We Already Know What Makes Techrights So Attractive to Online Abuse and Cybercrimes
Techrights helps explain how to dismantle the 'cancel culture' against Free software (it also names the key perpetrators*)
Do not tolerate abuse online. Do something about it. Become proactive.
IT is not at all surprising that the same people who attack, berate, libel and demonise the FSF also attack Techrights. Some of them are funded by Microsoft and some of them work for Microsoft. No surprise there...
Over the years we've studied their methods and learned how to neatly classify these. We already responded to some of these by phoning the police more than 20 times and having cops over to collect evidence more times than we can remember. Three months ago we filed legal action [1, 2] and our court papers name some of the other victims of similar abuse.
The classification of these methods would have to include:
- "Viral" ad hominem attacks on the messenger (includes deliberately defaming and impersonating people)
- Attacks on family members of the messenger, especially females
- Attempts to suspend social control media accounts, based on false pretexts and lies (it has gotten worse since I quit social control media)
- Attempts to deplatform sites
- Technical attacks, e.g. DDoS or other means
- Threats made directly or tacitly (sometimes death threats and/or death wishes, allusions to violence etc.)
- SLAPP and threats associated with SLAPP (even double-dipping in defiance of legal protocols)
There are a few more.
Some of the most outrageous attacks we saw involved calling people "nazis" (even Jewish people like Lunduke) and then demanding that entire platforms ban not only them but also take action against people who merely followed them (it gets really bizarre). In the case of the FSF's founder, we saw false accusations made by hypocrites who seem to be masturbating to child pornography. They try to defund the FSF and overthrow the FSF's best and most qualified people. Some of them accuse others of what they themselves did (by their own admission).
We are only somewhat grateful for the above abuse because it helps Techrights make a 'catalogue' of the tactics. We believe that by informing people and properly explaining these tactics people will be able to detect/identify them early (and thus react accordingly). █
_____
* Naming - with or without accompanying shaming - is the first step towards tackling the problem.