The notorious site had been a rallying point for the vicious harassment and doxxing of transgender people, feminists and people of color.
NEW YORK — A Russia-based provider cut web protection services on Monday to Kiwi Farms, becoming the second provider in two days to abandon the notorious stalking and harassment site and leaving it inaccessible on the public internet.
DDoS-Guard said it doesn’t have to decide whether sites violate laws, and it normally only restricts access to a site in cases such as receiving a court order to do so. The company said it acted this time, however, after receiving “multiple” complaints.
“Having analyzed the content of the site, we decided on the termination of DDoS protection services” for a version of the Kiwi Farms site with a Russian .ru domain name, the company said. The .ru site, registered in mid-July, had been running intermittently after Cloudfare cut off services on Saturday.
The site, created and operated by Joshua Conner Moon, 29, has been a rallying point for the vicious harassment and doxxing of transgender people, feminists and people of color.
The knocking offline of Kiwi Farms – both providers protect websites from distributed denial-of-service and other attacks — followed a fierce campaign of outrage led by Canadian transgender Twitch streamer Clara Sorrenti.
Cloudfare CEO Matthew Prince said in a blog post Saturday that he was troubled by the free-speech implications of effectively de-hosting Kiwi Farms, an about-face after earlier in the week defending his decision not to cut the forum loose. But he said escalating targeted threats on the site created an “immediate threat to human life” of dimensions his company had never seen.
Sorrenti, who goes by “Keffals” online, fled her home in Canada last month, only to have online stalkers find her in Northern Ireland and step up their harassment.
On Monday, Sorrenti tweeted that she would have a final update on the campaign against Kiwi Farms.
“We won,” she said.
It was unclear whether Kiwi Farms would try to find another service provider or whether its users might begin gathering on a new forum.