Removing the Lid Off of 'Cancel Culture' (in Tech) and Shutting It Down by Illuminating the Tactics and Key Perpetrators
Corporate militants disguised as "good manners"
IN OUR multi-year plan - boosted by the luxury of both time and focus - we still have EPO, Microsoft, GitHub and a few more extensive topics on which we've amassed thousands of notes (not yet published). One theme we're also going to explore is the "war" on Software Freedom. We have some sources and we've heard verifiable stories.
Today (very soon) Techrights will start an exclusive new story about a Free software funding blunder that nearly resulted in suicide. It seems very timely due to the European Union's effort to stop funding of Free software (probably due to Microsoft moles like these).
As I am writing book-sized documents on this topic at the same time as writing blog posts (or articles) it might take a while to publish all the stories, but we already see related stories published elsewhere. It seems like a growing issue. It's more widely recognised by now.
This morning we explained that OFTC wiped out about 20k IRC users/accounts, then refused to tell us why (we've asked several times since). It's a big blow for IRC in general (so maybe IRC's remaining future is less than a decade long). Similarly, GNOME Foundation has secret "courts" now. One can get banned for asking about these.
What has happened to basic communications? Are we entering some second Dark Age(s)?
An associate of ours said that it is "unfortunate, what went on behind the scenes".
"IRC does not have the support of the youth, the new generations are rabidly (in some cases) and or nonchalantly (in other cases) anti-FOSS and anti-Open Standards, to the point that neither they nor their 'teachers' even know of the existence of FOSS or Open Standards. They do dumb stuff now like rather than using more private technologies use 'apps' which will collect info and then hang them out to dry later when the time is right. Slack, Discord, etc."
"Plus the political environment in DC is even more distant from either. That's what the cancelling of RMS, Moglen, and the others was a prelude to."
Well, the common theme is, you get banned or risk getting banned not for anything FOSS-related but for some totally unrelated stuff that's not about Free software. The problem starts when someone targets you, just looking for an excuse to 'cancel' you. Our associate said those people get "banned for totally unrelated stuff so that DRM or various proprietary rights-limited technologies can be rolled out once the key people are removed."
"Reddit Brodie (Robertson) has something on that today. I haven't gotten to his video yet however. CoCs [is about] pushing an anti-FOSS agenda by making smoke screens about all kinds of other stuff. Too bad Dilbert got shutdown for taking on Bytedance, there was a relevant strip..."
"FOSS and Open Standards are just means to an end, Software Freedom," the associate added, "but without those means the end is not recognized or even acknowledged or even on the radar."
We intend to show another example of founders being forcibly removed from projects that they had founded and even secured finding for. This seems to be happening a lot these days. It needs to stop. █