Bonum Certa Men Certa

Alexandre Oliva's Message About Cancel Culture at the FSF

Original blog post by the FSF's interim co-president

Alexandre Oliva



Being cancelled is no fun. In my case, it was for standing for a friend who got canceled for defending someone else from an accusation that was later proven false.



Occasionally, however, an opportunity to make fun of such a sad and frustrating situation arises, and then trolling the oppressors becomes irresistible.



When my friend got canceled and asked me to take his place in our organization, I and my colleagues there got a copy of Orwell's 1984 from an anonymous donor (thanks!, mine was falling apart).



The organization has just announced the schedule for a conference it organizes. I submitted a speech proposal, but I didn't even get a response. I'm told by people in the know that my speech was selected, but that there was concern I might speak in favor of the canceled person instead of the proposed topic, a freedom-compatible revamp of the portable telescreens nearly everyone else carries in their pockets or purses, so I got preemptively canceled as well. So much for an organization that fights for freedoms and human rights.



Anyway, when announcing on social media the schedule in which I was disappeared, the organization published a picture of last year's conference, at a keynote that took place on 2019-03-25. There was I, very big guy at the front plane, sitting on the second row in a very discrete, barely noticeable (not) chromakey-green T-shirt I got from the Tor Project (thanks!), like a big green canvas in the audience just waiting to be replaced in the picture.



I couldn't help the thought that this was indeed what'd happened to me in the conference schedule, and so the orders to Winston Smith's job at Minitrue, in Orwell's book's NewSpeak, came to mind.



So I posted a response in NewSpeak:



lptimes 25.3.19 misprint 2nd row tuxfree malchromakey duckspeakful unperson rectify



In the language currently spoken in Oceania and elsewhere, that translates to:



A misprint in the Mar 25, 2019 issue of lptimes shows a canceled person of unorthodox opinions on the second row, not wearing a tux, poorly and incompletely edited into a chromakey background color. Undo the poor attempt to add to the picture a person who could not possibly have been there, since canceled people never existed, reprint the issue with the restored original version of the picture, and throw the remaining copy of the picture into the memory hole.



If you were hopeful that "tuxfree" could mean something else, allow me to remind you that Linux-libre's "Free as in Freedo" slogan does not make sense in NewSpeak: in the process of eliminating the possibility of subversive thoughts, NewSpeak stripped from the word "Free" the meaning of political freedom, leaving only that of of absence or lack of something. A Freedom-free language for a Freedom-free society.



See you where there is no darkness. Or not. If you get this, you are the brotherhood (or is it the resistance?) (see slides 9 and 10). Otherwise, maybe Big Brother is ''patching'' you.



So blong...






Copyright 2007-2020 Alexandre Oliva

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this entire document worldwide without royalty, provided the copyright notice, the document's official URL, and this permission notice are preserved.

The following licensing terms also apply to all documents and postings in this blog that don't contain a copyright notice of their own, or that contain a notice equivalent to the one above, and whose copyright can be reasonably assumed to be held by Alexandre Oliva.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License BY-SA (Attribution ShareAlike) 3.0 Unported. To see a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Things Will Only Get Better (as We Go Backwards)
It only gets better. If you go back in time.
UK High Court Shows SRA is Totally Useless in Curbing SLAPPs, This Has Impact on Our Reporting on the SRA Next Week
We'll carry on our coverage and soon finish the current series that so we can get on with more time-sensitive ones
 
Gemini Links 22/09/2026: Scout Night, Cybernetic Capitalism, and Thoughts on Companies Forcing People to Adopt Plagiarism Engines
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2026: "An Arsenal of Surveillance" and Slop Bots Suggest Starting Wars
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 193 Out of 200: Breaks GNU and Linux, Tries to Silence Critics, Loses All Money, Looks for Microsoft Allies and Sponsors
The latest emotional knee-jerk reactions serve to confirm what we have long said
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 21, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, September 21, 2026
Links 21/09/2026: "Lies of the Hey Hi (AI) Industry" and Solar Power Is Getting Cheap
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2026: Equinox and Beginner's Guide to Gemini
Links for the day
Links 21/09/2026: "Back On My Bicycle" and American Regime's War on Media Escalates Further
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 192 Out of 200: The Hired Guns of Garrett and Graveley Sent Us USB Sticks (One to Me, One to My Wife) Showing Lozza Talking to Garrett About Censoring/Deplatforming Techrights the Same Time Graveley Was Copy-Pasting Garrett's Lawsuit
Next year we plan to bring this matter to the Court of Appeal
Linux Kernel Becoming a Slopfest - Part 6 - Seeing Who Contaminates Linux With Slop (And Also Admits It)
Today we begin looking at some culprits
2026: The Year Galleries Realised the Need to Flag or Cull Slop Images
Society needs to shun slopfarms, people who use LLM slop (for anything at all), companies that use bots (which they dub "agents"), and so-called 'coders' who volley garbage into project and software hubs
Software Freedom Day Celebrated in 5 or 6 Continent
Software Freedom Day (SFD) 2026 was big this year
SLAPP Censorship - Part 191 Out of 200: Garrett, Graveley and Lozza
They talk to and coordinate with one another
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 20, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, September 20, 2026
Gemini Links 21/09/2026: Digital Hoarder, GTD, Minimalism vs Digital Minimalism, Rejection of LLMs
Links for the day
Links 20/09/2026: "Google Now Asking For Users’ Video Selfies" and Energy Prices Set to Rise
Links for the day
Enjoy the Giving/Sharing, Not Taking
We've long supported what we believed in, even with the little money we had
Links 20/09/2026: Amazon Layoffs, Flock 'Buyouts' (Silent Layoffs)
Links for the day
USCIS and Microsoft Rumours: Curbs on Lowering Salaries by Importing Cheaper Replacements?
It seems like Microsoft's mass layoffs and efforts to cheapen the workforce face obstacles
Gemini Links 20/09/2026: "Music While Working" and Radio Silence
Links for the day
Clownflare Data From Canada
We've like to think many people are attempting to install GNU/Linux over the weekend
SLAPP Censorship - Part 190 Out of 200: Plagiarism, Back Doors, and Sabotage of Linux
This can go on for a decade or longer
Linux Kernel Becoming a Slopfest - Part 5 - Kernel Dependency on Plagiarism Giant Microsoft is a Death Blow to Any Kernel
Microsoft is bringing copyright-infringing slop into Linux
GNU/Linux Has Grown a Lot Lately
Based on Clownflare
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 19, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, September 19, 2026