An Australian company found to have helped keep the notorious forum Kiwi Farms accessible online has been ordered to pay more than $400,000 in damages after a successful defamation action in the Victorian supreme court.
Liz Fong-Jones, a longtime crusader against the site, brought the action over what she asserted in court documents was an “abusive, transphobic, defamatory” thread targeting her on the forum since August last year.
In hundreds of posts, the Kiwi Farm’s users discussed information about her work, her partner and her family. They shared “vile and baseless” allegations that she was a rapist and a liar and that she had molested and threatened subordinates, which the judge found caused serious harm to her “very good” reputation.
Messages were sent to work colleagues and posted under her employer’s online videos.
In September 2022, a picnic with supporters she hosted in Sydney’s Hyde Park was surreptitiously photographed and pictures of participants were posted on the forum too.
Run by Joshua Moon, one of Kiwi Farms’s main activities is the sustained exposure of people the site deems worthy of derision – as the site describes it, “lolcows” that are “milked” for entertainment.
The case claimed that a Brisbane-based company, Flow Chemical, and its sole director, Vincent Zhen, were “instrumental” to its publication and for keeping it accessible, even though they were not the authors of the defamatory Kiwi Farms thread.
Because the matter was undefended, an interlocutory judgment was made against Flow Chemical and Zhen in July and Fong-Jones was awarded damages of $445,000 plus costs this week.
The Australian connection
Digging into the infrastructure behind Kiwi Farms when it was accessible online, Fong-Jones and her team found there were blocks of IP addresses that appeared to be obtained from the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), which administers IP addresses for the Asia-Pacific.
Flow Chemical is the registered owner of these IP blocks, according to court documents, “a subset of one which allows 1776 Solutions LLC to host the Kiwi Farms website”. Its sole director, business records show, is a Brisbane man named Vincent Zhen.
For a while, it was just another weird fact about the site. “No one really had any idea whether this was a red herring,” Fong-Jones said. “No one thought about the implications of this as far as Australian law [was concerned].”
Fong-Jones, an American, spends part of each year in Australia and this connection meant she also had recourse to the local legal system. At first Fong-Jones tried getting action against Kiwi Farms and Flow Chemical via Australian authorities, including via the eSafety Commissioner.
The agency attempted to contact Kiwi Farms in May 2022 with takedown notices for Class 1 material – a category of illegal and restricted online content – but the site ignored the request, telling eSafety to shove its “‘fines’ up your arse”, according to documents obtained under FoI.
A spokesperson for eSafety told Guardian Australia the commissioner has no power to seize IP addresses or servers. As there was no evidence Flow Chemical directly hosted Kiwi Farms discussion forums where the thread was posted, the spokesperson said it had no power to issue a notice to the company.
Then Fong-Jones started to look into her private rights of action, bringing the defamation case in May this year.
For her, the Australian lawsuit had motivations both strategic and personal. “The defamation, the threats to my life, the attempt to get me fired, they’ve gotten so extreme that it’s important at this point to vindicate my reputation,” she said. “To show that there are consequences for engaging in this activity, specifically against me.”
Zhen did not respond to a request for comment.
