How do we address possible harassment of our signatories? #3484
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nukeop
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nukeop
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They censored everything else, but only leave that issue open there just to defame us. Now, they are sending us emails too. Unless Neil McGovern himself react to that issue, I don't think they are "trying to address similar issues". |
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I think they should urge their signatories to stop contacting us. |
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Before that, I think we should put a notice on README to mention that we are civil rather than mobs. Like this:
There is a communication guideline from GNU |
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How about we gather evidence? If people do get harassed, we should have proof of that taking place. And once enough proof is gathered, we can open a different dialogue with the open-letter signatories, specifically that they have abused their position of power to harass and do not (at all) espouse the ideals they claim to. Them using the same methods they argue are unacceptable, is their biggest mistake, one that can stop this madness sooner rather than later. I call for having a procedure for that. I also call for a passage stating that a) they can't do that, b) if they did, that's way more problematic (and illegal) than the worst thing that RMS posted on a public forum. |
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I don't want people who are already getting intimidated to draw further attention to themselves. |
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just denounce them all, that counts as targeted harassment, also send them to eat a truck full of crap, don't bend the knee! |
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@machomanehmke This kind of shit is what makes all in support of RMS look bad. Please stop. |
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Wow these guys had a bot to respond to people. |
The fact that they are using a throwaway email address says enough about their balls |
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You should be ready for harassment. Big tech companies, especially in western Europe and the US, don't want you. Learn Russian or Chinese. Invest in crypto. Set up your own companies. Your future is bleak and miserable. The more tied down you are to leash holders and the west, the worse it is. |
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Really shows how dumb they are. This is pathetic. If you can, make your email private and just sign the letter through the web front-end, that way your commit email wont be your personal one. By the way if you're wondering how they got your email its as easy as cloning the repo locally and running Thats how i got theirs at least lmao. |
What about grow your own food, and become ungovernable! |
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Is there a lawyer among us to mass-send a cease and desist letter? Like, I'm pretty sure that harassing in that fashion is illegal! |
I'm with you on that. |
It is contradicts freedom of speech. IMHO it's better to react according to the proverb: "The dogs bark, but the corovan goes on." |
When the dogs barked at RMS, his caravan stopped. You can't win against the demons and chances are this sort of petition will do more harm than good in the long run. |
Nice idea. Many people do exactly this. Such tomatoes and cucumbers are much tastier. |
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@KOLANICH I think what we are doing is actually beyond this letter. There are a big open source community, and there must be other voices like us. This shows a unification of the rest of the community. |
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@KOLANICH some speech is not protected. Collusion for criminal acts, instigating violence against a person and so on (essentially the contents of their letter), is not only not protected by the first amendment, but is in fact a basis for a criminal charge. A cease and desist letter, in my opinion is an appropriate response to blackmail. |
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@KOLANICH can you please keep on topic? We welcome discussion, but I suggest opening a new issue? |
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I think the first step is in acknowledging that this is a narcissistic smear campaign, and that it fits the archetypal model for one. These are what are called "flying monkeys". Yes, they are engaging in poor behaviour but there is one or two people behind the effort -- in this case, the effort is run by Molly De Blanc and Elana Hashman. These types of campaigns are notoriously difficult to hold at bay from a legal perspective. I have seen this type of thing a few times in the f/oss community and once outside of it. |
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What's helped with me in the past dealing with campaigns like that is publishing their activity in a harassment journal that is google-indexed and then linking to it when it comes up. Every instance with details that can be used by a community to identify assailants. It won't bring alot of post-hoc justice but it will slow down their activity a great deal. |
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@jaw-sh you are the demon here if anyone is... |
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Unless, I misunderstood your position... |
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EDIT: found the demon: |
@FrostKnight you've gotta keep in mind that these are just flying monkeys. The command and control is responsible. Look at the core of the wart, not the surrounding tissue. |
Same with Tamil, Arabic Hebrew, Telegu , . Only gender neutral words is "it" referring to objects without life or animal other than humans. It's derogatory to call those people as "it" |
I'd like to be called as animal or sth, sounds cuter than human. Meow! |
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Guess it's fine to close this now |
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@SpheeresX It can't be determined conclusively who is behind these emails. We can't simply trace them without having true host server information. The culprit is not necessarily among those who signed the open letter or opposing Stallman. There may be a third party who intentionally wants to inflame the alleged conflict and incite distrust and hatred just for fun. |
At the end of the day, we only disagree on small issues. We, the FOSS community as a whole, need to work together to spread the free software movement, atleast that's what I hope |
It's about "jail castes" or "castes in jails" |
Russian is funny language. "Дверь(door) - она(is she)", "стол(table) - он(is he)". So in russian language not only "it" used for inanimate objects. |
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@uis246 I get your point, but that wasn't what I meant. Unlike English, as you point out, inanimate objects can be referenced with pronouns other than it. My point was, that you don't ever use it to reference singular non-grouped persons. In other words, using an it to describe your coworker would sound more like demoting them to the level of an inanimate object, rather than a polite attempt to not refer to them with gendered language. For example "Оно пришло" rarely if ever implies the arrival of a singular person. |
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On the topic of harrasment, I too have faced it |
It is not only in jails, people out of jails that have never been convicted still understand some expressions in |
This reminds me of the persecution of Jews in Germany in the 1930s. "muh it should make an excellent resource as a list of people not to associate with or hire for the benefit of our aryan master race" But now modern SJW nazis have abandoned the national question and instead of Jews they persecute all those who disagree with their views. Now they propose not to hire those who disagree with their views, and tomorrow - to give them a ride in gaswagen. |
Godwin law works.
It is OK not to hire anyone the owner of an org doesn't like. Their money - their rules. Restricting subset of candidates a company can hire causes only expenses. If they are ready to bear the expenses on the bullshit reason - OK, there are plenty more adequate bosses.
Not OK, but I don't think SJWs are any match of any real workers of violence. They talk too much, but in reality have even failed to properly check the signatures. Just losers. |
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@KOLANICH To add to your point, would it be fair to say that people who use their position of power to get people to sign a petition to remove an upstairs competitor are not pleasant to work with? I personally would hate to work for anyone who threatened me with job loss (or lack of promotion) for not stabbing RMS in the back over (at best) tenuous evidence of wrongdoing. Ironically, them not extending me the job offer is a favour. Better to work for/with someone with ideals and respect. Additionally, while they are free to choose whomever they wish to hire, I'm not OK with them scraping this letter for a plugin. Interestingly, it's violating several national laws, and a couple of international laws, so me being an Armenian student in the UK, I can sue the author of the extension, and most likely win. Just because they are justified in not hiring you based on your political views, doesn't mean that every method used for this admittedly scary-sounding "retaliation" is lawful. Giving McGovern et al, a pass is why we had to step in. |
Absolutely. It is an absolute disrespect. Though someone feel like it is OK for them to sell their position for money (and some people I personally beleive that are such are present in the list of signatories of this letter, but it is likely because this part of position was not bought yet).
I am OK with them scraping the letter. Open letters are signed to tell the world the fact If one is afraid that people would know he has signed the open letter and/or is afraid of consequencies of that, then he shouldn't have signed it in the first place. So scraping the letter and distributing the list they actually assist in fulfilling the purpose of such letters.
Please stop referring to the laws. You have no right to violate freedom of speech. Neither have the ones who have made the laws.
You can sue, but I won't bet on your winning. And if you really will go suing, I sincerelly hope and wish you to lose the case, because suing on such matters is just maliciously exploiting the current legal system designed by the devil himself.
IMHO it is OK not to hire anyone the owner of the company doesn't like. It is his company, it is his money, and it is up to him how to decide what is the best way for him to spend his money. Again, please note, I refuse to take part in the special Olympics of arguing about which kind of rights are real. |
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Hey, just because I write a letter saying that I support a cause and not afraid of the consequences doesn’t make the idiots who decide to take the chance and shoot me because of it not guilty. Shooting people is wrong regardless of what the cause is, which is why even the police are supposed to only sometimes use lethal force. With the laws, I hate to side with McGovern on this, but
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I don't understand this sentence.
Everyone can buy a knife in a store selling goods for kitchen and attack you without even shooting. And it is OK that they can buy a knife. They only should be trialled if they actually attacked you. One mustn't trial people based on speculations what they can do.
Using courts is exactly government (state in fact) intervention.
GDPR is a flawed law that is written the way to help corporations with potential to become monopolists to outcompete smaller ones. And it violates quite some freedoms. It is not good and must be abolished, but in some cases it can be used against monopolists themselves.
GDPR and a lot of other laws violate free speech and must be abolished.
One shouldn't have no expectation of privacy when signing public letters. The whole purpose of public letters is to trade some amount of privacy to the effect resulting from the signing of the letter. It is OK to demand mass surveillance to be abolished. It is not OK to demand stopping spreading public knowledge.
Absolutely no. Wiretapping is wire tapping. The word initally meant that someone goes to the wire leading to your analog phone, cuts the isolation of wires and connects own device to it to spy on your phone calls. It is absolutely different from the case when a person publicly roars "I support Stallman, record it!" (which is a kind of an offline analigue of open letters) on an agora and then cries "Don't distribute the list of Stallman supporters, it's me in it, there are people who prefer to boycott me if this list is readily available". |
For example. I sign a letter that says "I love RMS". There are people who hate me for it. Them saying that they hate me for it is them exercising free speech. Them shooting me in the gut is not however Free speech.
Their creating a chrome extension is not buying a knife. Their extension is more akin to stealing: I did not consent to their datamining.
State intervention isn't bad. Unregulated state intervention is. Example of state intervention: police that arrest people who mugged you. Example of unregulated state intervention: the police mug you and arrest someone else.
You are factually wrong. There are limits of reasonable information collection, regulated by privacy laws.
Ah... Mate, I'm sure you mean well, but that's not how privacy works. Signatures are not copyrightable. My signature or the fact that I used it somewhere is only redistributable if and only if explicit consent is given. You also aren't allowed to make modifications to the letter after I've signed it and keep my signature. So in your example, if somebody "roars" that they are Jewish, you still need to ask them if they want to participate in a data collection experiment. In the Digital world, the laws are different. They are different for a reason. |
I feel like your consent is not needed for that. When you signed this "letter", you have willfully made your support of Stallman public knowledge. And one cannot and shouldn't restrict distribution and processing of public knowledge. One can though in some jurisdictions, and it is an evil thing.
Sure.
Of course they are allowed, but it would make the signature void. To make that automatically happen, digital signatures could have been used.
I am not. I don't reason about what is legal and what is not, I am not a lawer. If one wants to talk about legality, I am the wrong person to talk about it. I reason about if it violates human rights or not. And these are absolutely different concept having nothing common with the laws and legality.
Ones who think so should consider emigrating to the states that are more totalitarian that the one they are in, such as People Republic of China. There they would get even more state intervention that they consider that This discussion got a bit too political, discussing politics is useless waste of time, I don't want to discuss it anymore. |
Your IP address is as much public knowledge as my signature: not at all, though it can be figured out, doing so without consent is at the very least not respectful of your privacy.
Mate, laws are what delineates rights and responsibilities. No laws = no rights. You can't talk about human rights, without talking about whether or not they violate others' rights! The constitution is the collection of those rights deemed irrevocable, and it serves as the common benchmark of all laws. We have right to free speech, and to privacy. You're always referring to violations of their free speech, when they, in fact violated, mine, yours and about 5000 other people's privacy. Both are equally important.
I'd invite you not to play dumb, and consider that what you classify as totalitarian countries actually fall under unregulated government intervention, that you conveniently neglected to quote. If you are here taking a stance against taking things out of context, please be consistent and yourself try to abide by that principle.
No discussion is a waste of time, if the interlocutors (you and me) are polite, respectful and follow a set of rules set out by the ancient greeks (you can do better in the modern day). It's sad that we didn't manage to reach a consensus of sorts. |
I don't want to discuss this. There are 2 completely different definitions of rights, and both are called rights and constantly confused. And in fact creating of this confusion is intentional. A person saying
In political positions consensus is impossible. Political positions are no matters of personal preferences, they are the matters of benefits. If one lived in Nazi Germany, he would be against Jews (if he is not a Jew himself), even if he finds Jews smart and useful, because otherwise he can be prosecuted. If one seeks for citizenship in a foreign state, he would act as if he respects, aggrees and supports all the laws, regulations (and the ones who have passed these laws and regulations) and officially encouraged (there may be ones that are discouraged and prosecuted) customs, traditions and lifestyles of that state. Most of states by now even require an oath of this to get a citizenship. If one "owns" property, especially the one on which his well-being depends, he would support everyone who already can deprive him of this property easily if wanted. If one lives in a state that de-facto prosecutes for not supporting its actions enough, even if the actions harms him, he would support them. It is absolutely useless to discuss this, it cannot be changed, to change one's political position one would have to reboot their life from a negative level (assumming that newborn children start from 0).
The state has issued the regulations (laws, acts) allowing it to do the things it does. Of course, it is regulated, by the law the state itself has made (which is de-facto equivalent to unregulated, the only difference that the state has to print pieces of paper documenting what it would do). A state which is regulated externally (i.e. by any other state) is not a souvereign state. A state which is regulated by its people is not a state at all. |
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What does any of this have to do with addressing harassment of our signatories? |
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So basically, what I'm saying is that we are protected by laws. @KOLANICH claims that these laws are moot. None of this matters, because the issue is closed. |
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Anyway, disregarding all of that dribble, I would like to see some kind of resource setup separately from this project but referenced in an issue somewhere like this one where folks can track/report harassment or any kind of extra-curricular activity that should be resulting in either criminal charges or litigation (to the maximum extent of the law, including class actions) -- or frankly, just publicity. Exposure of poor behaviour generally shuts it down pretty quickly, and often has consequences further down the line. |
Realistically, not much can be done about the general issue. However it could be useful to link some resources for people who fear they'll be discriminated for their opinions: |
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That's just not the case at all. There are tons of recourse for that kind of behaviour; I would appreciate you not conditioning people to be soft targets. |
and others
I have been contacted by several people on Discord and Matrix who told me that they were sent creepy messages by the anti-Stallman crowd, calling them to remove their signatures and threatening to stalk them, get them fired etc.
I know there are people who are still reluctant to sign, fearing future retaliation.
They are trying to address similar issues here: https://github.com/rms-open-letter/rms-open-letter.github.io/issues/2460
How do you propose we do it? I don't want to put a scary notice at the top because I think it will do more to scare people away than to responsibly inform them that there might be crazy creepy people trying to stalk them.
I also do not think those threats have any substance, and I do not seriously believe for a moment that anyone will have any IRL problems for signing this letter, and would like to communicate that clearly.
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