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Kiwi Farms
Type of site
Forum
Available inEnglish, with an "Internationale Clique" subforum for non-English discussions
OwnerJoshua "Null" Moon[1]
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional (required to participate)
LaunchedFebruary 4, 2013; 11 years ago (2013-02-04)

Kiwi Farms, formerly known as CWCki Forums (/ˈkwɪki/), is an Internet forum that facilitates the discussion and harassment of online figures and communities. Their targets are often subject to organized group trolling and stalking, as well as doxxing and real-life harassment.[2][3][4] These actions have tied Kiwi Farms to the suicides of three people targeted by members of the forum.[15]

Kiwi Farms' connection to several controversies and harassment campaigns has caused the forum to be blocked by Internet service providers or refused service by companies. After the Christchurch mosque shootings, the site was blocked in New Zealand; in 2021, after the suicide of Near, a non-binary software developer who was subject to targeted and organised group harassment by members of the site, DreamHost stopped providing their domain registration services to Kiwifarms. In September 2022, Kiwi Farms' was blocked by Cloudflare, due to an "an imminent and emergency threat to human life". Afterwards, the site switched to DDoS-Guard, a service provider based in Russia, who suspended their services soon after for "violations of the acceptable use policy".[16]

History

A webcam photo of Joshua Moon holding two fingers in the air and holding a copy of the Bible in the other hand
Kiwi Farms founder and owner Joshua "Null" Moon

Kiwi Farms was founded in 2013 by Joshua Moon (known as "Null" on the website), a former 8chan administrator.[17][18][7] It was originally launched as a forum website to troll and harass a webcomic artist who was first noticed in 2007 on a 4chan video game board.[2][19]: 8–9  Eventually, an Encyclopedia Dramatica page was created about the artist. A dedicated wiki, titled "CWCki" based on the artist's initials, was created by people who felt that the Encyclopedia Dramatica entry was not detailed or accurate enough.[2] Kiwi Farms was originally called "CWCki Forums"[20] before "Kiwi Farms" was coined in 2014.[2]

Harassment

The targets of Kiwi Farms threads are often subject to organized group trolling, harassment, and stalking, including real-life harassment by users.[2][4] Tactics include publishing their victims' personal information ("doxxing"), trying to get them fired from their jobs, reporting crimes at their addresses in an attempt to have police dispatched to their homes ("swatting"), and harassing their family members and friends. Some of Kiwi Farms' harassment campaigns have continued for months or years, and some aim to drive the targets to suicide.[3][21] The website originated to harass an autistic and transgender webcomic artist, but now hosts threads dedicated to harassing many individuals—particularly minorities, women, LGBT people, neurodivergent people, and people considered by Kiwi Farms users to be mentally ill or sexually deviant.[2][3] According to Le Monde, other targets have included feminists, journalists, Internet celebrities, video game or comics hobbyists, and far-right personalities.[7]

Canadian streamer, political activist, and transgender activist Clara "Keffals" Sorrenti was doxxed on Kiwi Farms in a thread dedicated to discussing her. Users on the site posted personal information about her (e.g. addresses, phone numbers) as well as that of her friends and family. Users also leaked sexually explicit photos of her and made death threats.[22][23] She was later swatted, arrested, and detained for over ten hours in August 2022 when someone stole her identity and sent fake emails to local politicians threatening mass violence. She was later cleared of any wrongdoing, and police acknowledged the incident as a swatting attempt. Users also posted the address of an unrelated man who lives in the same city and shares her last name, and police were also sent to his residence. After the swatting incident, Sorrenti said she moved out of her home and into a hotel for her safety.[24][25] After she posted a photograph of her cat laying on the hotel bed, Kiwi Farms users identified the hotel from the bedsheets in the photograph, and sent multiple pizza orders to the hotel under her deadname. "Obviously, the pizza itself isn't the problem. It's the threat they send by telling me they know where I live and are willing to act on it in the real world," she said in a video after the incident.[24][25][26] Sorrenti later fled the country after her location was identified again, reportedly by someone who hacked her Uber account.[27] The incidents are being investigated as criminal harassment, and Sorrenti stated she intended to pursue legal action.[25][28][29] Sorrenti also promoted a campaign to pressure Cloudflare into terminating its services to the website.[3]

On August 24, 2022, U.S. Representative for Georgia's 14th congressional district Marjorie Taylor Greene stated in an interview with NewsMax that she was swatted twice by a KiwiFarms user who identified themselves as "AltisticRight". She demanded that the website be shut down, saying "There should be no business or any kind of service where you can target your enemy. That's absolutely absurd and this is the type of lawlessness that Democrats want all over the country". Cloudflare suspended a service to the website that allowed them to customize error messages in response.[30][31][5]

Kiwi Farms used DDoS protection services from Cloudflare, an American hosting and web security service provider. Following Kiwi Farms' harassment campaign against Sorrenti, in August 2022 a campaign was started to try to convince Cloudflare to stop providing services to the site.[32][33] NBC News claims this was done in order to enable "debilitating virtual attacks" against Kiwi Farms.[34] While Cloudflare initially defended their decision to keep working with Kiwi Farms, on September 3, Cloudflare officially blocked the site from using its services.[5][35] People attempting to visit the site saw an error message explaining that the decision had been made due to "an imminent and emergency threat to human life".[36][37] Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince stated that the company acted because "the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site and specific, targeted threats [had] escalated over the last 48 hours" at the time of the decision.[37][35] Other middleware providers, such as hCaptcha, followed suit in halting support for Kiwi Farms.[38] Though the site was briefly offline due to Cloudflare's decision, it was back online "intermittently" on September 4 with the Russian-based service provider DDoS-Guard and a Russian domain that had been registered on July 12, 2021.[14][39][40] Former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi warned that by switching to Russian servers, Kiwi Farms "could easily become an increased threat of domestic terror".[38] DDoS-Guard stopped providing services to Kiwi Farms on September 5, also rendering the site's Russian domain inaccessible.[16][7] Moon has since claimed that the takedown of Kiwi Farms was "an organized attack", and that there is "a coalition of criminals trying to frame the forum for their behavior" which provides "opportunities for professional victims to amplify their message". Moon commented that he did not see a realistic scenario for Kiwi Farms to stay online.[41]

Suicides of harassment targets

Harassment campaigns by Kiwi Farms users are known to have contributed to the suicides of three individuals.[15] The Kiwi Farms community considers it a goal to drive its targets to suicide, and has celebrated such deaths with a counter on the website.[19]: 55, 61  They have used social media reporting systems to mass-report posts by harassment targets in which they've expressed suicidal thoughts or intentions, with the goal of reducing the possibility their targets receive help.[19]: 91 

In 2013, American video game developer Chloe Sagal became a Kiwi Farms target after Eurogamer reported Sagal's Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign had been flagged for "suspicious activity". Sagal had raised over $30,000 on the platform for metal poisoning treatment to remove shrapnel from a car accident, but Eurogamer reported that Sagal had actually intended to use the proceeds for sex reassignment surgery. Sagal later died via self-immolation on June 19, 2018,[42][43] which several reports attributed to years of harassment from Kiwi Farms.[4][9][44]

Julie Terryberry, a Canadian woman, died by suicide in 2016 following sustained harassment from Kiwi Farms users.[9][10][12] Following Terryberry's death, Joshua Moon posted a note on the forum claiming that Kiwi Farms and its users had no responsibility for suicide.[2]

In a Twitter thread posted on June 27, 2021, Near, a pseudonymous Japan-based software developer known for their work on the video game emulator higan, described long-term harassment from Kiwi Farms users. Near, who was non-binary, said that they had endured lifelong bullying but that the abuse had recently centralized around Kiwi Farms which had "made the harassment orders of magnitude worse".[4][11][45] Near stated that they and their friends had been doxxed and goaded into suicide by members of the website, and that Near had been mocked for being autistic.[4][11][45] On June 28, Hector Martin posted a link to a Google Doc which he said came from a mutual friend of his and Near's, which said that Near had died by suicide, and alleged that the harassment from Kiwi Farms amounted to murder.[11][45][46] Martin subsequently reported on June 28 that he had spoken to police who confirmed that Near had died the previous day.[11][46] USA Today reported on July 23, 2021, that it had confirmed with Near's former employer that they had died.[4]

Other controversies

Christchurch mosque shootings

In March 2019, Kiwi Farms republished both the livestream and the manifesto of Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. Shortly after, website owner Joshua Moon publicly denied a request by New Zealand Police to voluntarily hand over all data on posts about the shooting, including the email and IP addresses of posters.[17] Moon responded aggressively and mockingly, calling New Zealand a "shithole country",[20][17] and stated that he did not "give a single solitary fuck what section 50 of your faggot law says about sharing your email".[47][48] He deemed the request a censorship attempt and argued that New Zealand authorities "do not have the legal reach to imprison everyone who's posted [the video]".[20] Kiwi Farms was one of several websites blocked by New Zealand Internet service providers after the attack.[49] In New Zealand, those who were caught possessing or sharing images or videos of the attack faced charges that could result in 14-year prison sentences.[50][51]

Following the Christchurch shootings, Kiwi Farms was blocked by New Zealand Internet service providers after Moon denied a request by New Zealand Police to voluntarily hand over data on posts relating to the shooting.[49][17] Following the June 2021 suicide of Near, a software developer who had been a target of harassment from Kiwi Farms users, DreamHost gave the site owner notice that they would no longer provide domain registration services. Kiwi Farms subsequently began using a Russian registrar.[52] Shortly thereafter, it was moved to a U.S.-based domain registrar.[12]

My Immortal fan fiction authorship

Main article: My Immortal (fan fiction) § 2017: Rose Christo co-authorship claim

In 2017, Tumblr user and young adult fiction writer Rose Christo claimed that she had authored the Harry Potter fan fiction My Immortal, which, Christo said, she had written in order to find her missing brother. She announced that Macmillan Publishers was publishing a memoir, Under the Same Stars: The Search for My Brother and the True Story of My Immortal, about the fan fiction's creation as well as her childhood of abuse and experiences as a Native American in the New York foster care system. A forum thread concerning Christo and discussing her claims was created on Kiwi Farms. Christo's brother, a Kiwi Farms user, responded to the thread to say that Christo's story was nearly entirely false. Claims that he took issue with included that of their Native American ancestry, their having gone to foster care, and her quest to locate him, which formed the center of the memoir.[53][54] Christo then admitted that she had falsified documents supporting her story, but maintained that she had written My Immortal.[55] Macmillan Publishers canceled the publication of her memoir.[56][57]

References

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