Feb 03, 2023 20:00:00

How was the villainous bulletin board 'Kiwi Farms' that drives suicide through thorough harassment born?

Kiwi Farms is an Internet bulletin board that specializes in harassment, which drives multiple victims to commit suicide by making full use of doxing , online stalking, and offline harassment. Mother Jones, a non-profit investigative journalism organization, has summarized the background to the birth of such Kiwi Farms and the slanderous acts that have been done to victims so far.

The Website That Wants You to Kill Yourself—and Won't Die – Mother Jones
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/02/kiwi-farms-die-drop-cloudflare-chandler-trolls/

At Kiwi Farms, we call the suicide of a target a 'kill count,' and we've had at least three victims so far. The first confirmed victim is 19-year-old Julie Terryberry, who committed suicide in 2016 after her private photos were exposed by Kiwi Farms. Two years later, indie game developer Chloe Sagal died after setting herself on fire in a park in Poland after being harassed by Kiwi Farms.

Furthermore, in June 2021, David Ginder, a game emulator developer living in Japan, lost his life in a Kiwi Farms harassment campaign. 'I've been bullied, ridiculed and humiliated all my life. At 4chan I was just severely depressed, but the harassment at Kiwi Farms is an order of magnitude,' he wrote in a suicide note published online. It is said that Kiwi Farms users were pleased with Mr. Ginder, saying, 'Kiwi's kill count will be +1.'

When Kiwi Farms is picked up by the press, it tends to be introduced as an 'extreme right forum', but this is an incomplete explanation. Because while Kiwi Farms members love people like former President Donald Trump and white supremacist far-right activist Nick Fuentes, they also hate them for being

cringe .

Kiwi Farms refers to its targets as “ lolcows ,” transgender Twitch streamers, troubled teens, and far-right congressman Marjorie Taylor, a notorious conspiracy theorist. Greene and others are often the subject of ridicule. In this way, Kiwi Farms users target women, people of color, people with neuropathies, and sexual minorities not only for political reasons, but also because they are soft targets. Mother Jones pointed out that it's because we need

Kiwi Farms gained a lot of attention in August 2022 after a series of reports when Twitch streamer and transgender activist Clara Sorrenti, better known as

Keffals , was targeted by Kiwi Farms.

After being swatted by Kiwi Farms, Mr. Sorrenti was forced to emigrate from Canada. Drop Kiwi Farms (Let's drop Kiwi Farms)' campaign. We have requested that Cloudflare, which provided security services to Kiwi Farms, discontinue service to Kiwi Farms.

Cloudflare announced that it had blocked Kiwi Farms on Sept. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has stressed that the pressure campaign against the company was not the reason for the block, but Sorrenti declared victory, saying, ``We won. Kiwi Farms is dead.''

Cloudflare blocks harassment-specific bulletin board `` Kiwi Farms '', considering that LGBT discrimination develops into a crisis of human life-GIGAZINE

by Web Summit

Kiwi Farms, which was offline once, sought revival by using Tor and Russian services, and then secured another service provider, continuing its activities even at the time of writing the article.

The manager who supports such Kiwi Farms is Mr. Joshua Moon. Mr. Moon, who works under the username 'Null' on the site, said he lives with his mother in Pensacor, Florida.

Mr. Moon became famous in 2007 when a person named Christian Weston Chandler, a transgender and autistic person, became a hot topic on an online forum called Something Awful. The diary titled 'Love Quest' posted by Mr. Chandler and the unsatisfactory illustration of the original character ' Sonichu ', which combines Pikachu and Sonic, were ridiculed by Mr. Moon and other Something Awful users. was made

A group led by Mr. Moon, who played a central role in bashing Mr. Chandler, established a site called CWCki (Chandler's initials CWC and wiki) in 2008 to summarize information and posts about Mr. Chandler. , I soon expanded the target to people other than Mr. Chandler. In 2013, CWCki Forums was established and renamed Kiwi Farms in 2014. The site name, Kiwi Farms, is said to be a mockery of the target speech-impaired pronunciation of 'CWCki Forum.'

In this way, Mr. Moon and other Kiwi Farms users who solidified their activity base established a method to hunt down the target 'lolcow' in the thorough harassment of Mr. Chandler. For example, in order to gather information about Mr. Chandler, Kiwi Farms users pretended to be journalists, pretended to be Mr. Chandler's former classmates, psychiatrists, etc., and contacted Mr. Chandler and people close to him. We are trying to

Also, when Mr. Sorrenti mentioned above changed his address to avoid harassment, Kiwi Farms users immediately found a new location and harassed him by ordering pizza delivery with Mr. Sorrenti's dead name . Immediately after changing his place of residence, Mr. Sorrenti uploaded 'a picture of a cat on the bed' to SNS, but it seems that the sheets in this picture may have been a clue to identify the hotel. Mr Sorrenti said.

Once a target is found, Kiwi Farms users then use docking, intimidation, family contact, social media account hijacking, and cell phone SIM card hacking to attempt to put the target out of work. Then, by driving them into a corner mentally and economically, they ultimately drive them to commit suicide.

One Kiwi Farms user described the spirit of the site as follows: “If you put something stupid or embarrassing on the internet, it will stay on the internet forever and it will be ours. If you worry about things, we will love you with all our hearts and you will be ours too.We may eventually get bored and stop, or play too hard and break it. Hmm. But we don't let it go, and one day we can remember it and take it out again.