Far-right website Kiwi Farms offline after Cloudflare drops them following public backlash: report

Growing public backlash against the Kiwi Farms website has resulted in the website losing a key technological vendor and going offline.

"Reversing course under growing public pressure, major tech security company Cloudflare announced Saturday that it will stop protecting the Kiwi Farms website, best known as a place for stalkers to organize hacks, online campaigns and real-world harassment," The Washington Postreported. "Cloudfare chief executive Matthew Prince, who this past week published a lengthy blog post justifying the company’s services defending Kiwi Farms, told The Washington Post he changed his mind not because of the pressure but a surge in credible violent threats stemming from the site."

Prince issued a statement explaining the action the company finally took.

"We have blocked Kiwifarms. Visitors to any of the Kiwifarms sites that use any of Cloudflare's services will see a Cloudflare block page and a link to this post. Kiwifarms may move their sites to other providers and, in doing so, come back online, but we have taken steps to block their content from being accessed through our infrastructure," Prince said. "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. 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."

Cloudflare protected the controversial website from cyber attacks.

"Kiwifarms has frequently been host to revolting content. Revolting content alone does not create an emergency situation that necessitates the action we are taking today," Prince said. "We are also not taking this action directly because of the pressure campaign. While we have empathy for its organizers, we are committed as a security provider to protecting our customers even when they run deeply afoul of popular opinion or even our own morals."

Vice reports the website is down.

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Visitors currently see this message, with a link to CloudFlare's statement.