Disaster Under Pressure, Security Firm Cloudflare drops Kiwi Farms Website - Noted LoTT doxer Taylor Lorenz weigh ins

SAN FRANCISCO — Reversing course under growing public pressure, major tech security company Cloudflare announced Saturday that it will stop protecting the Kiwi Farms website, best known as a place for stalkers to organize hacks, online campaigns and real-world harassment.
Cloudfare chief executive Matthew Prince, who this past week published a lengthy blog post justifying the company’s services defending Kiwi Farms, told The Washington Post he changed his mind not because of the pressure but a surge in credible violent threats stemming from the site.
“As Kiwi Farms has felt more threatened, they have reacted by being more threatening,” Prince said. “We think there is an imminent danger, and the pace at which law enforcement is able to respond to those threats we don’t think is fast enough to keep up.”
Prince said contributors to the forum were posting home addresses of those seen as enemies and calling for them to be shot.
Kiwi Farms launched in 2013 and quickly grew into a popular internet forum for online harassment campaigns. At least three suicides have been tied to harassment stemming from the Kiwi Farms community, and many on the forum consider their goal to drive their targets to suicide. Members of the LGBTQ community and women are frequent targets.
Cloudflare has faced broad backlash in the past week as a campaign for it to drop the service gained steam and widened to pressure paying customers to drop Cloudflare if it held firm.
Two weeks ago, Prince said the company stopped selling Kiwi Farms a $20 per month service to customize error messages shown to web users when its pages wouldn’t load. On Saturday, it withdrew the remaining free services, which fend off denial-of-service attacks and speed content delivery by making copies of the site in many locations.
Clara Sorrenti, a trans Canadian Twitch streamer known online as Keffals, launched the #DropKiwiFarms campaign after being targeted by Kiwi Farms posters for over half a year.
Forum users had repeatedly doxed Sorrenti and her family, posting addresses and more, and last month they called in false crime reports to draw police to her home. Sorrenti fled to Northern Ireland late last month, and within 48 hours users of the forum had pinpointed her location and she began receiving threats.
On Saturday, she spoke with The Post just minutes after police had arrived at her residence after another swatting attempt.
“There are countless people suffering because of this website,” Sorrenti said. “Kiwi Farms isn’t about free speech, it’s about hate speech. The majority of the content on the site is threads used for targeted harassment against political targets.”
Sorrenti’s campaign against Cloudflare went viral in the past several days, with organizations and influencers joining in the call to ban Kiwi Farms from Cloudflare’s service. The Anti-Defamation League called Kiwi Farms an “extremist-friendly forum that has been the breeding ground for countless harassment campaigns.”
In the interview, Prince said he was uncomfortable dropping Kiwi Farms despite its content and would have preferred a court order.
But he said it was an easier call than his previous decisions to drop neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer and the 8chan website because those two were not hotbeds for specific violent plots.
Lorenz reported from Los Angeles.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Archive

 

[Dante Alighieri]

He's gonna monitor other sites for threats, right?


Right?!

 

[b0o0pinsn0o0tz]

Too bad faggots. We won't give up. Hey cloudflare, instead of sucking feminine penis for once how about you such my masculine manly dick?

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Kiwifarms is a threat to human life yet Sanctioned Suicide is not. The fuq?

 

[Doseferatu]

The only useful trick Taylor Lorenz has is to cry and lie on government-approved propaganda sources.

She might be good at blowies given her advanced age and bloated body, but that's only a guess.

 

[HIVidaBoheme]

Matthew Prince really wrote all that shit to try and sugarcoat the fact he bent over for the girldick.

I'm sure this will not come bite them in the ass later

 

[Screw Danlon]

Here, Cloudflare, Taylor, Keffles, et al, a pair of flipped birds


This really is turning into GamerGate Redux, isn’t it?

 

[Chiri]

Sure is convenient how this article went up mere minutes after the block happened...

 

[piter_de_vries]

Sure is convenient how this article went up mere minutes after the block happened...

Really gets the noggin joggin, huh

 

[Charactis]

But he said it was an easier call than his previous decisions to drop neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer and the 8chan website because those two were not hotbeds for specific violent plots.

@Null use this as a badge of honor you officially host the edgiest site on the net.

 

[Autistsforuganda2]

Hope you have fun now being harassed by trannies for the rest of your days. Hope it was worth it, because they will never be satisfied.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

When your autistic lolcow website is edgier than a neo-nazi blog.

 

[Dan Abrams]

I already had Tor installed on my PC and this cuts back on the invasion of Redditors anyway.

 

[Tard Whisperer]

This was posted at 6:18pm ET, within minutes of the site going down (anyone know the exact time?). Lorenz tweeted it at 6:21pm, Null didn't even post his comment until 6:22pm.

Lorenz/the Post was definitely tipped off before this happened, they had the article already prepared

Update: Cloudflare CEO tweeted out the announcement at 6:15pm. telegram users started asking what happened at 6:16pm. so confirmed that the article came out within 3 mins of the site being down.

 

[Kiwisee]

And yet we are still here, Journoscum.

 

[tehpope]

Hope you have fun now being harassed by trannies for the rest of your days. Hope it was worth it, because they will never be satisfied.

Eventually, the sword of damocles will come down on you Matthew Prince. Not by us, but by the troons. They'll say you have to go because you didn't act fast enough and won't take support away from other sites they deem bad. And then you'll watch as they replace you with someone else that'll crash your company.

 

[Polarity]

Kiwi Farms isn’t about free speech, it’s about hate speech.

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."

-George Orwell, 1984

 

[TheBest]

Nothing will kill the Farms. It doesn't matter if the site is up or not, the community will still be there, and you cannot kill the community. As long as the userbase is here, so will the Farms.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Not surprised but disappointed. I just hated seeing the trannies get another win.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

This was posted at 6:18pm ET, within minutes of the site going down (anyone know the exact time?). Lorenz tweeted it at 6:21pm, Null didn't even post his comment until 6:22pm.

Lorenz/the Post was definitely tipped off before this happened, they had the article already prepared

What if Lorenz was the one who made the fedpost?