Kiwi Farms
Frogs, clowns, and swastikas Alt-right |
![]() |
Chuds |
Rebuilding the Reich, one meme at a time |
Buzzwords and dogwhistles |
“”I bet the police and FBI love Josh.
Nothing makes law enforcement happier than websites that distribute how-to guides on making convincing terror threats (with handy email services for sending the threats), as well as detailed stories about child sexual abuse murder. Bonus! Now their members actually kill children (after chatting with Josh)! |
—Paul McGoff[1] |
“”When you put something stupid/embarrassing/whatever on the internet, it's on the internet forever. After you put it out there, it becomes ours. We own it. And if we feel like digging it up and laughing at it, we will. And if you decide to chimp out over that, we will love you for it with all our hearts, and you too will become ours. And when something is ours, it's ours forever. We might get bored with it and put it down. We might play with it a little too hard and break it. But it never stops being ours, and someday in the future we'll remember it, and pick it back up again.
Would you like to become ours, my dear? |
—Kiwi Farms user Dynastia[2] |
Kiwi Farms is an immensely creepy stalking forum run by manchild Joshua Conner Moon out of his mom's house.[3] The people who are stalked are what are known as "lolcows" to the site's userbase or "exceptional individuals".[note 1] Think some of the Internet's worst assholes and coalition of criminals[note 2] projecting their frustration onto minorities – and now that you're picturing GamerGate, think creepier.
Due to difficulties enforcing harmful speech on the internet, there hasn't been much legal action taken on Kiwi Farms, despite them being responsible for harming many people (directly and indirectly), costing them jobs and partners, exaggerating and spinning rumors, or even mentally abusing their victims to the point of suicide. In fact, the owners maintain that there is nothing illegal about the site, citing technicalities (we don't harass people; our users do!) and phonebooks also distributing personal information (because sharing the address of this person we find weird is totally the same as a printed 411!)[5]; or just simply denying, downplaying, or justifying the activities being taken place. No services are buying their lies, however, as KiwiFarms is struggling to find any web service company willing to do business with them ranging from PayPal to Cloudflare to even Russia-based DDOS-Guard. Not even 8chan wants anything to do with the site owner.
In May 2023, Kiwi Farms was only accessible through the Tor network and a spam-filled Telegram chatroom.[6][7] As of September 2023, Kiwi Farms is accessible through kiwifarms.st.[8]
Ableism, transphobia and general shittiness[edit]
“”Consider that across the forums there are multiple warnings to members to conceal their identity. For KFers, anonymity isn't a choice but a necessity — they know what they're doing is probably illegal, and that their anonymity insulates them from any consequences. They know their "entertainment" harms vulnerable people, which is why some of them felt bad when that one target hanged herself. But, most important, they know that if their anonymity were compromised, their own community might eat them alive.
|
—Margaret Pless, writing for New York Magazine about the questionable legality of the site users' actions[9] |
Critics of Kiwi Farms point out that the "Lolcows" who end up on the website are digitally stalked, harassed (by having rumors and smears posted about them) and doxed (including full names, birthdays, workplaces, personal social media accounts, and even street addresses and phone numbers). They'll often dox family members, dig deep for social media accounts, and pretty much stop short of their targets' Social Security numbers. Hell, even people who are ideologically aligned to them like Mister Metokur get doxed.[10] At least four people have committed suicide after being featured on Kiwi Farms.[11][9] Unsurprisingly, most of the site's users proceeded to mock said suicides.[9][12][13][14]
The forum was originally dedicated to monitoring the activities of a controversial individual called Christine Weston Chandler, commonly known as "Chris-chan". She is an autistic trans woman and a heavily-documented figure online best known as the creator of "Sonichu", a crossover between Sonic the Hedgehog
and Pikachu.[15] She was later arrested for having sex with her mother using evidence that had been posted on Kiwi Farms[16] but was later released by court order.[17]
Many "Lolcows" on the forum have (or in most cases, are simply accused of having) autism, and Kiwi Farms derogatorily labels these people as "spergs" (after Asperger's syndrome). Transgender "Lolcows" are described as the pejorative "troons" or "trannies", often end up in the "Rat Kings" category, and are often portrayed as either faking their dysphoria or being mentally unstable.[18] Most "cows" are described as what are known as "exceptional individuals", coined after a post filter was installed to replace the word "retards". On its now-banned Twitter account, Kiwi Farms described its purpose as "gossip and exploitation of the mentally handicapped for amusement purposes".[19] Furthermore, the sign-up page for the site once came with a disclaimer saying "autistics will be laughed at. Trannies will be misgendered. People will try to find where you live."[20] Due to its offensive content, Kiwi Farms is arguably a hate speech website.
Kiwi Farms' harassment goes beyond gender and neurological minorities. They target asexual people, despite them not being the most common target of abuse, having a thread on AVEN. The site's members will also target people with medical blogs (primarily women) by accusing them of exaggerating or even faking their illnesses. They target beauty gurus, artists and cosplayers, and regularly engage in fat shaming and looks discrimination. There is rarely a thread that doesn't contain someone posting slurs.
Posters tend to lean right politically. Many posters are far-right, and some are involved with 4chan and Encyclopædia Dramatica. They also tend to be white males in their 20's and 30's, and much like their dear leader, they're also antisemitic.[21] Despite the site's rampant transphobia, a sizable minority of its users are trans people who love to point out how any trans person they don't like isn't really trans. On the other end, the site is also popular with TERFs as a means of receiving personal information on their targets. Much the same, there's a minority of people on the site who are Tankies or Nazbols.
According to Alexa, Kiwi Farms receives over a million monthly sessions.[22]
Kiwi Farms was temporarily shut down on January 24, 2017 due to the owner's family getting harassed.[13] It was reopened three weeks later under the same management without fanfare, leading many to assume it was still down.
On June 27, 2021, Near,[note 3] the developer of the popular SNES emulator higan[23] took their own life after a 3-year-long harassment campaign by the site.[24][11][25] The forums responded largely with mockery[26] and outright denial of the suicide in the first place,[27] even as repeated evidence came forward that Near indeed committed suicide. In response, the site got DDOSed the next couple of days[28] and lost Dreamhost as its domain registrar which led the site to move to Cloudflare for its registrar and reverse proxy services[29].
On August 5, 2022, a trans YouTuber named Keffals was swatted, and when she tried to take refuge in a hotel, she was soon doxed by users on Kiwi Farms who were able to cross-reference a picture of the hotel's bedding with other hotels in the region. She was doxxed yet again after fleeing to the US by a member hacking into her Uber account. Sometime later, Marjorie Taylor Greene of all people was swatted by someone claiming to be from Kiwi Farms, and now even she wants the website shut down (but not without scapegoating Democrats in the process, blaming the situation on the perceived lawlessness the Dems want in the country).[30] While having been subject to intense public pressure especially after these events, Cloudflare felt the escalating violent threats in the site were too much for it to stomach (despite dawdling for years to do anything) and pulled the plug for support in September 2022.[31] KiwiFarms then tried to turn to Russian-based DDOS-Guard, but that too wasn't willing to provide for such an intensely toxic asset that it also terminated its services, in surprisingly much snappier time than CloudFlare.[32] Shortly after, they sought refuge with VanwaTech, a web hosting company known for willingly accepting far-right and extremist webshite content. VanwaTech founder Nicholas Lim defiantly stated, "We maintain a firm commitment to our role as a neutral provider of internet services and not an internet censor."[33]
In mid September 2022, Kiwi Farms was PWNED by hackers, with Moon posting a warning that emails may be leaked and passwords compromised.[34] Since the Keffals incident, Kiwi Farms was repeatedly kicked off various hosts,[35] suffered multiple DDOS attacks and ISP blacklistings,[36] and had their SSL certificate revoked.[37] In general, Moon had a tough time keeping the forum in operation, particularly on the clearnet. Of course, Moon didn't blame his actions or the illegal harassment activity spawning from his forum for these troubles; instead he blamed "terroristic harassment" from "trannies".[6][35]
On January 25, 2023, Youtuber TomDark had a debate with Moon & Destiny, where Moon said that he was going to appeal the court case. He also claimed that he had proof that Cloudflare is protecting multiple websites that are linked to ISIS and those websites are spreading ISIS propaganda, as well as Cloudflare protecting sites that host animal torture. [38]
Genesis of the name[edit]
The name "Kiwi Farms" fortunately has nothing to do with kiwi birds, kiwifruit, or people from New Zealand, where it has been blocked since March 2019 for providing torrents of the Christchurch shooter's uncensored livestream and manifesto.[39] In fact, the forum was originally known as the "CWCki Forums". (The CWCki, pronounced like 'Quickie', is a wiki dedicated to monitoring the aforementioned Christine Chandler. It was once hosted under Kiwi Farms, but broke away due to Kiwi Farms's instability.) The site was christened "Kiwi Farms" to mock someone with a speech impediment saying the original name, struggling with its unintuitive pronunciation.[40]
Joshua Conner Moon[edit]
Born on December 9, 1992,[41] Joshua Conner Moon is known as "Null" on the website and is its administrator.[42]
Views[edit]
- He is loosely associated with the alt-right.
- Moon supports Trump, referred to Obama as "The Nigger in chief",[43][44] and believes in the racist and rank white genocide conspiracy theory.[45][46]
- He thinks feminism ruins Western culture and says the word "cuck" a lot, probably because it rolls off the tongue well. And the company he keeps is overtly racist and spouts about "white genocide" and wanting to destroy feminism with fire.[47]
- He has posted that Muslims and refugees need to be killed.[48][49]
- He is also an anti-semite.[50][51]
- He's pro-Julian Assange, saying he would rather be set on fire by ISIS than deal with the UK government in reference to Assange's arrest.[52]
- Moon has a strong anti-journalist sentiment. When contacted by a NBC investigator, his only response was "The press are scum".[53]
Runs in the family[edit]
His own mom was a Kiwi member[54][55] and has been in trouble with the police.[56] She also worked for Keller Williams as a realtor[57] until she was fired when her activity on Kiwi Farms was seemingly exposed.[58]
Banned[edit]
- Joshua Conner Moon was banned from YouTube due to bullying and harassment.
- His @KiwiFarms Twitter account was "permanently suspended" for racism.[14][59] It was back up for a few months under @KiwiFarmsDotNet, although supposedly only for status updates,[60] but this account was banned a few months later.[61]
- He was also apparently banned from PayPal.[62]
- He was sacked as an admin for 8chan for allegedly promoting pedophilia.[39]
Pissed at us[edit]
Kiwi Farms has a thread "discussing" RationalWiki, which it describes as a "whiny hugbox for spergs and a clusterfuck of never ending drama on a rapidly declining website". Cynical later helpfully labeled the statement as "sarcasm", though it's not clear what part of the statement is supposed to be "sarcastic", especially since he continued to insult us.
See also[edit]
- 4chan, The site's ancestor.
- Lolcow, the site victims.
- Cringe culture, the site's lifestyle.
- Mikemikev, a neo-Nazi "lolcow" with a 700+ page thread on Kiwi Farms.
- Ethan Ralph, another alt-right "lolcow" beefing with Null.
- Encyclopædia Dramatica, another cesspit that revels in nastiness towards other people — including KiwiFarms users.
External links[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ↑ Moon is in fact the owner or co-owner of Lolcow LLC in Florida.[4]
- ↑ We used Josh's own words, of course. (archive) (original link)
- ↑ Formerly known as byuu.
References[edit]
- ↑ http://archive.is/mtujK#selection-581.0-605.298
- ↑ Wrong Planet, page 7. Archived from kiwifarms.net, 1 October 2021.
- ↑ Debunking Misinformation, a response to a recent Tumblr article
- ↑ Website Kiwi Farms refuses to surrender data linked to accused Christchurch terrorist Brendan Tarrant: A notorious web forum has refused requests to surrender data from posts about the accused NZ terrorist, instead unleashing a profane rant. by Marnie O’Neill (March 19, 201911:00am) News.com.au.
- ↑ https://archive.md/RoJky
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Kiwifarms Telegram feed, converted to RSS via "Telegram to RSS or JSON service" (https://tg.i-c-a.su/), archived on 23 May 2023
- ↑ "If you missed it - kiwifarms had been knocked off the clearnet for weeks now, and it looks like it'll be more weeks before Josh can even try to get it online. It also sounds like plenty of his previous users are just finding new homes + his telegram chat is slowly draining users.", @DropKiwiFarms, Twitter, 2023 May 23, archived on 2023 May 24
- ↑ kiwifarms.st. Archived on 25 September 2023
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Kiwi Farms the biggest community of stalkers. (19 Jul 2016). New York Magazine.
- ↑ Mister Metokur Dox Kiwi Farms (archived from February 10, 2019).
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 The Brilliant SNES Emulator Author Known As Near Has Died, Kotaku
- ↑ Joshua Moon questioned over legal status of Kiwi Farms. (26 Aug 2016). Crocels News.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Notorious forum Kiwi Farms closed following alleged harassment of founder’s family by William Hicks (24 Jan 2017) |Heat Street (archived from January 29, 2017).
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Twitter shuts down account of cyber-bully Joshua Moon. (19 Nov 2016). Crocels News.
- ↑ Her fan web comic even has as an entry on Know Your Meme.
- ↑ A timeline of Chris Chan's incest charge, which comes after years of online trolling that documented the creator's relationship with her mother. (6 August 2021). Insider.com.
- ↑ Chris Chan, an internet personality and common troll target who was charged with incest, has reportedly been released from custody. (28 March 2023). Insider.com.
- ↑ Sign up. (17 Feb 2017). Archive.is
- ↑ Kiwi Farms Twitter account. (23 Jan 2016). Archive.is.
- ↑ http://archive.is/pytWM
- ↑ CW: Anti Semitism
- ↑ http://www.rank2traffic.com/kiwifarms.net
- ↑ The Silicon Valley quest to preserve Stephen Hawking's voice, San Fransisco Chronicle
- ↑ A message about Near from a mutual friend. Google Doc of the situation.
- ↑ Near's Twitter account
- ↑ Thread The Great Twitter Meltdown of 2021 page 4 Kiwi Farms (archived from 27 June 2021).
- ↑ Null response regarding Byuu / Near Kiwi Farms (archived from 29 June 2021).
- ↑ Someone is currently paying money to DoS attack the forum. Archived from Kiwi Farms, 28 June 2021.
- ↑ kiwifarms.net whois lookup, who.is, Archived on 28 July 2021.
- ↑ How 'swatting' site Kiwi Farms has created a bizarre alliance between MAGA's Marjorie Taylor Greene and transgender activists, Joshua Zitser, Insider 25 August 2022
- ↑ Prince, M. (September 3, 2022). "Blocking Kiwifarms". The Cloudflare Blog. Accessed Setpember 3, 2022.
- ↑ DDoSGuard. (September 5, 2022). [1]. Telegram. Accessed September 5.
- ↑ "Kiwi Farms gets back online thanks to the same service that's kept 8kun alive" The Daily Dot. Retrieved 7 September 2022.
- ↑ "‘Well f*ck’: Kiwi Farms users freak after owner says site hacked, emails may leak" by Claire Goforth, Daily Dot, 2022 September 19
- ↑ 35.0 35.1 "Kiwifarms Down a Lot", topic, OnionFarms.Com, archived 2022 December 29
- ↑ Figure: Major incidents disrupting KIWI FARMS from September to December 2022. Green stars indicate the forum recovery,Vu, Viet Anh & Hutchings, Alice & Anderson, Ross. (2023). No Easy Way Out: The Effectiveness of Deplatforming an Extremist Forum to Suppress Hate and Harassment.
- ↑ "Guess I beat Josh to the announcement for that one :) Here's his statement about kiwifarms and their SSL cert problems. Interesting to note that threats did of course occur, just like kiwifarms threatened the family of cloudflare staff as well. they threaten everyone.", @DropKiwifarms, Twitter, 2023 May 16, archived on 2023 May 16
- ↑ "Destiny and Null talk about Kiwifarms Drama"
- ↑ 39.0 39.1 Website Kiwi Farms refuses to surrender data linked to accused Christchurch terrorist Brendan Tarrant
- ↑ https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Kiwi_Farms
- ↑ DOB
- ↑ Null's Page Kiwi Farms Multiple archive snapshots, 2016-2022.
- ↑ Josh's Victory Dance
- ↑ http://archive.is/uwZNR
- ↑ White Genocide. Archive.is.
- ↑ http://archive.is/QpvwZ.
- ↑ http://archive.is/mAOtD
- ↑ Joshua Null Moon Twitter Account. (15 Nov 2016). Archive.is.
- ↑ Joshua Moon's extreme comments about killing refugees. (17 Feb 2017). Archive.fo.
- ↑ Cut Jews Fingers off
- ↑ Archived From Old Twitter
- ↑ Josh on Assange Via Twitter
- ↑ Anti-trans stalkers at Kiwi Farms are chasing one victim around the world. Their list of targets is growing. - NBC News
- ↑ Son Like Mother
- ↑ His Mom's Profile
- ↑ Candice L Potter Arrest Record on 2013-09-16 01:22:02 in Florida, Escambia. Archived from findmugshots.com, 2017.
- ↑ Keller Williams
- ↑ She Got Fired
- ↑ Kiwi Farms Twitter (archived from 21 Jan 2016 14:52:02 UTC).
- ↑ @KiwiFarmsDotNet, Twitter (archived from February 12, 2022).
- ↑ Account suspended. Archived from KiwiFarmsDotNet on Twitter, 1 June 2022.
- ↑ Banned From PayPal but not from Mastercard Kiwi Farms (archived from December 8, 2022).