Antipodean fruit growers 2 - Canary in the internet coal mine

[Bosky]

Continuation thread from Antipodean fruit grower statement

A statement from the owner reads in part:

Downtime Update as of August 26th, 2022

"What I fear more than losing my site, being sued, or dealing with police is living in a world where [REDACTED] can [REDACTED] little boys and girls into [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], while normal people are not allowed to even discuss it.

The mob has already planned subsequent targets. Should we stay down, they will then attack 'gender critical' communities - especially those ran by and for women. No place can exist online which allows criticism of their [REDACTED], and nothing would excite them more than this power and domination struggle being inflicted on a female space instead."

I would link to the statement on the Internet Archive aka "Wayback Machine" but it has made all pages archived from the relevant site unsearchable (or deleted?).

Mumsnet does not permit links to the site Archive Today so that is out too.

1st Thread Antipodean fruit grower statement
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4620584-antipodean-fruit-grower-statement

am in - thank you. didn't occur to me to clear cookies!

And they are fully out to bat for Caroline Farrow (see her current thread on here). I’d never have thought there’d be such a cross over of the two forums. Seems the benefits of protecting free speech makes for interesting neighbours.

we’re all fascists according to the TRAs, I suppose as we know that’s not actually true of us, we’re willing to extend the benefit of doubt to them?

plus, Null hates paedos as much as we do.

Almost like Keffals didn't exist. Ahh.

Still without the security and protection of Cloudflare?

Cloudflare is entirely unnecessary now.

KF just built their own DDOS protection.

As any bunch of competent network engineers could do given the time and motivation and can do at any point when necessary. Why do you think Cloudflare are diversifying into hawking cloud storage. That's the thing about the internet, it was built to be open and distributed and based on common protocols. Cope and seethe keffals/Marg as they say on the farms.

You do know Cloudflare is not the be all and end all of Internet security? Why are you so invested in us not looking at the farms @MargaritaPie? What do you not want us to see?

All that collated evidence re: paedos and abusers - Marge wouldn’t want our feeble-lady-brains overloaded!

Anyone with teens or soon to be teens would be well advised to read KF from time to time. The internet is full of weird shit that is almost unfathomable to middle aged adults, having grown up with MySpace at most.
KF is a great heads up as to the sorts of people our kids could happen across via gaming platforms/discord/tumblr/whatever.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Just to add to the other responses. There is even a possibility now, that the DDOS protection the farmers have built could be sold as a service to other websites. Those who Cloudflare are pushed to dump as they were KF or sites who are sickened by what Cloudflare did, could in the future, use a service that springs from the farmers work. And there is potential now, that never existed before, for Moon and Co, to get really quite sickeningly wealthy. All thanks to Keffals deciding to attack them and eradicate them from the internet.

See that's the thing. People aren't just going to get bullied off the internet and slink away, never to be heard from again. It's not easy. But the more the mainstream companies push dissenters off their platforms, the more new platforms will be built. And while the amount of users who leave with them will be slow at first, eventually that will build up, a critical mass will occur and Meta, youtube, paypal, etc all risk finding themselves the hasbeens of the internet. While some of the people who were initially bullied off their platforms become the next big thing.

So keep on at it. I never looked at KiwiFarms before August. I was barely aware of it and the little impression I had was that it was to be avoided. The KeffalsKerfuffal prompted me to take a look at it and while it's full of edgelord shit that I really don't like, once you mentally filter that out, I think it's an utterly invaluable source of information and I now read through it several times a week. I know that once the information that's on KF becomes mainstream, this whole sorry pile of shit will be over and at least a handful of scapegoats will be in jail for what they have done to so many young and vulnerable people. I know that's why the attempt was made to destroy the site, and I know that it's not only failed but that it has massively, massively increased the amount of people like me, who are not regularly reading the site. It was a spectacular, spectacular own goal for Keffals and co. KF is more widely read than ever and Moon has at worst, reduced his reliance on third party service providers - at best, potentially created a service that could provide an excellent revenue stream.

So yeah, keep on crowing about Cloudflare dropping them. It means less than nothing.

IDK, I think it is probably useful to have people who are insistent about trying to ban a site that monitors child abusers etc. Instructive.

And to add to that - Cloudflare have damaged their own reputation.

They are supposed to be a neutral service but obviously the websites that need the most protection are the websites that have criminal enemies (because we mustn’t forget that DDOS attacks are absolutely 100% illegal, not just distasteful).

Cloudflare justified throwing the Farms under the bus driven by indisputable criminals due to KF supposedly posing an ‘imminent threat to life’ - yet not only is KF still up, and nobody is dead (nor maimed, nor seriously injured, not even so much as a sprained ankle!) but there hasn’t even been a police investigstion into whatever the fuck it was that Cloudflare decided was so serious as to warrant immediate termination of services.

How can any of Cloudflare’s other customers now trust Cloudflare’s professional judgement as an online security company that protects against criminal attacks when they’ve exposed themselves as bunch of easily-spooked dimwits?

I know if I were the regular target of hackers I sure as shit wouldn’t pay Cloudflare to protect me now that I’ve seen them withdraw that protection from someone else based on nothing more than rumour (a rumour that was most likely started by the same people who are funding/launching those Illegal DDOS attacks).

Cloudflare are the Gerald Ratner of the Internet.

The crossover arc of Mumsnetters and the KiwiFarmers is one that too few saw coming. Truly an unholy alliance.

I wish more people understood that heavy handed censorship on websites does not help to stop people having the thoughts that people do not want them to have, it just forces people to seek out alternative platforms which are usually more extreme and risk radicalising people further.

Mumsnet and Reddit censorship spurred not only the creation of Ovarit but also the influx of GC women to a darker place that welcomed them (The KiwiFarms).

IF KF gets pushed off the clearnet, the Kiwis have already proven that a majority of them will follow KF to their onion site. I for one now use Tor occasionally myself as well.

Believe me, the last thing any government or Tech company should want is people starting to access the “darkweb” just to be able to speak freely. On Tor, they cannot monitor us, they cannot advertise to us, they will find it harder to arrest (women) for hurty words online and they will have pushed a number of people onto an Internet where actual evil stuff is now within access.

Null's helpfully filled out a full post, which he's been keeping updated: "Null's Tier List for Internet Services":

This is a tier list of various service providers organized by how I feel their service handled complaint volume professionally. S is a service we still use, A is for companies that went above and beyond, and F is reserved for companies that gave zero notice before shitting themselves.

Anyone getting a high rating on that list has proven their trustworthiness, and is someone it would make sense to put reliance on, if you're going to rely on anyone.

Cloudflare, alas:

F. As much as I want to give Cloudflare some praise for standing by for almost a decade, I can't. When they did terminate:

• No direct communication with me, before or after service termination.
• No time to move off before the domain went down.
• Issued a strong statement in objection to private company censorship, before immediately backtracking it.
• Hijacked our domain to issue a defamatory, almost legally actionable, statement.
• Flailing blogpost accusing us of being the worst site they've ever hosted, alluding to violent threats they have not evidenced.

Cloudflare just isn't professional for a company its size.

The real reason keffals wants the farm shut down

twitter.com/tullipr/status/1578328540420141056?s=61&t=q5Axt1ftbZ_SHw8rxev0mw

fuck.

I hope this brave person is able to get some proper support via Ritchie passing on to the qualified professionals at Genspec or Thoughtful therapists or something.

I’m sick of victims being steamrollered.

Me too. There is such a pattern of the loudest voices - Challenor, Bradley etc - have most to hide

"There is even a possibility now, that the DDOS protection the farmers have built could be sold as a service to other websites"

kiwifarms was hacked because of a well-known exploit from 2010 (which Cloudflare would have protected against). I don't think anyone will be buying any "protection" Josh Moon has made.

"What do you not want to see?"

I don't want to see LGBT people and their parents/allies doxxed, harassed or bullied into suicide.

Hate sites such as kiwifarms radicalise haters even further and are breeding grounds for this sort of thing.

The hack was from before the new DDOS was implemented you big old dafty, Marge!

If I ever own a domain I'll stick with Cloudflare thank you. I won't be buying anything from Moon.

You do you, Marge!

We’ve got paedos in children’s charities to worry about.

Luckily we still have freedom of expression in a couple of corners of the internet so we can discuss and document safeguarding fails.

It’s such a worry when abusers can just DFE (delete fucking everything).

Thanks to Justine and Josh, it’s much harder for predators to keep predating.

Just checked. The domain marge.net is still available.

What content are you planning? We would love to have answers to our many questions.

(Not that I expect Marge to answer as s/he's incredibly ignorant when s/he wants to avoid a question)

Do you use Twitter @MargaritaPie ? Don't you think harassment and bullying is rife on there? Especially amongst certain 'minority groups'.

Do KF harass people? I thought there was a strict Don't touch the poo/Don't engage with the lolcows warning?
And there is no proof of KF being responsible for the suicidal actions of any person. In fact, didn't one of those people leave suggestion that the 'trans community' were responsible for the decision they made??

Chloe Sagal’s story, as told by loved ones is far more complex than those who denigrate KF are willing to accept.

IMO, it’s cynically exploitative, how Sagal’s severe mental health problems and lack of community support is now completely ignored by those who seek to use Sagal’s tragic death as cudgel against their own political enemy.

This thoughtful blog is by one of Chloe’s exes, they lived together for a couple of years and the relationship ended just short of two years before Chloe’s death in 2018:

destroyedforcomfort.com/tag/chloe-sagal/

The blog author, Rani, is also trans (if you ever read this, Rani - condolences. Grieving for an ex is a strange and difficult experience )

Sagal’s story is intertwined with Gamergate so it’s hard for a normie middle aged British mum to understand it all, especially so long after the fact, but there are receipts that show Sagal had been experiencing suicide ideation and attempts for some years prior to death and had reached out to both Brianna Wu and Zinnia Jones and been publicly rejected and felt humiliated.

There was a 2013 hooha over a medical costs crowdfunder being advertised as for one thing (car accident injuries) but intended for another (trans surgeries):

www.eurogamer.net/homesick-dev-chloe-sagal-successfully-crowd-funding-life-saving-operation

(which seems sad because this was quite early in the history of crowdfunders before trans-surgery-ones became so ubiquitous and perhaps Sagal’s fans would’ve helped with transition stuff anyway?)

Sagal reportedly attempted suicide whilst streaming live on Twitch in 2015:
www.gameskinny.com/google-amp/n4xzw/homesick-developer-attempts-suicide-on-twitchtv

Sagal’s mental health issues were seemingly difficult to tolerate - which is understandable (crikey knows we see a lot if it on the relationships board here) and while it’s easy, with hindsight, to say, ‘why on earth didn’t Chloe’s own community find help?’ the reality is that it’s not that easy to find help for someone with severe mental health issues (especially with no NHS) and sometimes distancing yourself is a self preservation necessity)

Lots of the tweets still exist on Twitter it’s not just archived stuff.

imgur.com/gallery/23bz3sa

twitter.com/ZJemptv/status/1010207130526380033?s=20&t=w7p8BByLElgWvjx14WJPbg

Anyway, perhaps it’s a natural response for trans people who actually knew and rejected Sagal to alleviate their own guilty feelings* by pointing the finger at anonymous online posters, but when second or third hand people like Marge to do it’s far harder to give benefit if the doubt.

*Suicide makes us all feel guilty even if it’s not a rational feeling and we don’t actually carry any blame, just wish we could’ve done something that changed the outcome.

———————
I am mindful of the Samaritans guidelines when discussing suicide and am thus adding their contact info to my post:

www.samaritans.org

(please reach out to a helpline if you need support, they exist for you to use - probably best not call Mermaids though, eh? ❤️)

A few comments from a 4 year old thread on the GamerGhazi subreddit - all by people who say they new Chloe (unverifiable as some of the user profiles have been deleted)