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Author: odinn
Date:  
To: System undo crew
Subject: [unSYSTEM] Censorship on mailing lists, and other fora
I've recently unsubscribed myself from the bitcoin-development mailing
list due to my objections to the censorship occurring there. (It's
being framed as "moderation," but it's fairly evident that since the
onset of the list manager's decision to begin restricting what kind of
content appears on bitcoin-dev, this has not been "moderation"
developed to avoid harassment or to slightly narrow the scope of
discussion, but rather, it's simply about censorship. An example of
"moderated" (censored) posts are shown here:
https://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev-moderation/

Presently, the 'king' of this group of censors seems to be someone
named Rusty Russell from Australia, rusty at rustcorp.com.au (a domain
that redirects to https://ozlabs.org/, which shows a large procession
of IBM employees... though I think that the core developers (and
various other bitcoin developers associated with the bitcoin-dev list)
by and large have decided to close themselves off to the world and to
any ideas that make them uncomfortable.
(Note you cannot see the censored posts described in the link above
merely by selecting them as they have all been "scrubbed" or double
censored - once from bitcoin-dev itself and another time on
bitcoin-dev-moderation. You have to click again on the link in the
scrubbed, or "moderated" message in order to see the censored material
that has been again censored by the censors.)

[I am still "watching" the bitcoin/bitcoin repository on github, and
periodically have commented & contributed, but based on my
observations there is negligible innovation happening there (real work
of developing privacy, innovation, decentralized / distributed
solutions for everyone, etc., is going to have to happen elsewhere -
such as in DW and ABIS).]

I've also unsubscribed myself from cypherpunks as it appears to have
turned into a mosh pit of censorship, where different people involved
with the list have encouraged the use of a system resulting in a
"contributors to be filtered" list being published and used by various
members of that list. While I understand that people are free to
read, or not read, what they want, the effect of publishing what
amounts to a blocklist - of people who you think shouldn't be listened
to or acknowledged, or who shouldn't have their information passed
along to others - is, to me, censorship, and isn't right.

My commentary, in part, on the matter (from my last post to
cypherpunks before I unsubscribed) was this ~ you could easily apply
this to not only various mailing lists, but also, to fora such as
twitter, facebook, and more (add easily censored forum / service here):

"I will soon be removing myself from cypherpunks and bitcoin-dev. I am
getting tired of being on lists that function more like ggautoblocker
& blocktogether than a forum for freedom of expression.

A reminder, I suppose, is in order, that unless we have fora that
cannot be censored or (easily) filtered (diaspora may be a good
example, and possibly zeronet) then we cannot express ourselves
freely, and the extent of our ideas (and by extension, ourselves)
cannot be said to be free at any level, or in any way, shape, or form.

Free thought requires free expression."


- --
http://abis.io ~
"a protocol concept to enable decentralization
and expansion of a giving economy, and a new social good"
https://keybase.io/odinn