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Comment by nchase | Hacker News Reader

The behavior Kiwi Farms encourages seems like it should be illegal. How is this not murder?

This is the most useful review article I've found (for U.S. law), though it's from 2014: "Death By Bullying: A Comparative Culpability Proposal", https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

The overall conclusion I get from it is that homicide or manslaughter charges could be brought in principle, but prosecutions are rare, and successful ones even more rare. The article author proposes a legal standard for culpability, but it's not clear it's been adopted by any courts. There are also some examples of lesser charges, like harassment or stalking, but they're also rare. In addition, several states have passed specific criminal bullying and/or cyberbullying laws that might allow easier conviction on a lesser charge, but they haven't been widely tested yet.

In 2017, a Massachusetts woman was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for coaxing her (then) boyfriend to suicide.

What did Kiwi Farms do? I tried looking up their comments on him[1] but only sampled some at random rather than reading all of their comments. It certainly seems cruel and mean spirited. Some more recent comments are flippant or celebrating the suicide - but it isn't clear to me that they did anything other than be mean to Near online.

Am I missing something?

1 - https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...

KF exists solely for harassment, doxxing, etc. They generally hate furries, LGBTQ+, streamers, "e-girls", really anyone.

They'll try to get you fired, call your boss, harass your workplace with fake reviews about you until you get fired, etc.

There's a lot implied in the doc linked from twitter, if not spelled out. Particularly troubling is the alleged targeting of friends and family.

That said, it's one side, and not even from the source, but from someone's interpretation/understanding of what happened to the source, so I'm being careful to not assume much. The quick-take might be the correct take in this case, but that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with using it.

I would edit this into my parent comment, but can't edit it any more. Further reading I found this post from the Kiwi Farms operator that shares an email from Near explaining a little more on the situation.

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...

that whole thread is so vile. poor Near. like, Near is apologizing to Null for persuading one of KF's moderators to delete the thread on them, and presumably was angry that Near influenced a mod into a chance of conscience? and Null lashes out at Near for it?

these are evil people. I wonder if they realize how evil they are.

Sadly, the majority have either convinced themselves they're good and the world is evil or decided that they don't care

Is being cruel and flippantly celebrating a suicide not condemnable enough?

I don't think it is the same as murder or should be illegal.

Just yesterday YouTube recommended me a video about an Australian YouTuber facing legal trouble for being mean to an Australian government figure. The laws he may, or may not, have run afoul of use similar language about online harassment. The YouTuber claims to be calling attention to corruption and poor governmental practice.

To me, the Australian YouTuber drama epitomizes a bad possible result of making online bullying illegal. Such laws will be used to squash genuine dissent - not just jerks.

I do think the cruel people celebrating a suicide should be morally condemned. I would think less of people who do that. I wouldn't advertise there, work there, etc. But I don't think it should be illegal and it is not similar to murder.

Don’t you believe that actions should have consequences?

Do you believe that psychological attacks can have a lasting impact?

Do you think that threatening someone’s friends and families is a reasonable act?

Do you agree that getting an intermediary to kill a third party is still murder? Why can’t the intermediary also be the third party?

This was a pre-meditated and coordinated long term psychological attack, with the explicit goal of getting someone to kill themselves. These actions must have consequences.

I think it is difficult to get the definition of such a law right. You don't want to send someone for jail just for, e.g., frequently arguing with someone and sometimes insulting them.

If the intent is to kill, and the person died through their actions, then it is murder.

The methods and means don't need to be enumerated. The intent and the end state are what is defined in law.

Both the US and Japan have standing here to charge KF members with murder and those that run KF as an accomplice.

Perhaps it doesn’t bother you but I’m worried about giving prosecutors yet another extremely broad tool that they can use to put people in jail on dubious grounds.

A group of people organize together with the intent of killing or harming others on the internet. This feels like an "on the internet" patent moment, absurdly so.

The original thread seems to exhibit gray area stalking. Look at post #84.

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...

Looking through that thread, I wouldn’t be surprised if a cyberbullying case could be made in many states. There are early comments predicting and mocking the victim’s suicide far in advance of it. With all the evidence we’ve got, it seems like this cyberbullying has some culpability in a death.

I am not saying these two situations are exactly the same, but here is a situation where someone used an electronic device to encourage a suicide and was prosecuted for manslaughter

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.californiacriminaldefensela...

The posts along the lines of “I hope he does it so our kill count will increase by 1” don’t seem totally dissimilar.

IANAL, but the Michelle Carter case never made it to federal court as the Supreme Court declined to take the case. As a result, the case did not set a de jure precedent for how similar cases should be conducted outside Massachusetts. In addition, Kiwifarms is protected by §230 and the suicide took place in Japan. Under federal law, neither Null nor KF bear any responsibility for the decisions of the site's respondents and it is unlikely that any IP logs are kept. There's also the fact that any such a case would be thrown out for lacking territorial and subject matter jurisdiction. In other words, there's no case.

On the matter of byuu's/Near's suicide, the (or at least one) motivation wasn't from bullying per se, but from Null's refusal to take down the 3 year old discussion thread regarding byuu.

Source:https://kiwifarms.net/threads/byuu-byuu_nyan-setsunakun0.430...

This Twitter thread strongly suggests the motivation was largely due to bullying from the Kiwi Farms forum, in addition to the owner’s refusal to do anything about the thread.

https://mobile.twitter.com/near_koukai/status/14089400572353...

I was arguing that the event could be considered more than nothing, possibly something like manslaughter due to possibly analogous events being considered as such. Not that the actors would be prosecuted under any particular law.

>>I was arguing that the event could be considered more than nothing, possibly something like manslaughter due to possibly analogous events being considered as such. If you're arguing that casework from manslaughter-at-a-distance exists in the United States and that such case work would be applicable to KiwiFarms, I'd disagree with both points. The first point has already been explained. As to the second point, such a case would involve interstate commerce. That's under the purview of the Supreme Court which has already classified what is considered unprotected speech. "Cyberbullying", however it's defined, is not among those designations. Defamation seems to be closest category, but that's not a criminal designation. Another point to address is that calling for someone's death or suicide is not in itself illegal. Otherwise, plenty of people would be imprisoned over their opinions about Donald Trump. There must be a mens rea and a credible threat or act for the purpose of objectively harming the individual in question. Composing a slanted and abhorrent commentary about said person does not qualify as or is not comparable to setting up the noose or pulling it.

I clearly state this is not what I’m arguing.

That’s not what happened with FriendlyJordies. Christo approached John Barillaro, deputy premier of NSW, whilst happening upon him on his way to school (The Con).

Barillaro then sicked an anti-terrorism task force on him, lying about almost ever aspect of the encounter. The difference? Those being actually stalked could never get this unit to act.

A complete abuse of power. But different to this.

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