Kiwi Farms: The Slippery Slope of Curating the Web * TorrentFreak
torrentfreak.comCloudflare initially declined to cut its ties with Kiwi Farms but later changed its position. This raises tough questions for online curation.
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The problem with this is simple: Not taking down dangerous information is a dereliction of duty of care for information custodianship.
Why?
Confidentiality refers to the prevention of unauthorized, unwarranted, and unacceptable access to information. In this case, if you are hosting the information of an individual (PII, for instance) you have an obligation to protect that data both for yourself, and the individual that data represents. To publicly share PII like this is a violation of information ethics.
Integrity refers to the ability to protect data from unauthorized access. What most people forget, ignore, and blatantly argue against is that it also refers to the accuracy and âcorrectnessâ of the data. Data that is inaccurate, incorrect, or otherwise improper can not adequately be used for any sort of analytical work, and more importantly impacts the information flow in real time. Flawed data, allowed to continue propagating, prevents the flow of correct information with high integrity. The very publication and repetition of dis- and misinformation is a violation of integrity.
Availability refers to the appropriate and proper access to the data or information being protected. In these cases, data allowed to be accessible by others is not only a violation of confidentiality, but is a de facto violation of availability. The protection of availability is often at odds with, but always tied to, the confidentiality of the data. Without proper confidentiality protection, and without authorization restrictions to allow for appropriate access to the data or information, availability is out of balance.
Say what you will about things, but the flow of dis- and misinformation and everyone who allows for it to continue is by very definition a threat to both small-scale information security, and larger-scale information security.
The view that all viewpoints are valid and equal is demonstrably dangerous throughout history. German has a word for those who are willing to allow for an extreme group to rise, despite knowing better: Mitläufer. Itâs commonly used, in German, to refer to anyone who hitches their wagon to an extremist horse and indirectly supports them. Note: not someone who actively supports them, but the kind of people who say âFREE SPEECH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING ELSE!â
Edit for further clarity: I wanted to add that I am perturbed that archives were also destroyed. Keeping those, scrubbed of doxxâd data and information, would have allowed investigators the ability to find the people in charge of Kiwi Farms and get a clear view of who the individuals were. That is now lost, but at the expense of proper information custodianship. Admittedly, the task of cleaning that data for ethical storage would have been a nightmare to undertake.
For further reading on the Marxist view of Free Speech: https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1a/nv-speech.htm
The archives werenât destroyed to my knowledge, they were just hidden from the public.
Pretty sure investigators have other means to get that information, depending how bad they want to make an example out of KF. KF for a while had its purpose of being digital blackshirts, but when they swatted that senator and the whole business in Ireland they just took it too far.
What about the slippery slope of slippery slopes? Once you give in to fear about slippery slopes, where will it end? Youâll never be able to say no (or yes) to anything again!
Exercising judgement is a difficult act, but not one that is black or white. It shouldnât be painted as something that is or isnât, either. A slippery slope either existing or not is a false dichotomy trying to shoehorn a complicated situation into an on/off configuration.
Calling the application of social pressure to get cloudflare to stop enabling hate a slippery slope is ignoring that itâs arguably the first instance of something like this to happen, it took an enormous amount of effort for it to happen, while it was not happening the livelihoods of individuals were being harassed, harmed, and destroyed, and it involved a private enterprise making a decision for themselves and is not reflective of how others in the industry will respond.
Of important framing, did we call the workers rights movement a slippery slope? Racial justice? Feminism? I think the more contentious the public perception is of a movement, the more likely people are to call something enabling said movement a slippery slope. However, on the opposite side of things we usually recognize the reduction or removal of human rights or governmental representation universally as a slippery slope when the issue is no longer contentious or is broad enough to apply to all individuals (while nobles may have framed the rise of democracies as a slippery slope away from monarchistic and feudal governmental systems, I doubt the same was said by the majority of individuals who stood to benefit from this paradigm shift). Applying the wording of âslippery slopeâ to make demons out of issues they simply disagree with seemingly only happens by conservative individuals to protect a worldview that suppresses others.
I agree with you. People forget that âslippery slopeâ is a logical fallacy, ie, âslippery slope fallacyâ. Itâs like when homophobes say that allowing gay marriage will lead to people marrying their dog or something. Like, no the fuck it wonât.
The lack of oversight is disturbing. We have a couple of places dictating what can and cannot be on the internet.
Iâd prefer to no oversight to arbitrary or bad oversight.