Before Freenode Collapsed Its Staff (the People Who Now Run Libera.Chat) Were Censoring/Silencing Some Free Software Supporters

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 07, 2025,
updated Nov 07, 2025

Let's go back in time...

Weeks before SHTF at Freenode we were contacted by people who said they had been blocked by Freenode, not by its secret owner but by its staff (unpaid volunteers basically; they got paid with power, not money). Our new search facility helps put things in context, chronologically:

We kept pointing this out many times in 2021. What happened at Freenode isn't quite as simple of the splinter group, Libera.Chat, would rather put it. Even it the plan/plot of Andrew Lee was self-serving and dodgy (like his politics^*), it doesn't change the fact that prior to Libera.Chat there was abuse of power (to censor) against various people whose lawful views - not political views - got suppressed by the bouncers.

We still have this issue in the Free software community; earlier today we mentioned this in relation to Python. █

____

^* He rejected the outcome of the 2020 election in his country, he tried to leverage IRC to make his own fictional country, he promoted fake-coins, and he hoped to centralised IRC users around his "app" and IRC.com, which he already controlled.

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