TechScape: How Kiwi Farms, the worst place on the web, was shut down
When users of the far-right forum harassed and stalked a trans streamer to the extent she fled her home, this is how Cloudflare pulled the plug ... finally
You don't need to know much about the online hate forum Kiwi Farms. In my first draft of this newsletter, I included a full history of the site, from its days as a spinoff of the far-right message board 8chan that was dedicated to the full-time harassment of a single internet micro-celebrity, to its involvement in the Christchurch shootings and multiple targets who went on to take their own lives. I discussed the detail of whether the site has an ideology that can be pinned down: the extent to which it is far-right, white supremacist, radically transphobic - or simply nihilistic and nasty.
But you don't actually need to know the grimy details. Suffice to say that Kiwi Farms is, like a long list of similar forums before and after it, somewhere that proudly fights for the label of the worst place on the internet".
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