@Unionhawk blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked (Cloudflare's statement) I'm glad they didn't do this for stupid reasons but because they genuinely believed this was an emergency measure. While I'm not a fan of some of Cloudflare activities, I love their support of free speech, and I'm glad they shut down Kiwifarms for reasons other than "we don't like the content".

blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-abuse-policies-and-approach

> In a deeply troubling response, after both terminations we saw a dramatic increase in authoritarian regimes attempting to have us terminate security services for human rights organizations — often citing the language from our own justification back to us.

(In reference to two other sites they terminated, prior to Kiwifarms)

So while I'd normally argue that this sets a dangerous precedent (as it did in the prior two cases), in this case it seems they were justified due to the immediate and extreme risk of loss of life.

@Wipqozn To be fair, most trolls will go away when you ignore them. It's just that Kiwifarms is a... particular kind of vile, and simply logging off doesn't work on them because they don't contain their assholery to the internet and bring it into the real world. That's what makes them more dangerous than the more common breed of troll.

@forest The site's only purpose is the targeted harassment of trans people and it has killed 3 already.

@Unionhawk Yeah. I hope the law shuts it down.

And it makes sense that CF would act quickly in an emergency to let the law have time to go to work.

But I commend them for supporting free speech as much as they do and resisted authoritarians trying to use this stuff as an excuse to shut down civil rights websites.

Cloudflare, DDOSGuard, etc are not bound by anything at all to accept any clients that only exist to try to get people to kill themselves.

Of course not. I don't think the government should force them to host anything they don't want to.

I think it's commendable that they choose to support freedom of speech (the ideology, not the Amendment), but I don't think it should be mandatory for them. And if a client is breaking the law, they should be shut down by the law, of course.

Let me actually rephrase, cloudflare etc should not accept clients whose website is just targettedharassment.com

eh

hot take I know

I'm more on the ACLU and EFF side of things here.

I think we should allow anything that's not illegal. If it's illegal, then shut it down.

john kiwifarms or whatever is welcome to host his own website dedicated to getting trans people killed without help of course, that's still legal

No it's not.

Causing people to kill themselves intentionally is a crime.

(At least it's illegal in the US)

If that was the case, and if cloudflare believed that to be the case, why did this take fucking years

Ask the feds.

Maybe they're just lazy.

It shouldn't be CF's job not to provide protection against criminal attacks any more than it should be an Ethernet switch's job to protect against child porn by taking away Ethernet cables from pedophiles. That's the law's job.

If CF actually hosted this stuff, it'd be different, but they literally only deflect illicit DDoS attacks.

They kept the site online

No, they protected it from illicit attacks.

Their hosting provider kept it online.

Justified attacks.

uh

You know DDoS attacks hurt more than the target, right?

I've worked in telecoms and can say that DDoS is never justified.

It is morally correct to take websites dedicated to causing harm offline.

It causes tremendous collateral damage.

@Unionhawk Yes. That's the job of the feds. It is not morally right to try to take it offline by also hurting innocent sites and companies, which is what DDoSing does. I hope you don't think that the ends justify the means...

For more information please re-read.

Because guess what? DDoS attacks typically come from hacked servers and computers.

@Unionhawk Oh, I'm well aware of how these kinds of attacks work.

It is unethical to afford ddos protection to sites who exist only to do targeted harassment.

And to call an attack that utilizes innocent victims justified is something so repulsive I can't put it into words.

Plain and simple.

Then how about you let me send you a sweet little exe file. I'm sure I'll use your computer for a justified attack. :^)

Look

But no. The ends do not justify the means. Hurting innocent people to hurt a bad guy is never appropriate, and I'm appalled that you'd actually argue that it is. Yes, Kiwifarms is awful, but that doesn't mean it's ever OK to hurt others to hurt them.

Here's the thing

At the end of the day the only thing that keeps the site offline at this point is not the FBI it is that they have no protection.

sigh

The FBI does not fucking care about a site that does targeted harassment of trans people

Do you know what a botnet is? It is a collection of illicitly-compromised computers. That is the source of the majority of (non-amplification-style) DDoS attacks.

I am familiar with the concept of computer science yes

One might say I have a degree in it

Then you're not ignorant, you just don't care about the innocent people who are hurt in the course of DDoS attacks?

I'm not going to argue about this anymore.

Do you think the site should remain online

No, not as it currently stands (i.e. not as long as it's engaged in criminal activity).

Do you know why it is probably offline

@Unionhawk Yes, because innocent people's hacked computers are being used to attack it.

And innocent telecom companies are working overtime to protect their other customers who are also offline because of the attack.

This is a super easy moral problem for me, but good luck with your math I guess

wow

Oh no some poor telecom company

...

@Unionhawk Innocent people's computers.

Not just telecoms.

And a problem that cloudflare not giving protection doesn't actually create

I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about the reprehensible view that it's morally acceptable to harm innocent people in order to harm guilty people.

This isn't even just an ACLU viewpoint. This is a common sense, human viewpoint.

Yes, I think Kiwifarms should be shut down. No, I don't think people should be hurt in order to do that.

I mean ultimately denial of service attacks can take many forms, and will be easier to carry out now lol

Well first off, CF mostly protects from large attacks. It's quite easy to protect from the kind they're likely to get.

I get that you're mad that people are being harassed. I really do. I get that you hate Kiwifarms, but that doesn't make it appropriate to call for the harm of innocents to obtain the ends you want.

I mean, ffs I'm a blackhat and even I don't think it's moral to operate a botnet!

But whatever. I'm done with this. I'll say it one last time: The appropriate course of action when someone is breaking the law is to have law enforcement take care of it, not to hurt random others in your vigilante crusade of justice.

law enforcement does not care

Then vote in people who do.

did not cause this action

will take no action

I mean hell, if you really want to hurt them while hurting a minimum number of innocents, just hack them.

Using sloppy attacks that hurt innocent people is not right. Pop their boxen and dox them if you really want.

I mean fuck, the russians sure as hell didn't force ddosguard dot ru to do this lmao

I don't care what DDoSGuard does.

Wow, I keep getting pulled in. I'm so bad at this.

shrug The world is actually pretty simple sometimes

Yes, yes it is. Not hurting innocent people is a pretty obvious choice to make.

And for that, we can all agree that it is wrong to make, post on, host, and protect targettedharassment.com

sigh

This really isn't getting through to you, is it?

Let me say it again: The ends do not justify the means.

Oh shit is is right to protect it then, hang on let me check that

nah I think I'm good

False dichotomy much?

Or are you doing this on purpose?

At this point probably a little

I've honestly lost track

It shows.

You want to know who else thinks the ends justify the means and that hurting innocent victims along the way is all fun and good? The patrons of Kiwifarms. This is why I'm so surprised that you'd be holding such a hurtful view.

I'm going to go before I cast a binding flag.

I'm not sure that works on other moderators, but if you wish to delete something offensive, feel free.

Previous message was "I'm going to test it on myself". I cast a binding flag on that. It just deletes it like normal.

It works but you don't get banned

Right.

(removed, sorry)

Technically you can do real dumb shit with site association, but a mod can just change their site association back and unban themselves

True. It's a really weird system.

I see (I meant re the edited lol, I'd happily accept a 30 and in fact, I'm taking one)

Flagged down?

I didn't flag you. I flagged my own comment as a test.

Fair enough. I have to leave too, but I always have a hard time being the first one to leave. :P

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