Thread by @BostonJoan

I haven’t spoken much about KF over the years, mostly out of sheer horror and a feeling of hopelessness after their hosting of the manifesto and video of the Christchurch massacre.

I would talk with reporters once in a while about possible angles to cover KF, but it was futile.

https://twitter.com/gossithedog/status/1566728231893573634

The problem, of course, was anyone who spoke of KF was likely going to endure networked harassment, possibly for years on end.

KF isn’t just a website that coordinates harassment. It’s is an infrastructure of evil frequented by people who have a serious amount of technical skill

Mess with KF and you were likely to have your bank account, Uber, phone number, and apps hacked. If they got your home address you’d be flooded with pizza delivery, at best, or worst, swatted by police.

Any business that kept that site alive was complicit.

Now, everyone knows that everyone knows that you do not underestimate an organized crew of trans activists.

While there have been numerous attempts to get KF kicked offline, one critical networked faction was often missing. Bad press and govt pressure wasn’t enough.

Enter @keffals and the #DropKiwifarms campaign, who got cloudflare and more companies to stop services to KF. Popular, organized, and already targeted by KF, Keffals is a Twitch streamer and trans activist who was recently swatted by KF.

Networked harassment campaigns that jump from the wires to the weeds are different than generalized hate campaigns because an individual is harmed and it’s a crime. There’s no way to hide behind claims of free speech, which was the main defense of the corps still serving KF.

Moreover, @keffals had a huge audience that were practiced at swarming to spread specific messages. This command structure of social media can be used for pro-social or anti-social activism, but it only works when someone has a large audience that respects their calls to action.

Mobilization is one of the most crucial features of contemporary social media and is a consequence of the design. It was disengenious of Cloudflare to claim that the pressure campaign exerted by #DropKiwifarms didn’t factor into their decision to drop KF.

There would be no public knowledge of KF, if not for the ‘name and shame’ campaign organized by #DropKiwifarms.

So what’s next?

Typically, deplatforming doesn’t stick unless it’s coupled with demonetization. That requires more vigilance on the part of activists to keep an eye on any attempts to raise $ to bring KF back online.

The removal of KF from the far right media ecosystem is already producing new alliances among influencers. The far-right, like most social movements, is characterized by fractures and fissures across trolls, white supremacists, and misogynists. The owner of KF is reviled by many.

The biggest fear of the far right in this moment is less about defending KF and more about the writing on the wall; i.e. other sites like 4chan will be targeted next.

They fear this activism will obliterate the internet’s hate machine.

So be it.