Greens Senator David Shoebridge (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas)

Greens Senator David Shoebridge has criticised the state of Australia’s internet regulation after the eSafety commissioner said she was unable to take Kiwi Farms offline with her powers.

Earlier this month, engineer Liz Fong-Jones complained to the Office of the eSafety Commissioner about the hate forum amid a global campaign to stop companies from providing services that kept it online.

Kiwi Farms is a website best known for coordinating users to harass certain targets (nicknamed “lolcows”) including revealing personal details, stalking and filing false police reports to provoke a law enforcement response. Three suicides have been linked to the website.

Fong-Jones argued that the adult cyber abuse material and abhorrent violent conduct material hosted on the website, the introduction of the new Online Safety Act, and Kiwi Farm’s little-known Australian connections meant that it was possible that the eSafety commissioner could take action. This included potentially seizing a block of Australian IP addresses or servers used by Kiwi Farms or other companies supporting them.

On September 2, Shoebridge — who is also the Australian Greens’ digital rights spokesperson — wrote a letter urging eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to follow Fong-Jones’ advice.

“I look forward to the eSafety commissioner taking this case seriously and acting to endorse the law in respect to Kiwi Farms in order to protect our community and especially the neurodivergent and transgender community,” he said.

The eSafety commissioner responded a week later saying that she would be unable to seize the IP address block or servers as her remit is “limited to issue notices to seek the removal of content”.

Additionally, Inman Grant noted that internet infrastructure company Cloudflare had stopped supporting the website, leading to it going offline (at least temporarily).

“kiwifarms.net is no longer able to be accessed by Australians at that URL … It is therefore no longer easily accessible to Australians,” she said.

Shoebridge said Inman Grant’s response shows how the regulatory framework is failing to protect users.

“It is alarming that the eSafety commissioner, which should be empowered to protect our rights and safety online, has no power to stop dangerous online forums such as Kiwi Farms, even where they present a real threat to people’s safety,” he told Crikey.

The Online Safety Act, which came into force this year, has been criticised by digital advocacy groups for giving already broad powers to the unelected eSafety commissioner to get content removed, websites blocked or even removed from search engines based on outdated models of classifying content.

Shoebridge’s critique of the eSafety commissioner comes from the other side: “Regulators need the power to shut down these players, rather than just playing whack-a-mole with separate instances of offensive content,” he said.

“It’s at least refreshing to get a frank assessment from the eSafety commissioner about the limited extent of the office’s powers — it’s a wake-up call to Parliament.”

Would you like the eSafety commissioner to have this level of power? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.