A Short History of Attacks on Techrights (and Boycott Novell Before That)
Speak out or die?
Hours ago a swarm of vandals targeted our IRC network. It's hard to tell if that's connected to the militants or Microsoft Lunduke trolls (remember that Lunduke came from Microsoft). However, it's a good opportunity to tell again the story of several (not all) attempts to silence us. It's not a complete list.
2005: Microsoft trolls contact my university to try to focus on some false narrative about me (saying that GNU/Linux advocacy is "spamming") and force me offline
2006: Imposter accounts write in my name, trying to discredit me (e.g. "I cut off my dick for Linux")
2007: I receive death threats
2008: DDoS attacks on my sites, cracking attempts too
2009: Extreme abuse in IRC, threats to sue, and much worse (this was probably the worst year, abuse-wise)
2010: Anti-Techrights hate sites (rude and obscene) show up online, Boycott Novell becomes "Techrights"
2011: Novell is gone, but until 2019 I'd receive some legal letters, even from the company's last CEO
2012: Abuse by Matthew Garrett begins (because coverage about "secure boot" is effective and persistent)
2013: Plenty of libel posted online about me
2014: DDoS attacks aplenty (may be connected to EPO)
2015: Microsoft contacts my employer asking the CEO to take action against me (which he declines)
2016: The CEO tells me what Microsoft did behind the scenes (he wasn't planning to tell me)
2017: Legal letters from a Republican Shiva Ayyadurai target me (around the time Donald Trump blocks me in Twitter)
2018: Webhost changed; the new webhost would later be offered a job by Microsoft (without even having applied for one!)
2019: Bill Gates pays my employer under an NDA; he then proceeds to harassing my wife and I (within a month or two)
2021: Microsoft-led OSI libels me online
2022: Efforts to deplatform me in social control media (OSI people had me temporarily suspended for covering Microsoft, under the guise of "COVID misinformation")
2023: Militants who abuse Free software people contact my employer and my wife's employer
2024: 2 SLAPPs filed by Microsofters
2025: Microsofters have lawyers dump almost 1,000 pages of legal stuff on me ahead of a 60-minute hearing while - only a day before this hearing - sending me a bill for preparing this mega-bundle (expecting me to pay for it; the Judge immediately rejected this ludicrous proposal)
Over time they seem to 'evolve' and new 'tricks' get pulled out of hats, but it typically backfires (or has no real effect). █