A few weeks ago developers at the most popular IRC server, Freenode.net noticed a strange smell in the air. That smell was change. Developers of the open-source organization have been quitting en masse after Andrew Lee, a tech entrepreneur has taken control of the network in what developers have described as a "hostile takeover."
Starting on May 19th, Freenode staff volunteers published posts announcing their resignations, and explained the reasoning behind their decisions to quit. They said there is little the staff can do to oppose changes that Lee wants to implement. According to staff member Aaron Jones, on May 11, Lee announced in the official Freenode support channel that he would be appointing a new person to run the network's infrastructure. This was "a violation of the agreement" that the staff members thought Lee was abiding by after buying Freenode in 2017.
"Giving him (or his designated representatives) access would violate the trust of all of our users, and would also be illegal in many of the jurisdictions in which we operate," Aaron Jones wrote. "The Freenode user base should consider very strongly that a hostile entity is now in operational control over the network, and is in possession of your data."
"Every remaining staff member was lied to. Our community was lied to," JonathanD, another staff member, wrote in his resignation.
As of May 25th things really started to heat up in the hostile takeover of Freenode as users and entire communities started to jump ship to a new IRC client, Libera Chat. This is when censorship started to take off, with many many users reporting their communities being destroyed by Freenode for mentioning the new chat alternative, Libera. Some users of Freenode are even reporting that their accounts are being disconnected from chat for saying the nickname of the head of Freenode, Andrew Lee. "Rasengan"
https://twitter.com/fosdem/status/1397454352835653632
- fosdem
https://twitter.com/assortedhackery/status/1397389032519307266
- assortedhackery
https://twitter.com/alyxw/status/1397775261043675139
- alyxw
Now, obviously, Steem and Freenode aren't direct parallels. But the two lines run alongside each other well enough for most people with a bit of knowledge into the Steem Hostile Takeover to see the similarities. Both purchases of the companies by Andrew Lee and Justin sun were technically legal, but looked extremely shady. And both new owners said very similar things things to their userbase and development teams; "We are not here to interfere." Oh, how they lied.
I'm sure you all remember how Justin Sun and TRON forcibly overtook the network consensus of Steem with the help of three of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, Binance, Huobi & Poloneix (part-owned by Justin Sun,) and the Steemy inc. ninja mined stake. The Steem hostile takeover resulted in most of the Steemy inc. team quitting in protest, such as head of communications Andrew Levine, and blockchain developers Michael Vandeberg, Steve Gerbino, and Roadscape.
After this point, the Users of Steem got together and decided it was time to hard-fork and opted to create HIVE. And, just like Lee is doing now, Justin Sun tried to censor any mention of the new Hive fork from his new Blockchain. While Andrew Lee cannot remove the stake of Steem users as he did to Markymark and a few other users, he does stand in a position over the multi-decades of user information generated by Freenode, and he can and will sell your information.
https://twitter.com/girlgone_crypto/status/1240727743559417856
- girlgone_crypto
Once again, it is time to jump from the sinking ship to a new one, Libera Chat. Resist censorship.
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