Kat Tenbarge

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Internet services company Cloudflare blocks fringe message board Kiwi Farms, citing ‘targeted threats’

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Internet hosting and security services provider Cloudflare said Saturday that it would block Kiwi Farms, a website associated with harassment campaigns against transgender people. 

The announcement puts the future of the fringe internet forum in doubt, though some of its members had already anticipated that Cloudflare could act and began to explore other options.

When attempting to visit Kiwi Farms’ website Saturday evening, an error message appeared that said: “Due to an imminent and emergency threat to human life, the content of this site is blocked from being accessed through Cloudflare’s infrastructure.”

The move comes after Cloudflare became the subject of a pressure campaign by a trans Twitch streamer who has been a target of abuse by Kiwi Farms users.

The streamer, Clara Sorrenti, known to fans as Keffals, responded Saturday in a tweet. “Cloudflare has dropped Kiwi Farms. Our campaign will put out a statement soon,” Sorrenti said. 

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince’s announced the move in a blog postand did not mention Sorrenti by name, but said that abuse from Kiwi Farms had intensified in response to her campaign.

“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.”

On Friday, NBC News reported that Sorrenti is one of Kiwi Farms’ growing list of targets, and that its harassment techniques could become a playbook against political enemies as the 2024 U.S. presidential election nears. 

Kiwi Farms owner Josh Moon did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday from NBC News. A post on the Kiwi Farms Telegram account said Cloudflare’s decision was “done without any discussion.” 

“The message I’ve received is a vague suspension notice. The message from Matthew Prince is unclear,” the post stated. “If there is any threat to life on the site, I have received no communication from any law enforcement.” 

Cloudflare is an internet services company that provides websites with a variety of crucial resources, most notably its content delivery network and mitigation of distributed denial of services campaigns, or DDoS, a common cyberattack that floods websites with fake internet traffic and renders them unusable.

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Cloudflare’s central role as one of the main providers of these services has also made the company a flashpoint around extremists’ internet operations. 

The company has generally been hesitant to take action against particular websites or internet operations, citing concerns that it holds immense power in terms of who is able to exist on the web, though it has before. 

In 2017, Cloudflare said it would no longer provide services to the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi message board. 

Prince also warned about Cloudflare’s role in knocking websites offline. 

“Reasonable people can and do believe all those things. But having the mechanism of content control be vigilante hackers launching DDoS attacks subverts any rational concept of justice,” Prince wrote in a blog post, citing the inevitability of cyberattacks that would knock the Daily Stormer offline.

Kiwi Farms users had been anticipating the Cloudflare ban for weeks and had created contingency plans if the site went down, including alternate internet domains, along with accounts and communities on Telegram.

While the decade-old Kiwi Farms archive of personal information on political enemies will be considerably more difficult to access and add to, the site’s user base appears committed to continuing to track trans people online, according to posts made on Telegram about a potential site shutdown.

“They’re thinking about what comes next,” said Fredrick Brennan, who worked with Moon when they were both administrators at the fringe message board 8chan. “I watch them closely, and they’re already thinking about how to move everything to Telegram.”

Brennan has since denounced 8chan, which he created, and successfully advocated to get the page removed from Cloudflare in 2019.

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LAPD investigates assault allegation against YouTuber filed by trans influencer

The Los Angeles Police Department said Wednesday that it is investigating an allegation that YouTube personality Denzel Dion attacked the social media personality Demi Martinez last week.

Martinez filed a police report accusing Dion of attacking her last Thursday after a party in the Hollywood Hills, according to Rosie Cervantes, a spokesperson for the LAPD.

Martinez, who goes by La Demi online and has over 300,000 Instagram followers, is a transgender woman known for posting about beauty, makeup and her transition. Early last Thursday, Martinez posted on Instagram that she had been the victim of a hate crime and an assault, naming Dion as the attacker. 

Dion, a prominent LGBTQ YouTube creator who has more than 1 million subscribers and is known for his celebrity fashion critiques, has denied the allegations. On Sunday, Dion was one of 12 influencers whom Meta, Facebook’s parent company, invited to attend and create content at the Academy Awards. 

Martinez first posted pictures to Instagram on Thursday appearing to show injuries she attributed to the assault, including bruising around her eyes and face, and cuts on her legs.

Hours later, Martinez posted screenshots of Dion’s Instagram account and identified him as her attacker, saying the two had gotten into an argument. 

Dion denied the allegations in posts published on his social media accounts later Thursday, writing that he was “heartbroken and deeply saddened” by Martinez’s allegations. “I would never do the things I am being accused of,” Dion wrote. “I know La Demi and we have always been cordial.”

Dion went on to write that he assumes Martinez’s allegations are “the result of mistaken identity” and that he doesn’t understand why Martinez “constantly mentioned my height, build, and race.” Martinez didn’t back down, responding on Instagram that Dion — who is Black and well over 6-feet tall — has a “distinct look.” Previously, she referred to him as a tall African American man.

“It baffles me that people would call me racist or say I’m making this story up,” Martinez told NBC News. “I’m not dumb, I know who I had my altercation with.”

Martinez said she reported the incident to the LAPD’s Hollywood investigative division last Thursday, which was confirmed by the copy of the police report NBC News viewed. Dion didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Martinez said that she had encountered Dion at parties and social events before, but that she did not know his name or that he was an influencer with a large following. 

Martinez said Dion referred to her using an anti-trans slur and threatened to beat her up. NBC News was not able to independently confirm the events that led up to the alleged assault.

“I said ‘Go ahead, do it,’” Martinez said. “Sure enough, he swung and knocked me out and I fell onto the steps and I remember grabbing the railing, trying to catch my balance, and it was just blow after blow to my head.”

Martinez said that she was the last member of her friend group at the party and was waiting for an Uber when the altercation began. According to the LAPD report that she provided to NBC News, Martinez said the incident happened around 3 a.m.

Some high-profile transgender creators, including Martinez’s friend and roommate Nikita Dragun, have posted in support of Martinez. They are both urging bystanders and witnesses to come forward. So far, none of the other party guests have posted publicly about Martinez’s allegations.