Kiwi Farms operator Josh Moon doubles down on rebuttal to help New Zealand police with Christchurch terror attack investigation

  • 19/03/2019
Joshua Conner Moon has doubled down on his profane refusal to assist police in the Christchurch terror attack investigation.
Joshua Conner Moon, aka Null. Photo credit: Creative Commons

The man who operates the Kiwi Farms website has joked about the backlash to his refusal to help New Zealand police in the ongoing Christchurch terror attack investigation.

Joshua Conner Moon, who goes by the username Null on Kiwi Farms, also says he has been contacting ISPs in Aotearoa and demanding to know why they are blocking his website for Kiwi users.

Very quickly after a gunman livestreamed part of his attack on two mosques in Christchurch on Friday that left 50 people dead, the video appeared on Kiwi Farms.

While Facebook, Twitter and Youtube were quick to remove the video from their platforms, Kiwi Farms kept it up - and responded with insults and expletives when contacted by a New Zealand police officer for assistance.

Despite having 'Kiwi' in its name, the website has no association with New Zealand; rather, the name was adapted from its former title of 'CWCki Forums'.

Moon laughs about the situation in a three-hour interview posted on YouTube by Nick Rekieta, a lawyer based in the US state of Minnesota.

"Your website has seemingly attracted the attention of the biggest and most terrifying of governments that the world has ever known," says a giggling Rekieta.

"Did they 'haka' you via email?"

The pair joke about New Zealand's response to the Christchurch terror attack footage and suggest that if Moon was extradited to Aotearoa, Sir Peter Jackson may pick him up from the airport to have him play a hobbit in his next film.

Applauding Moon's reply to the police email about New Zealand being a "shithole country" with "f****t law", Rekieta says: "The way you have to deal with police and government coming at you is with force".

Also in the video, Moon complains about New Zealand ISPs blocking his website at a DNS level, in an attempt to limit internet users in Aotearoa from accessing the video of the Christchurch terror attack.

"It's preposterous... It's hard to tell if this is a conscious effort by the ISPs themselves, or a request of the government," says Moon.

"I contacted three ISPs in New Zealand that people said had been DNS black-holing Kiwi Farms... the one that replied was Spark."

He then incredulously reads out the email he got from a Spark customer service representative, which explains why it is trying to block video of the Christchurch mass shooting.

Moon and Rekieta both agree that child pornography is the only type of content that should not be allowed to be shared online - arguing strongly that graphic videos of murder, even when they're terrorist propaganda, are in the public interest to be uncensored and freely available.

"Everything should be accessible, all the time," says Moon.

"I agree, 100 percent," says Rekieta.

"As long as it's not illegal - and I mean not illegal in the US, because I don't trust any other existence right now to have the free speech protection to say that 'illegal' means it should be illegal.

The video of the Christchurch mosque shooting was linked to in a post made seemingly by the gunman himself on 8chan, a notorious online forum that has similar content and a similar history to Kiwi Farms.

In the Rekieta interview, Moon explains that he was informed of the 8chan post so quickly he was able to access the video before it was removed from Facebook.

"I clicked through to the Facebook link and it's still up, so I'm like 'Oh shit'. I have my archive tools on standby, live 24/7... so I [download the video], immediately, throw it up on the site and create a thread," says Moon. 

He goes on to say his hosting of the video stayed up while most other websites removed it - resulting in a huge increase in traffic to Kiwi Farms, resulting in bandwith problems.

"My little website, you do want attention for it, but you don't want to be the 'school shooter website'. We've made the news multiple times now, because of our affiliations with - like it's three times at this point."

He then mentions two times users of Kiwi Farms had either carried out fatal shootings, or been thwarted in attempting one.

Meanwhile, Moon's response to the New Zealand police has been reported on elsewhere, with other alleged actions of his also being brought into the spotlight.

"Before he founded Kiwi Farms, Moon was sacked as an administrator for 8chan for allegedly promoting paedophilia. He is notorious for his online stalking and harassment campaigns, which have featured threats to 'rape, murder and dismember' his mainly female victims," reports news.com.au.

"In 2016, Moon was linked to a series of online threats to harm children in Florida, where he shares a home with his mother, forcing dozens of schools into lockdown."

Kiwi Farms users are posting links to the coverage and joking about it, particularly instances of media referring to them as 'incels', or involuntary celibates - an online subculture of men who claim they are unable to find sexual or romantic partners.

More allegations about Moon's online behaviour and its connection to real-world violence are posted on several websites online.

Newshub.