Authors:
(1) Anh V. Vu, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Cyberry Center ([email protected]);
(2) Alice Hutchings, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Cyberry Center ([email protected]);
(3) Ross Anderson, University of Cambridge and Edinburgh University ([email protected]).).
Table
Summary and 1 Introduction
2. Exhaustion and influences
2.1. Related to work
2.2. Interruption of Kiwi farms
3. Methods, data sets and ethics and 3.1. Forum and Discussions of IMAGEBOARD
3.2. Telegram conversations and 3.3. Web traffic and search trend analytics
3.4. Web community and 3.5 tweets. Licensing data
3.6. Ethical considerations
4. Impact on forum activity and traffic and 4.1. The effect of major disorders
4.2. Shifting the platform
4.3. Fragmentation
5. Impact on the stakeholders concerned and 5.1. The community that started the campaign
5.2. The answers of the industry
5.3. Forum operators
5.4. Forum members
6. Tensions, challenges and consequences and 6.1. The effectiveness of the alarm
6.2. Censorship versus freedom of expression
6.3. The role of the industry in moderating the content
6.4. Political influence
6.5. Restrictions and future work
7. Conclusion, recognition and references
Add A.
4.2. Shifting the platform
The natural behavior of web communities, when their normal gathering point becomes inaccessible, are to look for alternative places or channels to continue their discussions. Another graph in Figure 4 illustrates the initial shift of forum activities on the telegram, which took place on August 27, 2022, immediately after the Internet service provider Blackholing. Thousands of emoticon reactions were accompanied by this in the administrator's announcements, as commentary was not allowed at that time. Community reactions (eg answers, emoticons) seem to be consistent with the overall telegram posting activities, which grew rapidly afterwards and occasionally exceeded the forum activities, especially after the advertisement given by Cloudflare and DDOS GURD. At some point, for example, in early October and early November and November 2022, the total number of Kiwi farms and its telegram channel messages exceeded the volume of the pre -interruption post of the forum. However, important shifts took place only when all domains were completely inaccessible on September 18, 2022, and again when Zayo blocked the second embodiment of the second forum on October 22, 2022. The transition to the telegram channel seems to be fast, but quite temporary: Kiwi Farms users returned quickly when it got discussion, while the discussion activities when the Telegram channel is followed.
An important shift from the forum to this main competitor Lolcow Farm (see Figure 4 third charts), but the increase in posting on Lolcow Farm increased, which shows a small change in the discussion (see more §5.4). It is unclear when these posts traveled from Kiwi farms because the Lolcow Farm does not use the handles, making the user an inaccessible. Lolcow Farm also experienced stagnations on September 17 and 18, 2022 (on the same day as Kiwi Farms), but we have no reliable evidence to get a convincing explanation. Another drop took place around Christmas 2022 with Kiwi farms, maybe due to a holiday. Lolcow farm activity quickly returned to its previous level after these falls, which indicates that the campaign did not significantly influence the Lolcow Farm and did not lead the content between competing ecosystems; The shift observed in Kiwi farms was mostly “internal” in its ecosystem, not “external” shift in other forums. Although the impact of disorders on Kiwi farms and its telegram channels is very important for a very high effect, it is not important for the Lolcow farm (small size), see Table 2.
4.3. Fragmentation
Before Cloudflare's operations, traffic towards Kiivi farms (measured as a similar reading) was relatively even, mostly by the Primardomen. However, we see the streisand effect with an immediate about 50% more visits and 85% more visitors than the site was
Disturbed. It is expected that the removed public awareness and attracted people to visit both primary and alternative areas. Traffic to the primary domain was then significantly fragmented with other previously abandoned domains, resulting in kiwifarms.net the day after Cloudflare's intervention was less than 50%, as shown in Figure 5.
After the absence of kiwifarms.net, most of the traffic was directed to Kiwifarms.ru, which was protected by DDOS Guard (accounted for about 60% of the total traffic on September 4, 2022). DDOS-Guard's activities on September 5, 2022, reduced traffic towards kiwifarms.ru, while traffic kiwifarms.top reached its peak. Kiwifarms.top stopping the next day brought traffic towards kiwifarms.cc (PLEROMA Decentralized Web Copy), but it only lasted a few days before the traffic was shifted again. Construction of kiwi farms.
The restoration of the forum on September 27, 2022, gradually, gradually, almost all traffic back to the primary domain and by October 22, 2022, Kiwifarms.net mostly formed all traffic, albeit about half of the volume. This effect is very consistent with our forum data, which shows a reliable pattern. In general, our evidence shows clear traffic fragmentation in different domains of Kiwi farms, where people tried to disturb the surviving domains. Although the observed fragmentation is clear, the two domains are not important enough to evaluate the whole period as a whole. However, this is very important in terms of all traffic, especially the essential drops of the primaardomene kiwifarms.net (see Table 3) (see Table 3).
