No, Chris Chan did not originate or found Kiwi Farms. The website was created by Joshua Conner Moon (known online as “Null”), a former 8chan administrator, in 2013. While Chris Chan became the site’s primary target and namesake—the original “CWCki Forums” was explicitly built to harass her—she had no role in creating the platform. This common misconception stems from her prominent position in Kiwi Farms’ history, but the facts are clear: Moon founded the site as a harassment tool directed at Chan, not the other way around.
The distinction matters because it clarifies how online harassment platforms operate. Kiwi Farms didn’t emerge from Chris Chan’s activities; rather, it was weaponized against her from day one. Understanding this reversal is important for recognizing how such communities function and evolve over time. The site’s trajectory from a single-target harassment forum to a broader platform targeting multiple internet personalities reveals patterns in how online abuse infrastructure scales and adapts.
Table of Contents
- Who Actually Founded Kiwi Farms and Why?
- How Did Kiwi Farms Evolve From Its Original Target?
- Chris Chan’s Actual Position in Kiwi Farms’ History
- Understanding Platform Evolution and Harassment Ecosystems
- The Ongoing Controversy and Platform Persistence
- Broader Context of Internet Harassment Platforms
- Current Status and Future Implications
- Conclusion
Who Actually Founded Kiwi Farms and Why?
Joshua Conner Moon founded kiwi farms in 2013, initially as “CWCki Forums.” Moon’s background as a 8chan administrator gave him technical expertise and familiarity with anonymous imageboards and their culture. The “CWCki” name directly referenced Chris Chan’s initials—Christine Weston Chandler—making the site’s original purpose unmistakable from the start. Moon created the forum specifically as a dedicated harassment and documentation platform targeting one individual. The timing and choice of subject weren’t random.
Chris Chan had already been a focal point of internet culture and harassment for years before 2013. Creating a dedicated forum simply concentrated and expanded the existing harassment into a structured, searchable database. By 2014, Moon rebranded the site as “Kiwi Farms” as it expanded beyond Chan to target other internet personalities classified as “lolcows”—individuals deemed entertaining targets for ridicule and harassment. This expansion transformed it from a single-purpose harassment tool into a broader, though still fundamentally destructive, community.
How Did Kiwi Farms Evolve From Its Original Target?
After rebranding in 2014, Kiwi Farms began cataloging and harassing multiple internet personalities rather than focusing solely on Chris Chan. The site adopted the “lolcow” classification system, which categorized online figures based on perceived eccentricity or entertainment value they provided to harassers. This expansion was crucial to understanding the platform’s growth—it was no longer about one person but had become an organized system for identifying, documenting, and coordinating harassment against multiple targets simultaneously. However, this expansion didn’t represent a change in the site’s fundamental purpose.
Even as the focus broadened, the core function remained: providing a centralized platform where participants could coordinate harassment campaigns. The site accumulated detailed personal information about targets, tracked their social media, documented their activities, and organized coordinated attacks. The limitation of the site’s framing is important to recognize: it presented harassment as documentation or criticism, but the actual function was coordinated abuse. This distinction mattered legally and ethically, particularly when targets reported real-world consequences from the campaigns orchestrated on the platform.
Chris Chan’s Actual Position in Kiwi Farms’ History
Chris Chan served as Kiwi Farms’ original and longest-documented subject. From 2013 onward, forum participants dedicated thousands of posts to documenting her activities, analyzing her social media, and organizing harassment campaigns. The sheer volume of content about Chan on the site—spanning years of detailed posts—might make it seem like she had some role in creating it, but this confuses victim prominence with founding involvement.
Chan’s situation exemplified how Kiwi Farms operated at scale. The forum created an extensive archive of her personal information, tracked her location changes, documented her relationships, and coordinated online and offline harassment. This documentation served a dual purpose: it provided entertainment for forum participants and it created a reference database for new members to join in the harassment. By the time the site had expanded to other targets, the Chan documentation was already years deep and served as a template for how the site approached other subjects.
Understanding Platform Evolution and Harassment Ecosystems
Kiwi Farms’ history demonstrates how harassment platforms evolve from single-purpose tools into broader ecosystems. The site’s progression from “CWCki Forums” to “Kiwi Farms” mirrors how other online harassment communities have grown and adapted. Compare this to similar platforms: 4chan’s /b/ board existed for years before developing systematic harassment of specific individuals, and Reddit communities followed similar patterns of consolidating harassment around particular targets.
The practical lesson here is recognizing how harassment infrastructure scales. What begins as scattered posts about an individual can formalize into dedicated forums, which can then expand to multiple targets while maintaining the same organizational structure and culture. Understanding this progression matters for identifying early warning signs of emerging harassment communities and recognizing that claiming a “documentation” mission doesn’t change the underlying function. Kiwi Farms’ rebranding from a Chris Chan-specific site to a broader lolcow platform was a calculated expansion, not an evolution away from its harassment roots.
The Ongoing Controversy and Platform Persistence
Kiwi Farms faced significant controversy over its existence and activities. Multiple targets reported real-world harassment, doxxing, and coordinated abuse resulting from the site’s activities. Internet service providers, domain registrars, and payment processors periodically removed the site from their services, yet it persistently found ways to return online under new hosting arrangements. This resilience was partly technical—Moon’s experience with imageboards made him adept at maintaining infrastructure under pressure—and partly cultural, as the community actively worked to sustain the platform.
A critical limitation in addressing platforms like Kiwi Farms is the challenge of balancing free speech protection with accountability for harassment coordination. The site’s defenders argued it served a documentation function, while critics pointed to concrete real-world harms experienced by targets. The warning here is significant: platforms claiming to document or critique online figures may simultaneously serve as functional harassment and doxxing infrastructure. The stated purpose doesn’t determine the actual consequences, and distinguishing between legitimate criticism and coordinated abuse requires examining actual impacts on targets.
Broader Context of Internet Harassment Platforms
Kiwi Farms operated within a broader ecosystem of harassment communities that emerged in the 2000s and 2010s. Sites like Something Awful’s “Lovecraft” forums, various Reddit communities, and Discord servers all developed similar patterns of identifying targets and organizing coordinated harassment. What distinguished Kiwi Farms was its scale and explicit organizational structure—it was designed from the ground up as a centralized harassment platform, not as a general community that developed harassment as a secondary feature.
The Chris Chan case specifically became foundational to internet culture discussions about harassment and doxxing. New users learning about Kiwi Farms would inevitably encounter years of Chan-related content, making her the public face of the platform even after it had expanded. This meant that Chris Chan, despite being the victim rather than the creator, became inextricably associated with Kiwi Farms’ identity in popular understanding.
Current Status and Future Implications
As of May 2026, Kiwi Farms continues to operate, though its history and origins remain areas of documented controversy. Joshua Moon continues to operate the site despite ongoing pressure from hosting providers and payment processors.
The platform’s longevity demonstrates both the difficulty of removing established online communities and the commitment of its operators to maintain it. Looking forward, the Chris Chan case has become a cautionary example in discussions about internet harassment, doxxing, and the persistence of abusive communities online. Understanding that Kiwi Farms was not created by its most famous target—but rather created to target her—is essential context for analyzing how such platforms function and what distinguishes documented criticism from coordinated abuse infrastructure.
Conclusion
Chris Chan did not originate or found Kiwi Farms; Joshua Conner Moon created the site in 2013 specifically as a platform to harass her. This fundamental fact is often misunderstood because Chan became so central to the site’s identity and content, but her position as the original victim is distinct from any role in its creation.
The platform evolved from a single-purpose harassment forum into a broader site targeting multiple internet personalities, but this expansion didn’t change its fundamental function. The distinction between victim prominence and founder involvement matters for understanding online harassment ecosystems. Recognizing how platforms like Kiwi Farms evolve and persist, and how they frame harassment as documentation, is crucial for identifying similar abuse infrastructure and understanding the real-world consequences they create for targeted individuals.