Kiwi Farms, a site that hosted boards espousing homophobic, transphobic, racist and other hate speech, has lost its hosting company, kicking the site offline until if, and when, if finds a new host, NBC News reports.
Internet hosting and security systems provider Cloudflare announced Saturday that it would no longer host Kiwi Farms because the site has been used for targeted harassment campaigns against trans people. Users would dox trans people in the forums and direct harassment efforts against them. Claiming that they’re a “free speech” forum, Kiwi Farms refused to take down any threats or personal information.
Clara Sorrenti, a trans Twitch streamer known to fans as Keffals, was the subject of one such harassment campaign, but she countered by starting a campaign of her own: to get Kiwi Farms deplatformed, something which didn’t seem likely to happen because the CEO of Cloudflare initially rebuffed the effort by saying they supported everyone’s First Amendment rights. His view, however, changed when users of Kiwi Farms increased the number and intensity of hate campaigns..
“This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare’s role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with,” Cloudflare’s statement said. “However, the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site and specific, targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours to the point that we believe there is an unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life unlike we have previously seen from Kiwifarms or any other customer before.”