Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Death of the Internet (2021)
&gt; ColoCrossing in Buffalo physically unplugged my servers in 2019 for hosting the Kiwi Farms and Encyclopedia Dramatica.<p>I stopped reading the article after reading this sentence - and I agreed with everything the author stated until then.<p>Mass shootings, suicides and rapes have happened because of the content of KF and ED.<p>If you provide shelter for the racist, misogynist, homophobic, Nazi and automated weapons fanatic, then you deserve to be censored. Let&#x27;s not forget that the explicit purpose of KF is to run harassment and doxxing campaigns.<p>I believe that, as a society, we need to deal with people that, for a variety of reasons, have been isolated and pushed to the extremes, instead of further isolating them. But handing them a loudhailer to spread their hate and misanthropy isn&#x27;t the right way of dealing with them. Your freedom of speech ends when your words cause the murder, rape, beating or harassment of another human being. And, more generally, your freedom ends when it harms somebody else&#x27;s freedom. If we lose this principle, then we have lost civilization.<p>Building communities around ideas that damage the society as a whole and justify people&#x27;s most extreme beliefs is just wrong. When too much momentum builds around these ideas, they stop being a virtual pastime for trolls with plenty of time to waste and they spill into the real world. Real people die. Real lives are ruined. And a civilized society ought to draw a clear boundary to prevent these things from happening. We have to deal with the marginalized and the mentally shaky by including them back into society. Not by providing them with a platform to connect with others in the same state, consolidate their extremism, and create individuals that are even more unsuitable for being reintegrated into society than they were before.<p>Granted, it&#x27;s not always easy for regulators to draw this line, there are a lot of shades of gray, and we need to keep those in charge accountable for unfair censorship. But there&#x27;s really no gray area for KF and ED. If you host them, then you deserve to be unplugged.