Summary: Online bullying in social control media and even in IRC (our network has been trolled a lot lately) is a serious issue; to make matters worse, the CoC system has been weaponised by trolls to silence and intimidate critics of unethical corporations (habitually employing those trolls on 6-digit if not 7-figure salaries)

MORE than 3 years ago we cautioned that the Linux Foundation's Linux Kernel Code of Conduct (CoC) Committee had become "Officially Corporate". It's all about one thing: censorship. Who for? Check the members of the Code of Conduct (CoC) Committee. They're the cops, not to mention the judge, the witness, and the jury (the phrase is often "judge, jury, executioner"; but they're also the cops/vigilante on the scene). They'd also process the appeals if any are registered. This is lynching, not a system of justice, and salaries peripheral to the role govern who is punished and what for. Those committees aren't full-time jobs. They're for corporate lynch mobs to crucify communities.

"What the Linux Foundation does with CoCs is still relevant, albeit buried under Easter holidays (because it’s embarrassing; people file complaints for ‘insulting’ companies)"If the so-called 'Linux' Foundation wants not to be seen as a "Microsoft proxy" anymore, then the answer is simple: just quit being a Microsoft proxy like the Open Source Initiative (OSI) still is. It should be noted that the OSI never quit being a Microsoft proxy. More time passes and the OSI falls deeper and deeper into Microsoft's hands, just like the 'Linux' Foundation. Friend brings a friend, mole brings another mole. "Shooting the messenger" tactics won't help when the message is factual and clearly demonstrable, based on hard evidence; for instance, beware trolls saying/insinuating/alleging that someone is sexist and pro-rape (or choosing moles who are female so that critics may seem sexist) based on no actual evidence. We've already seen Microsoft's dangerous (he claims he's seeking professional help for that) likely homophobe and closeted transphobe Matthew Garrett defaming countless people online. That's just what he does. He also sabotages BSD and Linux (along with his Microsoft "online friend", Microsoft's serial child rapist who spent years painting Garrett as a security guru^*, which he clearly wasn't; he never was^**). The targets are quite consistent -- notably people who criticised his corporate masters. He's a white heterosexual male who uses trans people as political props and sex objects of his (many trans people see through his facade and abhor him for that; they told us so in private), hoping that someone deposits a CoC complaint after generating phony scandals to cause uproar -- all this just to 'cancel' critics and even send them to therapists against their will (blackmailed into it as a condition for returning to their own project). "CoCs are for selective enforcement," one person recalls, based on real-life scenarios. "See the SouthEast Linux Fest analysis from some years ago."

What the Linux Foundation does with CoCs is still relevant, albeit buried under Easter holidays (because it's embarrassing; people file complaints for 'insulting' companies). ⬆ _____________ ^* He not only exchanged over 100 direct tweets with him; he kept promoting Garrett's monopoly-enforcing sabotage (protecting Microsoft) as 'security' -- clearly the opposite of what that truly was. Microsoft and its media operatives generally groomed Garrett for over a decade and offered him a job.

^** Retroactively he managed to pretend to be a lecturer on this subject because of a lack of background check/verification. He's not even suitably educated nor trained for security. No Computer Science or Software Engineering background, either. I cannot pretend to be a General Practitioner (GP) and "learn along the way" as I try to treat patients. Then again, as Richard Stallman (RMS) noted earlier this month in Italy, maybe the goal is to conflate a lack of security (back/bug doors) with "security". Qualifications do matter and appointing the wrong people results in planned failure, even cover-up. But if corporations are willing to offer "shortcuts" to back scammers and charlatans (pretenders, phonies, imposters), anything is possible. Compensating for an existing role's inadequacy using a similar past role is a 'credibility-chaining' scandal we've already seen with Bully de Blanc. Sometimes it boils down to overt nepotism or entryism, even a sexual relationship (we gave examples from Sirius 'Open Source'). Scrutiny typically results in immense abuse. One common tactic there is trolling and defaming people in their own platform, provoking them constantly for a reply, then asserting they're being "mean" and/or "impolite". This one troll has stalked us 24/7 in IRC for several years already, perhaps even doxing my wife and I to our workplace (it's hard to definitively prove this because his partner is a Tor person; either way, a crime was exposed as a result).

^*** This was my response to his defamation against me over 2 years ago:

Video download link

"False accusations are made to distract from the core issues," an associate has noted, "and deflect onto those raising the issues." [1, 2].

The associate notes that "credibly accused" nowadays means "social control media death sentence by brigading" (boosted by deep-pocketed corporations with legions of foot soldiers online).

The video above starts with the example of RMS, though many other examples exist.