KF should just rebrand as an anime research site where discussion of people occasionally occurs by chance in the off topic section
@crook/mr. bones although you bring up valid points, i think there is an argument to be had that kf enabled those stuffty people to do those things by allowing the publication of other people's personal information without repercussion. you can say that theres a benefit in that kf have targeted genuinely bad people, but what kf identifies as a "bad person" can include people who haven't actually done anything seriously wrong, and vice versa. i personally wouldn't trust iban (or anyone i only know online, for that matter) to be impartial, ethical, or fair in drawing that line as the site administrator, given the lack of accountability except in extremely egregious situations.
Iban has his own thread on KF where he has been relentlessly mocked for his weirdo creep stuff and the stocking insanity. He doesn’t make any attempt to hide it. He’s not morally arbitrating across KF; it’s not the point of the website. KF is literally just a place where you discuss people, it’s not a place where you pursue justice and accountability.
This is where the strange term “lolcow” comes from. The people discussed on KF provide endless laughs from the absurdity of their degenerate and cringeworthy behavior. KF users post behavior that is funny or entertaining, not behavior that is “morally wrong” by the standards of some admin sponsored political faction. They routinely reestablish the idea that it’s better to not disturb the subjects in real life, not for plausible deniability from the press (with whom it wouldn’t matter anyway because the press has no integrity), but because participation in the behavior of “lolcows” ruins the authenticity. Similarly, if you push someone into hiding, they’ll stop talking, and you can’t laugh at them anymore. Same thing if they kill themselves.
This is the general MO of the website, I can’t account for the actions of every user, but compare this to Twitter which has historically had several different slogans dedicated to the idea of hunting people down in real life and implementing consequences for their online utterances - no holds barred; these people have gone after minors, in highly politically adversarially ways in which they actually are acting as self appointed moral arbiters. If discussing regular people in high-ish profile public arenas can be considered culpable for enabling destructive behavior, then half of the press and most of Twitter needs to disappear immediately. And if that is the conclusion the internet comes to, meh. KF can stay down.
the more i think about this post the more i feel that yes, it is our responsibility to prevent the distribution of personal information. besides the fact it goes against the idea of "information privacy is a value people should respect" when talking about corporations which collect user data and sell it, it is the social equivalent of giving everyone a gun specifically made to let you shoot the victim. the vast majority of people will not shoot the gun. a few will take it too far. even fewer will actually mete out a fair amount of vigilante justice, if thats possible to even define. and most likely, none of those few will factor in that others may have already dealt fair punishment, and that they may be adding on undue excess punishment as a result.
We need to make a distinction for what constitutes private information. Obviously, you shouldn’t go on KF and post someone’s bank password and SSN. Mainly because it’s completely illegal, but also because it has absolutely no entertainment value. As far as I could tell before the site went down, I didn’t see things like peoples addresses being posted, because for the aforementioned reasons, it goes
against typical KF interests.
But how much of someone’s behavior is private? If you post something on Twitter for the entire world to see, how much time has to pass before it becomes too private to archive? How much investigation can you do into readily and legally available information before it becomes “private” or “private investigating”?
