Giving a Voice to the Community (Even When It's Inconvenient or 'Scary')
Once upon a time we were threatened with deplatforming for merely reposting articles by Daniel Pocock; we no longer have this problem (we left the US in 2023, even if overzealous Americans get hired guns in London to continue with threats as if the US owns or is fundamentally annexing the UK for commercial gain)
The UK has a King, but he's not really* in power. The US has a King, but they still pretend to have a democracy (he rejects this, just like Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan).
Notice the fascist [1, 2] handsign that Erdogan is making in that one particular photo, an associate has noted, and since his quote should be reproduced here in the proper textual form as well (for Gemini Protocol): “Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”**
To some people and companies, the Open Web is (or was) like this.
This quote against democracy should be in the mainstream media, but a lot of media (even in the EU) shies away, seeing what happens to cartoonists or journalists critical of such ideas. "Also recall that Twitter silenced Erdogan's opposition in the week or so leading up to the ostensible election," [1, 2] an associate reminds us.
They meant co-founder, but that's not what's important.
Democracy and press freedom have a correlation between them; without freedom of expression it will always be "illegal" to try to compete for leadership, even on purely idealogical grounds (no violence).
To ensure that he never loses power (until his death, sans heirs) Sultan Erdogan has attacked the media very viciously; Turkey is now ranked near the very bottom for freedom of the press (no matter whose assessment) and anything that 'insults' the ego of the Sultan is deemed illegal and reporters are routinely imprisoned for mentioning "Erdogan" in some mildly negative/unflattering context.
This site is turning 20 this year; the sister site turns 22 quite soon. Both continue to grow and generally thrive because they can withstand all sorts of attacks, even hybrid attacks that masquerade themselves as causes which they actually attack (like claiming to protect women whilst in fact attacking women, including my mom and my wife).
We've come under attacks since 2006 when the site began. At first it was mostly abusive comments (in the blog, not just in peripheral social control media such as Reddit), but within a year or two*** the DDoS attacks began and we had to change hosts due to them. The original (first) host got exhausted by DDoS attacks against us, which probably meant that those DDoS attacks worked (effective enough to deplatform us temporarily).
SLAPPs came around 2008 and over the years we defused pretty much all of them. In 2023 two trans "activists" started sending threats to our webhost, who was trans (just to be very clear, we were not and are not writing about trans issues; they're totally irrelevant and unrelated to the topics we cover here, just a convenient pretext/excuse for saboteurs looking for reasons to spread hate, seed division and so on). This resulted in our Web site having its first long downtime in over a decade. We shifted everything to the UK after that and have been online without hassle since then (for the record, we were always in good standing and our prior host helped us migrate to the UK). I only know about all those threats because my wife saw them in the Disclosures ahead of a court case (after sending us about 10 kilograms of legal papers they sent about 50 kilograms more - vastly more than the SRA can ever handle); it turned out that they had also attacked our ISP! I made the Judge aware of this and she mentioned this in her decision. We also ended up having "smoking gun" evidence that those two trans "activists" were talking to each other over E-mail (not only in public) about how to censor - even deplatform - the site. This was hardly the last time:
Those same threats were publicly made only weeks ago. Further threats made to the webhost will be covered here in years to come, as well as swatting attempts. It was something along the lines of, "I changed my gender, so you must delete old pages..."
I have my opinions on all sorts of things, including groups, but I stubbornly refuse to generalise. Deductions and inductions lead to bigotry. Now there are also injunctions.
I believe that all men and women are presumed innocent and enjoy a presumption of goodwill, but people lose this if or when they persistently resort to objectionably abusive behaviour.
One thing I don't share with people like Daniel Pocock is the publication style, in particular the focus on people or names. If possible, I always try to concentrate on 1) issues/ideas 2) methods/patterns 3) key culprits (for accountability, cautioning others and so on). When writing about companies I'd often remove mentions of names, especially of 'low-level' workers; I assume many just "follow orders", so their behaviour is a manifestation of somebody else's wishes (usually someone richer, willing if not overly eager to abuse power). They probably have some mortgage to pay or children to feed etc.
We'll soon re-publish some articles on difficult subjects. Those are the views of their author, who isn't me. Having experienced censorious editors, I generally reject the idea of selective publication (relaying only what one agrees with), alteration of publication, or interference against opposing views (or writing styles). Based on this experience, I have strong views on anti-censorship or suppression - however tacit rather than direct and explicit - of inconvenient voices or voices that can invite trouble (as in, backlash, even criminal activities).
We are a mature site backed by NGOs and we can handle all challenges thrown our way. With that in mind, Pocock's more controversial articles will be reproduced here in full, verbatim. █
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* "I'm not sure if the king of the UK really isn't in power," MinceR alleges, as it seems "like he's just not using the power he has; he could dismiss the PM and other ministers, dissolve the Parliament, he's the commander-in-chief of the armed forces... he's also immune from criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits"
** And "also," MinceR notes, "apparently Erdogan likes to ride the tram from point A to point A (autocracy -> democracy -> autocracy) [...] I wonder if the trams in Istanbul (or in Ankara) are really that useless"
*** MinceR, who was involved at the time (via IRC), asks, "we don't know which year they began in?" For sure in 2008 it became intense enough to cause hosting issues, not just very long downtimes.