What GAFAM-Funded Organisations Tell You About Mr. Pocock is Untrue
HERE and elsewhere I've expressed my support for Daniel Pocock (in European Elections 2024). I'd like to elaborate on this stance by explaining the true chronology for a bit, as I recently did regarding another gentleman from Melbourne, Julian Assange.
Daniel Pocock comes from an Irish (in roots) family from Australia. He used to work here in Manchester (UK), he lived in Switzerland for many years (he worked there; he did work for UBS through Harvey Nash AG), and he can speak several languages. He's a cosmopolitan person, albeit not "by trade". His trade is software, notably writing, deploying, compiling code.
Pocock has contributed to Debian since the 1990s and over the years he became involved in Fedora, Mozilla, GSoC, and FSFE (to name a few). He earned this status based on his technical contributions.
Pocock's main 'mistake' was, he spoke truth to power. He challenged "the system". He gave a voice to victims of "the system", including if not especially women.
Pocock's image/reputation was tarnished by a sort of Ritual Defamation, or basically a bunch of corporate boot lickers "virtue-signalling" (to large corporations) by "piling" or "having a go" at him. "Every time they insult one person, there are probably 20 more people who stay away for fear of being insulted next," someone wrote last month.
Pocock, like Julian Assange, isn't the bad guy here. But some powerful people want you to think that he is.
Julian Assange was a publisher since around 2006. Pocock was busy doing technical work, not publishing per se (until much later years). Pocock had worked on Web sites going a long way back, supporting various left-leaning causes. Contrary to what smear campaigns say, he's as far as it gets from "right wing". Now he runs as an independent. █