Regarding the apparent and imminent repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the future of this website.

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If Trump follows through on this, and it's not just his umpteenth boast, we are truly fucked.
We'll see whether this strangulation of the net actually happens, I remain optimistic 2020 will spare us this calamity.
At the least, this Sword of Damocles will not hang above the WWW's head for much longer.
Bilateral support to safeguard this fundamental principle would be preferable, although I'll settle for a stalemate.

Should this signal the end for KF & many posters here, fare thee well. I've learned a lot about digital culture & its pitfalls whilst browsing here, something no lecture or book can impart adequately.
Sad to see such a good repository for niche internet history (among other things) go out like this
(There's KnowYourMeme, but it lacks the the doggedness of this forum & coasts more on trends than I'd like).

@Null, may whatever you do post-KF be more fullfilling & less temperamental.
Thank you for decidating years of your life to this digital cul-de-sac, the world is/was a better place for it.

Edited layout.
 
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3119967d0c said:
The US extends its jurisdiction over the whole world, bro.

Trump's bosses just murdered an engineering manager who was running the Iranian COVID vaccine project. Why does Iran run its own medical research programs, you may ask, rather than simply buying medicines from overseas? Very simple- because companies selling medicine to Iran will be targeted with legal and financial attacks, whether they even operate in the US or not.

Josh can't just host in Russia or Estonia or whatever. Even if he can keep the hosting provider secret, he is tied to the Farms, and he will be sued by freaks daily in the US. Without 230, he can't go back to the US without facing suits that could ruin him. And it's bad already! It just isn't going to happen, and you should learn better than to ask him to never be able to visit his homeland, to see his mother again, so that you can shitpost online.
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I really think you guys are overestimating the people going after this website

Phil Burnell & Amberlynn Reid aren't going to send drones to bomb shit in Uzbekistan and the US foreign secretary isn't calling Putin to get a troll forum shut down

Not saying it SHOULD be done, but someone can just host a copy of the site in a third world shit hole, no? Obviously I'm not saying Null should jump onto a raft and sail stealthily across the Atlantic with the kiwi farms on a portable ssd and never visit his poor old mum again. I'm sure there are kiwis out there that could help out.
 
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I'm going to say I'm nervous just because this seems like a pretty important Bill to attach Section 230 repeal on, something that Republicans and Dems would both agree on. At the same time This song and dance has played out before, Trump says he wants to repeal Section 230, I panic along with everyone else, then nothing happens because of gridlock or because something else pops up that catches Trumps attention. On top of that he just announced this, I don't know how much traction this will get in Congress or if they're willing to play ball with Trump. I'm going to agree with Secret Asshole from earlier that this is just Trump yelling into the void while Congress ignores him and he has to sign the bill to save face.

Of course this time it really could happen in which case shit. This website has brought me much joy and many idiots to laugh at and it was a delight to be here. Thanks to Null for putting up with all the bullshit and I hope to see you all somewhere on the net someday.


Dom Cruise said:
Don’t shut the site down completely, just remove the lolcow section but keep it as an open discussion forum for various topics.
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I agree with this, if only to keep the community together and have a place to actually discuss stuff without fear of getting banned for having the wrong opinion.
 
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AmpleApricots said:
People saying josh should just take it "underground" though are plain stupid. How's that supposed to work? His identity and face is all over the internet. You think nobody would or could make that connection?
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Anyone could theoretically do it and claim to be Josh, or Josh could do it and claim to be someone else - true attribution would be impossible. TOR also would obfuscate the site, acting as a barrier to entry for people discovering their own threads (whether that would be better or worse remains to be seen).
 
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wahkando said:
Not saying it SHOULD be done, but someone can just host a copy of the site in a third world shit hole, no? Obviously I'm not saying Null should jump onto a raft and sail stealthily across the Atlantic with the kiwi farms on a portable ssd and never visit his poor old mum again. I'm sure there are kiwis out there that could help out.
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No. Even with access to CloudFlare, even with servers at a high quality colo site in the US, there are problems caused by DDOS from time to time.

There's no way to spin up the site on a $40/month virtual server in Serbia where it remains performant enough to retain any sort of community.
Beavis said:
Repealing 230 would be a pain the ass even for the big dogs. They could easily be spending billions yearly defending themselves from lawsuits.
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No problem. They just do what Trump's buddies at Parler did, ask for your ID and make you responsible for those lawsuits.
 
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wahkando said:
I really think you guys are overestimating the people going after this website

Phil Burnell & Amberlynn Reid aren't going to send drones to bomb shit in Uzbekistan and the US foreign secretary isn't calling Putin to get a troll forum shut down

Not saying it SHOULD be done, but someone can just host a copy of the site in a third world shit hole, no? Obviously I'm not saying Null should jump onto a raft and sail stealthily across the Atlantic with the kiwi farms on a portable ssd and never visit his poor old mum again. I'm sure there are kiwis out there that could help out.
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That costs money that no one has.
 
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This isn't happening anytime soon. Trump is a lame duck and Congress could override his veto if he actually follows through. Democrats aren't going to agree to anything he wants and Republicans aren't going to play games with military gibz even if they want to do this.
 
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pareidolia said:
Anyone could theoretically do it and claim to be Josh, or Josh could do it and claim to be someone else - true attribution would be impossible. TOR also would obfuscate the site, acting as a barrier to entry for people discovering their own threads (whether that would be better or worse remains to be seen).
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And then they investigate him. Depending on the country he's in having a look-see at the logs of the providers what he's doing online is a formality. In a subset of these countries, actively investigating his internet traffic too. Stuff like this gets rubber stamped by judges, especially connected to the buzz-wordy "hate speech" stuff. A hint of a suspicion that he runs an "illegal site" and the judge grants a search warrant. In lots of european countries (and I assume in the US too) electronic devices have basically no protection whatsoever regarding privacy and the barrier for law enforcement searching them is really low. His harddrive is encrypted? Again, depending on the countries involved they can just lock him up until he tells the password. If the court has a hard-on for the "dark web" they will interpret his unwillingness to cooperate unfavorably, even if the official word of the law might disallow to do so. And no, we're not even talking China here. I would not that put on myself.
 
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