I want to call your attention to a serious ongoing organizational asymmetry between a group like the FSFE with their ties to big software (ie: Github whom RMS has spoken against), dedicated office, staff, and budget vs an unorganized set of independent Free Software developers who might be struggling to provide themselves comparable resources. Consider an individual like David who may refrain from Twitter, Facebook, and Github because they do not respect his freedoms, standing up to the Goliath Software Cabal who have no problems censoring people on platforms they control or have influence over. He would not stand a chance against them without our support; we probably would not even know his name. It’s very valiant and i applaud and pledge my support again.

If this discussion has made anything clear it’s that extreme conflict of interest within the FSFE prevents them from acting in our best interest. Until the internal conflicts are resolved they can not be trusted to be independent of their tech industry donors’ interests.

===== On Censorship =====

There are three parties in any instance of censorship: The censor who prevents censored material from reaching people; the censored, whose communication is obstructed; and the uninformed who are ignorant of the censored content or even that censorship has taken place. Some forms of censorship could be naïevily misidentified as (accidental) omissions. But some more subtle and chilling techniques are unmistakable in their intent.

For most (probably you, reader), censorship is ignorance because you would not have access to an alternative you don’t know exists. Generally, the broadest effect of censorship is on the uninformed who are prevented from learning of censored topics. But, ignorance is not the deepest most disastrous impact of censorship, the relationship between the censor and the censored is the most damaging and disastrous consequence for the Free Software movement because as Paul Bodie has pointed out people walk away from Free Software after dealing with this kind of skulduggery. To give a timely example of someone who did so, have a look at Michael Stapelberg who stepped down from Debian earlier this spring: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2019-03-10-debian-winding-down/ He complains of a remarquable overlap in topics of discussion from one time to the next over the span of a decade. This is a form of censorship known online as side-scrolling. Where irrelevant topics are inserted and refactored ad-nauseam until exhausting participants’ willingness to contribute to a discussion they view a onerous and unintelligent. Another form of censorship; effectively burying the discussion in irrelevance.

Most people are optimistic, when their messages does not reach the mailing list they scratch their heads, check their SMTP settings and simply chalk it up to a mistake; they dont think anything nefarious is going on.

While the law of average states that for each person who speaks up about censorship there are ten more who simply drift away from the community not knowing if it was something wrong with their email client or the server. For the one and ten who does not simply drift away and wonder what happened to his messages, there are those being made to think that the removal or alteration of their content was somehow for-the-greater-good, that the author was off-base or overly emotional. This is not acceptable!

Personally, I have experienced instances of de facto censorship in the form of not being allowed to participate in an election, having messages delayed until untimely, unauthorized edits, and removal of messages. *I think it is absolutely important we avoid censorship in any communication in any form. *

In a world where parent companies sell their customers’ data to third-parties as part of surveillance-as-a-service agreements, beneficiary organizations are relied on to provide censorship-as-a-service to complete an ecosystem of ignorance and diversion for the end user. We do not need any censorship or moderation on this list. I demand the FSFE stop trying to frame the situation as if it was one discontented person with a personal gripe and *I demand they publish ALL of the censored messages.*

For this reason and because i hold you in regard for our shared interest in computing, I urge all other Free Software fellows to regularly re-evaluate their communications platform choices from the perspective that they be as free from any form any form of censorship as possible. (Hint: It’s not always the sexy apps that respect their users AND apps that were OK at one point, might no longer be.) Give consideration to your commutation choices and you will be rewarded with the most informed discussion possible.

The alternative, living in a world of ignorance and diversion might not be a problem for a short while. But, continued reliance on moderation to lessen the burden on our collective ability for critical thinking will corral our thoughts. Inevitably this will lead to off-loading of our logical capabilities to the censor. With time, this will morph into extremism. Thus, enforcing the status-quo will only benefit one specific community, the Donald Trump Republican Community, and help keep the world the same for a long time.

These people, and I’m assuming you consider them as people, who have censored others with the goal to maintain their status as a flagship organization in Free Software are the ones who actually deserve to be silenced themselves.

P.S. I sent this email to both mailing lists at the same time. It should interesting to see if/when it appears on each list.