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Epik backtracks on Kiwi Farms claim after legal threat

Kevin Murphy, March 19, 2024, Domain Registrars

Epik has retracted a claim it made on social media that former customer Kiwi Farms was hosting child sexual abuse material on its web site.

The troubled registrar had said on Twitter in January that it had received a complaint about a “doxxing” post on the Kiwi Farms troll forum that contained naked photographs of an individual Epik said it believed was “underaged”.

Kiwi Farms supporters counter-claimed that the person in question was a 19-year-old adult and the web site’s owner, known as Null, threatened Epik with legal action.

Today, Epik tweeted:

Epik retracts its statement in regards to the Kiwi Farms @KiwiFarmsDotNet having child sexual abuse material on its website. While Epik may not agree with content that may be on its website, Epik has no direct knowledge of child sexual abuse material on the Kiwi Farms’ website.

In the last couple of month, Epik has sought to rebrand itself as a responsible registrar focused on entrepreneurs rather than controversial anchor tenants. It updated its abuse policy last year and kicked out customers such as Kiwi Farms and Gab.

The company is now owned by Registered Agents, a company formation company.

Kiwi Farms domain lands at Epik

Kevin Murphy, September 6, 2022, Domain Registrars

The primary domain for the controversial web forum Kiwi Farms, kicked out by Cloudfare at the weekend, has been transferred to Epik.

Whois records show the domain kiwifarms.net landed at Epik in the last hour or so. It’s still using Cloudflare’s name servers at the time of writing, so it’s still resolving to a “blocked” message from its old registrar.

Cloudflare blocked the name, reluctantly, on Saturday, citing “an imminent and emergency threat to human life”, believed to refer to a transgender activist and Twitch streamer targeted for death threats by Kiwi Farms users.

The site, whose users reportedly bully, doxx and swat trans people, has been linked to three suicides since it was launched in 2013.

The question for Epik and its new CEO now is whether they let the domain stay under its roof, or whether the same concerns cited by Cloudflare make it too toxic to touch.

UPDATE 1724 UTC: Not long after this post was published, the domain started using Epik’s name servers.

Cloudflare blocks anti-trans site for “emergency threat to human life”

Kevin Murphy, September 5, 2022, Domain Registrars

Internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare has “blocked” a site it provides domain services to after identifying “an imminent and emergency threat to human life”.

The company said on Saturday that it has reluctantly stopped providing services to Kiwi Farms, a web forum whose users reportedly bully and carry out doxxing and swatting attacks on transgender people and activists.

Visitors to kiwifarms.net are now presented with a message from Cloudflare stating: “Due to an imminent and emergency threat to human life, the content of this site is blocked from being accessed through Cloudflare’s infrastructure.”

A linked blog post explaining the decision 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.

The move is likely linked to a campaign by a trans Twitch streamer, who reportedly has been campaigning for Cloudflare to drop the site after multiple threats to her life, including a recent swatting (where armed police are tricked into showing up at your door).

Last week, the company had tried to explain its continued support for the domain by stating that one two previous occasions it has blocked sites, authoritarian governments have used that precedent to try to get human rights sites pulled.

At this stage, it appears that Cloudflare is using its status as the site’s DNS provider to implement the block. It’s still the domain’s registrar, and so far the Whois record does not reflect an attempt to move it elsewhere.

The domain was registered with DreamHost until last year, but was asked to leave following the suicide of a software developer, one of three suicides reportedly linked to Kiwi Farms users’ behavior.

Could Epik be its next destination? The company is a strong proponent of free speech, but even it has a line when it comes to violence. This could be Epik’s new CEO‘s first big test.