SLAPP Censorship - Part 28 Out of 200: Facing Consequences for Impersonation and Worse
Some people tend to believe or end up having leanings towards the selfish ideology wherein it's OK for oneself to do immoral things to people one deems immoral; it leads to hypocrisy and bad conduct in general
Today's main focus will be impersonation in IRC, but as usual we want to add some news, analysis, and essential background about the case where 3 parties became claimants but only one party was funded by third parties. "In general," as an associate explained this morning, "additional context in the posts helps so that casual visitors and new visitors can get up to speed. WWW is not social control media."
Nerves Struck, But the Reaction is Much Worse
So Garrett unconvincingly writes all sorts of things in social control media. Those things are mostly false and we need not respond to them in public (they're bait). It's just that he is hurt that we didn't settle with him - since 2021 (his nastygrams go a while back) - and that we show factoids that embarrass him and contradict his self-serving narratives (he was ill-prepared to paint himself as a genuine person and credible character). It's understandable that he is hurt, but it's just "karma" after decades of online abuse.
His account seems very high on the "OCD index", with almost 90% of his recent public posts being about us; here, and in the sister site, these issues are discussed in fewer than 5% of the posts; we add over 20,000 pages per year; we write critically about the companies he is connected to and have long done so, which is why he started attacking and stalking us in 2012, starting with blog comments, then abusive messages in Twitter where he has been a serial defamer for decades.
Invalid Modus Operandi
In a sense, Garrett is a lot like 4Chan (this may sound counter-intuitive, but bear with us as we justified this analogy in the past). He tries to scare and intimidate people. He has done so for decades already. He cannot grasp why it doesn't work anymore. Disempowerment hurts.
Based on what the spouse says this week, the modus operandi is to try to deplatform the critics; failing that, try to mislead or abuse processes (a form of social engineering based on phony, bogus credentials and appeal to authority) to get the critics locked up.
Funnily or ironically enough, someone has just wished him "many cold years in prison!"
He has long attempted to hide his past transphobia. A few years ago a trans developer offered to host Techrights for free (it was already hosted for free by another trans developer) because, according to her, she was utterly disgusted by how Garrett was manipulating and exploiting the trans community while using his spouse as some sort of "trophy".
One can see what his spouse said about him last night (above). Also recall: Matthew J. Garrett Has Just Sent a Threat to Put My Wife and I in Prison Because His Own Spouse Says He's a Rapist
He has a fetish for locking people up. Nice man.
Some More Background
Last week we mentioned impersonation in IRC by Garrett, who already admitted he had hijacked someone else's name (he admitted this under oath, he swore on the Bible) and today - after discussing Tor in the last part - we go ahead and present the evidence, which we explained via our barrister last year in front of a High Court judge (he authorised that our claims [1, 2] could go ahead and Garrett was then forced to put forth a Defence). To be clear, Garrett attempted to settle with us many times (including right before and during the trial) and our barrister - who had spent many years at Ofcom - felt very strongly about what they did to us and said we should write about it (settling on silence isn't an option when violent men from America attack your family to spite their face).
Documented Evidence
The following is an unaltered (it's still relevant) explanation from 2024 of what had happened along with evidence from IRC logs:
Under Paragraph 15.27.7 to 15.27.10 of the Defence and Counterclaim “15.27.8. admission by the Claimant under the name mjg59_ of expecting to “suffer the consequences of [his] actions”;15.27.9. the admission by the Claimant under the name mjg59_ that he was switching between machines while using the IRC network;
15.27.10. the admission by the Claimant that he impersonated other IRC users by adopting their usernames;”
Request
11. Please set out the date and time of each of the admissions referred to and where they were published.
15.27.9 above is covered in question 14, so they have basically made a duplicate request. See 14 below for the detailed evidence.
Regarding 15.27.8 , Rianne covered this; this is in her articles already, complete with a screenshot (for each statement) of what he said using M.J.G.’s authenticated username. The admissions were made in the #techrights channel.
Also Regarding 15.27.8, M.J.G. for the ‘smoking gun’ being shown, was quoted after he has said so on May 6 2023 at 07:05:10 (GMT) in the #techrights channel. He had used his own name to say so.
This is him talking about the consequences of action on Jan 1 2023 at 22:04 (GMT):
The impersonation tactic by M.J.G. was also well documented. He openly said in the #techrights channel (using his own name and authenticated user, M.J.G.) that was it “fun” as he adopted other people’s names and then posted nasty things using their name.
People then complained that M.J.G. was tarnishing their name by saying things using their supposed identities. To call this “Internet trolling” would be an understatement.
Here is an example for 15.27.10:
mjg59_is now known as bagira:
bagira_ is now known as mjg59_:
“I did a satire, yes”
“It's funny”
And more screenshots of hijacking names
Suffice to say, this in no way relates to any injunctions and we'll refer back to this in the future. Garrett's online mischief in IRC is a matter of public record, it's just that in this case it took a "nym-shifting" and impersonation form.
It's not "funny". It is moreover libellous. █
Image source: Abandoned building