The internet security and hosting company Cloudflare said it would not take down a website that “swatted” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) over its involvement in harassing public figures, a notable decision by a private-sector tech company to limit its own power to censor.
Cloudflare announced in a blog post Wednesday that it would not take action to remove websites hosting questionable content, as it did in 2017 when it removed a pro-Nazi website from its servers. The decision denies multiple requests for Cloudflare to take down Kiwi Farms, a forum with a history of harassing public figures, including Greene.
“Just as the telephone company doesn’t terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have concluded in consultation with politicians, policy makers, and experts that turning off security services because we think what you publish is despicable is the wrong policy,” the service said.
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Cloudflare made news in the past when it removed the pro-Nazi website Daily Stormer from its servers in 2017 and the QAnon-connected forum 8chan in 2019. While the company did those removals willingly, it claims that “authoritarian regimes” have approached them since requesting that it “terminate security services for human rights organizations” based on the same reasoning that the platform used to remove those other websites.
“Since those decisions, we have had significant discussions with policy makers worldwide. From those discussions, we concluded that the power to terminate security services for the sites was not a power Cloudflare should hold,” the company said.
The company did uphold its other efforts to offer aid to human rights organizations. For example, Cloudflare operates Project Galileo, an effort that provides free cybersecurity services to journalists and human rights groups.
Kiwi Farms was established in 2013 as a forum to harass certain online personalities. The website has been used to harass several public figures and is connected to at least three suicides. The site earned attention in August after a “swatting” attempt (in which a third party sends police over to a person’s residence as a form of harassment) ended with the transgender Twitch streamer Clara “Keffals” Sorrenti being arrested and detained for over 10 hours. This “swatting,” mixed with several other attempts at “doxxing” (in which personal information is revealed in order to harass someone), forced Sorrenti into hiding and led several people to push Cloudflare to take the forum down.
Greene was the target of two “swatting” attempts by Kiwi Farms on Aug. 24 when an automated voice called into her local police department and alleged that someone had been shot multiple times at the representative’s home.
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Kiwi Farms was also used to republish and spread the manifesto of Brenton Tarrant, the man involved with the Christchurch Mosque shootings. The website’s owner, Joshua Moon, refused to provide data related to Tarrant to New Zealand authorities and was blocked by New Zealand internet providers.
