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Pressure grows on Cloudflare to drop Kiwi Farms after latest doxing campaign

Kiwi Farms is embroiled in another controversy.

 

Claire Goforth

Tech

Posted on Aug 22, 2022   Updated on Aug 24, 2022, 6:28 am CDT

People online are trying to convince hosting and security giant Cloudflare to drop Kiwi Farms, in the wake of an online harassment and doxing campaign led by users of the notorious far-right site.

https://twitter.com/cherrycomfy/status/1561752098701983744

Users of Kiwi Farms are currently terrorizing Twitch streamer and transgender rights activist Clara Sorrenti. Sorrenti, who goes by Keffals online, recently fled her home after being “swatted.” A person impersonating Sorrenti reportedly sent local lawmakers a mass shooting threat, leading police to arrest Sorrenti. She was released without charges.

Then she was reportedly doxed again by Kiwi Farms users who analyzed the bedsheets at her hotel to determine her location.

The content on Kiwi Farms is notoriously transphobic. In March, one of the site’s users took aim at Sorrenti based on the belief that she played a role in getting another Twitch streamer booted from that platform for transphobia. The comment thread they started now spans more than 1,200 pages and thousands of comments

Now Sorrenti is in hiding. She’s also campaigning to convince Cloudflare to stop hosting Kiwi Farms, which has become a haven for far-right doxing and trolling efforts. The push is gaining steam online.

https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1561443931031646208

Kiwi Farms has played a central role in some of the internet’s worst moments. The Christchurch mass shooting videos were hosted there. When a police officer emailed the site’s founder for information about the shooter, he reportedly responded by posting the email without redacting the officer’s address.

Antifa obsessive Andy Ngo has also joined in the fray, defending the site and claiming it merely posts about leftist extremists.

Ngo, who’s been repeatedly accused of coordinating with far-right extremists, responded to Sorrenti’s efforts by misleading about Kiwi Farms. “The internet forum site features threads of photos and information about Antifa militants & other far-left extremists,” Ngo tweeted.

Sorrenti replied that Kiwi Farms’ users are also currently attempting to dox the police chief of London, Ontario, where she lives.

The Daily Dot found the post Sorrenti referred to. It included numerous pictures of the police chief with people who appear to be his family. “The Canadian police are fair game,” the user who posted the photos later wrote, “[Sorrenti] has had run ins with both the London and Toronto Police, [and] has given us several police officer names.”

“Those cops are watching this site as we shitpost,” they added. “If they are watching us we have every right to watch back.”

They later claimed that it “hardly qualified” as doxing because they weren’t able to find the chief’s address.

Doxing is a beloved pastime on Kiwi Farms. A user even recently started a thread called “How to dox people.” People mostly trolled them or accused them of being a member of law enforcement, however.

Cloudflare, which provides security services for a number of sites, has taken a stance on social issues before. In the wake of several mass shootings, it dropped its protections for 8chan, which led to the site going down for several weeks until it could find a new service provider to protect it from numerous DDoS attacks. It also dropped the Daily Stormer after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Cloudflare did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Dot.


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*First Published: Aug 22, 2022, 3:01 pm CDT
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