![]() “Kiwi Farms is extremely centralized, with Josh Moon right at the top deciding who is the target and who’s not,” said Brennan. Moon is himself a frequent poster and moderator on Kiwi Farms, under the username Null. ![]() Unlike sites like 4chan, where administrators have little direction over the harassment campaigns of its userbase, Brennan said Moon’s power over Kiwi Farms is different. When reached for comment, Moon replied via email, “The press are scum.” He did not respond to specific questions. Brennan, the founder of 8chan who has spent the last several years trying to take down the site he created due to its adoption by extremists, said he worked with Moon for years in Manila, Philippines, as a fellow 8chan administrator.īrennan said that, while websites like 4chan and 8chan can pose substantial national security risks, “what Moon is doing is worse, because he’s actually targeting specific people” on a more organized website. ![]() Kiwi Farms is owned and operated by Josh Moon, a former administrator of 8chan, a forum that became known as a dumping ground for white nationalist screeds posted by mass shooters and the conspiracy theory movement QAnon. Brennan believes that the harassment techniques being used to target trans people now could easily be channeled toward larger goals and government targets - including other recent political targets of the far-right, like the FBI. It would not be hard,” warned Fredrick Brennan, who previously worked with the founder of Kiwi Farms at another extremist site, 8chan. “This kind of Kiwi Farms thing could easily become, say, an FBI agent database. The information is used in an effort to get their targets fired or socially isolated by spreading rumors that they are pedophiles or criminals.Įxperts fear Kiwi Farms is starting to target other communities - and that their tactics are being duplicated throughout the political world to intimidate political enemies. The archive often features social media pictures of their targets’ friends and family, along with contact information of their employers. ![]() Kiwi Farms’ most notorious section is titled “lolcows” and targets transgender people. The forum is a massive archive of sensitive information on their targets, which has been used to repeatedly harass them. Kiwi Farms has become synonymous with doxxing (the release of an individual’s identifying information with malicious intent), swatting (a term for when an anonymous person sends an urgent, false tip to the police about a violent crime in a victim’s home in the hopes that law enforcement will raid it and potentially harm the person inside), and archiving controversial materials such as manifestos by mass shooters and recordings of their livestreams. If the ongoing efforts to close the forum fail, experts warn Kiwi Farms’ target list and techniques could expand as culture war issues gain more attention ahead of the 2024 election, potentially affecting more LGBTQ private citizens or creating a national security threat with the expansion of Kiwi Farms’ harassment tactics to new targets. (The statement did not mention Kiwi Farms by name.) A Cloudflare representative referred NBC News to the blog post when reached for comment. In a public statement posted Wednesday, under Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince’s byline, the company said that it will not drop security services for any of its customers.
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