Hosting provider Cloudflare announced blocking Kiwi Farms over the weekend, citing its threat to human life. (Full statement at the end of article)
On Wikipedia, Kiwi Farms is described as an internet forum dedicated to discussing and harassing online figures and communities. Their major targets are people who are minorities, women, LGBT, or neurodivergent.
After a transgender YouTuber and Twitch streamer, Clara Sorrenti (known online as Keffals), was a target of what is called swatting, there were more prominent outcries for something to be done about the forum.
Swatting is the action or practice of making a hoax call to the emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address. – Google Dictionary
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Cloudflare had tried to stare clear of the controversy and avoid taking action by claiming that doing anything would amount to abusing its power. It even used the example of a phone service company not disabling a line because a customer says awful things as an argument.
Additionally, the company said that when it took similar action against forums like Kiwi Farms in the past, it had to weather barrage of requests from authoritarian regimes asking it to take down human rights’ security agencies.
However, it has now said that the direct threat the forum poses to human life is no longer something it wants to be responsible for. While maintaining that the social media campaign #DropKiwifams was not responsible for its decision.
The block means that the forum can no longer use the host’s server to come online. Although, if Kiwi Farms finds another willing hosting provider, it would be back up and running.
Kiwi Farms, like its sisters The Daily Stormer and 8Chan, is not just a space for harmless trolling as they have been linked directly to deaths of victims, according to a New York Magazine report.
In response to the block, the site administrator told followers that Cloudflare did not discuss anything with them. Instead, the host provider had only sent a ‘vague’ message about a suspension.
Cloudflare complete statement:
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