A trans software engineer is trying to keep Kiwi Farms offline with new Australian internet powers

A software engineer is trying to keep the far-right hate website Kiwi Farms offline using new Australian internet powers, thanks to the online forum’s little-known connections to the country.

The nearly decade-old US forum is notorious for hosting hate content — including the Christchurch mass killer’s footage and other terrorist manifestos — and coordinating harassment, stalking and revealing private information about people (known as “doxxing”). 

Kiwi Farms members have relentlessly bullied people who’ve expressed suicidal ideation, often picking on marginalised groups. Multiple suicides have been linked to the forum. 

Last month, a major Canadian trans Twitch streamer called Keffals (real name Clara Sorrenti) launched a campaign to take Kiwi Farms offline after someone used her details revealed on the forum to send a fake email threatening mass violence. Keffals was subsequently arrested and detained before being cleared.

Since then, Keffals has led a #DropKiwiFarms campaign against Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure company whose services protect Kiwi Farms from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.  Cloudflare’s continuing support has played a crucial role in keeping Kiwi Farms online. Over the weekend, the company backflipped under pressure and announced that it had blocked the forum from using its services.

Kiwi Farms’ Australian connections

Liz Fong-Jones, who is trans, is a former Google engineer who has been targeted and trolled by Kiwi Farms users in the past. 

She’s asked Australia’s internet censor, the eSafety Commissioner, to take action against Kiwi Farms — something that’s possible because of its previously undiscovered connections to Australia.

Earlier this week, Fong-Jones submitted a complaint to the Office of the eSafety Commissioner that claimed Kiwi Farms hosts terrorist and cyber abuse content.

Under the recently passed Online Safety Act, the eSafety Commissioner can request that companies block abhorrent violent-conduct material (such as the depiction of terrorist acts) and remove adult cyber abuse material — refusing to can result in fines of $550,000. 

This typically wouldn’t be a problem for a US-hosted website outside of Australia’s jurisdiction. However, Fong-Jones claims that Kiwi Farms operates using an IP address leased to an Australian shell company by the regional internet address registry the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC). Kiwi Farms is operated by American company 1776 Solutions LLC. This company uses IP space assigned from Australian company Flow Chemical Pty Ltd, which does not appear to use its delegation of addresses for anything else.

Both Cloudflare and a director for Flow Chemical Pty Ltd have been contacted for comment.

Fong-Jones has asked the eSafety Commissioner to request that APNIC withdraw 1776 Solutions’ hosting — taking Kiwi Farms offline around the world — or face enforcement actions against their Australian directors.

Fong-Jones told Crikey that she had received a receipt of her complaint from the office. A spokesperson for the Office of the eSafety Commissioner didn’t confirm or deny that they had received a complain. They told Crikey that they don’t discuss the details of an investigation.

Fong-Jones said she chose to act when she saw what was happening to Keffals. 

“Australia has some of the strongest online speech restrictions in the world. I wanted to know why we couldn’t use these tools for some good to prevent violence and harassment and all the things they said their powers could be used for,” she told me in an interview.

“This is a litmus test for those laws.”

Update 5/9: The article has been updated in response to Cloudflare’s decision to withdraw services.