People Are Demanding That Cloudflare Drop Kiwi Farms

Following the recent doxing and swatting of Twitch streamer Keffals, people are demanding that Cloudflare, which provides security services to websites, stop offering its services to Kiwi Farms, the forum that she alleges organized the swatting. Swatting refers to the dangerous and sometimes fatal internet harassment tactic in which someone pretends there’s an emergency at their target’s home, prompting police to send a SWAT team. 

Streamer Clara Sorrenti, also known as Keffals, was raided at home and arrested on August 5. She claimed that users on Kiwi Farms, a notorious message board with a history of targeting and doxing vulnerable people, organized the raid and continued to harass her and numerous others. 

Cloudflare has not responded to Motherboard’s multiple requests for comment.

Sorrenti told me that a thread about her is one of the fastest-growing on Kiwi Farms. 

“Since March, they've doxed me three times. The information that they posted was used to swat me as well as an elderly man in Toronto where they thought I lived,” she said. “They've doxed members of my family. They've tried to terrorize me and do everything they can to ruin my life, and I'm one of countless people who have been affected by this. There's three people who've been documented that have taken their own lives as a result of this website. And I want to do everything I can to get this website off the internet.” 

Kiwi Farms has a reputation for being one of the worst trolling websites on the internet. It’s a place where users specifically misgender trans people, and regularly single out people to dox and harass them. As part of the campaign for Cloudflare to drop Kiwi Farms, more people have come forward on Twitter to share the abuse they’ve experienced when they become the forums’ targets. 

#DropKiwifarms and #CloudflareProtectsTerrorists were both trending on Twitter this week, after Sorrenti and supporters started demanding that Cloudflare stop allowing Kiwi Farms to benefit from its protections. Sorrenti wrote on Twitter that Kiwi Farms users have targeted her for this campaign, too: 

Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare provides DDoS protection services to numerous websites, including Kiwi Farms, effectively keeping them online. Cloudflare’s terms of use forbid “content that discloses sensitive personal information, incites or exploits violence, or is intended to defraud the public.” What Keffals alleges falls clearly under this prohibited use of Cloudflare’s services.

Cloudflare has drawn hard lines in the past and revoked its services from some of the vilest websites online, including the Neo-nazi website the Daily Stormer in 2017, and, following increased public criticism and initial refusal to do so, booted 8chan, a popular website for terrorist manifestos. 

It’s also pulled services from websites that provided a public good: in 2018, Cloudflare kicked Switter, a social platform for sex workers to help keep each other safe, off of its services, citing  the FOSTA/SESTA bill as the reason.

People have also started replying to Cloudflare employees’ tweets with demands that the company stop serving Kiwi Farms. 

People on Twitter, as well as Sorrenti, claimed that the official Cloudflare account hid replies on its tweets related to dropping Kiwi Farms, and then deleted tweets that were ratioed by people talking about the campaign. Cloudflare’s Twitter account normally posted at least daily before this week, but hasn’t tweeted in four days, as of writing.