Yuri Kuznetsov (kuz)

A picture of Kuz which used to be displayed on his personal website.

Yuri Mikhailovich Kuznetsov, better known as kuz (pronounced "kooz") is a Russian internet businessman currently living in Memphis. He's mainly known for creating 9channel, owning and administrating several other imageboards, frequently posting on them and on websites he doesn't own as well as founding The Kolyma Network, a "webhosting and internet services company", also known as KolymaNET. Kuz is an infamous and controversial figure in the imageboard sphere, he's mostly popular and liked on websites he owns, but on other sites he's gotten involved with his reputation is much more negative, with the most common accusation thrown at him by critics being that he's an "imageboard monopolizer", which he and his supporters deny.He also runs a personal blog.

Another picture of kuz.

Much of the following details surrounding his personal life and presence on the internet are in dispute, conflicting and come from many different sources. keep that in mind while reading. This page will provide several different perspectives and clashing information on him, followed by an analysis of that information. 

kuz only received his current reputation in the English speaking web after KolymaNET's renewal, so if you're only interested in his current business and not in his past you can simply skip to section 4. If you're not planning to skip, make sure to read everything for reasons highlighted above.

His favorite Touhou character is Hong Meiling.

9channel: The Official Narrative

Note: The following section is a retelling of 9channel and Kuz's history on the internet up until the original 9channel's shutdown in 2017 as written in official sources such as Kuz's personal blog and KolymaNET's website.

Kuz was born on June 30th of 1988 in Omsk, Russia. His father was Anatoli Kuznetsov, who hailed from Vladivostok and his mother, Fedorova Kuznetsov, came from a family of immigrants from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. He began programming at age 14 and in March 14th of 2005, he made his entrance into the internet by creating a deep-web Russian textboard called "9channels8birds" (referencing a Russian pun), often referred to as 9ch, 9ch8br and most commonly 9channel. Originally 9channel had no domain, just a port on Kuz's IP address. About a year later it was moved to TOR, and eventually made available to the clearweb. A couple days after it's creation, the first board was created, with the purpose of filesharing. The site grew respectfully popular for what it was, receiving a couple hundred daily users by April. The same month, the site was also fully renamed to 9channel (Девя.ч/devyach). It later shut down after kuz maxed out his internet line, but he brought it back in July. In January 12th of 2006 a second developer and administrator joined called Roman V. Semyonovich (also known as "DCPDEV" or DCP online). With his help the KolymaBBS was created, which was a set of bulletin boards that incorporated 9channel. This brought a large influx of new users to the site. In late 2006, 9channel's first image-board was created. The site as a whole, both the image and text boards, were a hotbed of criminal activity and the sharing of pornography/pirated software. In December 2005, KolymaNET was founded by kuz as a parent company and legal guardian of 9channel. It was "renewed" from an old Russian internet service provider called "Mag-Net", "Mag" being short for "Magadan", a Russian town.

9channel's peak is, coincidentally, considered to be 2009, the year in which the site received a large boost in popularity due to it being a front page feature in an article on the Russian local newspaper omsk.ru, which described the site as an "intense harm to local society". The same year, kuz showed up in a 9channel convention in Saint Petersburg. In 2014, he moved to The United States.

Kuz's news posts informing people of 9channel's shutdown.

9channel reached 500,000 active users by 2017, but unfortunately that same year the site was forced to shut down due to legal reasons. kuz made a news post informing users of the coming end on December 18th, and the site was fully closed on December 22nd. This was effectively the end of kuz's career until the relaunching and rebranding of KolymaNET in it's current, modern form in 2019.

Known 9channel Staff Members

Yuri Mikhailovich Kuznetsov

• Russian name - Юрий М. Кузнецов.
• Founded 9channel in March 14th, 2005.
• Served as a 9channel administrator.
• Born in Omsk, Russia on June 30th 1988.
• Nicknames - kuz, kooz, kuzzykins.

Roman Yevdokim Semyonovich

• Russian name - Роман В. Семенович.
• Joined 9channel as a second administrator on January 12th, 2006.
• Born in Russia on April 17th, 1984.
• Nicknames - DCPDEV, DCP.

mot

• Real name - Unknown.
• Joined 9channel as a moderator on March 14th, 2005.
• Born in Britain on November 16th, 1978.

eptil1

• Real name - Unknown.
• Joined 9channel as a moderator on April 11th, 2005.
• Born in Russia on September 2nd, 1987.

Yuka

• Born in Russia.
• Joined 9channel on March 2nd, 2008 as a moderator.
• Real name - Unknown.

kittymod

• Real name - Unknown.
• Joined 9channel as a moderator on March 14th, 2005.
• Born in Latvia on January 20th, 1985.

Nishimura Y. Toyoshige

• No information about him has been archived other than the fact that he was part of "Team nc9ch", nc9ch being some sort of failed old project related to 9channel.

9channel: The Unofficial Narrative

Note: The following section is a retelling of 9channel and Kuz's history on the internet according to sources not supported or commented on by kuz/KolymaNET, some of which are biased against him. Much of this section is copy-pasted directly from those sources, so keep in mind that these are not my words. It is completely unknown how accurate the following is, if at all. 

kuz was born in June 30th of 1988. His mother was a Chinese immigrant, and father was an alcoholic who worked on a large community farm. He worked on the farm until age 16, where he married his first wife. In the early to mid 2000s, kuz spent most of his time browsing random internet forums and teaching himself english. in 2002, he was 14 years old, at this age he purchased himself a computer. throughout his mid-teens in 2003 and 2004 he would regularly visit 2chan.net, though he spoke nearly no Japanese. Despite various rumors, kuznetsov never frequented SA as much as moot did, though he did visit there on several occasions. Shortly after the site was created, kuznetsov visited 4chan. He was inspired by the design. He and moot became regular contacts around this time. Through 2003 and 2004, kuz taught himself PHP and basic HTML/CSS.

In 2005, Kuznetsov began working for a Russian internet services provider called Mag-Net, which provided internet for eastern Russia, primarily, Magadan, hence the name. On March 14th, kuznetsov created 9ch8br, short for 9channels8birds. The name was later shortened to "9ch" or "9channel". In the beginning the site had no textboards, no imageboards, just a single screen with a file uploading button and a menu for viewing and selecting files below. It was incredibly basic in terms of looks, a dark blue background, white text, and minimal UI. It had one board called /ap/. 9channel was never hugely popular as kuz would like to claim in later years, never surpassing more than 10,000 daily posts. It's design was almost certainly inspired by another Japanese textboard called ayashiis world. The site was TOR only, and was almost exclusively used for sharing pornography, pirated software, and other controversial and illegal content. In late 2005, it likely had under 1,000 daily active users. It was during this time that the creation of KolymaNET was theorized. The company was created on December 7th, 2005.

In 2006, he hired Roman Semyonovich, who went by the internet handle "DCP". The pair became close friends and worked together to fix up 9channels code, which was hilariously bad. Kuznetsov wrote it only 4 months into learning PHP, and after hiring DCP, a talented PHP programmer, he put down programming for good, hence, why he only hires others and cant fix simple bugs himself. Very shortly before kunetsov's 18th birthday, he made a newspost to the now growing population of 9ch users (around 4,500). I have translated best i can (dont know any russian, just an american fan of russian internet stuff) this was his last newspost for 3 years, his next being in 2008.

greetings,
I come bearing news. Firstly, of bulletin boards. We have them now, please do use them appropriatley because me and my dearest friend and our newest developer, DCPDEV, have worked arduosly on them. You may use them to post images, shockwave flash, GIF, and other things. Please, do not upload pornography to the bulletin boards, and do not upload to them very quickly with lots of nonsense. I made 2 of these bulletin boards, /a/ is for discussion of anime, and /ap/. the latter of which is the counterpart to the /ap/ file uploader.
Secondly, DCPDEV will be our co-administrator for the time being, as i am taking an.. extended break for personal life reasons. [translators note: marriage] Do not worry, i am coming back shortly. Expect 7 or 8 days of absence. Sadly, i will not be around for the 1 year anniversary on 9channel. But i hope you all the best in the time being.
— kuzya

DCP was an overall boon to 9channel, he helped bring more users to what was before a dead link sharing site, he moved it to the clearweb and helped Kuznetsov set up some more features, and provided servers for Kuznetsov to use. Roman himself was not particularly rich, and was about 20 when he met Kuznetsov, meaning, now in 2021, he should be about 35. The site caught notice of local authorities, and was later brought to the clearweb. From this moment on, Kuznetsov likely was at least aware that authorities were closely watching him. By late 2007, Kuznetsov had seen many successes in his newfound internet ventures, he had made enough money from Zdavaprom, a advertisement agency, to quit his job at Mag-Net and move to an apartment in Omsk City. From 2007, up until March 2008, Kuznetsov enjoyed relative peace. He made a fair amount of money from his websites, and had started to get on his feet. It was likely within his knowledge that the Roskomnadzor (Роскомнадзор) were onto him. Роскомнадзор, is a branch of the Federal Security Services in Russia, they are esentially internet police + FBI.

From here the story begins deviating from 9channel and getting more complex, but to sum it up, the following claims are made about kuz-

• Kuz's first wife, Masha Kuznetsova, died in a tractor accident in 2008. Kuz took a break from the internet after this, during which the site was mostly handled by DCP, who went on to hire a man called Anton Maximov. With help from Anton, who was in contact with the owner of Mag-Net, he bought the company to act as an arm of KolymaNET, but kept the Mag-Net branding. In 2011, Mag-Net was liquidated and sold to Centronet, effectively ending KolymaNET's days as an ISP. Many employees were fired in the process. Kuz remarried at some point later, and remarried again in 2021.
• Kuz heavily censored political discussion relating to figures he supported.
• Kuz was a tax evader.
• The Roskomnadzor (RKN) heavily monitored kuz and his acossiates.
• kuz went to a 9channel convention in Saint Petersburg in 2008/2009.
• Kuz contracted HIV, details regarding the time and place are numerous and contradicting. It's most commonly believed that he caught it from a polish woman in 2008 or 2009. Some also say he got it from a woman called Cvnka, and go on to claim that she once got access to his 9channel admin password and used it to vandalize the site. Details are blurry, with some claiming the Polish prostitute from which he contracted aids is the same person as Cvnka and some claiming they're not the same person, and that he met Cvnka during his 2015 visit to Poland.
• With the help of a Hungarian businessman called Vass Boldizar, kuz created Rychuvak, a TOR only bitcoin trading platform, in 2010. Boldizar and Maximov often indulged in CSAM, Maximov even engaged with underage prostitutes. Rychuvak eventually shut down in 2018. Boldizar disappeared and took the servers with him. About 250k USD in bitcoin were "lost".
• Kuz was briefly arrested several times.
• Kuz moved to The United States in 2014.
• For a while after, kuz served as a moderator on 2ch.hk during which his interest in bulletin boards was reignited. He resigned in late 2016.
• Finally, 9channel was forcefully shut down by the Russian govermant in 2017. Following this, DCP disappeared from the internet while Anton Maximov remained a loyal friend to kuz. All of kuz's internet companies were shut down as well.

Assessment of Information

The "about" section on Kuzentsov's personal blog, as it was displayed on September 20th, 2020.

In the previous two sections, I've regurgitated the information present in various sources without questioning them. Now let's put whatever information we can under a critical eye. The sources are all listed below.

The first and most obvious point of contention is 9channel's size. Kuz himself has provided inconsistent information on the matter. On the 13th of December, 2020, kuz posted a response to "misconceptions" about him on his personal blog (more on that later). Among other things, he claimed that 9channel had 500k active users in 2017.

"Got my name correct, got "9chan8birds" wrong. It was also not a "russian board" it was a set of 94 boards. It had 500,000 active users in 2017."

However, the "about" section on the same blog claimed the following less then two months prior -

[...]" At its peak, it served around 500,000-600,000 users. though in its late stages, that number increased greatly."

A supposed screenshot of 9channel's front page.

Keep in mind that the site supposedly shut down in 2017, meaning that by then the "500k-600k" number should've been far higher. Kuz backtracked on 9channel's size even further later, claiming on another domain he used for his blog that 9channel had "50,000-60,000 users" at it's peak. This seems to support the claim leveraged by an anonymous Github callout document that 9channel was "never hugely popular" as kuz likes to claim. This is also supported by the noticeable lack on actual concrete proof of 9channel's existence - difficulty finding evidence of such of thing is not unexpected for the Russian deep-web, but for a website the size kuz used to claim 9channel was and which had a clearweb gateway, it seems suspicious. Some have used this lack of evidence to assert that 9channel never truly existed, and that kuz is fabricating his own history on the internet. Moreover, they claim that the Github page and a Neocities page we'll get to in a bit were written by kuz himself to further this false narrative, and that KolymaNET's "restoration" in 2019 was actually it's creation. Supposedly the motive for kuz to do this is that he wants to be "the Russian moot", or that he wants to larp as being bigger and more important than he really is or that he wants to not be seen as an outsider to the imageboard sphere on website he's trying to buy.

A 9channel twitter profile from 2009.

While it can't be determined how much of Kuz's words are truthful, it's more likely that 9channel *did* exist and simply wasn't as big as he claims. The first piece of evidence for this is a Russian Devyach twitter account created in 2009, which contains an .onion link in it's bio, displays "Omsk, Russia" as it's location and uses a phrase in it's bio that's also used on the front page of Devyach's revival in the present day. Another piece of evidence is a Neocities page about 9channel's history supposedly created by a "kuz stalker". The page claims to have been created in 2015, and google search results confirm this. There is still doubt to be had about the twitter page, however, since kuz by his own admission wiped out most of his presence on the internet prior to 9channel's collapse, which makes it strange that the account hasn't been deleted. There's also the strange fact that while devyach.net claims to be a revival of 9channel, kuz actually mentioned devyach as a website that he bought, not created, in his aforementioned response to misconseptions (see citation 23).

A screencap of Strawberryheaven's front page on May 28th, 2021.

Similarly, however, the Github document can also be called into question. The page itself was written by an anonymous author and published in April 2021. It goes strangely in-depth into Kuz's life, leading one to ask how the writer could've gained any of this information without fabricating it or being kuz themselves. Furthermore, absolutely no proof or mention of the existence of Vass Boldizar or Zdavaprom (an advertisement agency kuz alledgedly owned prior to 9channel's collapse) could be found. One thing mentioned in the document that could be found mentioned *on Kuz's website and not by a user*, however, is Rychuvak. Archived snapshots could be found of Strawberryheaven (a kuz website we'll get to later) that show a list of dead boards, presumably original 9channel boards considering their date of closure is mentioned to be December 22nd 2017. The same list can be found on KolymaBBS. Among these boards are /ca/ - Crime Announcements, /rape/ - Porno/Rape and /ry/ - Rychuvak Criminial Syndicate. Considering that Kuz's main claim to fame is no longer a TOR website known for criminal activity but rather a legal business AND considering that he claimed to have actively wiped his presence on the internet, one has to wonder why on earth he would choose to make this information public, which gives more fuel to the theory that it and the Github document were fabricated by kuz for clout or other purposes.

MagNet's website, as it appeared on January 10th of 2001.

Another thing that could be found is Mag-Net, the Russian ISP that KolymaNET purchased. It was real, and as written in the Github document, was hosted on the kolyma.net domain. The company was created in 1999 and wayback machine captures of it date back to the year 2000. The site doesn't seem to have gone any noteworthy changes during or after the supposed purchase by KolymaNET. It's actually a little difficult to draw the line between KolymaNET and MagNet - KolymaNET claims to have been "renewed" from MagNet in 2005 after which it served as an ISP among other things, but it's not clear what is meant by this. It becomes stranger when compared to the Github's claim that KolymaNET purchased the company in 2008, and that kuz only quit his job at MagNet in 2007. Moreover, the site still doesn't seem to have undergone any changes when the company was liquidated and sold to Centronet in 2011. As is evident by the wayback machine captures, MagNet continued to exist on the kolyma.net domain after this supposed purchase by Centronet. There also just isn't much proof regarding KolymaNET's purpose as an entity separate from MagNet. Overall, the relation and line between the two companies is hard to define.

Something that lends more credibility to the Github document (or to the idea that it was written by kuz himself) is the existence of Anton Maximov - he's real, and much like the anonymous author alleged he's still working with kuz. Specifically, a quote from Maximov is displayed on the main page of KolymaNET's NSS subdomain (more on that later), a quote that is supposedly from 2015. Elsewhere, he's also mentioned to be the director of that arm of the company. His Russian name is "Антон Максимов".

Regarding Roman Semyonovich, kuz claimed he joined 9channel in 2006, as do Semyonovich's bio and the Github document, though KolymaNET's now defunct wiki claimed it occured in 2005. Since this wiki was likely editable by anyone the information presented in it shouldn't be taken as seriously as information that comes from kuz himself, though it's worth noting that the wiki was hosted on KolymaNET's website rather than being independently owned by an unrelated party. The wiki also claimed kuz moved to The United States "for tax reasons".

As for the Cvnka incident, kuz entirely denies that any of it ever happened. He responded to the rumors in a blog post in December 2020 -

"Wow, this is a whole lot of nonsense in just a couple sentences. I did go to a convention in saint petersburg, yes. I did not meet a polish girl halfway through, i never met any women there actually. This "cvnka" character was a mere 12 years old when this event took place (2009). If you are wondering, cvnka is the name of an american vtuber and online personality. I have no connections to her, but for some reason, there are very pertinent rumors that we know eachother—I assure you, we do not! Ask her yourself, or, better, stop harassing her with stupid and innapropriate questions about me. Thanks."

Do note that the Neocities page claims that Cvnka incident occurred in 2015.

Finally, kuz still claims to be working with DCP, despite the Github document claiming that he quit the internet following 9channel's collapse.

KolymaNET - The Present Day

"First and foremost, like the Free Software Foundation, the Kolyma Network believes the internet should be free. Running continuously since 2005, we have never failed to continue delivering the extensive archival network to the users who need it most. The internet should be a free and open place for anyone who wishes to use it for expressing their creations, opinions, and artistic creations."

Now we arrive the modern era of KolymaNET and Kuz's presence on the internet, following the collapse of 9channel. Evidence from here on out is FAR more concrete, reliable and proven.

A screenshot from KolymaNET's website.

Restoration efforts began in 2019, and by 2020 The Kolyma Network's website was back, hosted on the domain kolyma.jp. Originally, the new KolymaNET was centered around webhosting services, specifically "The Free Webhosting Project".

"Coming in december of this year, we will launch the Free Webhosting Project. The sole intent to provide free webhosting to anyone who needs it. No advertising, no fees, no branding. This means that any user can register a serverspace on our network and host their website free of charge. The user will have to pay for such things as the domain, but the webhosting is completely free. A guaranteed 50gb cap, 1gb of Server Memory, and instant access to your server console at any time. 24/7/365."

The renewed company started out small in scope, the website even claimed "we arent corporation. we arent a government agency. Hell, I dont even know why Im saying "we". Its just 3 people." It would later expand to include protections and other internet services as the company grew and kuz became involved with more and more websites. Kuz also opened his personal blog. On February 3rd, 2021 the site was restructured and switched to the kolyma.org domain. 9channel was also revived under devyach.net. 9chan.moe and 9channel hideout were made as well.

KolymaBBS

KolymaBBS, as it appeared on bbs.kolyma.org.

The KolymaBBS system was reestablished, once again as an aggregation of several text/imageboard and originally only hosted KolymaNET's own textboards, a news aggregator called the KNN (Kolyma News Navigator) and StraberryHeaven.net, a new website intended to be a successor to Heyuri.net in a period of time during which the site was down for months (more on that later). KolymaBBS would grow to include other imageboards using KolymaNET's services and/or owned by the network. However, on the 10th of july 2021, kuz announced the dissolution KolymaBBS, stating that in the future KolymaNET will reposition itself as an internet-service company, and that it would be distanced from managing the various websites under it's umbrella. The services currently offered by KolymaNET include the following -

• BBS Creation
• Rental Servers & VPS Rental
• Website Hosting
• Contractual Software Development
• News Aggregation
• File Hosting and Storage
• IP Address Rental

KolymaBBS technically still exists, however it's back to only hosting KolymaNET's own textboards and it only links to other sites using the network's services instead of fully incorporating them.

Policy

Webhosting and protection services remain KolymaNET's primary purpose as a business, at least on a surface level. As expected, some restrictions are placed on KolymaNET hosted websites.

Global Policy
There are no exceptions to these rules.
1.Do not violate Russian Law - The Kolyma Network will take measures to ensure that the law of the Russian Federation is enforced on all of our services, servers, websites, chats, bulletin boards, etc.
2.Do not post sexually exploitive material of children - This includes, but is not limited to: child pornography, "jailbait", and "child modeling".
3.Do not spam or flood.
4.Do not evade or bypass filters or blocks Attempting to evade a filter or block which is set to prevent the action from taking place is against our policy.
5.Do not promote terrorism or violence Promoting violence against individuals or groups is forbidden. Do not advertise for terrorist organizations, do not encourage or celebrate terrorist activity.
6.Do not upload malware or computer viruses to our servers, or attempt to spread other malicious software
7.Do not conduct cybercrime, such as DDoS or Phishing
 Special Notice from Network Security Service
"Loli" or "Lolicon", is defined as fictional depictions, drawn or simulated, of underage or "young-looking" persons. This content is no longer forbidden as of May 20th, 2017. It does not fall under our rule again CSAM, since it does not depict real persons, and can therefor not have an "age", or be under 18 years old.
In-House Guidelines
NOTICE! These rules do not apply and are not enforced on customers websites, VPS's, rental servers, or other products, and only apply to KolymaNET-run sites or services.
there are rules and policies which apply to KolymaNET only (such as the KolymaNET IRC server).
1.Doxxing - It is generally against our guidelines to Doxx people.
2.Promotion of extremist ideologies, this includes Nazism/Fascism, Communism, or other harmful ideologies.
3.Advocacy of criminal acts, it is especially forbidden to post "crime-announcements", or other encouragement of criminal activity. It is forbidden to promote harm to other individuals, or to promote murder or suicide, or to encourage others to commit murder or suicide.
4.Promotion of LGBT/Beastiality/Pedophilia is forbidden.

The NSS

The front page of KolymaNET's NSS subdomain.

The NSS or Network Security Service is an arm of KolymaNET tasked handling so called threats to the company. The NSS is public about it's datamining initiatives, stating the following -

"Kolyma's Network Security Service is the leading security group on the runet. The NSS is tasked with a variety of tasks, such as monitoring dangerous users, cooperating with the surveillance office to collect and catalog information on certain users, remove internal and external threats, and ensure the social integrity of the whole of the Kolyma Network."

The NSS keeps a public list of "dangerous websites" and "public enemies" to The Kolyma Network. Naturally, the NSS is very controversial, leading many to distrust Kolyma owned websites and make accusations that KolymaNET as a whole is just a datamining scheme.

Known KolymaNET personnel

(excluding kuz and other figures that were mentioned above.)

*ceje

*Kaguya

*Nakura/名無しあき

*Skyzzerz

*Yakui

*Yemu/예무

Involvement With Various Websites/People

Much of KolymaNET and Kuz's infamy in modern times comes not from the network itself, but rather Kuz's conduct on existing websites, particularly imageboards. kuz is a massive shitposter, even on sites he shows interest in purchasing, and often becomes the center of many controversies on those sites.

Heyuri

Heyuri's front page.

Heyuri is an imageboard created by Riley James Bell (better known as lolico) in 2018 It was originally hosted on the Heyuri.cf domain and meant to be a P2P filesharing website, but on November 24th 2019 it was relaunched in it's current form as an imageboard. On February 29th of 2020, the site switched to it's current domain, heyuri.net. It was incorporated into KolymaBBS prior to it's disslolution. kuz calls it his favorite website, which some consider strange since kuz is a fan of soyjak shitposting which is banned on Heyuri. Heyuri also hosts kuz's clone of ayashii world.

Kuz took interest in Heyuri in early 2020 and on the 26th of May, replaced Cavalier as the site's second administrator. In June, the site was transferred to KolymaNET's servers and a new developer was hired - akima. On July 9th, akima sabotaged Heyuri's main server, yukari, by running malicious commands until it fatally crashed, and the data lost was completely unrecoverable. akima claimed it was a hard drive failure. The site is down until lolico restores a backup and kuz makes a news post explaining the situation. Spam and server issues continue into the following months, allegedly caused by further sabotage from akima.

Lolico and kuz were prone to conflict and on the 29th of July, kuz gets demoted to a moderator and briefly fired before being rehired on August 23rd, but fighting between the two continues and heats up to the point where kuz threatens to reveal lolico's private information, though he quickly apologizes and asks to be demoted to a mod again, before completely resigning in August 27th. His resignation isn't taken well by some users, and many turn on lolico. In September, kuz exposes akima for intentionally sabotaging the site. Lolico initially disbelieves him, and akima responds by spamming the site and using his ftp access to delete all files and replace the front page with guro and lolico's doxx. Lolico makes a post attacking kuz, exposing him for allegedly threatening him, spamming heyuri with soyjaks and secretly keeping his admin privileges when he demoted himself to a mod. He also leaks private discord conversations with kuz. Following this, lolico kills Heyuri for several months. A thread about the drama is made on 3chan in which both kuz and lolico make an appearence. In the meantime, kuz seizes the heyuri.cf domain and creates strawberryheaven.net to act as a successor to Heyuri, and many refugees settle there or on 3chan.

A news post announcing Heyuri's return.

In late September, lolico announces that he's planning to bring Heyuri back sometime in the future, and on December 1st the relaunch is confirmed to be occuring under both kuz and lolico, who have supposedly made up their differences. consequently, Straberryheaven is shut down, but in January 2021 it's reopened by kuz for "posterity" before being closed again later that year. Just a couple days after the relaunch, lolico retires, giving kuz ownership of the site. Kuz reveals this in a news post, in which he also says that DCP and the Strawberryheaven team would be stepping in to fulfill his role as developers, though lolico was later rehired by KolymaNET and as of February 2022 works as a developer for Heyuri which brings us to the current state of the site. As of February 2022, akima is listed by the NSS as a public enemy of The Kolyma Network, though he's marked as "handled".

Opinions on kuz are generally positive among those who still use the site, though among older users who left or unrelated onlookers it's more mixed. As for lolico, he also earned his fair share of infamy for the debacle, particularly amongst kuz loyalists who disliked lolico's handling of the situation as well as his management of the site in general compared to kuz. As one user wrote following the September 2020 incident-

"If you really want to know then I'll tell you, but it's nothing you haven't been told before, and most of it's water under the bridge at this point (and hopefully “lessons learned”): You waved off criticism by wrongly assuming that anyone who had developed a negative opinion of you or your actions must be a troll You believed that Heyuri was somehow going to surpass both 4chan and Reddit in size, and even saw that as a desirable outcome, despite proving to be unequipped to manage a site that's only a microscopic fraction of those Contrary to the above belief, you've expressed that Heyuri was better before the main userbase came along - a userbase which was more humorous, more lighthearted, more cancer-free, and more dense with amazing OC creators than any imageboard community I've ever seen. You couldn't have dreamt up a better userbase - rarely ever does any site get to experience such a golden age - and yet you were still unhappy with it, all because we didn't mongle your cock hard enough You got annoyed over people praising and making OC about kuz more often than they did you, even calling it “unfair”, and you threatened to fire everyone or give up Heyuri if it continued. This was despite you being the one who hired kuz to be co-admin and community liaison in your stead, and you rarely ever stepping foot outside of discord to make your presence known on Heyuri (at least beyond reporting that bugs had been fixed from time to time) You showed little to no respect to the people who volunteered their own time and effort to help Heyuri out behind the scenes, and you would frequently fire (or threaten to fire) them for the pettiest of reasons - usually for having the audacity to exercise privileges that you'd given them in the first place. When they would try to do some obvious good (like dealing with repeat rule breakers, running OC contests, creating a positions page to help get more volunteers onboard, or attempting to enable a captcha in the midst of a heavy spam attack), you would shut it down and/or fire them because you hadn't personally reviewed every aspect and given it the greenlight That part was so unbelievably dumb and arrogant that it's worth reiterating: you once fired Heyuri's co-admin/server host because they attempted to enable the captcha during a heavy spam attack without getting your express permission first. Anyone with their head outside their ass would have fired their co-admin for NOT enabling the captcha in that situation, but your head was wedged up there so firmly that I'm surprised you didn't consider selling molds of your head for use as a buttplug To add insult to injury, you'd been warned numerous times before and after that point that having no form of captcha or spam prevention in place on an imageboard in today's internet climate was a massive vunerability, but you chose to either ignore those warnings, or devalued their importance Ultimately, you didn't value the golden egg-laying goose that you'd happened upon, nor did you value much of the contributions made by others to help you rear it, and it ended up dying a violent and perfectly avoidable death Through sheer arrogance, you drove virtually everyone around you away; everyone that is except for notorious thorn in Heyuri's side “faganon”, and a double-agent skiddie who dox'd you and played you like a fool - and who pwned Heyuri beyond repair after you'd conveniently fired all the potential lines of defense for him. And then you had the gall to forgive the skiddie for his actions, while continuing to hold a grudge against your former staff and userbase! That's why I consider the lolico of 3-4 months ago to be an egotistical asshole, and why I hope for yours and everyone else's sake that you've changed since then If you have changed, and you do end up reviving Heyuri with kuz (or something to that effect), I will personally take pole position in the line to suck your cock, and I'll swallow your man juice with pride. Just saying… "

Kuz himself does not seem to share these negative views on lolico.

Gurochan/G3

G3's logo.

G3 is a set of three sister sites with a focus on lolicon and gore/guro hentai hosted by The Kolyma Network. It launched in March 14th, 2021. It's comprised of Loliboard/Loliach, a lolicon/shotacon imageboard, Gorechan, a gore imageboard and Gurochan, a guro (real-life gore is not allowed) imageboard, which will be the main focus of this section. Loliboard and Gorechan were created by the Kolyma Network.

Gurochan was founded in 2005, and has gone through many domain changes, reboots and ownership transfers in it's lifetime. After several months of being down, the site was brought back on January 29th 2021 by kuz under a new domain - gurochan.ga, after the staff found KolymaNET and agreed to use it's hosting services, and kuz is brought on as a co-admin. The site's structure is restored and on the 31st, a news post confirms that "Gurochan has been absorbed into the greater sphere of imageboards in the Kolyma Network". In February 6th, it's also decided to switch from TinyIB to KolymaNET's own imageboard software: kokonotsuba, which is also used on Heyuri. Gurochan was also incorporated into KolymaBBS prior to it's dissolution.

Straitjakit's thread on r/guro.

On February 13th, following an argument between kuz and the co-admin Straitjakit in which kuz proposed running ads on Gurochan to which Straitjakit refused, kuz seized ownership of the site, citing Straitjakit's mental instabillity. In his post announcing this on Gurochan's /dis/ board, he also states that the moderators have all been replaced with "Kolyma Network Operatives. Straitjakit responds, claiming that kuz trademarked Gurochan's name behind the team's back and that he's planning to create a new website to replace it. He also makes a thread on the subreddit r/guro accusing kuz of going AWOL, datamining users and buying several domains to prevent a replacement site from being made. kuz (u/kuzzykins) posts in the thread and the two argue, kuz denies that any user information other than IPs is being collected, explains that the ads he suggested would be guro-related and used to cover the cost of the servers and asserts that he owns "the domain, files and copyright." According to kuz, Straitjakit banned him from the staff channel following their argument about the ads, and Straitjakit's prospect of creating a new Gurochan violates his copyright. Straitjakit further accuses kuz of sending legal threats and threatening to doxx him and seize more of his property, kuz denies the latter two accusations and calls them "potential libel". Opinions in the thread are overwhelmingly pro-Straitjakit, with some users protesting the idea of kuz copyrighting Gurochan's name in the first place. Straitjakit later deleted his reddit and discord accounts. On the 24th, kuz publishes an explanation of the fiasco from his point of view on his personal blog.

Encyclopedia Dramatica's Gurochan page after it was vandalized.

In June, kuz announced that he will be handing Gurochan over to another owner due to legal issues he's had with Gurochan's content, the new owner being "Kutay Demir", better known as Kaguya, another KolymaNET official who also serves as a moderator on Heyuri. Kaguya hosts a short Q&A on /dis/. On July 7th, Encyclopedia Dramatica's page on Gurochan was vandalized with claims that the site is infected with malware. The vandalized page also called kuz a "Vodka-swilling Swindler" and a "notorious kike". News of the vandalism is posted to KolymaNET's news aggregator. Straitjakit (or someone pretending to be him), presumably the vandal, posts on /dis/, mocking Kaguya and linking another /dis/ thread claiming that discord and reddit are where most of the guro community is. The vandalism is brought up, and the OP recieves a ban message linking to Straitjakit's page on the Gurochan wiki. As of February 2022, Straitjakit has an entry on the NSS list of public enemies. In December, a news post by Kaguya announced that Gurochan would be migrated to another host due to downtime, but the decision was reversed, and the site continues to use KolymaNET's hosting.

64chan/Lolifox/maki

A picture of Maki.

Xavier Cisneros, better known as Maki is a minor internet figure, known for creating several small imageboards as well as getting arrested in 2019 for allegedly threatening to shoot up his high school in Bethel Park. His websites include Lolifox, 64chan and autismchan. Most of what's known about him is unrelated to his involvement with kuz, so it won't be mentioned here. Info is sparse so It'll quickly summarize -

• In 2020, KolymaNET unsuccessfully tried to aquire Lolifox.
• When Maki tried starting a webhosting service called "Makibox", kuz posted a warning on his personal blog telling people that the service is crap and that they shouldn't use it.
• Maki paid for a DDoS attack on KolymaNET's servers.
• kuz placed a bounty on Maki, offering 1k USD for any information that can be used to get Maki arrested. This bounty has since been claimed.
• Lolifox got spammed with CP and gore.
• Months later, an official KolymaNET statement mentioned that the company used legal action against "a group that attempted to DDoS out network", possibly referring to Maki.
• In the blogpost in which kuz announced the dissolution of KolymaBBS, he also mentioned that several employees have been purged for "the lolifox attempted-seizure".
• Maki has an entry on the NSS list of public enemies, but it mentions that he's "deemed no longer a threat."

Multichan/Tokiko

A picture of Tokiko.

Robert Brown, also known as Tokiko, is an American web developer and antifa supporter. He's the creator of the Multichan project, a decentralized, federated and anonymous textboard, a project which kuz was involved in. Details are shaky so I'll summmarize what I can -

• Tokiko was originally meant to be hired by KolymaNET to work on Kokonotsuba, but was removed.
• kuz was initially a part of the Multichan project, which was hosted on multich.kuz.lol as well as 0chan.vip, bbs.4x13.net, multichan.sageru.org, ripirc.org and some others.
• According to kuz, in June 2021, Tokiko's computer broke and he contacted kuz and asked for help with repairing it, kuz said he refuses unless Tokiko agrees to do some work for him.
• Tokiko took this as mockery, and publicly claimed that he's being scammed and abused by KolymaNET, and accuses KolymaNET of mass datamining and slave labour, and spreads a supposed doxx of kuz.
• On July 1st, KolymaNET issues an official statement written by kuz, in which he announces his withdrawl from the Multichan project and condemns it's creators.
• kuz accuses Tokiko and his accomplices of censorship, spamming CP on KolymaNET websites and warns people not to use Multichan.
• Tokiko gets placed in the NSS list of public enemies.
• ripirc.org gets placed in the NSS dangerous websites list.
• A user on a KolymaNET imageboard puts up fliers in Tokiko's town calling him a pedophile.
• Multichan gets raided with pro kuz/anti Multichan threads.
• kuz posts on his personal blog that a Multichan admin is demanding him privately on discord to shut down KolymaNET.
• Tokiko makes a post calling kuz a cybercriminal and claiming that threatened him and tried forcing him to work for free.
• In September, kuz offers a 1000 USD rewards in exchange for Tokiko's home address.
• Tokiko's name is still listed on the NSS public enemies list, however the entry itself was expunged. At one point, Tokiko was listed as public enemy #1.
• multich.kuz.lol is changed to a single gif of Hatsune Miku dancing and saying "GO FUCK YOURSELF".

soyjak.party

soyjak.party's front page.

soyjak.party, often shortened to "the party", is a soyjak themed imageboard spun off from 4chan's /qa/ board. It was created in September 2020 by a guy called Soot, who advertised it in a thread on /qa/. The vast majority of activity is concentrated on the /soy/ board. The site has it's own wiki and a booru for soyjaks. kuz posted on the party fairly often with his tripcode, sometimes just to shitpost. The default name on the site is "Chud" instead of "Anonymous".

On June 22nd 2021, kuz made an first appearance on the party, posting a thread on the /suggest/ board offering soot "a few grand" for the site in a strangely jokey tone. Anons in the thread shitpost and "pretend" to freak out but soot confirms he's "not selling shit". On July 4th, someone makes a thread on /b/ about KolymaNET, claiming that the company a datamining operation, that it's fabricating it's history and warning people of the threat, users begin to theorize that the party has already been secretly sold. Some also pointed out that recent CP spam could've been the new owner's doing. Soot responds rather aggressively, giving the OP a public ban ("THE PARTY DIDN'T GET SOLD, KYS DRAMAFAG"), and said that he "never even got a fucking offer".

An infographic explaining the conspiracy theory.

One user then pointed out something strange - The IP address that soyjak.party points to changed on June 22nd, the same day kuz posted his offer on /suggest/. Another user pointed out that the e-mail service used for [email protected] is Yandex, a Russian company. Soot claims he used Yandex since the site's creation and locks the thread. kuz posts in the thread before it gets locked, simply saying "yikes...". Another thread on the matter is made on /soy/ in which a user adds that two wiki mods were demoded shorty after kuz made his offer. Soot asserts that the IP change occurred because he changed hosts to improve performance, that the site is worthless and that he never talked to kuz at all. kuz posts in the thread, renewing his offer and asserting that he's being serious about buying the site. Despite this, Soot was added to the NSS list of public enemies and marked as "handled", though his entry specifies that he's not a "kolyma-specific enemy". The entry was later removed from the list entirely.

On July 9th, kuz's tripcode, !WezrG/5mtU, was cracked and posted on /soy/ in a thread calling for a mass raid on KolymaNET imageboards while using kuz's trip - several sites were briefly taken down a result. kuz later switched to his current tripcode - !netsovkMgo. A debate occurred in October when a user suggested adding a gemvote/coalvote system to the party (essentially likes and dislikes) which ended in many users ironically demanding the feature from soot, which kuz supported in an open letter to Soot where he also asks to be modded. Eventually, a user comes in with their own soyjak imageboard, soyjaks.net, to which he promised to add this feature. Eventually, he did. However, it didn't take long before users noticed that the site was hosted by KolymaNET, one clue to that being that the site used kokonotsuba, and kuz had to come out and admit he was the owner of the site. Drama ensued on the party and the site was taken down, it's front page being replaced with short text messages and eventually the "GO FUCK YOURSELF" Hatsune Miku gif. On December 29th, due to a large scale DDoS attack which kuz believes is coming from the party, he posts on his personal blog that he's willing to cease his involvement with the site if the attacks stop.

kuz posting on the party in December.

CP spam on the party continued and intensified as the months went by and became a larger and larger topic of discussion due to it's frequency, and users grew upset by Soot's lack of communication and failure to handle the issue. Anons often requested Soot to ban TOR as a way of reducing the spam, but instead individual nodes were banned with no word from Soot on the possibility of banning TOR posting entirely. soyjak.party's rules state that part of the reason TOR and VPNs are allowed is various conspiracies about the site being a KolymaNET datamining honeypot, some users speculated that Soot's unwillingness to ban TOR stemmed from him not wanting to reignite those accusation even if they were mostly a joke.

The CP issue reached it's (first) breaking point On January 8th 2022, when soyjak.party was taken down for over 20 hours. Many refugees flooded 4chan's /bant/ to wait it out, and speculated that the downtime is the result of a CP report. This theory was confirmed by Soot when the site came back up the next day. Speculation that kuz is behind the spam, possibly to pressure Soot into using KolymaNET's services continue. The same thing happens again just a week later on January 14th, and this time refugees flee to a bunker on 9chan.tw, in which the admin of a soyjak.party Telegram channel claims data got wiped and Soot is restoring a 5 months old backup. CP is posted on the bunker as well. While the site was down, one of soyjak.party's mods spammed the site's booru, Onionsbooru (which itself was replacement to the defunct Soybooru), with /pol/ memes before shutting it down permanently. It was later replaced by a third booru. The site was back up on the 15th, rebooted not from 5 months ago but from November, losing tens of thousands of posts as a result. Soot remained silent, and the mods restored the missing posts to the post counter over the next two weeks.

An exchange that occured between kuz and a party user regarding CP.

By this point many were sick of Soot and his management of the site, and some started to label themselves as kuz supporters. On January 25th, kuz leaked email exchanges between him and soot in which Soot actually considered selling the site for 600$ in bitcoin, but eventually changed his mind. kuz asks Soot to apologize for "betraying" him and to wordfilter his name. kuz also sent Soot an email requesting the IPs of several posters. The thread blew up and similarly did the catalog, it wasn't long before the board was hit by one of the hardest ever waves of CP due to the recaptcha having been recently removed, and than reenabled as a result. Users point out the correlation between kuz's appearances and CP being spammed, which kuz claimed is deliberately done by the CP spammer(s) in an attempt to frame him. kuz makes additional offers to help Soot deal with the problem. The party remains in disarray for many hours. In the following few days, CP begins being disguised in regular soyjak gifs/videos, causing more chaos. After a particular mp4 that starts with a dancing swedejak and than switches to a baby rape video is posted several times, users grow even more unsatisfied with Soot's handling of the site.

On February 4th, following kuz's announcement that he purchased vidlii, another wave of CP hits /soy/. The catalog once again explodes with threads about kuz/CP for the next two days and kuz aggressively responds to a thread accusing him of being behind the spam. The party tries raiding Gurochan but the raid instantly fails, and the spammers' IPs were made publicly visible on KolymaNET's anti spam database. On February 6th, a mod openly claims that "kuz supporters" are just kuz samefagging.

Yurijak.

Shortly after, kuz posted a thread acknowledging the kuz soyjak variant and announcing that he's leaving the party as a result of misinformation about him the mods "harassing" him. He also says he's leaving NSS agents on the site. He also offers to remove the IP of a guy who emailed him from the anti spam database. Reactions in the thread and other threads are mixed, some are sad to see him go and others happy, some also lament that Soot and kuz couldn't have worked together. Indeed, kuz doesn't post with his tripcode for the next few days and CP dies down.

kuz drama continues, however, as yurijak threads grow in number for the next few days, possibly as a result of kuz endorsing them in his goodbye thread. On February 16th in a thread asking people to stop talking about kuz, a mod accuses a user of secretly being kuz, and does so again in another thread, calling out kuz by name. Soot posts that kuz is "literally itt" and shows newfound hostility to him, and the mod leaks the location of a user, that being Maryville, which is in the same state as kuz. Other users come in and say that kuz lives in Memphis which is on the opposite side of the state. Soot responds saying kuz has "posted from his trip multiple times on this IP" and that it's the same ISP. Several users are offended that Soot is willing to leak a user's details out of suspision that they're kuz, and kuz makes an actual return, posting with his tripcode for the first time since his goodbye thread. Soot claimed the post was made from a brand new IP. kuz and Soot discuss publicly in the thread, kuz claimed that he posted with a VPN many times and that he feels unsafe posting with his real IP, especially after the new wave of yurijak threads in which people posted pictures of his family and threatened them. He also confirmed that NSS agents really were patrolling the site. While the conversation continued, Soot implemented the first wordfilter in the site's history - "kuz" was filtered to "im trans btw". The filter was later removed. Soot posted that he wants to believe kuz is a good guy and that he's tired of hearing about him, and kuz tells him to expect an email from him. Naturally, while that was happening the catalog exploded once more with drama thread and CP was posted as well. One user (probably jokingly) accuses Soot of spamming CP himself to which Soot responds angrily. Yet another /cpsg/ - "CP spammer general" thread is made in which Soot responds again to the same accusation. Another user makes a thread reminding people of the theory that kuz secretly bought the site in june and that the whole event was orchestrated to which a mod (kinda) reponds. The wiki gets mass vandalized and /soy/ continues going up in flames for the next 2 days as a result of all this.

kuz declaring war on Soot and revealing the IP of a pro Soot poster.

The emails kuz sent Soot.

On February 21st a janitor goes rouge, deleting a bunch of old threads as well as the locked stickies on /r9k/ and /soy. Users freak out and the janitor makes a thread claiming they did what they did as an act of protest against the mods for their management of the site, but it gets deleted. The booru temporarily goes down, leading some to believe the mods deleted it again. The mods respond to several threads about the occurrence but receive many angry responses. As the drama keeps boiling, kuz swoops in with his own replacement site - soyak.party, which only had one board (/soy/) and used kokonotsuba (we'll call it party2 for simplicity). kuz hosts a Q&A on party 2. The site gets spammed and kuz begins revealing the IPs of pro-soot posters and declares war on the party. All hell breaks loose on the party, /soy/ drowns in drama/meta discussion for the next 24 hours. Eventually Soot wakes up and makes a sticky on /soy/, claiming the rouge janitor has been fired and leaks the emails kuz sent him, in which he renews his offer to buy the party, threatens the site and Soot by saying he'll "witness the full effects of his teacherous and libelous behaviour" and demands Soot to make a locked sticky clarifying that he's not the CP spammer and than he'll withdraw all KolmyaNET employees from the party. The locked sticky on /soy/ is also remade. Soot also implies that kuz might really be behind the CP spam. The wiki is mass vandalized again and the party raids Gurochan while this is happening and spams kuz's wife's (Nedelya Kuznotsova, got married to kuz in august) email.

kuz posts in the thread in an unusually hostile tone towards Soot, calling him a "fucking retard" at one point. Soot says he wants nothing to do with him anymore. kuz berates him for leaking private emails but Soot points out that he's done the exact same thing to him in the past. kuz posts one last time in the thread, reminding people of his past "victories" against Straitjakit and Tokiko, claims that Soot posted CP to party2 and takes the site down, making it redirect to his blogpost about health tips. He later changes it to a page that displays a list of IPs "engaged in anti Kolyma activity which were confirmed not to be VPNs", signed by an NSS agent. The list mentions that one of the IPs "could be Soot".

The party waits for retaliation from kuz but as the day goes by nothing happens and people slowly go back to regular posting, though the site slows down somewhat from it's usual speed and morale is at an all time low. whether kuz was bluffing or not remains to be seen.

Vidlii

Vidlii's logo.

Vidlii is a video sharing website launched in 2015 by Jan. It's design invokes youtube in the 2000's.

The site was struggling in the 2020's and in January 2022, it's announced that the site will become a read-only archive, to many people's dismay. On February 4th, kuz makes a thread on soyjak.party claiming he bought "a video sharing site, a big one" for "10k in bitcoin". Shortly after that day, the news is made official on KNN, accompanied by an announcement on Vidlii about the change in ownership. The announcement says that Vidlii will NOT become read-only, and will be hosted by KolymaNET in the future. The new owner is not kuz but a guy called "lolwut". Later that month, the channel "CL21" uploads an interview with both kuz and lolwut, conducted in discord.

Additional websites

A caricature kuz once featured on his blog, mocking kissu and the idea that he's monopolizing imageboards.

• kissu.moe is an anime/moe themed imageboard spun off from 4chan's /qa/ board in 2018, created by "Kai Nicoll-Griffith", better known as "Verniy". After getting sick of kuz drama discussed on the site, the owner wordfiltered "kuz" to "that guy". Kissu has an entry on the NSS dangerous websites list.
• Lainchan is a technology themed imageboard created on April 20th of 2014 by "Kalyx", though he's no longer the owner. kuz posted on Lainchan several times, offering his services.