Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Death of the Internet (2021)
I don&#x27;t know how to feel about this.<p>The interlocutor is not neutral. He is - to put it politely - an enabler of, or an active participant in, some of the most distasteful acts a person can commit short of physical violence.<p>I try to avoid thinking about these things as I strongly believe in GIGO, but based on cursory research this person&#x27;s website has,<p>&gt; The Kiwi Farms community considers it a goal to drive its targets to suicide, and has celebrated such deaths with a counter on the website<p>&gt; The forum’s homepage featured a “kill count” that tallied how many people the site had hounded to suicide<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forward.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;517780&#x2F;kiwi-farms-trolling-website-antisemitism-transgender-harass-4chan&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forward.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;517780&#x2F;kiwi-farms-trolling-website-...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kiwi_Farms" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kiwi_Farms</a><p>-<p>&gt; On August 24, 2022, U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene stated in an interview with NewsMax that she was swatted twice by an individual claiming to be Kiwifarms moderator &quot;AltisticRight&quot;. She demanded that the website be shut down<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;kiwi-farms-trans-activists-mtg-swatting-trolling-website-offline-2022-8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;kiwi-farms-trans-activists-m...</a><p>-<p>&gt; &quot;A few years back, I was doxed by Kiwi Farms, and someone came to my home and raped me. I have reason to believe he got my address from KF.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;BathysphereHat&#x2F;status&#x2F;1553879823499595780" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;BathysphereHat&#x2F;status&#x2F;155387982349959578...</a><p>-<p>&gt; Twitch streamer under the name &quot;Keffals&quot;, was doxxed on Kiwi Farms in a thread dedicated to discussing her. Users on the site posted personal information about her (e.g. addresses, phone numbers) as well as that of her friends and family. Users also leaked sexually explicit photos of her and made death threats.[34][35] She was later swatted, arrested, and detained for over ten hours in August 2022 when someone stole her identity and sent fake emails to local politicians threatening mass violence. She was later cleared of any wrongdoing, and police acknowledged the incident as a swatting attempt.<p>-<p>&gt; In the final Twitter thread they posted before their death, Near—who also went by Byuu, and identified as nonbinary—publicly called out Kiwi Farms for making their lifelong experience with online harassment and bullying “orders of magnitude worse.”<p>&gt; “It’s escalated from attacking me for being autistic, to attacking and doxing my friends, and trying to suicide bait another, just to get a reaction from me,” they wrote. “The internet is not a game. It’s real life. I’m a real person. This stuff really hurts.”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;the-worst-site-on-the-web-gets-ddosd-after-being-connec-1847196197" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;the-worst-site-on-the-web-gets-ddosd-aft...</a><p>-<p>And the list goes on and on.<p>There&#x27;s a difference between maintaining a forum whose users do horrid things v. maintaining a forum where the owner&#x2F;chief moderator posts a counter of the number of people they&#x27;ve driven to suicide.<p>It&#x27;s vile. BUT does that merit banishment?<p>In the spirit of Jean-Luc Picard, while the interlocutor is abhorrent, removing him from the internet, a fundamental service feels just as wrong as doing nothing.<p>I don&#x27;t know what the answer is over here.<p>What is the morally correct thing to do in the face of such immediate evil and a righteous choice that will also (eventually) lead to evil? How do we pick the lesser?<p>How do we know that we&#x27;ve made the right choice?<p>To quote one of my favorite TNG lines, &quot;Villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well-camouflaged.&quot;