First and foremost, I’ll say right off the bat that I do not condone targeted mass hate campaigns against individuals or groups. I personally condemn that activity across the board no matter the victim or antagonist in any conflict, for any reason. That said, there’s a terrifying precedent being set currently that’s going to enable certain groups to change the world in ways previously not possible.

First, we need to identify how speech is protected on the internet. Currently there are no laws on any books anywhere that guarantee a person has access to the internet. There are also no laws explicitly stating that a company has to, in good faith, do business with everyone who approaches them for service regardless of who they are or what they believe. There are no laws regulating platforms on the internet that ensure every individual has equal access or ability to use them. There are no laws protecting forms of speech on the internet uniformly. There aren’t any real protections in place anywhere in federal regulatory bodies or federal or state governments on the whole. You can fall back to the first amendment, but the first amendment says fuck all about corporations being required to propagate your ideas. There are no such protections in place.

Right now the law is that “he with the biggest pocket book wins the fight”. This is not unique to the US and applies pretty uniformly most everywhere you go. Sure, definitions will change based on area wealth and whatnot, but the idea is pretty broadly accepted.

Now that we’ve established the fact that speech on the internet is not at all protected and, what speech exists on the internet is actually just “permitted” to exist.

Except when it isn’t.

I get it. I really do. Nazi ideology is disgusting. It makes me uneasy to think it was mainstream for an entire country. It’s unsettling that it didn’t die with the national socialists that lost the war. It makes me uncomfortable to think that the policeman parked under the bridge on the freeway could specifically be looking for people of color breaking laws, solely so he might have an excuse to harass them or possibly worse. God knows there are enough examples where that exact scenario is true, and people of color have been murdered as a result. It’s horrible. It’s time to end it. But that kind of change isn’t going to come from Google turning off nazi websites. That sort of change must be systemic, it must be directly involved in the area of interest. Like putting murderer cops behind bars. This is the only way to curb naziism. Hold them accountable at home, at work, in life. You think they aren’t looking for alternative means of organizing every time you shut down one of their little groups? Of course they are, and they already have the infrastructure built out because peer to peer networks were born very shortly after the internet itself.

De-platforming 8chan was a mistake. It’s easy to dispel the bullshit they believe, but people grew tired of correcting misinformation and the resultant laziness just caused 8chan users to flock elsewhere. I don’t personally know where that “elsewhere” is, but I don’t need to know where it is to know it exists, that these people didn’t just “go away” because 8chan went away and they certainly didn’t stop organizing. So what did you accomplish by de-platforming 8chan? You made it harder to observe these groups and what they’re up to. That’s all you did. You blindfolded victims.

And that’s the victory Keffals just won; She blindfolded herself. She has no idea where the next targeted harassment campaign against her will be organized and she won’t see it coming, which is shortsighted and stupid.

Good luck to you, though. You don’t deserve the harassment, but it would be a good idea to temper your choices and plan adequately. The knee-jerk “de-platforming” isn’t going to work out short term or long term. If I were Keffals, I’d be downloading Telegram and monitoring Tor KF for where they might act out next.