So I looked into this case and it's even more convoluted and weird than Null is letting on in his summary on the crowdfunding website. It's a classic case of Null gaslighting about what actually happened to make Epik seem culpable, when it's really just a case of an ISP receiving what to them seemed like a genuine abuse report and erring on the side of caution. I now suspect that Null just wants fuck-off money from Epik. He wants Epik to settle this out of court, to avoid the hassle of going to jury trial and being subjected to Null's endless gaslighting about what's allowed on his website and why, and why you need to just go along with it, your ToS be damned.
Here is Null's summary of the case against Epik on the fundraising website. Notice how he's conflating the Epik case with his case against Caraballo, which are really two different cases:
Epik, LLC & Alejandra Caraballo
During #DropKiwiFarms, Epik (under the direction of Brian Royce) permitted us to stay with them as their registrar for over a year after leaving Cloudflare. Historically, it has been extremely rare for any domain registrar to interfere in their client's business for anything less serious than emergencies and law enforcement orders. Domain registrars, especially large ones like Epik, are perceived as neutral and professional entities.
When Epik, a year later and now under new management, put a hold on kiwifarms.net, it took significant social media pushback to compel them to allow me to transfer to a new registrar. This ended the issue and I was happy to move on and away from Epik.
However, a month later after extended silence, Epik's official Twitter account sprung to life and began replying to now month-old comments about the Kiwi Farms. In doing so, Epik made two actionable statements of defamation:
Epik had put a hold on the Kiwi Farms by order of law enforcement, and then
Epik had put a hold on the Kiwi Farms because it hosted child abuse material.
Both of these claims are false, and demonstrably so because Epik also admitted as much in public. Epik confessed they had received no law enforcement order to remove the site, and the evidence they posted of child abuse material was watermarked with dates which conclusively proves the person in it was over 19 years old when he took the photos of himself.
However, the damage is done, and tens of thousands of people saw and shared these messages. In particular, Harvard cyberlaw professor Alejandra Caraballo, who has been invited to speak before Congress, explicitly claimed the Kiwi Farms "hosts child sexual abuse material (CSAM)", which is a strictly legally defined term that a Harvard law professor absolutely knows the meaning of. This claim is a stronger, more serious, and distinct claim from Epik's.
These claims are false. The Kiwi Farms has never hosted any child abuse material. The speakers of these false claims are respected members of the industry and they constitute per se defamation. Allowing Epik and Alejandra to get away with these knowing, deliberate lies threatens the long-term prospects of the Kiwi Farms. Their lies will be propagated both as rumors in the industry and directly referenced into complaints sent to service providers we rely on.
Note Epik LLC threatened on 𝕏 that they would use discovery in a lawsuit to target Kiwi Farms users. You should know that contributions to this fund go directly to an IOLTA account and all records are secured under the management of an attorney, which allows us to protect your privacy. Our attorney is bound by the rules of professional conduct as well as by the attorney work product doctrine and the attorney-client privilege, and will take maximum steps to ensure your privacy.
Notice how Null does not link to the xeets from Epik. He also does not link to the post on his website where the pictures of the masturbating man were posted, so people can see them in context for themselves and decide if that particular post violates Epik's ToS.
Compare the above summary to what Null actually said about the case on MATI:
In this MATI episode, we get a completely different retelling of events from the one on the crowdfunder website. According to the MATI episode, what actually happened was the following:
- There is a post on KiwiFarms where a certain "Telegram pedophile" is being profiled and exposed for being an admitted predator Telegram. - Null tellingly does not link to this post or go over it like he usually does on MATI, he only shows the screenshots from Epik's xeet. Anyone who's ever browsed KF knows the forum is full of such threads of alleged and proven/convicted social media pedophiles and predators. It would seem at first that these predators are being exposed on KF for the sake of justice/accountability, but Null explicitly stated on MATI that gay kids deserve to be raped by online predators just for being gay. Null features these threads and posts on his website as ragebait, against the LGBT community amongst his overwhelmingly far right audience, The purpose of these threads is not justice/accountability by rallying the genera public to report a Telegram pedophile to LE. Instead it meant to exposed the LGBT movement for what they "really" are, a threat to society. There is no indication on Null's part that he himself has bothered to contact Telegram or LE about the "Telegram pedophile" featured on his forum to put him behind bars where he belongs.
- Null claims that the "Telegram pedophile" featured on his forum has admitted to selling CP on Telegram. Additionally, the "Telegram pedophile" allegedly has claimed that he is not a real pedophile because he only abuses children for money. Null does not link to or show the posts in question where the "Telegram pedophile" made these alleged statements. Let's hope Turkey Tom will do an hour long video showing the actual posts with these alleged statements.
- The screeshots of a masturbating black man, that were sent to Epik in an abuse report, are supposedly pictures that the "Telegram pedo" took and posted of himself. According to Null's repeated argument, anyone who has voluntairly shared an intimate picture of themselves anywhere on the internet should submit themselves to the fact that it can be endlessly reproduced in contexts outside of their control or intent.
- Null claims to have a copy of the "Telegram pedo"'s passport, which is featured in the same post as these pictures. Null does not explain how he has obtained a copy of this man's passport, and he does not mention this fact on his crowdfunding website. Null does casually mention it on the February 2nd 2024 MATI episode, insisting that Epik should've looked at this copy of the man's passport to determine how old he actually is, regardless of how young he looks in the photographs. Null compared the watermark of the photographs to the date of birth copy of his passport, and concluded that he was 19 years old when he took those pictures of himself masturbating. Null concluded that since 1) the Telegram pedophile shared these pictures on his own and 2) he was 19 at time, this means Null has a right to feature those pictures on his website as part of the post exposing the pedophile.
Here is Null mentioning the passport on MATI:
"Because one of those things, is a passport, and it says here, date of birth, August 15th, 2002. This person is a pedophile, BTW. He sells child pornography on Telegram."
- Here's where it gets really crazy: Null claims that the "Telegram pedophile" himself was the one who sent the abuse report to Epik, essentially reporting his own KiwiFarms thread to Epik. Null does not present any evidence for this particular claim. I still don't know how Null has determined this. Again, let's wait for that hour-long Turkey Tom documentary to see the evidence.
Now let's look at this story from the perspective of Epik: You work at Epik's abuse department. You have just received an abuse report claiming CP, with screenshots of pictures of a masturbating black man, who appears to look underage. The abuse report states that these pictures have been posted for all to see on the web forum of one of your customers, providing a link to the specific forum post. Again, AFAIK the abuse report itself has not been shared, and I don't know if Null has actually seen it. Null does speak about the abuse report on MATI
as if he has (because how does Null know it was sent by the pedo himself?), but again, this could be his usual gaslighting. Presumably whomever sent this abuse report to Epik made sure to mention that the pictures were shared in a pedophilic context. Perhaps the report said something like:
"KiwiFarms has a thread about a pedophile on Telegram and that thread includes pictures of the pedophile masturbating in violation of your ToS.". Is it really that weird that Epik's abuse department, upon receiving such an abuse report with such explicit pictures, deceided to err on the side of caution and block KF for appearing to violate their ToS?
Null apparently expected Epik to go through the abuse report as well as his forum post with a fine tooth comb to figure out what's what. Null insists that Epik should've browsed his forum at length (as if Epik have the time to go through all that turbo autism thunderdome) and taken the time to check the copy of the pedophile's passport featured on his forum. Null is stuck so deep in his personal bubble of casual internet doxxers, that he now expects everyone around him to live by his forum rules - which he himself will casually break anyway. Null does not seem to understand that when a normie receives a bunch of explicit pictures of a youthful looking man with the word "pedophile" all around them, their natural reaction is to "block now, ask questions later".
Null's argument hinges on the only way the only way Epik could've checked the age of the man in question, is by consulting the doxx - the copy of the man's passport - featured on Null's forum. Does Null really not realize how utterly absurd it is to expect others, who are not in the busness of casually doxxing people, to browse the doxx on his website for answers and clues as to what they're looking at? How does Epik know that the passport featured on his website is even real? More importantly, Epik stated on Xitter that they not only blocked KF for what they perceived to be CP but also for, quote, "doxxing". Perhaps Epik did see the passport, but instead suspected that a minor was being exposed and doxxed, pictures and passport and all.
Now that I've pieced together what actually happened here, it's even more infuriating to me that Null has managed to sell this whole bizarre story to his followers as Epik somehow acting in bad faith to defame him.
If Null has determined that it was the Telegram pedophile reporting his own thread to Epik, why doesn't Null sue the pedophile himself to put him in his place? Oh right, because "gay kids deserve to be raped by online predators for being gay" according to Null, so Null doesn't actually care about stopping a pedophile's predation on Telegram, as long as he gets the juicy pictures of everything for his forum.
Anyways, I'd love to see how Null's lawyer would spin this before a jury, but I suspect Null just wants to get an out of court settlement from Epik, not an actual lolsuit. Epik just went through a controversial reorganization, so they probably can't afford to get in any lolsuits right now. I suspect Null is using Kiwi money to hold a legal gun against Epik's head to force them to give him... basically even more money. I can totally understand if Epik - or Caraballo for that matter - decides to pay Null some fuck-off money rather than have to deal with his bullshit gaslighting in court about what he allows to be posted on his forum and why.
I hope any ISPs looking at this will appreciate the spectacle of Null taking an ISP to court for enforcing their ToS, where they explicitly state they don't want any liability over, quote, "pornography or obscene materials". Clearly posting pictures of a Telegram pedophile fingering his asshole is of such pertinent urgency that Epik's ToS just has to make way for Null warning the world about this menace to society.
BTW, I looked up Epik's ToS on Archive.org to see if it has changed since Null left them... and there are multiple captures of that particular page, every day since Null announced he was going to sue them. Someone has been capturing Epik's ToS page, presumably because they hope to catch Epik in the act of retroactively changing their ToS. No need to change the ToS though, it plainly states in very basic standard language, that Epik doesn't want to be liable for any pornography or obscenity being hosted through their service. You agreed to this ToS, Null. You really think you can break the ToS just because your users felt the burning need to expose a Telegram pedophile fingering his asshole on your web forum?
