In Part 2 of BARPod two-part series on #DropKiwiFarms, the plot thickens and the trolling and the fake identities accumulate faster than Jesse, a very tired millennial, can keep track
Christ, Tenet was easier to follow. Nonetheless, it eventually made a strong case that Cloudflare probably acted too rashly plus I'm a sucker for stories involving journalists being rubbish.
Still though, who do you root for in a story about an asshole who uses an asshole to direct negative attention to a website full of assholes? Free speech? Yeah, I guess free speech. *sighs, hits the shower*
Jesse gets in his own way sometimes with painstaking details, but I can’t blame him considering how often people distort what he has written/said, and because the majority of the media has gone the opposite direction and decided details and facts don’t really matter if they get in the way of a narrative.
Listening to the details of this story was honestly exhausting...but the bigger implications here is that a random online troll and an insane narcissist (who’s been put on a pedestal by a media that does absolutely no vetting of the identity traits are right) was able to get an entire site shut down with virtually no facts to back them up. That is really concerning, and it does need to be documented.
I do not think the online troll was trying to get the site taken down. I think only the narcissist was. I think the troll doesn't care what the consequences of his actions are. And his actions definitely helped bring it down. I alao am not sure the kid Jesse spoke to is the same person who went to Keffels' place in Ireland. I also think it is awful that Keffel worked to get Kiwi farms taken off the internet while knowing the kid who stalked her had nothing to do woth kiwifarms
I agree, and that’s one of the things makes it even more infuriating. For journalists and corporate institutions, reacting to social media drama should be the rarest of rare exceptions not the rule, and it should never be given legitimacy if the key players in the story can’t be even be confirmed.
I keep thinking about these two episodes and I think maybe Jesse got in too deep and lost some of his perspective / objective distance. Not in that he got anything wrong but in that he saw the story as more important than it probably is. Thinking back over the 3+ hours the only takeaways I'm left with are:
1. There is a truly terrible site / forum, which seems to provide a venue for unlawful acts (cyberstalking, lsoliciting the commission of crimes, etc), but also had good info on it, and maybe is no worse than the worst social media platforms
2. A company that provides critical internet infrastructure decided to stop doing business with this terrible site.
3. The *specific* allegations the critical infrastructure provider cited in terminating its services turn out to be pretty shaky
4. The person pushing these allegations is a hypocrite and potentially has committed similar bad acts
5. Maybe she knew the allegations were shaky
To me that's just... Not much of a story. It boils down to "terrible maybe illegal site gets kinda sorta shut down for slightly wrong reasons." I feel like this was all just background research for the real story... (Which is fine for a podcast btw!)
If J keeps working the story a more compelling next chapter maybe would be the media's fawning treatment of the terrible hypocrite scammer person... Or using the person's apparently-not-good-faith emergency GoFundMe as an entree into the larger phenomenon of identitarian grifters who fundraise on false pretenses (which is, you know, wire fraud)... Or how the Internet Archive makes decisions (what is is governance) and are there any alternatives... Or something else!
I would agree , but I think what happened with Cloudflare unfortunately makes the story significant. It’s as close as you get to an institution internet wise, and whether they realize it or not they have opened a door and will likely face regular pressure campaigns from certain internet types. It is essentially akin to a police department saying they won’t prevent crime as long as that crime is directed at a specific person or house. It’s not a good precedent, and I hope they create a concrete policy as a result of this, though I’m not holding my breath.
That's a good point and would be another good focus for a "real" story, which these two eps would just be background research for.
For me, given that KF seemed to provide a venue for illegal acts and content or their solicitation (just from what I've learned from the pod and I could be wrong!), I think it is entirely legitimate for it to just be gone from the Internet. It's too bad its useful info has to go too, but them's the breaks.
It is pointless to talk about Kiwi Farms as a portal for solicitation of crime if you have not spent time there. First. I am not sure that anything that happened on Kiwi Farms does not alap happen on Twitter. Second. Having spent time on Kiwi Farms, and wanting to bleach my brain after, the problem is that people were very very cruel on there.
The doxxing really was not ok but aside from that. What other criminal activity happened?
And is doxxing reason enough for a website to get shut down?
Second. Has anything occured on Kiwi Farms that has not on Twitter? If yes, then yeah, shut it down.
I think you're missing a huge amount of board culture and why people go to KF in the first place.
What makes someone an online public figure and "fair game" for discussion?
And what should be the expectation for privacy in this era?
If someone posts on Twitter "AMHOLE," or that they identify as a vagina, is it okay for people who don't know that person to talk about it?
Does it make a difference if this person is part of the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, which has gleaned a lot of uncritical bobblehead media coverage from outlets as diverse as High Country News and Samantha Bee?
Like Keffals, the majority of people discussed there are online attention whores, but unlike Keffals, the majority of the tone isn't hatred, it's like watching a show on TLC. (I think everyone with a show on TLC has a thread there.)
Maybe giving online attention whores more attention is bad, but I don't think discussing what makes a person like that tick, even if the conclusions are grim (cough autogynephilia cough), is totally out of line.
And the easy way to not be discussed like that is to not overshare on social media.
Absolutely nothing illegal happened on the website though. Playing the “I guess they probably did something offensive, maybe illegal so they should be erased” is the exact problem. Newsflash, Blocked and Reported is accused of the SAME things by the SAME activists. You think it’s fine to erase this “terrible” podcast from existence? Because that’s what you’re handwaving away.
You’re right that the media’s complicity in deliberate misinformation campaigns is a big story. But what you’re missing is the purpose. The media campaigns are one just a piece of the machine that includes far left activists and their entrenchment in the tech industry being given an insane amount of power over what anyone can see or hear or say online.
If you’re fine with a site that isn’t guilty of the accusations, and also never been found to be doing anything illegal, being erased from the internet, you’re part of the problem.
And remember: (1) downvoting threats is not a defense to violations of federal criminal statutes; (2) Section 230 publisher immunity does not apply to federal criminal statutes.
KF is totally different from what Jesse and Katie do. Not a close call.
Yes, gotta admit I did have to keep replaying sections of it to recap my memory on who was doxxing who etc, but I guess this means I must have enjoyed it.
I still have no idea how we knew about Keffal in the first place though! Can anyone refresh my memory?
So the disinhibition effects of the internet produces behavior intended to terrorize but maybe just for lulz and so then some are terrorized, while others pretend to be terrorized in order to make money and attack their enemies?
Long time BAR listener turned premium through the Kiwi Drama. Long time 'farmer' too, though that's not a title I relish in having. Also extremely into the emulation scene, so the Near drama is a niche I feel fairly confident talking on.
David "Near" Kirk Ginder, formally known as Byuu, is a fascinating figure. As I've defended many times, even on the farms, he is one of the most talented reverse engineers the emulation scene has ever seen, period. There's a term called "Cycle accurate" which, in layman's terms, means completely accurate emulation of a system, down to it's 'cycles'. In example, if a game for Super Nintendo had lag in it on the original console, a modern emulator running on a modern PC could compensate for this and remove the lag, as modern PCs are far more powerful than the older systems. A cycle accurate emulator means that it will run identically to how it ran on those systems - if it lagged on a Super Nintendo, it will lag in the emulator regardless of the PC.
This is all to say this is incredibly hard to create and only a coding wizard would even attempt to take on something of this scale. Near not only created Higan, a cycle accurate emulator of the original Nintendo, but then went ahead to start Ares, which is a multi-system multi-platform emulator focused on accuracy. In short, Near was a coding genius when it came to emulation with Higan being a crowning achievement for the emulation community worthy of all of the praise it's received.
Near was also a semi-complicated figure in the emulation scene. He started a preservation project where he would both purchase and 'borrow' old and rare games and 'rip' them (read: back up their data to a HDD). When he announced he wouldn't be publicly sharing his extensive archive with the public, the online community responded harshly. There's some drama about a large shipment of games going missing, and lots of other odds and ends to this story but the core of it is: Near (Byuu at the time) wanted to preserve games and didn't want to face any legal repercussions for sharing, and this is where the drama begins.
Byuu roughly translates to "mistake" in Japanese, which is how he saw himself. This is to say, depression and anxiety riddled his past and there's lots of examples of him saying he is permanently leaving emulation, only to come back with a project more mind blowing than the last. In 2014, with hopes of changing bringing him some sort of relief to his depression, Byuu moved to Japan.
And this is where the furry arc begins (if you're a BAR listener, you must have seen this coming). Near starts to go by they/them and joins the 'Baby fur' community, which is to say he and his online friends would represent themselves as toddler furries, wearing diapers or with binkies in their mouths. I'll let you, dear reader, make your own assessment of this information. In 2018, the Kiwifarms thread is made to document his weird online behavior. In 2020, Near drops the handle 'Byuu" and decides to go by Near, trying to leave his depressed past behind.
In a twist you may not have seen coming, Near joined the Kiwifarms and posted to his own thread. You can see his posts under the account "Near Throwaway" on the following archived link: https://archive.ph/FJw0B - this account was verified.
I personally think he does a great job defending himself and seems fairly reasonable. In his own words, he wanted to thank the OP of that thread for making it and acknowledges his odd past and his desire to move past it and focus on emulation. This is on page 6 of the thread, fairly close to it's origin, and he posts a few more times before eventually leaving. The thread reaches a whopping 16 pages before it fizzles out. For non Kiwi's, 16 pages is basically a nothingburger.
Then, seemingly out of the blue, Near demands Josh "Null" Moon to remove the thread via the extortion that you mentioned. To be clear: there was never any dox of Near/Byuu, nobody even knew his real name until post-mortem, let alone his address or other identifying information besides he proclaimed to be living in Japan. The reasoning behind their demand of the removal of the thread still remains a mystery, as they proclaimed to be thankful for the thread at one point The Streisand effect happens, the thread begins to explode in popularity, and then his suicide is announced via a Google doc from an anonymous friend of Near's. In this, they show text logs of Near talking about killing himself and the anonymous friend states they stayed on the phone with Near as he did the act until he heard nothing but music playing in the background, with Near going completely silent.
Grim stuff. Hector Martin, another brilliant programmer and supposed friend of Near, tweets out about his suicide. According to him, Hector verified this the validity of this with Japanese police himself. Due to these tweets, Hector has been placed as the defacto point of 'reliable news' for information regarding Near. But this is also where things become incredibly suspect.
For one, there is no proof of any of this. Many believe that Japanese police would never discuss the details of a suicide with simply a friend of the deceased, though this is impossible to prove. To date, the person behind the Google Doc have not been discovered. The final nail in the coffin (no pun intended) for the people of Kiwifarms and Near Suicide Denialists was that the US Embassy produces a list of deaths overseas and Near wasn't listed. At the time of his suicide, the list was debatably not up to date, and Hector proclaimed as such, saying the Kiwi Farms trolls were attempting to prove a faked death with out of date information. Months after it was supposed to be updated, June of 2022, it was finally updated... and there is still no record of any suicides in Japan during the time of his supposed death. Hector says something to the tune of "lol imagine trusting the government for being accurate about death records" and blocks any dissidents.
There's a lot more to this story I could go into - USA today wrote an article sourcing an alleged co-worker of Near, but there has never been any proof shown that they knew each (or that he was even real) other besides a few previously unseen pictures of Near being released. The internet at large took Near's suicide at face value and blamed the farms for causing it. The same person who reported to USA today supposedly created a Kiwi Farms account (impossible to prove if it's the same user or a troll a la JSingal69) and posted a picture of an Urn with David Kirk Ginder written on it. Anyone could have a custom urn made however, so this didn't add any proof to the story.
This entire essay is to say: it's very complicated. Near was flamed from all sides of the internet; from preservationists angered by his 'selfish' ways of not sharing his collection to the trolls of KF for being a 'babyfur' (I hate writing that.). As with Keffals, it's impossible to say the origin point for the trolling he received in person, but it is clear his thread was miniscule and most people were laughing at him instead of being angry, which is an important difference imo. His death is as mysterious as it gets, but even mentioning the possibility it might be faked will get you blocked and reported on any emulation board or even general gaming board. I personally have been blocked from reddit.com/r/emulation for questioning things, even though I have nothing but the highest praise for his work and I truly couldn't care less what got his socks off. It's incredibly frustrating and I've been waiting a long time for a real journalist to cover this story. Happy to provide any additional information about Near/ the Farms in general... back to finishing the episode now :)
Great summary, agrees with what I read (I’m not a KF user, just read sometimes).
Even if he was in Japan, this would have left a trail visible in the US. There’s no sign of it. I’ve never heard of a supposed death in modern times where no trace of the actual death can be found even years later.
I haven't listened to the episode yet but I did skim through the notes and I want to point out that State Department records prove that near isn't dead. No American citizen died by suicide in in Japan the months in which Near could've killed himself.
Sort of surprised that Jesse calls this a “conspiracy theory.” Where is the death certificate? Bereaved family members? Any official documentation at all? Do they even have this guy’s real name? All that I can see in favour of the “he’s dead” theory are two or three randos whose own claims to even know him are tenuous.
For every Farmer that has wasted a couple hours trying to disprove Byuu's death, there are twenty trans activists that have spent not only time, but huge sums of money, attempting to make the narrative that Byuu took their own life irrefutable. The fact Jessie called it a conspiracy theory after having done an episode on the @sciencingbi hoax really caught me off guard.
My personal theory is that Byuu made the extortion attempt against Null in the hope he could prove it was possible to simply buy out the CEO of Transphobia, in a similar way to what the internet porn kingpins at Brazzers did when they bought "TheRealPornWikileaks." If you want to see what true victory would look like to Keffals, watch the video of the pornographers burning those hard drives in their parking lot, but imagine that it's 7 terabytes of the Farms going up smoke instead of porn stars' birth names.
I honestly think Keffals saw "The Most Hated Man on the Internet" on Netflix and decided she wanted to be the hero IT guy that bought out Is Anyone Up.
This whole thing was wild to listen to and admittedly I had a hard time following. I am not really all that online beyond listening to podcasts about the internet. I have no social media accounts other than substack and this is the only place I comment on anything. This story made me feel like a crazy person and I can’t imagine being Jesse and having the stamina to investigate any of this. Like, good God there truly is this entire alternate world with its own rules and politics that exist solely on the internet. I know that’s an obvious observation and is very much at the core of this podcast, but Jesus Christ this was like listening to a work of dystopian Si-Fi. The characters involved are so messed up and detached from reality. It is impossible to put myself in the minds of any of these fucking people their behavior is so foreign and incomprehensible to me. Totally entertaining to listen to, but this paints a pretty bleak picture.
For me, this is the most disturbing thing - all the characters are absolute dregs-of-society, only-visible-because-internet types, but that didn’t used to matter because only other very online people saw them. Now massive platforms are blindly taking them at face value and doing what they demand. Cloudflare taking Keffels’ story at face value is not far off loads of institutions all deciding en masse that indicating biological sex might be real can only ever be a sign of anti-trans bigotry, no matter what the circumstances. When did the grown ups start to take only the most online, most disturbed worldviews as unassailable fact?
Extremely minor nitpick, but "your file is too powerful" or whatever around 1:34:00 IS the message Discord displays if you upload a file that's too big. Seems less trolly than clueless on his part.
It's a pretty common issue on Discord, in fact. Users press "PrintScreen" on 4K displays and try to send a big ass PNG. Until the "Winter" chatlogs are proven to fakes, I am witholding judgement on this. Fredrick Breenan aka Hotwheels is still on good-boy probation following his heel-turn against unlimited free speech, and he felt confortable publically posting screenshots of that alleged discord chat when he broke with Keffals. If Brennan had posted fake screenshots, Keffals would have made it a big point to assail his most recent adversary's credibility by pointing out the various ways in which to manufacture a screenshot.
Just as with his faildox on Winter, the real issue is not that there's teenage trolls touching the poo, it's that a 27 year old would lie about the websites frequented by those trolls to the media in order to enrich their 6-figure brand. The most important thing to remember is that Keffals would be powerless without the backing of ecommerce providers like Paypal, Stripe, and the big 4 credit card companies. I was sickened by Cloudflare's empty language about the need for internet banking to be treated like a utility. You know whats scarier to a tech titan than insolent tweets from the failed camwhore? Emails from the flatulent femboy's fans at Visa and Mastercard recounting what they did to Pornhub and the NRA after being initially rebuked in the name of free speech.
as for Pless' comment that KF has incentive to muddy the water regarding the veracity of Near's suicide, it should also be said that #DropKiwifarms has incentive to not welcome investigation on the chance that KF's theory on Near being alive because it ultimately weakens their cause (and puts Near back into the spotlight which they have been trying to escape).
KF is a den of weaponized autism, they've spent over a year contacting Japanese authorities and trying to find a shred of evidence which would substantiate Near's death and came up with nothing, meanwhile on the other side all it took for confirmation was a third-party confirming the death which they refused to elaborate on.
as with the other deaths people are very desperate to attribute them to KF regardless of the extraneous circumstances at play, it is why it didn't take much for Near's death to be accepted despite there's very little to corroborate it, the campaign benefits from Near being dead, not from Near being alive still.
At least two alleged journos who work for Jeff Bezos and Jack Donaghy should be fired.
Null should sue the living snot out of said alleged journos and use the proceeds to retire to a castle on the Dalmatian coast. Preferably a place with a big dovecote.
Right? When I was 16 my biggest concern was where we were going to buy weed, if my friends and I could scrounge enough change in the couch to put gas in the car to drive there, and which mix tape we'd listen to on the way. This makes me extremely sad for a lot of kiddos out there. GO SMOKE POT AND LISTEN TO THE PIXIES IN A TACO BELL PARKING LOT LIKE WE DID!
Damn these tech companies to Hell for creating this dystopian nightmare! None of us were clambering to be in constant contact with the whole world and they went and invented it anyway.
"What are you listening to?"
"A podcast."
"What's it about?"
"It's.... um.... it's about the Queen. And the reaction in Northern Ireland."
"Yeah? How do they feel about it?"
"Very sad."
Christ, Tenet was easier to follow. Nonetheless, it eventually made a strong case that Cloudflare probably acted too rashly plus I'm a sucker for stories involving journalists being rubbish.
Still though, who do you root for in a story about an asshole who uses an asshole to direct negative attention to a website full of assholes? Free speech? Yeah, I guess free speech. *sighs, hits the shower*
Jesse gets in his own way sometimes with painstaking details, but I can’t blame him considering how often people distort what he has written/said, and because the majority of the media has gone the opposite direction and decided details and facts don’t really matter if they get in the way of a narrative.
Listening to the details of this story was honestly exhausting...but the bigger implications here is that a random online troll and an insane narcissist (who’s been put on a pedestal by a media that does absolutely no vetting of the identity traits are right) was able to get an entire site shut down with virtually no facts to back them up. That is really concerning, and it does need to be documented.
I do not think the online troll was trying to get the site taken down. I think only the narcissist was. I think the troll doesn't care what the consequences of his actions are. And his actions definitely helped bring it down. I alao am not sure the kid Jesse spoke to is the same person who went to Keffels' place in Ireland. I also think it is awful that Keffel worked to get Kiwi farms taken off the internet while knowing the kid who stalked her had nothing to do woth kiwifarms
I agree, and that’s one of the things makes it even more infuriating. For journalists and corporate institutions, reacting to social media drama should be the rarest of rare exceptions not the rule, and it should never be given legitimacy if the key players in the story can’t be even be confirmed.
I keep thinking about these two episodes and I think maybe Jesse got in too deep and lost some of his perspective / objective distance. Not in that he got anything wrong but in that he saw the story as more important than it probably is. Thinking back over the 3+ hours the only takeaways I'm left with are:
1. There is a truly terrible site / forum, which seems to provide a venue for unlawful acts (cyberstalking, lsoliciting the commission of crimes, etc), but also had good info on it, and maybe is no worse than the worst social media platforms
2. A company that provides critical internet infrastructure decided to stop doing business with this terrible site.
3. The *specific* allegations the critical infrastructure provider cited in terminating its services turn out to be pretty shaky
4. The person pushing these allegations is a hypocrite and potentially has committed similar bad acts
5. Maybe she knew the allegations were shaky
To me that's just... Not much of a story. It boils down to "terrible maybe illegal site gets kinda sorta shut down for slightly wrong reasons." I feel like this was all just background research for the real story... (Which is fine for a podcast btw!)
If J keeps working the story a more compelling next chapter maybe would be the media's fawning treatment of the terrible hypocrite scammer person... Or using the person's apparently-not-good-faith emergency GoFundMe as an entree into the larger phenomenon of identitarian grifters who fundraise on false pretenses (which is, you know, wire fraud)... Or how the Internet Archive makes decisions (what is is governance) and are there any alternatives... Or something else!
I would agree , but I think what happened with Cloudflare unfortunately makes the story significant. It’s as close as you get to an institution internet wise, and whether they realize it or not they have opened a door and will likely face regular pressure campaigns from certain internet types. It is essentially akin to a police department saying they won’t prevent crime as long as that crime is directed at a specific person or house. It’s not a good precedent, and I hope they create a concrete policy as a result of this, though I’m not holding my breath.
That's a good point and would be another good focus for a "real" story, which these two eps would just be background research for.
For me, given that KF seemed to provide a venue for illegal acts and content or their solicitation (just from what I've learned from the pod and I could be wrong!), I think it is entirely legitimate for it to just be gone from the Internet. It's too bad its useful info has to go too, but them's the breaks.
It is pointless to talk about Kiwi Farms as a portal for solicitation of crime if you have not spent time there. First. I am not sure that anything that happened on Kiwi Farms does not alap happen on Twitter. Second. Having spent time on Kiwi Farms, and wanting to bleach my brain after, the problem is that people were very very cruel on there.
The doxxing really was not ok but aside from that. What other criminal activity happened?
And is doxxing reason enough for a website to get shut down?
Second. Has anything occured on Kiwi Farms that has not on Twitter? If yes, then yeah, shut it down.
I think you're missing a huge amount of board culture and why people go to KF in the first place.
What makes someone an online public figure and "fair game" for discussion?
And what should be the expectation for privacy in this era?
If someone posts on Twitter "AMHOLE," or that they identify as a vagina, is it okay for people who don't know that person to talk about it?
Does it make a difference if this person is part of the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, which has gleaned a lot of uncritical bobblehead media coverage from outlets as diverse as High Country News and Samantha Bee?
Like Keffals, the majority of people discussed there are online attention whores, but unlike Keffals, the majority of the tone isn't hatred, it's like watching a show on TLC. (I think everyone with a show on TLC has a thread there.)
Maybe giving online attention whores more attention is bad, but I don't think discussing what makes a person like that tick, even if the conclusions are grim (cough autogynephilia cough), is totally out of line.
And the easy way to not be discussed like that is to not overshare on social media.
Absolutely nothing illegal happened on the website though. Playing the “I guess they probably did something offensive, maybe illegal so they should be erased” is the exact problem. Newsflash, Blocked and Reported is accused of the SAME things by the SAME activists. You think it’s fine to erase this “terrible” podcast from existence? Because that’s what you’re handwaving away.
You’re right that the media’s complicity in deliberate misinformation campaigns is a big story. But what you’re missing is the purpose. The media campaigns are one just a piece of the machine that includes far left activists and their entrenchment in the tech industry being given an insane amount of power over what anyone can see or hear or say online.
If you’re fine with a site that isn’t guilty of the accusations, and also never been found to be doing anything illegal, being erased from the internet, you’re part of the problem.
18 U.S.C. s. 875(c)
And remember: (1) downvoting threats is not a defense to violations of federal criminal statutes; (2) Section 230 publisher immunity does not apply to federal criminal statutes.
KF is totally different from what Jesse and Katie do. Not a close call.
Yes, gotta admit I did have to keep replaying sections of it to recap my memory on who was doxxing who etc, but I guess this means I must have enjoyed it.
I still have no idea how we knew about Keffal in the first place though! Can anyone refresh my memory?
So the disinhibition effects of the internet produces behavior intended to terrorize but maybe just for lulz and so then some are terrorized, while others pretend to be terrorized in order to make money and attack their enemies?
Long time BAR listener turned premium through the Kiwi Drama. Long time 'farmer' too, though that's not a title I relish in having. Also extremely into the emulation scene, so the Near drama is a niche I feel fairly confident talking on.
David "Near" Kirk Ginder, formally known as Byuu, is a fascinating figure. As I've defended many times, even on the farms, he is one of the most talented reverse engineers the emulation scene has ever seen, period. There's a term called "Cycle accurate" which, in layman's terms, means completely accurate emulation of a system, down to it's 'cycles'. In example, if a game for Super Nintendo had lag in it on the original console, a modern emulator running on a modern PC could compensate for this and remove the lag, as modern PCs are far more powerful than the older systems. A cycle accurate emulator means that it will run identically to how it ran on those systems - if it lagged on a Super Nintendo, it will lag in the emulator regardless of the PC.
This is all to say this is incredibly hard to create and only a coding wizard would even attempt to take on something of this scale. Near not only created Higan, a cycle accurate emulator of the original Nintendo, but then went ahead to start Ares, which is a multi-system multi-platform emulator focused on accuracy. In short, Near was a coding genius when it came to emulation with Higan being a crowning achievement for the emulation community worthy of all of the praise it's received.
Near was also a semi-complicated figure in the emulation scene. He started a preservation project where he would both purchase and 'borrow' old and rare games and 'rip' them (read: back up their data to a HDD). When he announced he wouldn't be publicly sharing his extensive archive with the public, the online community responded harshly. There's some drama about a large shipment of games going missing, and lots of other odds and ends to this story but the core of it is: Near (Byuu at the time) wanted to preserve games and didn't want to face any legal repercussions for sharing, and this is where the drama begins.
Byuu roughly translates to "mistake" in Japanese, which is how he saw himself. This is to say, depression and anxiety riddled his past and there's lots of examples of him saying he is permanently leaving emulation, only to come back with a project more mind blowing than the last. In 2014, with hopes of changing bringing him some sort of relief to his depression, Byuu moved to Japan.
And this is where the furry arc begins (if you're a BAR listener, you must have seen this coming). Near starts to go by they/them and joins the 'Baby fur' community, which is to say he and his online friends would represent themselves as toddler furries, wearing diapers or with binkies in their mouths. I'll let you, dear reader, make your own assessment of this information. In 2018, the Kiwifarms thread is made to document his weird online behavior. In 2020, Near drops the handle 'Byuu" and decides to go by Near, trying to leave his depressed past behind.
In a twist you may not have seen coming, Near joined the Kiwifarms and posted to his own thread. You can see his posts under the account "Near Throwaway" on the following archived link: https://archive.ph/FJw0B - this account was verified.
I personally think he does a great job defending himself and seems fairly reasonable. In his own words, he wanted to thank the OP of that thread for making it and acknowledges his odd past and his desire to move past it and focus on emulation. This is on page 6 of the thread, fairly close to it's origin, and he posts a few more times before eventually leaving. The thread reaches a whopping 16 pages before it fizzles out. For non Kiwi's, 16 pages is basically a nothingburger.
Then, seemingly out of the blue, Near demands Josh "Null" Moon to remove the thread via the extortion that you mentioned. To be clear: there was never any dox of Near/Byuu, nobody even knew his real name until post-mortem, let alone his address or other identifying information besides he proclaimed to be living in Japan. The reasoning behind their demand of the removal of the thread still remains a mystery, as they proclaimed to be thankful for the thread at one point The Streisand effect happens, the thread begins to explode in popularity, and then his suicide is announced via a Google doc from an anonymous friend of Near's. In this, they show text logs of Near talking about killing himself and the anonymous friend states they stayed on the phone with Near as he did the act until he heard nothing but music playing in the background, with Near going completely silent.
Grim stuff. Hector Martin, another brilliant programmer and supposed friend of Near, tweets out about his suicide. According to him, Hector verified this the validity of this with Japanese police himself. Due to these tweets, Hector has been placed as the defacto point of 'reliable news' for information regarding Near. But this is also where things become incredibly suspect.
For one, there is no proof of any of this. Many believe that Japanese police would never discuss the details of a suicide with simply a friend of the deceased, though this is impossible to prove. To date, the person behind the Google Doc have not been discovered. The final nail in the coffin (no pun intended) for the people of Kiwifarms and Near Suicide Denialists was that the US Embassy produces a list of deaths overseas and Near wasn't listed. At the time of his suicide, the list was debatably not up to date, and Hector proclaimed as such, saying the Kiwi Farms trolls were attempting to prove a faked death with out of date information. Months after it was supposed to be updated, June of 2022, it was finally updated... and there is still no record of any suicides in Japan during the time of his supposed death. Hector says something to the tune of "lol imagine trusting the government for being accurate about death records" and blocks any dissidents.
There's a lot more to this story I could go into - USA today wrote an article sourcing an alleged co-worker of Near, but there has never been any proof shown that they knew each (or that he was even real) other besides a few previously unseen pictures of Near being released. The internet at large took Near's suicide at face value and blamed the farms for causing it. The same person who reported to USA today supposedly created a Kiwi Farms account (impossible to prove if it's the same user or a troll a la JSingal69) and posted a picture of an Urn with David Kirk Ginder written on it. Anyone could have a custom urn made however, so this didn't add any proof to the story.
This entire essay is to say: it's very complicated. Near was flamed from all sides of the internet; from preservationists angered by his 'selfish' ways of not sharing his collection to the trolls of KF for being a 'babyfur' (I hate writing that.). As with Keffals, it's impossible to say the origin point for the trolling he received in person, but it is clear his thread was miniscule and most people were laughing at him instead of being angry, which is an important difference imo. His death is as mysterious as it gets, but even mentioning the possibility it might be faked will get you blocked and reported on any emulation board or even general gaming board. I personally have been blocked from reddit.com/r/emulation for questioning things, even though I have nothing but the highest praise for his work and I truly couldn't care less what got his socks off. It's incredibly frustrating and I've been waiting a long time for a real journalist to cover this story. Happy to provide any additional information about Near/ the Farms in general... back to finishing the episode now :)
TRAs have got Wikipedia and Reddit locked down. It’s ludicrously biased and censorious. Wish somebody in mainstream media would cover it.
It would make a great story if someone had the skills and courage to cover it.
"It's very complicated" you say?? You already fit in.
Great summary, agrees with what I read (I’m not a KF user, just read sometimes).
Even if he was in Japan, this would have left a trail visible in the US. There’s no sign of it. I’ve never heard of a supposed death in modern times where no trace of the actual death can be found even years later.
Am I the only one listening to this thing fully expecting Teddy to end up being a Keffals alter-ego?
That's what I was thinking too. Really wouldn't put it past these people.
Really thought that was going to be the reveal in the last conversation
Me too!!
I haven't listened to the episode yet but I did skim through the notes and I want to point out that State Department records prove that near isn't dead. No American citizen died by suicide in in Japan the months in which Near could've killed himself.
Sort of surprised that Jesse calls this a “conspiracy theory.” Where is the death certificate? Bereaved family members? Any official documentation at all? Do they even have this guy’s real name? All that I can see in favour of the “he’s dead” theory are two or three randos whose own claims to even know him are tenuous.
For every Farmer that has wasted a couple hours trying to disprove Byuu's death, there are twenty trans activists that have spent not only time, but huge sums of money, attempting to make the narrative that Byuu took their own life irrefutable. The fact Jessie called it a conspiracy theory after having done an episode on the @sciencingbi hoax really caught me off guard.
My personal theory is that Byuu made the extortion attempt against Null in the hope he could prove it was possible to simply buy out the CEO of Transphobia, in a similar way to what the internet porn kingpins at Brazzers did when they bought "TheRealPornWikileaks." If you want to see what true victory would look like to Keffals, watch the video of the pornographers burning those hard drives in their parking lot, but imagine that it's 7 terabytes of the Farms going up smoke instead of porn stars' birth names.
I honestly think Keffals saw "The Most Hated Man on the Internet" on Netflix and decided she wanted to be the hero IT guy that bought out Is Anyone Up.
This whole thing was wild to listen to and admittedly I had a hard time following. I am not really all that online beyond listening to podcasts about the internet. I have no social media accounts other than substack and this is the only place I comment on anything. This story made me feel like a crazy person and I can’t imagine being Jesse and having the stamina to investigate any of this. Like, good God there truly is this entire alternate world with its own rules and politics that exist solely on the internet. I know that’s an obvious observation and is very much at the core of this podcast, but Jesus Christ this was like listening to a work of dystopian Si-Fi. The characters involved are so messed up and detached from reality. It is impossible to put myself in the minds of any of these fucking people their behavior is so foreign and incomprehensible to me. Totally entertaining to listen to, but this paints a pretty bleak picture.
For me, this is the most disturbing thing - all the characters are absolute dregs-of-society, only-visible-because-internet types, but that didn’t used to matter because only other very online people saw them. Now massive platforms are blindly taking them at face value and doing what they demand. Cloudflare taking Keffels’ story at face value is not far off loads of institutions all deciding en masse that indicating biological sex might be real can only ever be a sign of anti-trans bigotry, no matter what the circumstances. When did the grown ups start to take only the most online, most disturbed worldviews as unassailable fact?
You are so right. It is terrifying to me that speaking of the reality of biological sex is now transphobia - wow.
I wonder if the cloud media just thought it would be easier to give in. TRAs can be dogged
So, are we all racing to get the name jsingal69 once Kiwifarms registration re-opens?
Extremely minor nitpick, but "your file is too powerful" or whatever around 1:34:00 IS the message Discord displays if you upload a file that's too big. Seems less trolly than clueless on his part.
It's a pretty common issue on Discord, in fact. Users press "PrintScreen" on 4K displays and try to send a big ass PNG. Until the "Winter" chatlogs are proven to fakes, I am witholding judgement on this. Fredrick Breenan aka Hotwheels is still on good-boy probation following his heel-turn against unlimited free speech, and he felt confortable publically posting screenshots of that alleged discord chat when he broke with Keffals. If Brennan had posted fake screenshots, Keffals would have made it a big point to assail his most recent adversary's credibility by pointing out the various ways in which to manufacture a screenshot.
Just as with his faildox on Winter, the real issue is not that there's teenage trolls touching the poo, it's that a 27 year old would lie about the websites frequented by those trolls to the media in order to enrich their 6-figure brand. The most important thing to remember is that Keffals would be powerless without the backing of ecommerce providers like Paypal, Stripe, and the big 4 credit card companies. I was sickened by Cloudflare's empty language about the need for internet banking to be treated like a utility. You know whats scarier to a tech titan than insolent tweets from the failed camwhore? Emails from the flatulent femboy's fans at Visa and Mastercard recounting what they did to Pornhub and the NRA after being initially rebuked in the name of free speech.
Okay I don't believe the replacing Union Jacks with the Trans flag is true because there's no way Keffals wouldn't have posted about it
This is the biggest one. Everything keffals does is for internet points and validation. RaTiO 🤪
Never happened, no catholic here would take a union jack down over the summer, you'd be murdered.
as for Pless' comment that KF has incentive to muddy the water regarding the veracity of Near's suicide, it should also be said that #DropKiwifarms has incentive to not welcome investigation on the chance that KF's theory on Near being alive because it ultimately weakens their cause (and puts Near back into the spotlight which they have been trying to escape).
KF is a den of weaponized autism, they've spent over a year contacting Japanese authorities and trying to find a shred of evidence which would substantiate Near's death and came up with nothing, meanwhile on the other side all it took for confirmation was a third-party confirming the death which they refused to elaborate on.
as with the other deaths people are very desperate to attribute them to KF regardless of the extraneous circumstances at play, it is why it didn't take much for Near's death to be accepted despite there's very little to corroborate it, the campaign benefits from Near being dead, not from Near being alive still.
“A den of weaponized autism” is probably the best description of KF I’ve ever heard.
What the hell? The trigger warning for this episode would need a trigger warning.
You guys have hit the mother lode of internet bullshit with this one.
Jesse should get a Pulitzer for this.
At least two alleged journos who work for Jeff Bezos and Jack Donaghy should be fired.
Null should sue the living snot out of said alleged journos and use the proceeds to retire to a castle on the Dalmatian coast. Preferably a place with a big dovecote.
To be fair, Jack DID have microwaves taken from him.
This whole episode made me feel so disappointed that a site went down over something they didn't even do.
I had to stop lurking and go full primo for this story. Honesty is in short supply out there
Most of the other primo episodes aren't as exhausting.
Reporting on this -- *actually* reporting -- took some courage (fr fr). Thanks to you.
Also, I’m so glad I am not Gen Z. Growing up in this stew must be... stressful.
Right? When I was 16 my biggest concern was where we were going to buy weed, if my friends and I could scrounge enough change in the couch to put gas in the car to drive there, and which mix tape we'd listen to on the way. This makes me extremely sad for a lot of kiddos out there. GO SMOKE POT AND LISTEN TO THE PIXIES IN A TACO BELL PARKING LOT LIKE WE DID!
Damn these tech companies to Hell for creating this dystopian nightmare! None of us were clambering to be in constant contact with the whole world and they went and invented it anyway.
It's so freaking hard on young people.
How the fuck is this only five dollars a month?