Kiwi Farms: Anti-trans stalkers chasing Keffals around the world
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
I don't blame Cloudflare for being reluctant to play judge, jury, and executioner, even though they would probably see short-term profit from doing so.
One thing I find peculiar: we don't see the same lack of will when it comes to policing copyright online. KF gets away with literal murder, but share so much as a fragment of a song or movie and you get nuked from orbit.
Protecting copyright reinforces the system -the status quo. There's a financial motive, there's a social motive. That's why you see a lot more action on that front.
Protecting the marginalized is against the interest of far-right aligned groups (many, many, many law enforcement people happen to be far right, as do many in the judiciary, and FBI) -they see the silencing of "freaks" and LGBT people as being a Good Thing. Therefore Law Enforcement is anti-motivated, and the time (AND MONEY) that they spend on cases they don't care about to begin with is TIME AND MONEY taken away from persuing things like...policing copyright, or engaging in civil forfeiture or other profit-driven activities.
It isn't peculiar when you think it through. Disgusting and absolutely depressing -yes. But not peculiar. It makes perfect sense from their point of view.
We have blocked Kiwifarms. Visitors to any of the Kiwifarms sites that use any of Cloudflare's services will see a Cloudflare block page and a link to this post. Kiwifarms may move their sites to other providers and, in doing so, come back online, but we have taken steps to block their content from being accessed through our infrastructure.
This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare's role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with. However, the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site and specific, targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours to the point that we believe there is an unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life unlike we have previously seen from Kiwifarms or any other customer before.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/03/cloudfl...
Reading the related article I thought cloudflare was providing hosting or caching but it seems they are (or were) providing DDoS protection.
Harassing Keffals is wrong. DDoS is wrong. Who’s right here?
After the swatting incident, Keffals stayed in a hotel one night. KiwiFarms were able to track her down in a matter of hours. With nothing more than a photo on her Discord that happened to include the hotel bedsheets.
Their vitriol isn’t something that you can just “grow thicker skin” against. These people will harass you until the day you die, and never give up.
I’m not defending them and what they’re doing to Keffals is beyond wrong but what does this hope to accomplish?
Dragging cloudflare through the mud might seem like a good idea until someone else whips up the twitter mob to get them to drop <random cause you support> so they can be DDoSed off the interwebs.
Next time they pressure cloudflare they have a playbook to go off of to get what they want.
And what playbook? Oh so Cloudflare decided to kick one site off now they “have to” kick everyone else off? Why? Are they legally obligated to?
Cloudflare can decide to do whatever it wants on a case by case basis, it’s a business not a court. Precedents be damned.
The whole gay cakes debacle resulted in jurisprudence that supports the right of businesses to refuse service on the grounds of "a genuine objection in conscience".