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

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I have been around since almost the beginning: I was here when it was still known as the CWCki forum, when Champthon was running things and then Mew.

We have survived it all: When Cogsdev went mental and exiled the forum, when Mew turned out to be a complete degenerate, the BlueberryRaggamuffin scandal; when we discovered Nick Bates and had to accept not all lolcows are harmless, funny people, the Chloe Sagal - Translifeline saga, when the site was taken down the first time due to the Vordrak incident, and then the Zoosadist incident.

My point isn't to say that forum will survive, No. This is most likely the beginning of the end. However, this site and community has seen and been involved in some really wild shit. What other site has been used as an internet boogeyman, a source for Vox, and cited in an academic paper? I can't think of many. The forum has aged well and Null is now essentially going out on his own terms. He said it himself, he is no longer some edgelord in late teens but now a man close to 30. He wants to be an adult. Kiwifarms and adulthood can't be more of an antithesis of each other. Hell, I have grown up and only skim A & H, multimedia and Hulkamania. I find Lolcows to be boring. I am roughly the same age as Null and understand his thought process. I was at most twenty one when I joined and now I just entered my 30's; I was then some punk kid who liked to drink too much at bars and had no ambitions for my life - now I have a career and am saving for a house; I was then still a stranger to adult relationships, but now am debating if I should pop the question to my girlfriend.

The point I am trying to make is that unlike Chris-Chan, we have grown and learned how to move onto the next stage of life. Kiwifarms will always be something special, kind of like how MAD magazine and Cracked were to my parents generation, but ultimately something that is meant for that generation alone and would be dated for successive ones. I rather it end on its own terms than become some sanitized shell of itself like Encyclopedia Dramatica. It has been around at the Twilight of the "wild west" era of the internet and stuck it to the "big tech" era on multiple occasions. I say it deserves a peaceful death, with the community accepting the fact, appreciating what it was, happily marching into adulthood. Something that none of the documented lolcows ever could do.
 
When Biden enters office, I think he’ll be too focused on foreign policy and “muh racism” than to care about Section 230, apparently he hasn’t mentioned it since January, so it could’ve been one of those promises he ended up forgetting about. Either way, Trump is either an absolute retard who can’t criticism, or a genius who’s using his influence to rile up grifters on social media into supporting this. Either way, the internet is fucked, the only “edgy” website I can see coming out from this is 4chan, but that’s because it’s ISPs are no longer based in the United States but rather Japan and France.

Either way, we have about a month and a half left and I think Trump is only saying this shit to remain optimistic to his supporters. Even if Biden is against section 230, most democrats are still supportive of it. So he probably won’t even try to repeal it as he wouldn’t have enough power as opposed to most republicans siding with Trump on that issue.

To all of the people who unironically “memed” Trump, congraulations we didn’t get the badass leader who was going to build the wall, but rather an emotionally stunted manchild.
 
When Biden enters office, I think he’ll be too focused on foreign policy and “muh racism” than to care about Section 230, apparently he hasn’t mentioned it since January, so it could’ve been one of those promises he ended up forgetting about. Either way, Trump is either an absolute retard who can’t criticism, or a genius who’s using his influence to rile up grifters on social media into supporting this. Either way, the internet is fucked, the only “edgy” website I can see coming out from this is 4chan, but that’s because it’s ISPs are no longer based in the United States but rather Japan and France.

Either way, we have about a month and a half left and I think Trump is only saying this shit to remain optimistic to his supporters. Even if Biden is against section 230, most democrats are still supportive of it. So he probably won’t even try to repeal it as he wouldn’t have enough power as opposed to most republicans siding with Trump on that issue.

To all of the people who unironically “memed” Trump, congraulations we didn’t get the badass leader who was going to build the wall, but rather an emotionally stunted manchild.
But if 230 is killed "muh racism" will 100% die this time for sure, because all the evil nazi small websites will die and only the verified truth of the big social media sites will survive.
 
I’m older than you and generally successful in life and the conversation here (when not about lolcows) has made me wiser.

There is difference between frequenting the site and actually running the place, though. Sure, we have some, SOME, intelligent conversations, but we also have ADF's post op nudes, Wogglebug Production sperging out, and Iconoclast's rants and his "belch dimension" comic, and some our members still finding randomly typing the N word to be the pinnacle of comedy. I am not saying this place doesn't have intelligent and thoughtful conversations, just that for every instance of those, there are two cases of utter cringe such as heretics on holidays, love shies making generalizations about women, or troll-shielding. Hell, we use to have an entire subset to archive the cringe, it was called "spergatory".

Now imagine running and owning a forum of that nature while having a career, a wife, and egad, even a child. What happens if that leaked out to the public? I guarantee you that person would be seen as an oddity to say the least.
 
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There is difference between frequenting the site and actually running the place, though. Sure, we have some, SOME, intelligent conversations, but we also have ADF's post op nudes, Wogglebug Production sperging out, and Iconoclast's rants and his "belch dimension" comic, and some our members still finding randomly typing the N word to be the pinnacle of comedy. I am not saying this place doesn't have intelligent and thoughtful conversations, just that for every instance of those, there are two cases of utter cringe such as heretics on holidays, love shies making generalizations about women, or troll-shielding. Hell, we use to have an entire subset to archive the cringe, it was called "spergatory".
You need autism containment on any serious site, though. If I started up “freedom farms” tomorrow, I’d be swamped with loli and gore (cp and vore?) and that’s just the obviously bannable stuff. Null has a good thing going here and I don’t think I’d be able to strike that moderation balance easily.

That said, he has his own life to live and that ultimately matters more, although I hope there is some way to preserve the community if he chooses not to run it (assuming 230 protections stay).
 
But if 230 is killed "muh racism" will 100% die this time for sure, because all the evil nazi small websites will die and only the verified truth of the big social media sites will survive.

The blue checkmarks who feed off this stuff will have nothing to REEEEEE at. Maybe they'll starve to death.
 
Section 230 is mainly an absolute fuck off weirdo clause. You get sued as an ISP? You pretty much just file a motion saying "fuck off section 230 bitch" and the suit goes away. Without it? You have months or even years of litigation costing six figures or more. It's just math. With 230? It's lol fuck off. Without it? You got a million dollars or so? Josh is completely right about this shit. This site exists with 230, without it we are fucking toast. This is not a joke.
There's an interesting parallel to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. You can't sue a gun company just because a jogger shot you with a gun. It's been one of the big bugaboos of the gun-control left and they've been trying to wreck it for a while.

230's problem is that there's no real method of clouting someone behind the ear and saying 'You need to change your patterns or we're stripping you of these protections'. There doesn't seem to be any way to enforce its demands outside of a civil suit that has to start with disproving it. Of course, the problem with the former is 'who decides what the right patterns of enforcement are?'.

I'm pretty disappointed with Trump. For a swan song, this isn't very good. And considering the vitriol seen in certain quarters against KF, I don't blame Null for being twitchy.
 
So I know that section 230 is unlikely to be repealed right now, but that doesn't mean it won't in the future, or null won't get (more) sick of the site.
I'll be pretty upset if the site disappears. I was fine with it the first time, but that was years ago. I've been on this site for six years now. It's the only outlet I have for a lot of the craziness I see. This year just sucks.
 
To those who think axing Section 230 will be the end of the internet, please consider Cubby vs. Compuserve. This was the case law that applied prior to Section 230, and will remain such (probably) if Section 230 is repealed.

To summarize: Cubby Inc. sued Compuserve for defamation because an unspecified user (Compuserve couldn't locate them, apparently) slandered Cubby. In the end, Compuserve was found innocent because they didn't moderate their forum in any capacity. The overall impact of the law essentially states that "if your website has jannies and tries to act like publishers, moderating content, then you are responsible for all content featured on your website. If you don't have those things and don't act like a publisher, you aren't responsible."

This is good news for you for two reasons.

  1. Should Section 230 be repealed, the reigning hydra of Silicone Valley will no longer have any freedom to moderate in an unbiased way (because it would, legally, behoove them to not moderate anything at all.) This is bad news for Null because he satisfies the role of 'publisher', chiefly by employing jannies and otherwise editorializing what's posted on Kiwifarms. The site will probably die.
  2. You won't need Kiwifarms. The moment Twitter (or whoever) ignores the letter of the law, tries to moderate, is found to be a publisher and takes a blow to the kidneys over the decision, all of these other censorship-prone platforms will throw up their hands and stop moderating anything. All the content this community compiles regarding their preferred lolcows may be freely hosted across numerous different websites. If the law can't find the original poster, there won't be any real way to take that content down.

Theoretically, Null can repurpose Kiwifarms into a sort of 'scrolling' website, not unlike a yotsuba imageboard. Conceptually, popular content would stay active; dead or floundering content would sink down the tubes and will delete itself automatically. This system would be automatic and thus not qualify as editorializing, nor would it require jannies (nor anyone besides Null, behind the scenes.) That's up to him however.

The point I'm making is this sensationalism over Section 230 is yet another redux of what we were fretting over in 2014. It will have a tangible effect, but your internet isn't going to die.
Oh well I guess it's fine if KF can maybe still exist if it's a completely unmoderated and usable 4chan clone. At least we owned Google epic style.
 
If 230 gets axed, Null should annihilate this forum entirely, with no backups, and replace it with a forum dedicated to the cultivation and marketing of kiwi fruits, with no off-topic discussion allowed at all. We should all get a bunch of posts on the subject ready in advance, so that there can be a large number of backdated posts there from the beginning, so it looks like there never was an autistic gossip forum here.

Gaslight all the lolcows as a final, immensely stupid prank.
 
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