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The Internet

Cloudflare Blocks Site Linked To Hate After Weeks of Pressure (bloomberg.com) 373

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Cloudflare blocked Kiwi Farms on Saturday, days after hinting it will continue working with the controversial discussion forum despite weeks of pressure. From a report: The company has blocked Kiwi Farms content from being accessed through its infrastructure after an escalation in rhetoric and "specific, targeted threats" over the past 48 hours, Chief Executive Officer Matthew Prince said in a blog post. "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," Prince said. While we believe "it would have been appropriate as an infrastructure provider for us to wait for legal process, in this case the imminent and emergency threat to human life which continues to escalate causes us to take this action." Previously, Cloudflare offered security services to Kiwi Farms. Visitors to Kiwi Farms sites that use any of its services will now see a Cloudflare block page and a link to Prince's post.
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Cloudflare Blocks Site Linked To Hate After Weeks of Pressure More

Cloudflare Blocks Site Linked To Hate After Weeks of Pressure

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  • It wasn't about hate (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday September 05, 2022 @07:12PM (#62854982)
    And that makes it sound like they're doing this because of pressure from leftists. Not that leftists aren't happy to see them go but it had nothing to do with that.

    The website and question is called kiwi farms and it's famous as a place you can solicit swattings and other violent Acts. There are people who are dead because of stalkers from that website. There was apparently an imminent threat of violence being coordinated on the site and everybody knew it. Somebody was going to get killed with that site didn't go down.

    The argument will be that the people in question will just go somewhere else that is boogie2988 over it YouTube pointed out there really isn't anywhere else for them to go. Reddit and 4chan and 8-chan all have cracked down on coordinated violence and abuse. And in order to make this work you need an entire community dedicated to it and staying focused on it. A handful of people occasionally popping up on a forum or discord channel isn't enough to sustain it.

    I suppose it also helps that the authorities are tired of being used for SWATtings. It's getting to the point where people are having serious discussions about whether or not they need SWAT teams. Or whether it's worth having a military force that can be used as a moments notice to brass and or kill someone with little more than a phone call. So a lot of pressure is coming down to get the SWATters under control

    • Re:It wasn't about hate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday September 05, 2022 @08:28PM (#62855170) Journal

      In 2022, It's ridiculous that SWATting is still a thing. It's been happening for over a decade now, it's time for authorities to close this loophole. It was time a while ago.

  • Dependence on cloudflare (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cygnusvis ( 6168614 ) on Monday September 05, 2022 @07:17PM (#62854990)
    Society needs an open source alternative!
    • it's not the software, it's the infrastructure. It's expensive to run. I guess you could socialize it. But with the amount of death threats and swattings and stalkers on kiwi farms I think even a gov't organization would shut it down.

      I mean, these guys couldn't get the Russians to host it. They host Storm Front. Literal Nazis. And they said "Kiwi Farms is too much".

      • Why doesn't law enforcement shut down the actual site, rather than the cloud services company offering them DDoS protection?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by splutty ( 43475 )

          Because law enforcement takes time.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rpnx ( 8338853 )
          Because hosting a form for other people to gossip is not illegal. The government can usually only go after individual posters (which is what they should be doing, and cloudflare as well if someone is doing something illegal). REGULATE REGULATE REGULATE. TITLE II COMMON CARRIER IAAS AND PAAS.

          • Gossip is one thing. Doxxing, harassment, and assault planning is another. It's not clear what's actually going on there since many are making allegations without there being much evidence for or against. Kiwi Farms does have a reputation, but it takes more than that to prosecute.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      What dependence? They're perfectly allowed to just not use Cloudflare.

      Of course, considering the type of site it is, not using Cloudflare would take it offline just as hard.

  • Illegal behavior (Score:5, Informative)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Monday September 05, 2022 @07:20PM (#62855006)

    >"Cloudflare Blocks Site Linked To Hate"

    No, that is inaccurate by omission, leading one to believe they simply blocked a site for the undefinable, non-illegal, constitutionally-compatible nonsense category called "hate speech." Apparently they are blocked due to what clearly appears to be illegal behavior. There is a big difference. Quote:

    "Cloudflare contacted law enforcement in several jurisdictions over âoepotential criminal acts and imminent threats to human life that were posted to the site.â

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *

      There's something else going on. Even as a casual observer of news, I learned that the Marge Green SWATters were claiming to be Kiwi Farms admins.

      That was quickly shown to be a frame-up job but apparently the miscreants figured out that posting wild threatening shit will cause CloudFlare to censor Kiwi.

      Everything about this situation glows.

      Kiwi has a reputation for non-censorship so it's teeming with obnoxious weirdos who say things that would melt any delicate flower. Maybe it was unwilling to engage in t

      • >"That was quickly shown to be a frame-up job but apparently the miscreants figured out that posting wild threatening shit will cause CloudFlare to censor Kiwi."

        Which would amount to a false flag type operation, if true. I haven't followed any of it, so have nothing to add. My posting was only about the misleading summary title.

        >"Also Cloudflare is now a liability, which is a shame. If critical Internet infrastructure must be centralized then we need to try again."

        Yes, it is disturbing. It would be

        • IT DOESN'T MATTER IF THEY WERE HOSTING THEM.

          Kiwi Farms can host their own site. If they face DDoS attacks, they can counter the attacks themselves or they can pay someone else to deal with it for them. There is not yet an internet police force that exists to bust skulls when people get funny ideas about internet property so they're kinda left to whatever they can figure out themselves.

          I feel almost dumb explaining this because surely slashdot readers understand capitalism and free markets.

      • Do you know literally anything about Kiwi Farms? (Score:5, Informative)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday September 05, 2022 @08:13PM (#62855140)
        you don't need to do a frame up job or make it any worse than it already is. The site is literally where the SWATters and stalkers who were too much for Reddit and bloody 8-chan went after those sites clamped down. And they didn't clamp down under pressure, they did it after multiple people died. Either in SWATtings or killed by their Stalkers.

        Kiwi farms was where you went to destroy someone with Stochastic Terrorism. It got to the point where nobody could pretend it was anything else. That meant anyone doing business with them was in danger of at least civil if not criminal negligence charges.

        Not all speech can or should be protected. There, I said it. This isn't even "paradox of intolerance" stuff. This is literally psychos trying to touch off other psychos to see if they can get people killed. And doing it in an organized fashion that made it highly effective. You can't let that many psychopaths congregate in one place planning and executing violence. Not if you want a functional civilization.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by thunderclees ( 4507405 )

          Seems like an attempt at justification.
          Mainstream news outlets commit "Stochastic Terrorism" by editing flash point stories to try and create mass rioting and they face no censoring or even any backlash.

      • What is the "Missouri federal filing"?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nucrash ( 549705 )

          Missouri will probably sue over this too because defending hate speech is what Eric Schmitt does best.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        This isn't a free speech issue. These shitbags were responsible for the deaths of innocent people. They should be in prison

        You know what went on on that site. Why are you lying about it? Are you one of their shitbag members?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msauve ( 701917 )
      OK, I basically agree with your point. But WTF is/are "kiwi farms?" The summary doesn't say, yet implies they're evil in some way. These days, there's a lot of "evil" associated with political incorrectness. Is this really an imminent threat to society, or just cancel culture?

      If there's illegal activity, the summary doesn't even bother to mention it, and if Cloudflare didn't get a prompt response from "law enforcement in several jurisdictions", how serious is it really?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rpnx ( 8338853 )
      Victims like Kiwi Farms should start suing these news sites that intentionally slander certain groups as XXX label. It seems that defamation by implication is a thing in many states that could be leveraged to attack these evil corporations. REGULATE REGULATE REGULATE. TITLE II COMMON CARRIER IAAS AND PAAS.
  • Below is the response by the creator of kiwifarms. Apparently the account involved in the threats of violence was a sleeper account who posted rarely to the forum. It was reported 7 times and the user banned in about half an hour. When you look at other social sites such as Facebook, who have livestreaming of terrorists in action, and they don't get a fraction of the backlash, you know there's a coordinated agenda on the cards.

    https://archive.ph/damIX [archive.ph]

  • Possibly the wrong course of action (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Monday September 05, 2022 @08:46PM (#62855220)

    If individuals on Kiwi Farms are posting direct threats and encouraging harassment, shouldn't law enforcement take action either against the individual posters or the site admins? Or both? Kicking them off Cloudflare seems pointless. They'll just pop up somewhere else.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Law enforcement tried, but the site refused to cooperate by e.g. handing over logs or IP addresses associated with posts, although I suspect many of them will be using VPNs or other proxies.

      Kicking them off isn't pointless. Look what happened to 8chan. It's still around, but a shell of its former self. The "community" scattered to a bunch of different replacement sites and can't do nearly as much damage now. The admins were forced to clean up the worst of it to get hosting.

      There are people alive and safe to

  • No loss (Score:4, Interesting)

    by satsuke ( 263225 ) on Monday September 05, 2022 @10:22PM (#62855414)

    So a site that exists to DOXX and collate information on how to target people who have the audacity to be transgender and not secret about it.

    Sounds like a real winning formula.

    Maybe that site should consider dedicated hosting, rather than a company that might have moral indignation over publishing information that could lead to violence.

  • If only there was a network of institutions out there that could make a decision as to whether material was illegal. If only companies with an internet presence always paid attention to what these institutions said...

    They're called courts and should be able to make interim ruling that material on a site is illegal, though ones that would rapidly result in definitive rulings. No company should be making these calls.

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