The Rise, Fall, and Return of Kiwi Farms After Deplatforming Efforts - Pseudo intellectual article attempts to frame the farms deplatforming as authoritatively retarded as possible

Authors:
(1) Anh V. Vu, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Cybercrime Centre (anh.vu@cl.cam.ac.uk);
(2) Alice Hutchings, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Cybercrime Centre (alice.hutchings@cl.cam.ac.uk);
(3) Ross Anderson, University of Cambridge, and University of Edinburgh (ross.anderson@cl.cam.ac.uk).

2.1. Related Work

Most studies assessing the impact of deplatforming have worked with data on social networks. Deplatforming users may reduce activity and toxicity levels of relevant actors on Twitter [28] and Reddit [29], [30], limit the spread of conspiratorial disinformation on Facebook [31], reduce the engagement of peripheral members with hateful content [44], and minimise disinformation and extreme speech on YouTube [32]. But deplatforming has often made hate groups and individuals even more extreme, toxic and radicalised. They may view the disruption of their platform as an attack on their shared beliefs and values, and move to even more toxic places to continue spreading their message. There are many examples: the Reddit ban of r/incels in November 2017 led to the emergence of two standalone forums, incels.is and incels.net, which then grew rapidly; users banned from Twitter and Reddit exhibit higher levels of toxicity when migrating to Gab [33]; users migrated to their own standalone websites after getting banned from r/The Donald expressed higher levels of toxicity and radicalisation, even though their posting activity on the new platform decreased [45], [46]; the ‘Great Deplatforming’ directed users to other less regulated, more extreme platforms [47]; the activity of many right-wing users moved to Telegram increased multi-fold after being banned on major social media [34]; users banned from Twitter are more active on Gettr [48]; communities migrated to Voat from Reddit can be more resilient [49]; and roughly half of QAnon users moved to Poal after the Voat shutdown [50]. Blocking can also be ineffective for technical and implementation reasons: removing Facebook content after a delay appears to have been ineffective and had limited impact due to the short cycle of users’ engagement [51].

The major limitation of focusing on social networks is that these platforms are often under the control of a single tech company and thus content can be permanently removed without effective backup and recovery. We instead examine deplatforming a standalone website involving a concerted effort on a much wider scale by a series of tech companies, including some big entities that handle a large amount of Internet traffic. Such standalone communities, for instance, websites and forums, may be more resilient as the admin has control of all the content, facilitating easy backups and restores. While existing studies measure changes in posting activity and the behaviours of actors when their place is disrupted, we also provide insights about other stakeholders such as the forum operators, the community leading the campaign, and the tech firms that attempted the takedown.

Previous work has documented the impacts of law enforcement and industry interventions on online cybercrime marketplaces [20], cryptocurrency market price [52], DDoSfor-hire services [14], [15], the Kelihos, Zeus, and Nitol botnets [53], and the well-known click fraud network ZeroAccess [54]; yet how effective a concerted effort of several tech firms can be in deplatforming an extreme and radicalised community remains unstudied.

2.2. The Kiwi Farms Disruption
KIWI FARMS had been growing steadily over a decade (see Figure 1) and had been under Cloudflare’s DDoS protection for some years.[2] An increase of roughly 50% in forum activity happened during the COVID-19 lockdown starting in March 2020, presumably as people were spending more time online. Prior interventions have resulted in the forum getting banned from Google Adsense, and from Mastercard, Visa and PayPal in 2016; from hundreds of VPS providers between 2014–2019 [55]; and from selling merchandise on the print-on-demand marketplace Redbubble in 2016. XenForo, a close-source forum platform, revoked its license in late 2021 [56]. DreamHost stopped its domain registration in July 2021 after a software developer killed himself after being harassed by the site’s users. This did not disrupt the forum as it was given 14 days to seek another registrar [57]. While these interventions may have had negative effects on its profit and loss account, they did not impact its activity overall. The only significant disruption in the forum’s history was between 22 January and 9 February 2017 (19 days), when the forum’s owner suspended it himself due to his family being harassed [58].[3]

The disruption studied in this work was started by the online community in 2022. A malicious alarm was sent to the police in London, Ontario by a forum member on 5 August 2022, claiming that a Canadian trans activist had committed murders and was planning more, leading to her being swatted [23]. She and her family were then repeatedly tracked, doxxed, threatened, and generally harassed. In return, she launched a campaign on Twitter on 22 August 2022 under the hashtag #dropkiwifarms and planned a protest outside Cloudflare’s headquarters to pressure the company to deplatform the site [59]. This campaign generated lots of attention and mainstream headlines, which ultimately resulted in several tech firms trying to shut down the forum. This is the first time that the forum was completely inaccessible for an extended period due to an external action, with no activity on any online places including the dark web. It attempted to recover twice, but even when it eventually returned online, the overall activity was roughly halved.

The majority of actions taken to disrupt the forum occurred within the first two months of the campaign. Most of them were widely covered in the media and can be checked against public statements made by the industry and the forum admins’ announcements (see Figure 2). The forum came under a large DDoS attack on 23 August 2022, one day after the campaign started. It was then unavailable from 27 to 28 August 2022 due to ISP blackholing. Cloudflare terminated their DDoS prevention service on 3 September 2022 – just 12 days after the Twitter campaign started – due to an “unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life” [24]. The forum was still supported by DDoSGuard (a Russian competitor to Cloudflare), but that firm also suspended service on 5 September 2022 [25]. The forum was still active on the dark web but this .onion site soon became inaccessible too. On 6 September 2022, hCaptcha dropped support; the forum was removed from the Internet Archive on the same day [60]. This left it under DiamWall’s DDoS protection and hosted on VanwaTech – a hosting provider describing themselves as neutral and noncensored [61]. On 15 September 2022, DiamWall terminated their protection [26] and the ‘.top’ domain provider also stopped support [27]. The forum was completely down from 19 to 26 September 2022 and from 23 to 29 October 2022. From 23 October 2022 onwards, several ISPs intermittently rejected announcements or blackholed routes to the forum due to violations of their acceptable use policy, including Voxility and Tier-1 providers such as Lumen, Arelion, GTT and Zayo. This is remarkable as there are only about 15 Tier-1 ISPs in the world. The forum admin devoted extensive effort to maintaining the infrastructure, fixing bugs, and providing guidance to users in response to password breaches. Eventually, by routing through other ISPs, KIWI FARMS was able to get back online on the clearnet and remain stable, particularly following its second recovery in October 2022.

(Link/Archive)

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Formatting was fucked from the website so I'm not transferring any of the images. If this has already been posted then help me figure out how I can't find it on the site.

Edit: Sorry if it wasn't clear. This is not the entire article. I just posted over the part where they talk the most about the farms disruption. Check out archive link to see the full autistic hate of the farms on display!
 
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Work Experience. From April to July 2025, I was a Research Scientist at TRM Labs — a leading blockchain intelligence platform, where I worked on new methods to trace obscured money flows of illicit actors. From October 2019 to April 2025, I worked as a Research Assistant at the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre under Dr Richard Clayton, Professor Alice Hutchings, and Professor Ross Anderson. From June to July 2024 I visited Delft University of Technology to work with Professor Rolf van Wegberg on a research project co-funded by the Dutch Law Enforcement, focusing on the facilitators of financial cybercrime.

My guess...he has a connection with the Vietnamese version of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security.
 
>and move to even more toxic places to continue spreading their message.

girl i dont give a fuck about that jab anymore.

but now im stuck here forever even more radicalized than ever mother fuckers
 
i gotta say those toxicity, identity attack and threat levels are pretty low. we gotta pump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers.
i'll start with some "identity attack"
...
FUCK NIGGERS
FUCK FAGGOTS
FUCK TRANNIES
FUCK KIKES
AND FUCK THE JANITOR!
 
Do these people realize how hated their Left fascist assholery is? Do they care?
They don't care. they think they are inherently right and everybody who disagree with them are all stupid, every "ist" in the book, a nazi, e.t.c.
I've talked to a few academics on all levels. elementarey and secondary school teachers, college professors, researchers, e.t.c and it seems a lot of them are arrogant as hell, self-entitled, and have a massive superiority complex the higher up the academia ladder you go.

And then you throw ideology in that mix. now you got arrogant, self-entitled, ideologically driven "researchers" with superiority complexes pushing junk because they can't separate their beliefs from their supposedly objectibe research, onlt for it to pass peer review with just as ideologically driven people. three actual researchers put that to the test by publishing 20 fake studies with made up data that was obviously fake. 4 of them were accepted with 1 reccommended for an award, 7 were still in the process of being approved and the rest rejected before the researchers pulled the plug.
here is the full list here. you can see exactly what way the idiological bias goes.
 
-Academia is hell snip-
You cannot hate them enough
Sorry to the readers on (insert current page) who have to retread something from page 6. But I have to underline Otterly's point on this. I'm currently a grad student and in the humanities (so academia-lite probably), particularly in the part that is partial to the idea of digging through sumerian manuscripts, and it is 100% cult like behaviour. In fairness, I've been fairly impressed with my professors and how they are willing to tackle ideas. but even then you can tell there's a general progressive or left-wing orthodoxy. I don't think any of my professors have a single right wing view. They are very brittle towards criticism that doesn't reinforce the world view. If you come at them saying "this isn't touching on minority voices" or "you're not doing enough to decolonize medieval German history", a lot of them will nod sagely and take it under advisement. If you so much as dare suggest that things in a revolutions course like "modern histories (1960~ onwards) of the Haitian revolution severely downplay or excuse the retaliatory genocide on the island towards whites" you'll get strange looks from the students and either placating talk about bias and academics being academics or condescending ridicule depending on the scale your teacher falls on the loon-o-meter.

Students are just as bad as we all know and are so ok with authoritarianism (as long as they're wearing the jack boot) it's worrying. I was at a French university when the Palestinian shit was kicking off and outside on of the classes there were massive a palestinian banner and some random arab student in a puffer jacket above it like he was Mussolini. I'm dragging on a bit now but Otterly has the right of it on all marks there. It has gotten worse since her time in academia and they are still immensely culty that drink every bit of the kool-aid.

Tldr: Otterly is right and everytime I have to speak with an academic I become a step closer to reaching AM levels of hate.
 
=We found from announcements in the Telegram group that KIWI FARMS could be accessed through six major domains: the primary one is kiwifarms.net and four alternatives are kiwifarms.ru, kiwifarms.top, kiwifarms.is, and kiwifarms.st, while a Pleroma decentralised web version is at kiwifarms.cc.[8] To investigate how users navigated across these domains when the forum experienced disruption=

its very weird. when they talk about web traffic they don't mention tor at all.
 
Fuck off, britniggers. We're full.
1754717954892.webp

Take your glowies with you while you're at it, back to that imaginary myth of a place you call "Scotland"
 
Someone should register those emails on the farms just for lulz. Preferably with their full name and personal photo so every time someone looks for them it shows them as farm members.
 
And then you throw ideology in that mix. now you got arrogant, self-entitled, ideologically driven "researchers" with superiority complexes pushing junk because they can't separate their beliefs from their supposedly objectibe research, onlt for it to pass peer review with just as ideologically driven people. three actual researchers put that to the test by publishing 20 fake studies with made up data that was obviously fake. 4 of them were accepted with 1 reccommended for an award, 7 were still in the process of being approved and the rest rejected before the researchers pulled the plug.
here is the full list here. you can see exactly what way the idiological bias goes.
Drivel like "Queer acceptance from dogs in Portland Oregon" and "Using sex toys keeps men from being transphobic" being accepted as legitimate papers genuinely says so much about how fucking shit quality control is in modern day academia. Like, no intelligent conversation or study should ever consider shit like that as legitimate.
It sucks that even "the best and the brightest" of America end up being a bunch of sensitive crybaby retards. Sign of the times I suppose.
 
What an astounding display of cognitive dissonance.

They understand that the Great Firewall is a bad thing. They understand that North Korean censorship is a bad thing. They understand that fascist book burning is a bad thing. But they're happy, even ecstatic, to block, censor, and silence a mundane website that harms none. They're so trapped in ideology and so unaware of their confinement that they can't see the forest for the trees. It's really pathetic.

Proverbs 26:11
 
Why do SJWs -- and the MSM that they infiltrate -- keep dumping out all these insufferable new soy buzzwords, such as "deplatforming"?

also:

I may be somewhat out of the loop on just how the hell the SJWs have managed to make KF look so bad anyway -- especially to the MSM, which "woke" have managed to infiltrate. Is it mainly the work of "Keffals" and "Liz Fong-Jones" in response to KF airing their dirty laundry? Or, is their BS just another part of the "woke" efforts to "cancel" KF? Is this site being one of the few left with the freedom of speech of a '00s site -- and which criticizes The Narrative™ -- really all it takes to become the "Nazi site" now?
 
OP completely missed the point and didn't even properly archive the fucking thing

if you think this is pro-censorship pseudointellectualism, you are mongoloid niggercattle that didn't even read the fucking study

Content moderation has recently shifted to the infrastructure layer [106]; now that activists have pressured infrastructure providers to act as content moderators, policymakers will be tempted too. Some may stand up to political or social pressure, because moderation is both expensive and difficult, but others may fold from time to time because of political pressure or legal compulsion. This would undermine the end-to-end principle of the Internet, as enshrined for example in COPA's 230 in the USA and in the EU's Net Neutrality Law [107].

is there pearl clutching? yes, but the study is ultimately making the case that social justice efforts are counterproductive.

We believe the harm and threats associated with online hate communities may justify action despite the right to free speech. But within the framework of the EU and the Council of Europe which is based on the European Convention on Human Rights, such action will have to be justified as proportionate, necessary and in accordance with the law. It is unlikely that taking down a whole community or arresting its maintainer because of a crime committed by a single member can be proportionate. For a takedown to be justified as necessary, it must also be effective, and this case study shows how high a bar that could be. For a takedown to be in accordance with the law, it cannot simply be a response to public pressure. There must be a law or regulation that determines predictably whether a specific piece of content is illegal, and a judge or other neutral finder of fact would have to be involved.

i know a lot of panties are going to get into a twist from "despite the right to free speech", but there is a point that can be agreed on: this issue needs to be approached on a more neutral ground

attached is an archive of the full paper taken from the proper source (the experimental HTML option on the site butchers this paper unfortunately)
 

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OP completely missed the point and didn't even properly archive the fucking thing

if you think this is pro-censorship pseudointellectualism, you are mongoloid niggercattle that didn't even read the fucking study
I don’t understand, this is A&N sir. I barely read my own posts! Thanks for the archive and condescension though!

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Abstract

  • This study examines the effects of the disruption on KIWI FARMS and its relevant stakeholders following a Twitter campaign that started on August 25, 2022.
  • The research analyzes quantitative data, such as tweets and forum activity, and qualitative data, including statements made by tech firms about the incident.
  • The findings reveal the impacts on the community, industry responses, forum operators, and members, providing insights into the efficacy and implications of the disruption.
The Impacts on Relevant Stakeholders

  • The campaign saw a sharp increase in tweets and reactions, peaking on August 25, 2022, but activity dropped significantly after Cloudflare and DDoS-Guard took action.
  • Cloudflare initially resisted terminating services for KIWI FARMS, citing concerns about setting a bad precedent for content regulation, but later reversed their decision due to escalating user aggression.
  • Harica, a Greek Authority providing certificates for .onion sites, initially supported freedom of speech but later considered revoking KIWI FARMS' certificates due to concerns about harassment connecting to suicides.
The Forum Operators

  • The forum operators actively tried to restore service, switching DDoS protection providers and attempting to build their own anti-bot mechanism.
  • The admins were very active, for example, sending seven consecutive messages on 23 August 2022 that mostly concerned the large DDoS attack on that day.
  • Their activity was inversely correlated with the forum’s stability; they were less active when the site was up and running stably or when there were no new incidents.
The Forum Members

  • There was around a 30% drop in the number of users after the disruption, and the activity of core survivors remained consistent, while newcomers showed increased toxicity.
  • The network had developed stably before the disruption, with around 55.3k nodes and 131.3M edges on 1 July 2022.
  • Core users are better connected than casual users, see Figure 11. The Twitter campaign largely boosted the centrality of both core and casual survivors.
Tensions, Challenges, and Implications

  • The disruption was more effective than previous DDoS attacks, but the impact was short-lived, with half of the core members returning quickly after the forum recovered.
  • Deplatforming alone may be insufficient to disperse an unpleasant online community in the long term, even when concerted action is taken by a series of tech firms over several months.
  • The free speech protected by the US First Amendment [94] is in clear tension with the security of harassment victims.
Policy Implications

  • Content moderation has become a political, policy, and public concern.
  • The UK Online Safety Bill proposes a new regulator who will be able to apply for a court order mandating that tech firms disrupt an objectionable online activity.
  • Even when several tech firms roll their sleeves up and try to suppress a community some of whose members have indulged in crime and against whom there is an industry consensus, the net effect may be modest at best.
Conclusion

  • Merely attempting to deplatform an active standalone online community is not enough to deal effectively with hate and harassment.
  • Policymakers should first ask which tools are likely to work, and it is in this context that we offer the present case study.
  • The harm and threats associated with online hate communities may justify action despite the right to free speech.
 
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Thanks for the [...] condescension though!

tbh i was trying to be over-the-top so it'd come off as silly (tho i guess it didn't help i was genuinely annoyed the OP didn't archive properly reeee)

anyway i saw your LLM edit and i feel like it focuses way too much on the pearl-clutching aspects while not focusing on the parts of the paper that say the political and social pressure approaches are just a pile of unfair bullshit

what i'm getting at is that while I view the ppl that wrote this paper as "opposition", they're opposition in a way that's actually reasonable and i encourage ppl to actually read the full paper
 
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what i'm getting at is that while I view the ppl that wrote this paper as "opposition", they're opposition in a way that's actually reasonable and i encourage ppl to actually read the full paper
Totally fair and you’ve convinced me, I will actually read it and try to take it for what it is rather than what my bias says.
 
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