Cloudflare Closes Kiwi Farms Forum Responsible for Numerous Harassment Campaigns

Cloudflare is leaving Kiwi Farms, the forum responsible for numerous harassment campaigns. A difficult but necessary decision.

DNS and internet security provider Cloudflare has blocked Kiwi Farms, a forum infamous for its online and real-world harassment campaigns. CEO Matthew Prince announced the company’s decision just recently.

Cloudflare pulls out of Kiwi Farms

“Because Kiwi Farms felt more threatened, they responded with an even greater threat,” Matthew Prince told The Washington Post. “We believe that there is an imminent danger and the speed with which the authorities can respond to these threats, in our opinion, is insufficient.”Writing on the company blog, Matthew Prince explains that Cloudflare is seeing an increase in targeted threats, “unlike what we’ve seen from Kiwi Farms or any other client before.”

Kiwi Farms was founded in 2013 by former 8chan administrator Joshua Moon. Over the past ten years, at least three suicides have been linked to bullying campaigns emanating from this forum. In recent weeks, Kiwi Farms has gained popularity on both sides of the US political landscape. After being the target of several attacks from this site, trans streamer Clara Sorrenti launched a campaign to shut down Kimi Farms. She used the hashtag #DropKiwifarms to lobby Clouflare and other major infrastructure providers.

Forum responsible for numerous persecution campaigns

“Many people are suffering because of this site,” Clara Sorrenti told Th Post, moments after police arrived at her home after another slap. “Kiwi Farms has nothing to do with free speech, it’s just hate speech. Much of the content on this site is topics used to target politicians.”

U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Green called for the forum to close after a user posing as Kiwi Farms sent police to her home. “This site needs to be neutralized,” she told Newsmax. “There should be no businesses or services of any kind to target the enemy.”

Difficult but necessary decision

A few days ago, it looked like Cloudflare would do nothing against Kiwi Farms. The company released a post detailing its offensive content policy. Without explicitly mentioning the forum in question, Matthew Prince and another executive argued that taking action against sites deemed objectionable by the company and the public would harm minorities and marginalized people.

Matthew Prince most recently described Cloudflare’s decision to block Kiwi Farms as “a dangerous decision that doesn’t sit well with us.”He told The Post that he would prefer to act in response to the court order, but added that it was easier than when Clouflare decided to drop Daily Stormer and 8chan. At the time of this writing, Kiwi Farms is still online after switching to DDoS protection and a Russian domain name.