Inside Kiwi Farms, the hate-filled platform that just had its worst day ever
A $20 billion company just made life hell for the operators of a platform so disturbing it takes the title of “worst place on the internet”.
A $20 billion company just made life hell for the operators of a platform so disturbing it takes the title of “worst place on the internet”.
If you have never heard of Kiwi Farms, that might be a good thing.
The online hate forum brings together the very worst content from far-right, anti-trans, pro-white extremists and uses it to target the most vulnerable people in the sickest of ways.
Its founder Joshua Moon celebrated the work of the Christchurch massacre terrorist and told New Zealand police they were “clowns” from a “small, irrelevant island nation” for daring to ask him to remove a livestream of the worst attack on NZ soil in history.
“Is this a joke?” Moon told an officer in a conversation he later shared online.
“I feel real bad for you guys, you’ve got a quiet nation and now this attack is going to be the first thing people think of for the next 10 years when they hear the name New Zealand.”
Kiwi Farms had, until this week, used two tactics in particular to target individuals who dared speak out against the bigoted views of its users.
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They either doxxed them, which involves the release of identifying information for malicious intent, or swatted them — a term that involves sending false tips to police about a violent crime at a victim’s residence.
But all of that unravelled this week in the most humiliating way for Moon and his supporters when the Kiwi Farms platform was pulled from underneith them.
In a nutshell, Kiwi Farms has been blocked and its users greeted with a blunt message by the internet infrastructure giant Cloudflare.
What makes that move so extraordinary is that Cloudflare once refused to remove its services from militant Islamic extremist network al-Qaeda. Its founder and CEO Matthew Prince wrote at the time that “a website is speech — it is not a bomb”.
Here we have a company which in the pas was willing to offer its services to one of the most violent extremist organisations in the world but not a group of transphobic Trump supporters.
In a message on the platform it previously provided to Kiwi Farms, Mr Prince explains exactly why that is.
“We have blocked Kiwifarms,” he writes. “Visitors to any of the Kiwi Farms sites that use any of Cloudflare’s services will see a Cloudflare block page and a link to this post.
“Kiwifarms may move their sites to other providers and, in doing so, come back online, but we have taken steps to block their content from being accessed through our infrastructure.
I want to make it clear that I did not DDoS Kiwifarms, I do not have the technical skills to do so and do not condone criminal behaviour regardless of who does it. Kiwifarms has many enemies and this campaign has emboldened them. It’s not my fault that Joshua made those enemies.
— Clara Sorrenti (@keffalsbackup) August 24, 2022
“This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare’s role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with.”
Mr Prince explained that a campaign had been launched to bring down Kiwi Farms. What that campaign effectively did was cause its users to escalate threats against individuals to a level that Cloudflare described as “an unprecented emergency and immediate threat to human life unlike we have previously seen from any customer before”.
“Kiwi Farms has frequently been host to revolting content,” Mr Prince continued.
“Revolting content alone does not create an emergency situation that necessitates the action we are taking today.
“Beginning approximately two weeks ago, a pressure campaign started with the goal to deplatform Kiwi Farms. That pressure campaign targeted Cloudflare as well as other providers utilised by the site.
“However, as the pressure campaign escalated, so did the rhetoric on the Kiwi Farms site. Feeling attacked, users became even more aggressive.
Its American operator is not likely to be taking the news well.
Kiwi Farms has been removed from the Internet Archive. The archives of all the threads of people made on Kiwi Farms are gone. pic.twitter.com/v8778YyvUT
— Keffals (@keffals) September 6, 2022
Moon has been almost solely focused in recent months on targeting one person — Ontario-based trans activist Clara Sorrenti who goes by the online moniker Keffals.
Ms Sorrenti has been subjected to a coordinated attack by users who shared her personal details and called police to her home citing a shooting threat that did not exist.
Armed police arrived and she was arrested but thankfully not hurt.
The Guardian reports that Ms Sorrenti fled to a hotel but made the mistake of posting a picture online.
Kiwi Farms users compared the sheets in the hotel and let her know she had been found.
When she fled to Ireland, a person showed up outside her apartment with a handwritten note filled with abusive messages for the transgender community and its supporters.
Kiwi Farms is, for now, offline. It is a small win for Ms Sorrenti and for those against hate-speech free from consequences.
We will see how long that lasts and whether somebody else is willing to offer the forum a home.
