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对于该报道的内容,也许人们会有不同的理解,我没有时间遂条反驳,所以放出原文供大家自行判断,有意的朋友可以翻译这篇文章:

Far-right supporters move to open source to evade censorship

A suicide and a strange bitcoin bequest have opened a window on to the new frontier of extremist online media

Fri 12 Mar 2021 10.10 GMT

On 8 December last year, a Frenchman called Laurent Bachelier gave away a total of 28.5 bitcoins – worth $556,000 – to 22 people. On the same day, he killed himself.

In suicide notes written in French and English, he explained that the burden of illness (he suffered from a neurological pain disorder) and his loss of hope for the future had led him to despair. After railing against the decline of western civilization and attacks on free speech, he wrote that he had decided to “leave his modest wealth to certain causes and people”.

Allusions to the “14 words” slogan used by white supremacists offered a clue as to the causes he favored. The beneficiaries of Bachelier’s largesse were all either prominent far-right agitators, or platforms offering them a home. The donations immediately attracted the attention of cybersecurity researchers, extremism watchers and law enforcement officers.

Bachelier gave the video platform BitChute two bitcoins (in January, the price of a single bitcoin ranged between $30,000 and $40,000). The neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer got one, the French Holocaust denier Vincent Reynouard got 1.5, and the US white nationalist celebrity Nick Fuentes, an attendee of the riots in Charlottesville and the rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol in Washington, received 13.5 – worth over $450,000.

A Guardian investigation can now reveal that one of the lesser-known beneficiaries is a YouTube influencer of sorts – one with a history of promoting far-right political ideology. Luke Smith, now a Florida resident, maintains a monetized YouTube channel with 109,000 subscribers. He received at least one bitcoin from Bachelier, valued at the time of writing at just over $30,000.

It’s possible that Bachelier saw in Luke Smith a like mind and a shared purpose. Beyond their common ground in far-right politics, each saw technology as a weapon in their war against liberal, tolerant societies.

Like Bachelier, Smith eschews so-called proprietary software – like MacOS or Microsoft Word – and communications tools like Facebook or Twitter, built and controlled by Silicon Valley firms. Instead, Smith is an advocate for so-called “open source software” – the kind that makes it possible to use, copy, redistribute and modify software legally. And recently, he has been promoting communications platforms that might help extremists to operate beyond the reach of censorship – and even the law.

What Smith preaches: a war against the modern world

The man being funded by Bachelier’s donation likes to present himself as a latter-day Ted Kaczynski – the so-called Unabomber, whose infamous manifesto Smith has at times earnestly recommended to his followers.

Kaczynski, a terrorist still imprisoned for a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three and injured 23, was motivated by a hatred of the modern technological world. In recent years, his apocalyptic account of an industrial civilization on the brink of collapse has resonated with rightwing extremists – including the Christchurch mosque murderer, Brenton Tarrant – who describe themselves as “eco-fascists”.

In 2019, Smith said in a video he wanted to live in a “Unabomber cabin” to escape the surveillance and censorship which he believes is especially aimed at the far right. In a post on his blog in the same year – since deleted – he described the modern world as one “where your every action is watched, if you use proprietary software and communicate only via social media services”.

 The fantasy of the US splintering along ethnic lines has long been entertained by white nationalists

Public records show that Smith moved to a rural property that year near Mayo, in northern Florida, whose title is held by a family member. Since then, most of his videos have been recorded in and around the property.

In various videos and podcasts, Smith rehearses other ideas associated with the far right. He advocates breaking the US up – potentially into racial enclaves “maybe [by] dividing by states, maybe [by] dividing by ethnic groups”. The fantasy of the US splintering along ethnic lines has long been entertained by white nationalists, who have taken to calling themselves the “Balk Right”.

This is not the only place where Smith touches on ideas associated with white nationalism. In a 2018 podcast, he offers an account of human history that relies on arguments made in The 10,000 Year Explosion, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist book. Smith also directed readers to websites like radishmag, where readers are asked to “reconsider” slavery and lynching is painted in a positive light.

Luke Smith did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Taken together, these beliefs come back to another far-right splinter ideology: the neoreactionary movement, which in the last decade has been enjoying an online renaissance of sorts, especially among some of Silicon Valley’s tech elite.

The birth of the neoreactionary movement

The neoreactionary movement traces its history to 2007, when the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Curtis Yarvin started a popular blog under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug. He used it to attack liberalism, democracy and equality, discussed racial hierarchy in the euphemistic terms of “human biodiversity”, and counseled followers to simply detach themselves from the society ruled by the institutions of liberalism.

Journalist Corey Pein wrote an account of the culture of Silicon Valley which, in part, examines the influence that Yarvin’s ideas had in the tech world. Pein says that while neoreactionary ideology is somewhat incoherent, what is consistent is the members’ commitment to extricate themselves from liberal democracy. This “exit” doctrine was influential among some Silicon Valley leaders, including the tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who once memorably said: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

Smith follows the same ideological path. His principal outlet for these ideas is his YouTube channel, where he offers tutorials on how to use austere open source software applications, encouraging viewers to detach themselves from Silicon Valley’s products. The channel is both relatively successful and lucrative, and followers rate him highly. His videos have had more than 18.7m views,meaning he could earn anywhere up to $31,100 a year from his channel on current numbers.

 Smith has been pushing users in the direction of decentralized social media platforms in the so-called 'fediverse'

YouTube confirmed that Smith’s channel remained in their partner program, meaning that he continues to earn money from the channel, but that they had removed one video, featuring racial slurs, which the Guardian had asked about.

Media representatives for Google responded to requests for comment with their
own request for clarification of questions about Smith’s channel and
their community guidelines, but ultimately offered no comment.

Smith has lately been pushing users in the direction of decentralized, resilient social media platforms in the so-called “fediverse”, a network of independent social media sites that communicate with one another, and allow people to interact across different sites. This could allow far-right activists to operate in ways that make them very difficult to shut down.

Though many prominent programmers and advocates in both the wider open source software movement and the fediverse are motivated by progressive, anti-corporate or anti-authoritarian political ideals, now the tools they have created might be used to shelter far-right extremists from the consequences of their hate speech and organizing.

Manipulating the open source movement for nefarious ends

The free and open source software movement has attracted many people with progressive politics, who have used it to help provide digital tools to those with few resources, to breathe new life into hardware that might otherwise have been added to a growing mountain of e-waste, or to move public institutions from Barcelona to Brasília away from dependence on expensive software.

However, experts say that it is not surprising that someone like Smith would be tolerated or even welcomed by some elements of open source culture.

Megan Squire is a professor of computer science at Elon University who has published research on both the far right and open source software communities. She says that “the dominant open source culture historically has been one of extreme misogyny, unfounded meritocracy, toxicity and abuse of everyone,” and that Smith is one of those resisting efforts to change that culture.

In recent years, and especially since the Gamergate movement intensified scrutiny on toxicity in tech, some responded to the blatant sexism, antisemitism and racism online with codes of conduct after realizing this behavior was actually starting to hurt them (Squires says they couldn’t recruit and retain developers).

The provision of safer online spaces for marginalized groups is a large part of the motivation of many of the people who have created the underlying software. On those platforms, tools for moderation and easy ways to flag sensitive content are baked in by design. But Smith is among a small group who repeatedly rail against the introduction of such codes of conduct within open source projects.

 Some open source communications platforms do away with the need for servers by implementing a 'peer-to-peer' network

In a video recorded a week after the Capitol riots, when social media bans were removing rightwingers from Donald Trump down to prevent further violence, Smith said that those who wanted to bypass censorship should use the Twitter-like platform, Pleroma.

Open source software like Pleroma, Mastodon and Matrix reproduce the functions of Twitter, allowing users to send out brief messages to followers. But their implementation and structure are much more decentralized, allowing anyone to set up their own platform on their own server, after which they can join up, or “federate”, with other such communities.

Some open source communications platforms go a step beyond this, and do away with the need for servers altogether by implementing a “peer-to-peer” network. PeerTube, for example, allows users to browse and watch videos in a similar way to YouTube, but instead of streaming it to users from a central server, each user watching a video acts as a relay point.

The technical details are perhaps less important than the practical effect: no one has authority over these platforms: no one ownsthem. While governments and users can place pressure on the big social media companies to ban problematic users or communities, for better or worse, no one can stop anyone creating their own servers or peer-to-peer networks.

These technologies, then, are effectively uncensorable. According to a report by Emmi Bevensee, the co-founder of research consultancy Rebellious Data and the social media monitoring tool SMAT, extremists have been advocating, and even developing them, for years.

 The reason I want it as a trans anti-fascist is the same reason that a Nazi wants it; we just have opposite ends

“Every marginalized community knows what it’s like to be systematically deplatformed”, says Bevensee, who uses non-binary pronouns, pointing to the way in which groups such as sex workers have adopted platforms like Mastodon after finding themselves unable to advertise their services.

But as Bevensee’s report shows, peer-to-peer platforms are a double-edged sword. “The reason I want it as a trans anti-fascist is the same reason that a Nazi wants it; we just have opposite ends,” they explain.

“You know who really doesn’t understand it? The FBI,” Bevensee adds: “we’re talking about a technology that can’t be subpoenaed. It can’t be surveiled” and, in order to carry out remote surveillance of private chats, “you would have to back door every single device in the world”.

This opens the way for extremists to propagandize and organize on platforms that are beyond the reach of legal authorities and tech giants alike. After the far right-friendly social media site Gab encountered hosting problems and app store bans, it rebuilt itself on Mastodon’s software, despite determined opposition from the platform’s creators and users.

Beyond Gab’s ambiguous place in the fediverse, the Guardian found dozens of servers using peer-to-peer, open source tools, which were either exclusively or disproportionately devoted either to far-right politics, or to conspiracy theories that mainstream social media services have previously cracked down on, including coronavirus denialism, “incel” culture and neo-Nazism.

With the far right under pressure from mainstream social media companies and internet hosts, this may be just the beginning.

But experts say that despite their recurrent complaints about Silicon Valley’s platforms, extremists will maintain their foothold in the mainstream for as long as they can. As Squire says of Smith’s internet activity: “Why is he still on YouTube? Because that’s where the eyeballs are, that’s where the money is.”

• In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org

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Pro-crypto people need to face the fact that there are some projects that are super shady.

Anti-crypto people need to face the fact that there are some banks that are super shady.

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A great math rebuttal on just how pathetically poor the court arguments were claiming election fraud in the USA. Quite literally the guy who wrote the mathematical analysis for the Trump side should never be taken seriously in any math context every again. He lost his right to being considered an expert

youtu.be/ua5aOFi-DKs

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Heartbreaking story from Myanmar, where the Tatmadaw is shooting to kill unarmed protesters--and they keep coming. washingtonpost.com/world/2021/

So I was looking into a claim by @tek about mastodon.social seeming to be down. It seems the site is very much up, but it's difficult to get prompt updates of any of the toots on any of the servers I'm currently on.
Can someone explain to me what is going on?

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Just discovered that the comments on LBRY are centralised. I tried to post a comment on a video using the Android app and got a error saying it couldn’t access “comments.lbry.com”.

I think it’s really dishonest of @lbry to not make that clear from the outset.

Other things they really should make more clear to non-technical people include that it’s not decentralised or censorship-resistant if they use lbry.tv or odysee.com since they are central websites run by a single company (LBRY Inc). Probably more.

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"Gwnewch y pethau bychain."

Today is Dydd Gŵyl Dewi, St. David's Day, a day of celebration and culture in #Wales. St. David is know for the saying the above, which translates as "do the little things."

David's philosophy means to take care in the small things that impact you and the people around you. None of us are perfect, but we can all be mindful.

Happy St. David's Day, and ponder the little things.

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@mathlover

When users are more than capable of blocking instances on their own, and its a trivial matter to just go down a list when you first open an account and create your own personal block list, then I really fail to see the point besides perhap virtue signaling.

@swiley

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Facebook has recently launched a campaign touting itself as the protector of small businesses, and targeted advertising as the best method to reach customers. But they aren't telling you the whole story.
eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/face

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Hail to the shrews! 🤪

ARRL: Video Documents Removal, Preservation of 250 kW Voice of America Transmitter

#ARRL #HamRadio

ow.ly/GGxU50DN59I twitter.com/wa1gov/status/1366 #America

--
Post to New Community News Site:
ChestertonEagle.com

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Google & Facebook collectively own 66% of the top 15 mobile apps: "As they face lawsuits over market dominance, the question of how much of the mobile app economy — & the digital economy writ large — they own will grow more urgent," says @sarafischer.

axios.com/google-facebook-domi

Original tweet : twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/

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@xj9

> When it comes to GNU, their promises and goals quickly fall apart. Their sources quickly get progressively more complex, bogged down by the requirements they put upon themselves. It uses copyright as a vessel for their restrictions, effectively reinforcing the system that it seeks to subvert. It speaks of sharing programs as the fundamental act of friendship, and yet GPL forks result only in never-ending feuds. GNU is fundamentally a force for centralization, and centralized systems are far easier for the Powers that be to corrupt than any others.

I don't understand this. You are referring to the GPL right? I can just replace 'GNU' with 'GPL'? How is it a force for centralisation exactly? It's not quite explained.
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It’s the 3rd day without tap water and with constant blackouts. The snow is melting now, but they have no idea when the network will be restored. Probably not today, either.

This is neither fun, nor how I imagined Europe of the 2020s…

It seems linuxrocks.online is down, and went down within the past 24 hours. Anyone know what's going on?

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I have recently uncovered a user who seems to be opening temporary accounts at QOTO, blocking all the moderators so we dont see their posts and then posting high offensive material (nazi imagery, transphobic and hateful derogatory content, etc) and then proceeding to announce to block list moderators and possibly on the list in general in an attempt to get us banned.

The issue of users being able to block moderators and do **exactly** this is something I have brought up to @Gargron before probably over a year ago but he has never acted on fixing this issue and does not see it as needing fixing from what I could gather (he can interject here if he would like).

It is something we as moderators are powerless to detect or act against unless someone actually reports the content first, that is the only way we will even see it. Thankfully none of the block lists have actually acted on this and no damage to QOTO has been done. But seeing as this may continue I want to make others aware of the problem, press gargron to fix the issue once more, and also encourage **anyone** who sees such content on QOTO to please report it so we can act on it.

I can not personally confirm this but according to the block-list operator they seem to have reason to think it is @snow behind the attacks. This would be in line with the behaviors from snow I have witnessed in the past.

For the attempt by snow to spam and falsely accuse instances see here:

likeable.space/notice/A21ux0Ib

For more information see these attempted block requests on QOTO that were made in this fashion:

schlomp.space/FediBlock/data/p

schlomp.space/FediBlock/data/p

@arteteco @Sphinx @khird

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stop being woke without taking the consequences of it
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Tackling the Monopoly Problem

There was a time when people who were exploring computational technology saw it as the path toward decentralization and freedom worldwide. What we have ended up with, instead, is a world that is increasingly centralized, subject to surveillance, and unfree. How did that come to be? In a keynote at the online 2021 linux.conf.au event, Cory Doctorow gave his view of this problem and named its source: monopoly.

lwn.net/SubscriberLink/844102/

HN discussion: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2

Note that this is a shared link created by an LWN subscriber. Please consider subscribing to LWN if you value its content and can afford to do so. The site has served the Linux and Free Software community excellently for decades.

#CoryDoctorow #Pluralistic #Monopoly #Decentralisation #Centralisation #Surveillance #SurveillanceCapitalism #SurveillanceState #LinuxConfAU #LWN

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