An anonymously run website that promised to catalogue people accused of “celebrating” the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk drew tens of thousands of submissions within days of launching and triggered warnings from civil liberties advocates, even as senior elected officials and right-wing influencers urged employers to punish those named. The site, which debuted as “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” before rebranding itself the “Charlie Kirk Data Foundation,” said in posts on X that it had logged more than 60,000 entries by Sunday evening and briefly published a searchable list before going offline. “Is an employee or student of yours supporting political violence online? Look them up on this website,” read an early landing page captured by reporters. A later statement on the site insisted, “This is not a doxxing website. We lawfully collect publicly-available data to analyze the prominence of support for political violence in the interest of public education.”
The effort followed a wave of firings and suspensions of workers over social media posts about Kirk’s Sept. 10 shooting at Utah Valley University, as prominent conservatives framed the campaign as a moral response to what they called “celebration” of political violence. Vice President JD Vance, guest-hosting Kirk’s podcast on Monday, told listeners: “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out,” adding, “And hell, call their employer.” The Washington Post reported that more than 30 institutions — from federal agencies to universities and private companies — had disciplined employees for comments deemed inappropriate or celebratory, amid mounting pressure from the right.
Within 48 hours of launch, the website’s operators reported the project “had grown to more than 63,000 people,” according to the Post, which noted the list was later removed and the site became inaccessible. A post on the project’s X account on Sept. 14 declared, “That was quick. 63,648 data entries,” and linked to the site. The Guardian, citing the same X feed, said the operation had started as “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” and rebranded to “Charlie Kirk Data Foundation,” and reported the site was offline by Tuesday after claiming it had received “more than 63,000 submissions.” Axios, which described the group as “crowdsourcing a database,” said the organizers boasted they would “reshape the rank-and-file of America’s institutions” and that the database would be searchable “by general location, employer, and industry type.”
While the numbers climbed, the project’s scope and methods drew immediate scrutiny. Wired reviewed the site as it went live and reported that entries included names, employers, locations and social accounts of people the operators believed had “glorified” Kirk’s death. The outlet said an “About” section added Thursday repeated the claim that it was “not a doxxing website,” describing itself as “a lawful data aggregator of publicly-available information.” Wired interviewed individuals who said they had been listed and subsequently faced torrents of harassment; one journalist, Rachel Gilmore, said, “This website has me genuinely afraid for my safety,” adding she had received emails and direct messages promising to “find out where I live.”