Cloudflare blocks harassment bulletin board 'Kiwi Farms', considering LGBT discrimination develops into a crisis of human life


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Web Summit

On September 4, 2022, hosting service giant CloudFlare blocked Kiwi Farms , an American Internet forum aimed at discussing and harassing online people and communities, and announced that it had stopped providing security services. . Behind the block is reportedly a heated debate on the Internet over transgender discrimination.

Blocking Kiwi Farms
https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked/

Kiwi Farms: Anti-trans stalkers chasing Keffals around the world
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/cloudflare-kiwi-farms-keffals-anti-trans-rcna44834

Citing imminent danger Cloudflare drops hate site Kiwi Farms | AP News
https://apnews.com/article/technology-gay-rights-7d64f7b71736e091a4b5d1b3935551b5

Cloudflare reverses decision and drops trans trolling website Kiwi Farms | Internet | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/sep/04/cloudflare-reverses-decision-and-drops-trans-trolling-website-kiwi-farms

Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare, said in a statement, 'Threats on Kiwi Farms have never been higher in the last 48 hours and we have been actively working with law enforcement agencies, but we are no longer working with law enforcement.' It was an emergency that was so imminent that we could not wait for the agency to act,' he explained, explaining that the growing problem surrounding Kiwi Farms was the reason for this block.



Kiwi Farms is a long-established online forum that has been operating for more than nine years since February 2013, but is known for issues such as outright harassment aimed at driving targets to suicide. It is reported that there have been three suicides so far. One of the main targets is transgender. did.

At the time of writing, the target is Clara Sorrenti, a Canadian Twitch streamer and transgender activist who goes by the name Keffals , and Sorrenti named her on August 5, 2022. It is said that he suffered from so-called swatting, which is reported to the police with a shooting notice. After that, Mr. Sorrenti, who was harassed by his Uber account being hacked and having meals sent to him, moved his address outside of Canada, but when his new address was exposed, he was also swatted there. rice field.


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Oregon Department of Transportation

Due to this damage, Mr. Sorrenti and his supporters launched a campaign on Twitter using tags such as '#DropKiwiFarms' and ' #CloudflareProtectsTerrorists '. and put pressure on CloudFlare.

Prince CEO did not reveal the direct reason why CloudFlare blocked Kiwi Farms, but the official blog stated that a pressure campaign aimed at stopping Kiwi Farms had started around mid-August, and that the pressure was on Cloudflare. He also revealed that it extended to providers who use Cloudflare as well.

However, Prince emphasizes that this pressure campaign is not the direct reason for this block. Prince said he sympathized with the philosophy of the pressure campaign, saying, ``As a security provider, we do our best to protect our customers, even if it goes against public opinion and morals.'' He said he has protected Kiwi Farms from cyberattacks such as DDoS attacks.

However, after the pressure campaign escalated and posts on Kiwi Farms quickly became radicalized in response, CloudFlare said it could no longer wait for law enforcement to respond to Kiwi Farms security. service has been discontinued.

As a result, Kiwi Farms was temporarily inaccessible , but at the time of writing, it was revived as KiwiFarms.ru . However, the security service uses DDoS-Guard , a Russian DDoS countermeasure service, instead of CloudFlare.



“We will continue to actively cooperate with law enforcement authorities in their investigation of Kiwi Farms and the individuals who posted potentially illegal content,” Prince said. Although the situation has been brought under control, we recognize that the fundamental problem has not been resolved.' I was.

Sorrenti also welcomed CloudFlare's decision to discontinue service to Kiwi Farms, and said it would continue its pressure campaign against Kiwi Farms' hosting providers.

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in Web Service,   Security, Posted by log1l_ks