The Russian company DDoS-Guard stopped serving the Kiwi Farms forum

The administration of the English-language forum Kiwi Farms, associated with bullying and a number of incitements to suicide, reported that the Russian cybersecurity company DDoS-Guard had stopped providing services to them. Kiwi Farms turned on DDoS-Guard protection after the US company Cloudflare, which provides similar services, disconnected the site from its services under public pressure. The press service of the Russian company confirmed to Kommersant that they stopped providing Kiwi Farms services without waiting for notification from the authorized bodies.

“We provide services to those who need them, if the client’s site has not violated the law or if there has not been an official notification from the authorized bodies about a ban on supporting the resource. Today, DDoS-Guard stopped providing services for the Kiwi Farms forum, without waiting for official notice, ”Kommersant was told in the company’s press service.

“We have been following a policy of net neutrality for many years. However, there are things that are unacceptable to us under any circumstances, ”said a company representative, referring to the acceptable use policy of the service (.pdf). He added that DDoS-Guard received “many calls from ordinary users that this resource has connected our service and violates the acceptable use policy.”

The Kiwi Farms forum in its current form was founded in 2013. Users of the site posted on it the personal data of women, LGBT people and neurodivergent people, pursued them and called the police to their addresses. At least three suicides are linked to the actions of Kiwi Farms users, notes The Washington Post. Cloudflare was for a long time the only major Internet company that continued to provide services to Kiwi Farms. She proceeded from the fact that she has no right to refuse security based on what is published on a particular site. September 4, after the public campaign DropKiwifarmscloudflare announcedthat the actions of the site’s users pose an “imminent threat to human life”, and blocked Kiwi Farms.

Kiwi Farms Administrator Joshua Moon declared in the site’s Telegram channel that after Cloudflare and DDoS-Guard, it “does not have a plan B” to protect against DDoS attacks. He stated that “a coalition of criminals is trying to put the blame for their actions on the forum”, and noted that he “does not see a situation in which the Kiwi Farms forum will be allowed to simply work.”

Yuri Litvinenko