33
votes
Near, the author of bsnes and higan, has died
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- The Brilliant SNES Emulator Author Known As Near Has Died
- Authors
- Kotaku Staff
- Published
- Jun 27 2021
- Word count
- 374 words
From a comment I found on HN:
Society needs to have some better kind of process for dealing with egregious sites like Kiwi Farms. I don't mean to grandstand on this subject too much, but I feel continually frustrated at how many people wear it almost as a point of pride that the internet is some lawless frontier where anything goes, and the permitted existence of sites like that is taken merely as a necessary consequence of that idea.
I used to be an internet freedom/free speech absolutist/tech libertarian in my younger years, but it's events like this that are wearing me down over time. Why shouldn't the government coerce Cloudflare to take this site down? In the libertarian's mind, what is the mechanism by which harms like these are mitigated or resolved?
Edit: I've had some time to think this over. I think what bothers me most here is that Near didn't have free speech. KF has a chilling effect on the speech of trans and queer techies who's contributions might make the world a better place. I guess I'm still for "free speech," but allowing abusive peoples' speech comes at the cost of denying marginalized folks' speech.
I have a sense that viewing issues like this purely in terms of speech leaves a lot out of the picture. Not to be too blunt but the important fact here is that someone committed suicide because of harassment. Quibbling about whether that person had "enough" speech (whatever that means) or not relative to their harassers is... alien.
I think it's as simple as allowing free speech, but not allowing hate speech or obstruction of other people's free speech. Though that might be hard to define and lead to problems..
I have a lot of feelings about this but no words to say them with.
Why do we feel the need to tear down people who are different to us? How do people feel the need to hurt people who have contributed more to the public good than most people will do in their lifetimes? Why do we extinguish the people who burn brightest?
KF users are the kind of people who lived in darkness for so long, somebody with a light about them is seen as an attack.
Kiwi Farms is a very fucked up place that openly doxxes, harasses and bear-baits vulnerable people.
Sites like that are a great argument for repealing the First Amendment, because I'm pretty sure that America's forefathers never envisioned free speech being weaponised like this...
Unless you want Desantis and the rest of the delusional fantasy that is the Republican party telling you what you can and cannot say, I strongly recommend against opening any pathways for legalizing government policing of speech.
Further, if those jamokes had their way, it's very likely that hosting companies would be forced to carry sites like Kiwi Farms, because otherwise you are discriminating against "conservative" ideas.
Sad for so much potential to be thrown away. It cannot be understated how impressive Near's body of work was, and they seemed like a stand-up person as well.
Given the nature of the perpetrators, unfortunately it's completely unsurprising that they'd do that. KiwiFarms is consistently underreported for the damage they do, and they should get far more media attention. Like usual, the marginalised and vulnerable don't get the voice they deserve.
First time I hear of "Kiwi Farms". WTF, internet, we need to talk.
Same here, and I suspect that I'm better of for it -- sounds like a corner of the Internet that I'd rather not explore.
Like @RNG said in another comment, I also used to feel like it was very important for speech on the Internet to be unfettered, but the more that time passes I'm starting to have second thoughts about that as it turns out that the most vile voices seem to be the loudest when given an open platform. Unfortunately, I don't know how to resolve the conflict between free speech and the rights and freedoms of the more vulnerable, and I'm not sure that it's a question that's even possible to answer. I'm not sure that we want to completely silence those people in the public sphere either, as the last four years or so have been very enlightening to learn who is harboring disgusting thoughts and is willing to share them when they think that it is no longer socially unacceptable to do so.
Man, I spent a lot of time exploring SNES emulators and their work has always been on another league. What a waste.