They were sensitive and struggled with depression - KF knew their harassment would be effective. Near was gay, autistic, non-binary, and involved with furry communities (though IIRC they may not have been a furry themselves - not that it matters), which made them an easy target. My understanding is that KF chooses to harass people who are marginalized, easy to bully, and on the basis of how dramatic, embarrassing, or 'cringe' their response would be. I don't know if I'll get all the details right, but I'll try. I'm a huge fan - not just of their technical achievements or their ideological commitment, but also of the seeming grace with which they carried themselves in the past few years. I never personally interacted with Near, but I've been following them and their work since the days of the zsnes forums, back in the mid-00s. They really wanted people to call them that and not their old pseudonym. They're all an enormous net-negative for humanity.Ī nit: it'd be more respectful to use 'Near'. They're ideologically flipped compared to Twitter trolls, but fundamentally alike in their methods, moral posturing, and disregard for basic human decency. The trolls on Kiwi Farms are more visible as big fish in their own small pond. The trolls on Twitter blend in by being a few medium-sized fish in the ocean. Actual Twitter employees harassed right-wing reporter Andy Ngo after a real-world mob attack sent him to the ER with a brain hemmorhage, an event which 'ACAB Twitter' continues to celebrate and remind him about. On Twitter, self-appointed mobs of the morally righteous call for violence against children, farm lulz from the killings of police officers, dox strangers to get them fired over off-color jokes, and endlessly harass and threaten certain conservative journalists and activists. How am I supposed to respond except by deciding, I will not do anything with my life that could attract Kiwi Farms' attention? To some extent, I can be careful about opsec to some extent, if someone goes after me, I'm all right with that.īut what if they go after other people in the name of targeting me? What if they go after my friends, or even my family, who has very little say in what I do? What if my parents, who have never had to care about opsec in their lives and like most people's parents own a house and have their real names on it, get SWATted because some monster on an internet forum hates me? Not that I'm doing anything particularly likely to attract the attention of the worst part of the internet (but then, you'd hope that 'writing some emulators and going by 'they'' shouldn't either), but, I've thought about it and decided I can deal with people going after me. After getting to know them, it became clear this was a defense mechanism a product of all the abuse they received over their entire life. > Some of you may be aware of Near’s notoriously paranoid opsec. Doxing some, directly harassing others, and even specifically seeking out suicidal people to target. Not to be defeated in their pursuit of utter emotional and psychological destruction, they went after who Near treasured most: their friends. Many wouldn’t, but Near was strong enough to overcome that level of emotional abuse. Composing a slanted and abhorrent commentary about said person does not qualify as or is not comparable to setting up the noose or pulling it. There must be a mens rea and a credible threat or act for the purpose of objectively harming the individual in question. Otherwise, plenty of people would be imprisoned over their opinions about Donald Trump. Defamation seems to be closest category, but that's not a criminal designation.Īnother point to address is that calling for someone's death or suicide is not in itself illegal. 'Cyberbullying', however it's defined, is not among those designations. That's under the purview of the Supreme Court which has already classified what is considered unprotected speech. As to the second point, such a case would involve interstate commerce. The first point has already been explained. If you're arguing that casework from manslaughter-at-a-distance exists in the United States and that such case work would be applicable to KiwiFarms, I'd disagree with both points.

>I was arguing that the event could be considered more than nothing, possibly something like manslaughter due to possibly analogous events being considered as such.

Near bsnes emulators has died