Kiwi Farms, formerly known as CWCki Forums, is an American Internet forum dedicated to the discussion of online figures and communities it deems "lolcows". The targets of threads are often subject to doxing and other forms of organized group trolling such as ongoing harassment and stalking, including real-life harassment by users.
History
The website was originally launched as an exclusive imageboard to troll and harass an autistictransgender webcomic artist, who was first spotted in 2007 on a 4chan video game board for having designed a homemade comic-series called Sonichu.
Controversies
Suicide of Chloe Sagal
In 2013, video game developer Chloe Sagal became a target of Kiwi Farms after EuroGamer.net reported Sagal's Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign had been flagged for "suspicious activity", having raised over $30,000 for an alleged metal poisoning treatment to remove shrapnel from a car accident and it was found that Sagal had actually intended to use the proceeds for sex reassignment surgery. Sagal later committed suicide by self-immolation on June 19, 2018.
In 2017, Tumblr user Rose Christo claimed that she was the author of the Harry Potter fan fictionMy Immortal and that she had written it in order to locate her missing brother. She also announced that Macmillan Publishers was publishing a memoir about the fan fiction's creation as well as her childhood of abuse and experiences as a Native American in the New Yorkfoster care system. A forum thread about Christo was created on Kiwi Farms questioning these claims, and a user claiming to be Christo's brother wrote that Christo's claims of authorship and almost all of her story was false and that their family was white and not Native American. Christo then admitted that she had falsified documents supporting her story but maintained that she had written My Immortal. Macmillan Publishers cancelled the publication of her memoir.
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 relating to the shooting, including the IP addresses of posters and their emails. Moon responded aggressively, calling New Zealand a "shithole country", and stated that he does not "give a single solitary fuck what section 50 of your faggot law says about sharing your email". Kiwi Farms was one of several websites blocked by New Zealand ISPs in the wake of the attack. Moon's response garnered mixed to negative reception. New Zealand publications that covered the story criticized Moon for his rudeness and unwillingness to cooperate with law enforcement; Newshub called Moon's message "aggressive" and "mocking".
On August 6, 2019, Joshua "Null" Moon announced that Kiwi Farms was down after a DDoS attack which occurred one day following the 2019 El Paso shooting, but users were able to access Kiwi Farms again by 4:00 PM Central Time. Moon stated that, while Kiwi Farms had in-home DDoS protection, he was looking for alternatives to Cloudflare, the security provider for Kiwi Farms.
