Kiwi Farms – the online forum that is notorious for being a cesspit of racism, doxing, stalking and harassment – has lost its domain registrar and has been given 14 days to find an alternative.
The owner of Kiwi Farms Joshua Moon, who goes by the screen name ‘Null’, posted a lengthy message [warning: offensive content] to the website on Tuesday to make the announcement.
“I opened my Dreamhost account over 12 years ago, in April 2009, and registered my first domain name at 16 with birthday money I had saved up. Dreamhost has been the registrar of kiwifarms dot net for its entire existence,” he wrote.
“Despite the problems we’ve faced in just the recent past, and despite all the services that we’ve had to find replacements for over the years, Dreamhost has – shockingly – been the only company to not fail in their role of providing basic Internet resources without senseless moderation for that entire time. This was not an easy job for them, and from what I understand, Dreamhost had their own customer support reply template for complaints related to our domain because the volume of complaints was numerous enough to warrant it.”
For those unfamiliar with the site, it operates as a message board that has very little – if any – moderation for offensive or harmful content.
As you’d expect, this allows the absolute worst of the internet to thrive and has resulted in Kiwi Farms being implicated in the suicides of at least three people, who claim they were the target of unrelenting hate and harassment by users.
Not to mention, in March 2019, Kiwi Farms republished both the livestream of the Christchurch mosque terrorist attack and the manifesto of the person behind it.
Following the attack, Moon refused to hand over data and posts related to the attack to New Zealand Police, deeming the request “censorship.”
However, it wasn’t until the third and most recent suicide allegedly linked to the site that its domain registrar has finally decided to distance itself from Kiwi Farms.
“Despite no evidence what so ever of any harassment towards Byuu, or even a confirmation of Byuu’s suicide, the coordinated harassment campaign led by Hector Martin against Cloudflare and Dreamhost has yielded positive results in that Dreamhost is no longer our domain registrar. This sets an incredibly dangerous precedent and walks the Internet further down the path of oblivion. More of the Internet’s underpinnings are consolidating, and what few companies remain independent are becoming more worthless and pussified by the minute.”
As a result, Moon has been given 14 days to find a new registrar for the website.
“Despite this shortcoming, Dreamhost has given me 14 days to move my domains over to someplace else and I am working on that now,” he wrote.
There’s no suggestion that this will actually mark the end of Kiwi Farms, rather, it will likely just result in Moon having to find a more expensive registrar to host the site.
At the time of publishing, it appears Kiwi Farms has found a temporary home with Cloudflare.
(Update: It appears the site is headed to Cloudflare for now.)
— Jared Holt (@jaredlholt) July 13, 2021
If you need mental health support, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or chat online. Under 25? You can reach Kids Helpline at 1800 55 1800 or chat online. You can also reach the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467 or chat online.
If you require immediate assistance, please call 000.
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