance that "the cops should do something about this" would be a lot more credible if the EFF actually put in some effort to make that happen, rather than just using it as a cheap defense against people not Following The Procedures.

Follow

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

Oh, and as a bonus point on the "slippery slope" argument, that didn't fit into my previous post anymore...

You know who have been getting hit with corporate speech policing for a long time already? Sex workers. I don't know, but it doesn't seem like "banning KF" was really a factor in that, was it?

As usual, the "eventually it will hit marginalized people too" turns out to be "actually marginalized people were always hit by it already, just now it also hits the shitty people"

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

Loving the commentary on this thread on an external forum, insinuating that I "have no idea what I'm doing and what the consequences will be of posting things like this"

It's not as if I've spent the better part of the past 15 years deliberating the complexities of this topic, or anything like that

Nah, I'm not following the Respectable Viewpoint, so I must just be clueless!

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

I also particularly can't stand the "instead of putting this responsibility on ISPs, you should put pressure on authorities to crack down on this" type argument that so often gets raised on topics like this.

Like, how about you go try that yourself, and then we'll meet back here in a year or two, once you've figured out for yourself why that's not what we're putting our energy into. Deal?

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

@joepie91 It inherently always hits marginalized folks first. If it hit the majority class first it would never work.

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

@joepie91@social.pixie.town tbf, hasn't EFF continuously advocated against restrictions for sex workers? EFF is pretty much the reason why I have ever heard of FOSTA and similar laws.

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

@antonia That only means they *really* don't have a good reason to be presenting this as some novel slippery slope.

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

@joepie91@social.pixie.town I mean, this concrete thing was not used against sex workers, but I think we do have every reason to believe that it will.

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

@antonia The point is that this isn't some hypothetical. Sex workers have been getting thrown out of everywhere for decades, including several levels removed from the direct provider.

HE throwing out KF changes exactly nothing about this situation. There is no slippery slope. We're already at the bottom of the slope, and have been for years.

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

@joepie91 I think that might be the most galling part. Lukewarm slippery slope shit like this always notes communities that are inevitably already being impacted.

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

@joepie91

I like how the EFF thinks marginalized people and websites don't already get taken down when they very clearly do and in an overrepresented majority of the time. How many times have I seen queer people have to hop domains or change cloud provider or set up ridiculous rube goldberg style mechanisms for keeping themselves online?

Or the whole thing where ISPs already try to censor torrent traffic through throttling, even if it's a torrent for a completely legal file.

Or that whole thing where for a while the anarchist cook book was held in unnamed text files on random ftp servers because anything directly linking to it would get slapped

But yeah, the EFF super needs to defend the forum full of people who like to commit murder. It's very cool and normal of them to make an annual blog post about how much they love those guys

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

@joepie91 good god do I hate the whole don't rock the boat, be respectable, be peaceful liberal bullshit

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

@joepie91 The day I read that story of a man getting stabbed on a train while the cops stood one car over, watching, letting it happen until the guy had mostly ended the attack already... That was when I knew "the authorities should do something about this" will seldom work.

They know it's happening, but either they don't care, have no power to do anything or are so risk averse it's pointless to ask.

re: EFF, kiwifarms, death, harassment :boost_requested: 

@joepie91
you will never hear people say facebook shouldn't be held responsible for allowing promotion of genocide because it's the police job to stop it, because people love shitting on facebook. but it's essentially the same argument.

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