On the heels of the content network Cloudflare dropping the troll site KiwiFarms from its internet security service, one mother’s history with the site shows exactly why it should have taken moments, not years, to see this kind of decisive action. Debi Jackson, a mother and transgender rights advocate, tweeted on Monday night that her interaction with the site—more accurately, her then-9-year-old child's history with it—changed their lives forever. Jackson’s transgender daughter, Avery Jackson, was featured on the cover of National Geographic in 2016 in a historic move to feature Avery as the first trans person on the magazine’s cover. Editor-in-Chief Susan Goldberg wrote in a letter to readers at the time that Avery was one of 80 9-year-olds photographed in eight countries for its piece on the gender revolution. Avery was selected for the cover because of the strength and pride she exuded in her portrait. "We thought that, in a glance, she summed up the concept of 'Gender Revolution,'" Goldberg wrote.
KiwiFarms apparently had another plan for the child, Jackson detailed in a story shared on Twitter.
RELATED STORY: Hate site KiwiFarms is finished after years of trolling and harassment of marginalized people
“It was the ‘Gender Revolution’! But within days, we were doxxed on KiwiFarms,” Jackson wrote.
She continued in a thread:
The kind and gentle folks who call themselves Kiwi Farmers decided that I was a groomer pedophile and that Avery would only be "safe" if they exposed our full names, addresses, cell phone numbers, places of work, etc. "to protect the children" dontchaknow.
It was the night of an ice storm, when our city was essentially shut down. But within moments of a google alert (because I'm not a complete noob), we noticed cars stopping in front of our house. In the middle of an ice storm.
Panic started to creep in. We watched updates on our thread as more and more very private information was share. Not all accurate. (Mostly not accurate, but that doesn't matter to them.) But those cars. In an ice storm…
Our kids were 9 and 10. It was past their bedtime, but they noticed that mom and dad were still up and talking an awful lot. We were on the phone with everyone we could think of. What do we do? How do we stop this? The cars in front of our house…
Over the next few days, we spoke to the local police. They sent us to the FBI cyber crimes unit. They contacted federal district attorneys. Folks started investigating. They wanted to help. They wanted to. But they kept running into dead ends.
Jackson said a thread about her child on KiwiFarms was linked in hundreds of stories globally. "I thought our life was literally over as each new google citation came in," the mother tweeted.
“MY CHILD WAS 9,” Jackson continued. “Nine.They bragged in the thread that I ‘must be watching’ so they wanted to elevate things for me to read. So many comments about driving me to suicide...for my child's benefit. MY CHILD WAS 9.”
Jackson said authorities couldn't determine the jurisdiction the incident fell in and encouraged her to file a lawsuit and "hope for the best."
Jackson instead turned to Google, she tweeted.
"I was connected to folks on their LGBTQ ERG and they helped. After a couple of months, they realized how bad KF was and decided to stop indexing their pages," the mother said. "That meant no more KF pages would turn in up search results for any person they targeted!"
Or so she thought.
Jackson wrote:
“I was so proud of this victory. It was one that I couldn't share publicly, because I didn't want farmers to know what was happening. I hoped it would be a slow and silent death to the site. But apparently, somewhere along the line, they changed their mind.”
Still, Jackson said when she learned of Clara Sorrenti, a transgender streamer on the interactive livestreaming service Twitch, publicly advocating for a KiwiFarms takedown, it gave Jackson panic attacks. "I didn't want to not cheer for her, but I also was terrified about how much new traffic she was generating for them," the mother tweeted of the streamer, who goes by Keffals.
Jackson said she was "terrified" of more people accessing her family's personal information, but then Sorrenti did it: She won.
CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a blog post on Saturday:
We have blocked Kiwifarms. Visitors to any of the Kiwifarms sites that use any of Cloudflare's services will see a Cloudflare block page and a link to this post. Kiwifarms may move their sites to other providers and, in doing so, come back online, but we have taken steps to block their content from being accessed through our infrastructure.
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.
Jackson credited Sorrenti and so many trans advocates that worked with her. “They are holding those terrorists accountable,” Jackson tweeted.
Of her child, she wrote this:
Avery is just 15. More than a third of Avery's life has been lived in the shadows of Kiwi Farms terrorism. My bright and confident kid withered away, decided that being a proud and public trans kid ruined their life, and didn't even want to acknowledge being trans anymore.
But now, things have changed. Today was overcast but we felt nothing but sun on our faces. We know the terror is over. Avery is free.
RELATED STORY: Web security company Cloudflare cuts ties with notorious trolling and harassment site KiwiFarms