- Joined
- Nov 14, 2012
Featured on Jan 1, 2022 by Null: 2022 Privacy Checkup & State of the Union
Every year, I write on my thoughts about the site and encourage people to review their privacy. I keep these succinct to respect your time, and would greatly appreciate if you took a moment to read this post.
Your Privacy
In 2019, the site was compromised and a hacker could access any account that had been recently active. This leaked a lot of user registration emails and hurt the community in a way which it has never fully recovered from. I encourage a proactive stance on privacy. The information on PrivacyTools.io is world class.
As we enter 2022, please review the following.
Our Growth
Our user base tends to double every year. 2021 has maintained this trend.
Our Stability
After byuu faked his suicide, we have been under routine DDoS attack. I have been able to mitigate it, but had to close my hosting company to the public in the process. I will be signing a contract this year for DDoS mitigation at a network level which will increase our monthly expenses by $1600. The DDoS-related downtime is hindering the forum's ability to grow, as well as our sister services like the fediverse node which is more seriously impacted. I hope that after fortifying my network I can sell services to help recoup that loss. If you have need for "complaint resistant" hosting (like a reverse proxy), get in touch.
Search engines have seriously penalized our site. "Kiwi Farms" is now a banned term on many services. Our domain does not tend to show up in results unless "kiwi" is manually typed. We will continue to grow through word of mouth, as we have in the past.
XenForo has revoked our license. We will be writing our own forum software.
Our Legal Problems
We incurred more than $20,000 in legal expenses in the last two years. Both parties file pro se, but one recently acquired pro bono representation from a scalper law firm trying to get wins for media companies.
My plan to mitigate this is to aggressively pursuing damages and collecting personal possessions (at a loss) to discourage belligerent parties from continuing to harm my community. I also intend to win the rights to intellectual property and the image of these parties, so that I can put them on merchandise and recoup expenses with victory merch runs.
We currently have no legal problems with the United States. Russia has blocked our .net domain and I suspect the EU will begin blocking sites in the near future. I am considering localized censorship as a way to mitigate pressure from foreign governments (i.e. blocking threads about RusFed citizens to Russian IPs).
Our Forum Software
There is a software rewrite in early stages of development to replace XenForo. It is being written in Rust. It will be open sourced sometime in January or February. If you want to help, please wait for the source to be opened before volunteering.
Our Finances
I keep specifics about our finances because that information is used against us. Primarily, we make money through three vectors:
I will continue to do merchandise. I am very sorry for the delays with the silver run. The last box is being held at customs for an unknown reason. I hope to have logistics sorted by the next physical run.
I want to do an NFT run using Polygon/MATIC. There is a discussion thread for that here. If you don't know anything about NFTs or crypto, don't worry, I will explain how everything work when that happens. NFTs are typically a base image which is randomized and generated when purchased. They're pretty ugly so I had someone draw a cute kiwi for a base which can be accessorized with lolcow stuff from the site.
My Concerns
My main concern is finances. It's looking better each year, but frustratingly, as soon as I find a winning formula, a new and expensive problem crops up. We are making headway, but it's not a very stable situation, and we have very real financial loss conditions.
My other main concern is community unity. As we grow, it becomes harder to keep up. There's a lot of people under one roof and I feel that I should adjust how I involve myself and get information about what's going on and what people care about. I have had difficulty managing infighting and other issues after 2019 because the hack caused people I relied on for help to leave. Replacing that is hard and I often find myself wishing people would just relax for once. Though that only applies to very specific groups. Other very large and very new demographics on the site have managed to fit in with almost no problems.
The site's birthday is February 3rd. I started hosting it on that day in 2013 when I was 20, so we're coming up on Year 9. A lot of the site's problems are ebbing simply because we've made it over the hump. We've been around for almost a decade, and those that don't like that can go complainon the CWCki on /cow/ on tumblr to Vordrak on Twitter (and /pol/, I guess).
Happy New Year frens.
Your Privacy
In 2019, the site was compromised and a hacker could access any account that had been recently active. This leaked a lot of user registration emails and hurt the community in a way which it has never fully recovered from. I encourage a proactive stance on privacy. The information on PrivacyTools.io is world class.
As we enter 2022, please review the following.
- Your username. Is it something that you've used elsewhere? If so, change it.
- Your email. Is it something that ties to your real identity? If so, make an alter ego email you use for drama sites.
- Your password. If you forget your password and lose access to your email address, I will not recover it for you. Have trouble keeping track of passwords? Use a password manager.
- Your IP. I do not share your IP without a subpoena and I limit how long I keep IP data. However, if you browse from work or school, you should use a VPN or Tor (Tor Browser, Brave Browser). If you think Tor is compromised, you are wrong: Article 1, Article 2.
- Your behavior. Privacy starts and stops with you. No software can mitigate oversharing. Do you participate in off-site groups like Discord servers? Mind what you say; it can (and often is) logged and shared.
Our Growth
Our user base tends to double every year. 2021 has maintained this trend.
Our Stability
After byuu faked his suicide, we have been under routine DDoS attack. I have been able to mitigate it, but had to close my hosting company to the public in the process. I will be signing a contract this year for DDoS mitigation at a network level which will increase our monthly expenses by $1600. The DDoS-related downtime is hindering the forum's ability to grow, as well as our sister services like the fediverse node which is more seriously impacted. I hope that after fortifying my network I can sell services to help recoup that loss. If you have need for "complaint resistant" hosting (like a reverse proxy), get in touch.
Search engines have seriously penalized our site. "Kiwi Farms" is now a banned term on many services. Our domain does not tend to show up in results unless "kiwi" is manually typed. We will continue to grow through word of mouth, as we have in the past.
XenForo has revoked our license. We will be writing our own forum software.
Our Legal Problems
We incurred more than $20,000 in legal expenses in the last two years. Both parties file pro se, but one recently acquired pro bono representation from a scalper law firm trying to get wins for media companies.
My plan to mitigate this is to aggressively pursuing damages and collecting personal possessions (at a loss) to discourage belligerent parties from continuing to harm my community. I also intend to win the rights to intellectual property and the image of these parties, so that I can put them on merchandise and recoup expenses with victory merch runs.
We currently have no legal problems with the United States. Russia has blocked our .net domain and I suspect the EU will begin blocking sites in the near future. I am considering localized censorship as a way to mitigate pressure from foreign governments (i.e. blocking threads about RusFed citizens to Russian IPs).
Our Forum Software
There is a software rewrite in early stages of development to replace XenForo. It is being written in Rust. It will be open sourced sometime in January or February. If you want to help, please wait for the source to be opened before volunteering.
Our Finances
I keep specifics about our finances because that information is used against us. Primarily, we make money through three vectors:
- Merchandise.
- Cryptocurrency and stray gift card donations.
- Money that I make.
I will continue to do merchandise. I am very sorry for the delays with the silver run. The last box is being held at customs for an unknown reason. I hope to have logistics sorted by the next physical run.
I want to do an NFT run using Polygon/MATIC. There is a discussion thread for that here. If you don't know anything about NFTs or crypto, don't worry, I will explain how everything work when that happens. NFTs are typically a base image which is randomized and generated when purchased. They're pretty ugly so I had someone draw a cute kiwi for a base which can be accessorized with lolcow stuff from the site.
My Concerns
My main concern is finances. It's looking better each year, but frustratingly, as soon as I find a winning formula, a new and expensive problem crops up. We are making headway, but it's not a very stable situation, and we have very real financial loss conditions.
My other main concern is community unity. As we grow, it becomes harder to keep up. There's a lot of people under one roof and I feel that I should adjust how I involve myself and get information about what's going on and what people care about. I have had difficulty managing infighting and other issues after 2019 because the hack caused people I relied on for help to leave. Replacing that is hard and I often find myself wishing people would just relax for once. Though that only applies to very specific groups. Other very large and very new demographics on the site have managed to fit in with almost no problems.
The site's birthday is February 3rd. I started hosting it on that day in 2013 when I was 20, so we're coming up on Year 9. A lot of the site's problems are ebbing simply because we've made it over the hump. We've been around for almost a decade, and those that don't like that can go complain
Happy New Year frens.
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