the host Cloudflare finally blocks the forum “Kiwi Farms”
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After several weeks of pressure, the American company Cloudflare finally announced, on Saturday September 3, its decision to block the forum called Kiwi Farms a few days after explaining that it had no intention of doing so. Kiwi Farms is behind a wave of harassment against Canadian streamer and transgender activist Clara “Keffals” Sorrenti, who was forced by violent attacks against her to flee her own home.
The company blocked access to Kiwi Farms content through its infrastructure after rhetorical one-upmanship and “precise and targeted threats” over the past forty-eight hours, its chief executive said in a communicated. Matthew Prince also added:
“This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare’s role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous decision that we are not comfortable with. »
Although we believe “that it would have been appropriate as an infrastructure provider for us to await legal proceedings, in which case the imminent and urgent threat to human life which continues to escalate leads us to take this action”, added Matthew Prince.
Even more aggressive users after the campaign
Users of the site have become even more aggressive after the internet campaign to pressure service providers to block it, Cloudflare’s chief executive said, adding that over the past two weeks the company has contacted law enforcement in multiple jurisdictions about “potential criminal acts and imminent threats to human life that have been posted on the site”.
It all started on August 5, when Keffals, who rose to prominence on the Twitch platform with video game streams, fell victim to a swatting. This practice consists of making the police believe that serious events are taking place at the victim’s address, so that the forces of order and more particularly the SWAT (the American GIGN) go there. Keffals found herself held at gunpoint for no reason at her home in London, Ontario, and “misgendered” on numerous occasions – the anonymous message having put the police on his trail having voluntarily used his former marital status.
After recounting this first ordeal in a video posted August 9 on YouTube, the videographer and her fiancé are the subject of a second attack, their stalkers having managed to identify the hotel in which they took refuge thanks to a simple photo of their cat on a bed. Since then, as Clara Sorrenti recounts in a second video published on August 18, the couple have lived “in a secret place”. She accuses the members of the Kiwi Farms forum, considered by the New YorkMagazine as “the largest community of stalkers on the web »for having made his address public – a practice known as doxing. She also reveals to be the subject of a hate campaign ” for many months ” and say “to fear in the future an escalation in violence in [s]we place ».
“Blow to Kiwi Farms”
The origins of Kiwi Farms date back to 2007 on 4Chan. The members of this forum specialize in mocking, harassing in packs and pushing Internet users to the limit, in particular transgender people, overweight people or people with Asperger’s syndrome. At least one person targeted by Kiwi Farms committed suicide in 2016, recalled, at the time, the New YorkMagazine. The members of the forum have declined all responsibility and have since continued to harass many people whom they consider to be “eccentric”.
Using the hashtags #DropKiwiFarms, #TimesUpCloudFlare and #CloudflareProtectsTerrorists on Twitter, among others, Keffals and his supporters called on Cloudflare to stop offering its services to Kiwi Farms. After being silent for about ten days, Cloudflare finally reacted in a blog post, August 31. Without citing the Keffals case or any other pending case, Matthew Prince and Alissa Starzak, respectively CEO and Head of Public Affairs, went into detail about their company’s policy on abuse, reaffirming the neutrality they have always claimed:
“In the same way that a telephone operator does not cancel your subscription because you have said horrible, racist or bigoted things, we have concluded (…) that you are preventing access to our services because we consider that you posting is despicable is not the right way to go. »
Over the past ten years, Kiwi Farms has been linked to multiple attacks by doxing or of swatting. At least two people have committed suicide after being targeted by Kiwi Farms users, according to messages from the victims themselves or friends quoted in news reports.
In a communicated published on Saturday, Clara Sorrenti said that this decision “deals a blow to Kiwi Farms and to [sa] community “.
“However, this is not the end. If we want to see the end of Kiwi Farms and communities like theirs, we must keep fighting. »
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