The Farms are mostly, though community action, dedicated to the truth. The truth is ugly and inconvenient, sometimes boring. While there are malicious actors who frequent the site, they tend to be filtered out because their claims don’t stand up. And they’re told to fuck off.
I watched a story recently on the beginnings of investigative journalism. Which is traced back to Ida Tarbell who wrote articles about John D Rockefeller and his Standard Oil trust, one of the largest business monopolies of all time. She brought to light a lot of unspoken information that was really bad for robber barons and their illegal business practices, The outcome of her reporting ended with standard oil being broken up into 34 separate companies.
Fast forward to today and journalism has been swallowed and corrupted by large corporations with social addenda’s, bought and paid for. They cherry pick convenient information they want to use and discard the rest. Or I should say they attempt to, because the zoomers working as journalists these days are largely imbeciles that can’t even bother to spell or fact check their work. Truth is not their objective.
Kiwi Farms performs and is fairly successful at raw investigative journalism. Users investigate and provide evidence for their claims and then celebrate writing cold hard truths. I think it’s the beating heart of the community.
And through these best attempted truths occasionally people are warned, protected, and made aware of the social dangers around them.
As a compatriot of mine, Roxanne Wolf said something to the extent of, ‘it’s the good friends you make along the way’ and I have enjoyed talking with several members met on the farms. Because I find they’re not afraid to laugh. And laughter is such a precious and forbidden gift at this moment in time.
It’s very important to have a place where you can spout off and speak your mind. Have an opinion, right or wrong. If you live in fear of repercussions for speaking your mind, you’re more likely to harbor unchallenged opinions that never grow or change.