The Fall Of Kiwifarms

What it was, how it happened, and where we go from here

A lot of you have probably seen the news about the doxxing and harassment website Kiwifarms which went offline on September 2nd. I have had many people message me asking what this site was, why it was so bad, and how everything went down. For the longest time, I felt unable to tell my own story because this website had also harassed and doxxed me. Thanks to the many trans people that worked so hard on taking the site down, though, I feel empowered to finally speak about it.

First, a primer: Kiwifarms was a website that harassed, stalked, doxxed, and threatened people - most victims were transgender or autistic. Multiple suicides have been implicated by this website. The owner, Josh Moon, named his company Final Solutions LLC, an indication of the rampant antisemitism, naziism, and white supremacy that is centered on the website. The site’s loading error message referenced a 41% suicide rate for trans people. The site literally had a resource guide on how to inflict the most amount of pain to transgender people in their doxxing threads. These are things that I would have the unfortunate luck to get to know intimately.

About 6 months ago I discovered I had my own thread on the site. They doxxed my address. They physically went to my local court to pull court files on my divorce, which they posted into the thread to pour over. They found anyone that was in pictures with me and tried to doxx them too. They even stalked a well known transgender activist in person in my state because she appeared in a video with a local governor candidate with me.

This last week though, transgender people finally banded together and let it be known that enough was enough - we were going to start to hold the companies responsible for hosting this content accountable. After getting swatted by Kiwifarms, twitch streamer Clara, better known as Keffals, publicly began speaking out about her harassment on the site. The first target emerged: Cloudflare, a service that hosts the site and mitigates ddos attacks, of which Kiwifarms was the recipient of many. Finally, on September 2nd, Cloudflare caved and blocked Kiwifarms. It took a literal immediate threat to human life that was generated from the site for them to act, and we should never forget the role the company played in allowing a hate community to thrive.

I can’t explain how happy people were when the news broke. I knew so many of the people working in the background on making these things happen, and I was personally involved in talks as well. To say that the atmosphere was celebratory would be an understatement - transgender people around me were brought to tears by the fact that this site would no longer make their lives hell.

One thing has become abundantly clear. Transgender people have a power in our unity and diversity, and when we act together, we can move mountains. Kiwifarms was thought to be untouchable - you simply didn’t speak about it and hoped the Eye of Sauron would not turn on you. I am so proud to be a part of this community, and I look forward to the wonderful things we will all accomplish in the future.