How do we address possible harassment of our signatories?

[nukeop]

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.

[shenlebantongying]

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".

[nukeop]

I think they should urge their signatories to stop contacting us.

[shenlebantongying]

Before that, I think we should put a notice on README to mention that we are civil rather than mobs. Like this:

"To take this movement to a positive direction, please communicate in a friendly, considerate, patient and generous way."

There is a communication guideline from GNU

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.en.html

[appetrosyan]

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.

[nukeop]

I don't want people who are already getting intimidated to draw further attention to themselves.

[Kezii]

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

[eylles]

just denounce them all, that counts as targeted harassment, also send them to eat a truck full of crap, don't bend the knee!

[icyphox]

@machomanehmke This kind of shit is what makes all in support of RMS look bad. Please stop.

[pac85]

Got an identical email

[Jack-O-Brian]

Wow these guys had a bot to respond to people.

[teunissenstefan]

Got an identical email

The fact that they are using a throwaway email address says enough about their balls

[jaw-sh]

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.

[inthecatsdreams]

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

git log "--format=format:%ae" | sort -u | sed '/noreply/d' | grep '@'

Thats how i got theirs at least lmao.

[kchanqvq]

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.

What about grow your own food, and become ungovernable!

[appetrosyan]

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!

[inthecatsdreams]

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.

[KOLANICH]

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!

It is contradicts freedom of speech. IMHO it's better to react according to the proverb: "The dogs bark, but the corovan goes on."

[jaw-sh]

@KOLANICH

"The dogs bark, but the caravan 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.

[KOLANICH]

What about grow your own food

Nice idea. Many people do exactly this. Such tomatoes and cucumbers are much tastier.

[shenlebantongying]

@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.

[appetrosyan]

@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.

[appetrosyan]

@KOLANICH can you please keep on topic? We welcome discussion, but I suggest opening a new issue?

[cmpunches]

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".

https://medium.com/@OwnYourReality/flying-monkeys-the-narcissists-tool-for-the-smear-campaign-798daf7a59c0

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.

[cmpunches]

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.

[FrostKnight]

@jaw-sh you are the demon here if anyone is... Not even a nice try... -_-

[FrostKnight]

Unless, I misunderstood your position... RMS is not the enemy...

[FrostKnight]

EDIT: found the demon: https://github.com/rms-support-letter/rms-support-letter.github.io/issues/3883 the op of this thread...

[cmpunches]

EDIT: found the demon:

3883 the op of this thread...

@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.

[FrostKnight]

If you mean the creator of that other github page, then yes...

[franpoli]

I would recommend not reacting abruptly to any attack in order to avoid escalation. It could hinder our action. Let the offenders discredit themselves.

[cmpunches]

Do document and publish it though.

[ghost]

Fortunately, they can't contact my employer to get me fired. Because, I'm still unemployed

[KOLANICH]

@bnainar , IMHO this threat is non-credible.

• He has a full list of people from the internet, some of which may have filled in fake data. It is a loads of useless work to discover the true info and call to employers.
• One usually cannot just phone the boss.
• A sane boss will never consider someone from the Internet calling the org and asking to remove an employee as a reason to really remove him.
• Fire you for signing petitions may be illegal. Stallman was self-resigned because the harrassers started attacking the orgs and people he valued in a try to protect them. So did Brandan Eich. They were not resigned by their employers, they were self-resigned. The harrasers have managed to make them feeling guilty, not for what was used as a cause for harrasing, but for selfish behavior of allowing the harrasers to blackmail the orgs and third parties.

It is only possible in the case of certain power relations between harrasment organizers and captives. Even if every FOSS developer signed a petition for not harrassing Stallman and Eich, the final decision whether to continue or stop or start giving money to the orgs and persons is still up to the owners of money.

Mozilla didn't have and still doesn't have a viable business model not centered around its browser (people are unwiling to pay for a browser, and in the case of Chrome it is Google pays for it from the money it gets from other sources, which Mozilla don't have, and even if had, it would be either unprofitable to keep developing the browser or their browser would have becomed the same piece of shit Chrome is). If one destroyed Firefox, he would have destroyed Mozilla. And inflicting harm to an own website, that makes $, in process of harrassing is not a big deal in certain circumstances. So what they did was a credible threat to Mozilla, and Eich has resigned in a try to protect Mozilla from harrasment. (Though I am not sure how much they have achieved by this, since while in Brave Eich has chosen Chromium as a base of their new web browser, not Gecko he must be familiar with, even though it is still Gecko-based Firefox that is the most privacy-friendly and the most extensible web browser. One really has to have serious reasons to choose Chromium over Gecko when building a browser that tries to protect privacy).

@cmpunches

And finally when possible move away.

I don't think these are useful advices. If they are useful or not heavily depends on circumstances the most important of which power relations beween a person being harrased, persons organizing the harrasment and persons used by organizers of harrasment are. If they have lower or equal power, in most of cases just not giving a f**k about who says what is enough. In most of cases they would have to cooperate to you anyway.

[ghost]

Hm, I don't have this message.

[KOLANICH]

Offtop: @fsvk74, why not to use folders and filters? I usually have a dedicated folder for each service I use that knows my email and a rule moving mails from that services into that folder.

[bircoph]

Hm, I don't have this message.

They may be targeting only a subset of signatories.

[6r1d]

They may be targeting only a subset of signatories.

Or having a slow script going in random order.

[ghost]

They're still learning. you can forgive them for being ineffecint lol

[dmitriitux]

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.

And rightly so, let him move to Russia. We do not have this nonsense and he can calmly develop his ideas and teachings.

[dmitriitux]

And rightly so, let him move to Russia.

whats the median tax burden in Russia, and how are the land ownership laws? can I buy 10 acre plot of farm land for $120k?

I honestly don't know. I have never been so interested. I myself live in an apartment in the city and only thought about moving to a separate house. In the Moscow region, you can build a normal house with land for ~80k dollars. But such a purchase is like you have it in the east of Russia you need to look at and why you need it at all =)

[KOLANICH]

whats the median tax burden in Russia

I guess it is enough to know that the current prime minister was previously a head of a federal tax-collecting agency and has some IT background, that is enough to understand what is automatiable but not yet automated. You shouldn't change jurisdictions, they all will become the hell kind of PRC currently is soon enough, so changing them not worth the effort.

[dmitriitux]

whats the median tax burden in Russia

I guess it is enough to know that the current prime minister was previously a head of a federal tax-collecting agency and has some IT background, that is enough to understand what is automatiable but not yet automated. You shouldn't change jurisdictions, they all will become the hell kind of PRC currently is soon enough, so changing them not worth the effort.

so how should it be? as before? =))) automation came and working with taxes became much easier just the same.

[Bluesboy]

Hm, I don't have this message.

I think they just don't bother to threat Russians because our employers are not give two sh**s about transgenders.

[dmitriitux]

Hm, I don't have this message.

I think they just don't bother to threat Russians because our employers are not give two sh**s about transgenders.

if the company is local in the cis or only within russia, then yes, but if you work, for example, in jetbrains, then they may already think there =)))

[test1230-lab]

EDIT: found the demon:

https://github.com/rms-support-letter/rms-support-letter.github.io/issues/3883 the op of this thread...

Tf u on about? The demon? I just voiced my opinion. Not trying to get y'all fired or some shit lmao.

[ghost]

Not sure if this will do much, but we can report the account they're using to send these messages to the Gmail team.

They're using a Gmail account to send these threatening emails, and harassment is bannable according to Gmail's Terms of Service.

[dmitriitux]

Hm, I don't have this message.

I think they just don't bother to threat Russians because our employers are not give two sh**s about transgenders.

In India too. I think Western liberals are too focused on "inclusiveness", "wokeness" and "diversity". Employers here don't give a f**k about homosexuality or trannies or something. They just want to get the job done

I apologize for asking. But there are still "castes" in India? I just read different materials that in India there is still thinking of castes and they have not got rid of it until now.

[cmd410]

They're using a Gmail account to send these threatening emails

Email verification services say this email doesn't exist

I guess they are spoofing the sender, so it's probably no use to report it. But there is a chance this address gets into spam list.

[KOLANICH]

But there are still "castes" in India? I just read different materials that in India there is still thinking of castes and they have not got rid of it until now.

I would say that there are still "castes" in Russia (though as I understand they are not only in Russia, it is just not often told explicitly) ...

[dmitriitux]

But there are still "castes" in India? I just read different materials that in India there is still thinking of castes and they have not got rid of it until now.

I would say that there are still "castes" in Russia (though as I understand they are not only in Russia, it is just not often told explicitly) ...

yeah, we also have castes in our society, in fact. I'm just curious about India. In India, they are trying to get rid of them, but among the people they remain firmly, as I understand it. Probably a person should have written to me in private messages.