A Year Since the Big Switch - Part III - Deliberate Deceit and Misunderstandings
Retreat from the prior webhost was only a matter of time since around 2021 (things had turned sour due to SLAPP and other threats)
In Part I and in Part II we explained that there had been a negative atmosphere due to persistent threats and apparent bribe attempts. That was corrosive to independence and true autonomy. The EPO's lingering attempts to shut us down go back to 2015 and a year later the CEO of Sirius Open Source told me in person (in Alton Towers) that Microsoft was contacting him, trying to get me in trouble. They even phoned him. I had gotten used (accustomed but not complacent) to this around 2004 or 2005 when my university was contacted by Microsofters, trying hard to crush me, censor me, even to take me offline (they succeeded only temporarily; it lasted a few hours before my Head of Department stepped up in my support and everything was restored). That was nearly 20 years ago. I did a lot of GNU/Linux advocacy back then.
What happened last year wasn't a big deal and not a huge peril (in comparison to the above). It was a short-lived issue - a hang-up - which resulted in the sites being better off: faster, safer (more secure), more efficient (a lot more publications), and with almost no technical debt - a problem that had grown every year for about a decade by then.
Only 3 or 4 hours after my 11th wedding anniversary I felt unwell. It turned out (the following day when I took a test with a home kit) that on the evening of my wedding anniversary the mild but persistent pain I felt near my hips was in fact a familiar symptom of my first COVID-19 infection (I managed to altogether avoid it until late 2023). I went to sleep before finalising the text but after preparing an Alan Cox video to publish the following morning (COVID-19 didn't prevent me from working; it was just a real nuisance like a headache and some moderate body pains) and when I woke up I could not access the site to finalise the article with the video. It was baffling at first and it took more than half a day to figure out what the heck was happening because all the "action" was in social control media (which I had already abandoned completely) instead of proper communication channels, including IRC, E-mail, telephone etc.
I sent an E-mail to the host. She didn't send me anything and I knew nothing. So I asked:
Hi,About 5 hours ago irc, tuxmachines old, techrights old, and HV became unavailable. tuxmachines new is still online, so I wonder if IP address changed?
I could not find you anywhere in Libera and OFTC.
Kind regards and lots of thanks!
Roy and Rianne
Many hours passed without a reply and with the containers/VMs all being offline.
I started looking around for how else to contact her and then found a hint of what had happened. So I followed up by E-mail: (remember I was no longer in social control media and other Web junk)
Hi,I've just seen this: [...]
To be clear, this morning rianne and I both tested positive for COVID-19 (I woke up 2 hours ago this morning), for the first time. This adds to already bad health. :(
Can I get back in just to transfer the files, please? I can get another host and I can pay you for all the help and work.
Can I phone you, please?
Still no reply. This was not intentional. She just wasn't checking her E-mail and later wondered aloud why I wasn't getting in touch (presumably in social control media). Remember our IRC network was down at the time (due to the above).
My wife wrote also:
Hello [...],I'm a bit sad about your decision to put Techrights website down. I am fully aware of why you have come to decide to do this, but this isn't fair. This group of mobsters victimized me in all sorts of harassment and caused me to even [...]. They doxxed us last year, and when I started writing and unmasking this group of people now they retaliating and reversing all narratives to get your sympathy.
Many thanks,
Rianne
Also no reply. Curiously enough we never received any replies by E-mail, but IRC was used instead (as we'll explain in the next part).
My wife also followed up with:
Hi,I want to post on TuxMachines and it's no longer accessible, but if you can send me the copy or give access just to copy the data, I would really appreciate it. The site is almost 20 years old and had many contributors.
Best,
Rianne
Notice we were very polite and diplomatic all along. There was no foul language or anything.
We both got COVID-19 at the same time (and for the first time), so the above E-mails - which is all of them - were composed when we were ill and had just witnessed our sites taken offline a few hours after our anniversary.
The last message was sent in the evening (almost half a day later) to say:
to be clear, they were the ones reversing victims and offender narrative here, for they doxed myself and rianne last year to cause us to [...]. They're not the victims here, they started this by attacking rianne and her family, which depends on her.Those cases are still open and investigated. Don't let them manipulate you into thinking they're the victims here.
We're both here with COVID-19 this morning. And Rianne [...] due to what they did. Please see below.
For those who crave/miss the context, remember it was us who had already been abused for at least a year at this point. The people who abused us found the audacity to pretend that they - the abusers - were somehow the victims. Our webhost at the time fell for it, as she failed to communicate with both sides to figure out what was really going on (and had gone on for a year or so). This isn't due process, it's a farce and a classic case study. Don't shoot first and ask questions later. Find out what's going on. After you shoot the damage cannot be undone; the trust is gone as damage was done.
In Part IV we'll talk about how the sites got migrated, owing to help from the prior host and associates. It wasn't a very bitter ending and the outcome (migration) seemed like a matter of time given prior threats and blackmail attempts (going back to some time around 2021). █