Summary: The concept of “concern trolls” as explained by The Source

THE PLATFORM of the troll (ACCESS) may already be sinking, which is good news given the lobbying against freedom which came from that direction. The Source has provided a good explanation of the trolling technique used there:

We’ve seen a huge increase in “concern trolls” in the FLOSS arena, mainly corporate-backed “vocal members” feigning wide-eyed innocence when called out on attempts to corrupt, undermine and discredit Free Software. Their favorite flavor of political correctness is to take great offense at the very suggestion that Free Software might be preferable in some way to closed and proprietary software, painting both the opinion and the speaker thereof a cad of the highest order for bringing up things like ethics or morality in mixed company!

Granted, the vast majority of “concern trolls” are cretins with corn-pone opinions, to whom honest discourse is a term without meaning or import, but I still believe it useful to point out their lies and demagoguery if for nothing more than illustrating the clay feet of their rhetorical statue.

What’s funny to me is that there aren’t any “free speech nazis” on the other end of the pole. Sure, I see a lot of attempts by the above “concern trolls” to paint certain Free Software figures as “nazis” (or even more vile characterizations), but even concern-troll-favorite-target-RMS is constant in his recognition of individual right to chose the software they use, even when under the most tasteless personal attacks and misrepresentation of his position.

In fact, even when the concern trolls go so far as to organize slanderous campaigns chock full of good old fashioned mud-slinging personal attacks, I have yet to hear the target cry “censorship” (I have seen the trolls play the “this censorship is not actually censorship” in advance though, in what I consider the pathetic gasps of a guilty conscience writ exceedingly small).

Pointing of fingers

To be fair (and without naming names) I am aware couple of presentations / personalities in the FLOSS universe that I would personally classify as taking the “offensive for the sake of being offensive” road and then pretending any objection to the offense is “PC run amok” – these people one could group in the “free speech nazi” group, but they are not Free Software advocates.

The remainder of that post provides insight into this trick, as explained from a sceptic's point of view. We generally recommend The Source as a source of Free software news. ⬆