Techrights Will Never Surrender to Censors Who Resort to Blackmail and Violence
Recent: There's Nothing "Funny" About Attacking Free Speech and Software Freedom | Free Speech Rejected by Opponents of Free Software
OUR IRC network (we've used it since 2008) is very active and it is one of about 500 networks worldwide that are of decent size (not like a pair of people or a family). Our network has been growing this year or steadily every month since October (when we banned hugely defamatory Microsoft-connected militants who attacked not only users but also family members of theirs). This abuse of theirs always intensified when Microsoft had severe issues, such as mass layoffs or misleading results that they insisted must not be scrutinised (by the way, the chatbots are a passing fad, based on the numbers)...
Some of the perpetrators also have background with Red Hat and Fedora (before IBM), so let's not forget that.
Old-timers know that in 2010 we added a non-CoC to our Wiki, after people in IRC had received threats. It said (and still says): "The IRC channels id not have a written policy until August 2010 when Internet trolls began to upset regulars and sometimes provoked on purpose (the general policy is very liberal and tolerance is high). We now use a warning system, whereby an offensive person receives 3 warnings before action is taken."
We are still in the process of explaining what happened in recent years; it's connected to why my wife and I resigned from our jobs. The militants, by their own admission (in official documents), played a role in that. If those people don't use IRC and social control media as weapons, they will resort to the telephone too. Or even misuse of authorities, as the FSF-EEE* showed (trying to censor critics, who are former insiders)
We now expect that our series may last (or run) until the end of this year. We have plenty to show and the more aggression we're subjected to, the more details we can share. It is important to have this properly documented because the same methods are being leveraged against other Free software-centric communities. We warned about this in April 2021 (after we had first heard of this). █
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* FSF-EEE (the 'FSFE') is highly censorious, directing this behaviour at us too. In the freedom of speech sense, it is like the Nazi Party that it seems to try to distance itself from. It's attacking the key people from the actual FSF, not just Stallman but also Professor Moglen.