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Kiwi Farms all but finished after bill comes due for years of trolling and harassment [1]
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Date: 2022-09-05
Kiwi Farms has been infamous for using reams of online data to dox and swat people, with trans people coming under particular scorn. The site’s harassment campaigns have been linked to at least three suicides.
But Kiwi Farms may have finally met its match in Twitch streamer and trans activist Clara “Keffals” Sorrenti, who has been the target of a particularly relentless campaign of doxing and swatting after she spoke out against the raft of transphobic legislation in the United States. The harassment continued even when she fled her native Canada to the United Kingdom. Undeterred, Sorrenti started a campaign to get Cloudflare to pull its services from Kiwi Farms.
Cloudflare initially refused to do so because—wait for it—it claimed its decisions to pull services from noxious sites like Daily Stormer and 8chan led dictatorships to pressure it to pull services from human rights sites. In Cloudflare’s twisted and patently insulting view, dropping sites like Kiwi Farms, whose stock in trade is targeting the marginalized, potentially endangered those speaking for the marginalized. However, Cloudflare reversed course on Saturday night due to the increasingly threatening tone of Kiwi Farms posts. According to Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, while law enforcement was on the case, things were escalating too rapidly for Cloudflare to wait. Translation—Prince knew that his company could have potentially been sued out of existence if Sorrenti or anyone else were gravely injured or killed as a result of Kiwi Farms’ tactics.
On Sunday afternoon, Keffals tweeted that another important part of Kiwi Farms’ infrastructure had cut the cord. Namely, hCaptcha, which provided Kiwi Farms with services to keep bots from signing up for accounts.
x @hCaptcha Thank you for standing up for what is right. — keffals #DropKiwifarms (@keffals) September 4, 2022
Kiwi Farms had managed to get DDoS protection via Russia-based company DDoS Guard—but even that was only enough to keep the site online intermittently. By late Sunday night, however, the site had gone offline. According to British Internet security expert Kevin Beaumont, this was because DDoS Guard had pulled its protection.
x Kiwi Farms is down across all domains as their Russian DDoS provider terminated them as a customer.
Cloudflare ignored them for years, btw.
https://t.co/QZtduzvdQ1 https://t.co/bxaXNwRWfH etc pic.twitter.com/2deX6AytMf — Kevin Beaumont (@GossiTheDog) September 5, 2022
This was subsequently confirmed by Yuri Litvienko, the media and tech reporter at one of the few independent media sources left in Russia, Kommersant—the Russian counterpart of The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and Bloomberg News.
x A DDoS-Guard representative has confirmed to me that the company dropped Kiwi Farms "without waiting for an official notice," citing noncompliance with their Acceptable Use Policy and "a multitude of inquiries from ordinary users."
https://t.co/t299M3xHls — Yuri Litvinenko (@ylitvinenko) September 5, 2022
Beaumont later obtained DDoS Guard’s full statement.
In a lengthy post just before Kiwi Farms went offline, site founder Josh Moon claimed that a multitude of problems made it very likely that it will be awhile before the site returns. Indeed, literally as he was typing it, he was notified that DDoS Guard had dropped him.
x "I do not see a situation we are allowed to operate"
The fall of Kiwifarms - Joshua Moons Statement - Family Emergency, crisis at the farms, site will be down, the whole thing is going down in flames. Good news, everyone! #dropkiwifarms pic.twitter.com/iDiArlZGM4 — DropKiwifarms (@DropKiwifarms) September 5, 2022
Harvard Law’s Alejandra Caraballo saw a similar statement on Kiwi Farms’ Telegram feed, and noticed something that made her think this site could be dead for good. Apparently Kiwi Farms’ IPs are hosted in Australia—and if APNIC pulls them, Kiwi Farms might never come back.
x Kiwi farms has now been dropped by DDoS Guard, their Russian protection for the RU domain. Joshua Moon is basically admitting defeat as there's no place left for him to turn to now that even Russia won't help him. APNIC may even revoke his IP addresses as they are Australian. pic.twitter.com/9rXnq8hnOj — Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) September 5, 2022
Whether Moon can get back online is the least of his worries. It’s only a matter of time before we see Kiwi Farms posters being arrested, and Keffals has given a pretty loud indication that she intends to pursue civil action; she’s started a GoFundMe campaign to fund her legal expenses.
Let’s be frank—this is one site that needed to be canceled. Slate put it best on Sunday night—this is actually a victory for free speech. At risk of sounding like a broken record—an environment in which people are bludgeoned into silence by harassment and trolling is not conducive to free speech.
Kiwi Farms has been around since 2013. And on the face of it, it looks like it was brought to its knees in a mere 72 hours. NBC News profiled Kiwi Farms’ harassment of Keffals on Friday afternoon. And by Sunday night/Monday morning, it was in a full death spiral. This, friends, is what democracy looks like.
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