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Last remaining 1000+ user community channel seized by Freenode staff

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Re: Last remaining 1000+ user community channel seized by Freenode staff

#91

Post by rtkwe »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #35
LocalH wrote: post #3

Wow, they really think they own the communities just because people chose to use them for IRC? How fucking entitled and arrogant . I don't even use it, but death to Freenode. Obviously somebody thought they found a gold mine, but in their tunnel vision is so focused on "owning" something that they never owned, that they're willing to burn the whole place down to keep "owning" it.

is it really any different than say.. Discord? or a subreddit? it always stuck me as amazing in how much autonomy IRC channels tend to have on various servers, especially as the internet has changed in the past 20 years. Between mobs wanting "accountability" for speech they don't like, the increases in liability, the MSM targeting any platform that has any free speech or autonomy to it (be it Substack, podcasts, E2EE…

There's different expectations for IRC vs most other social/chat platforms because of the structure and history. IRC has traditionally been run as a non-commercial community project so admins and server ops haven't had the same incentives for commercial palatability and IRC being older and a bit more obtuse to get into meant it didn't get the same attention in the cases where it's users do get into trouble. On top of that given it's a protocol instead of a single company there's a bit of separation where each server doesn't put pressure on all the others.

Re: Last remaining 1000+ user community channel seized by Freenode staff

#92

Post by joepie91_ »

fsloth wrote: post #23
rodiger wrote: post #5

Can someone provide some background? What started this?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-bee... Abbreviated: A LLC has enough papers to prove that they own Freenode, and they have more money than the Freenode past volunteers to spend in court fighting over this. Hence the Freenode volunteers decided to abandon Freenode. Lesson: Even though you are a fully volunteer organization, always maintain an explicit paper trail that holds in court who owns a…

> A LLC has enough papers to prove that they own Freenode

Actually they almost certainly don't. But they don't need to, either; they can just suppress the staff through legal threats, because lawsuits are expensive. Whether they are in the right is immaterial.

Re: Last remaining 1000+ user community channel seized by Freenode staff

#93

Post by na85 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #79
unixhero wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a flourishing community of the interwebs maybe, just maybe. IRC as a tool is certainly not dead. Former IRCOP.

How does IRC work on mobile these days? Last time I used IRC seriously, I had to get off the train because I was chatting more on mobile than not and the mobile clients were basically un-serviceable (IIRC, protocol is too chatty and stateful for reliable connection on a device continuously changing its physical network connection).

As it always was, the best way to use IRC is sadly to sign up for a third party shell account and run a bnc or an irssi+tmux session or similar.

It's little wonder to me that IRC's lunch got eaten; the UX on mobile is just awful.

Re: Last remaining 1000+ user community channel seized by Freenode staff

#94

Post by LegitShady »

Jaygles wrote: post #81
_xy8h wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLDR Bullet Point version. * Founder lilo/Rob died. * Christel became new head of staff. * Christel "sold" Freenode to Andrew Lee (of which was not hers to sell) and never told the rest of Freenode staff the terms. * Lee decided to assert himself by claiming he owned all of Freenode and that the staff had to hand over the keys to the kingdom to him. * Staff resisted, Lee used threats. Staff decided it was better to m…

> Christel "sold" Freenode to Andrew Lee (of which was not hers to sell) and never told the rest of Freenode staff the terms. If this is the case, is anyone pursuing a way to invalidate the sale?

Because likely nobody who can afford to has any standing.

Re: Last remaining 1000+ user community channel seized by Freenode staff

#95

Post by sitzkrieg »

shadowgovt wrote: post #79
unixhero wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a flourishing community of the interwebs maybe, just maybe. IRC as a tool is certainly not dead. Former IRCOP.

How does IRC work on mobile these days? Last time I used IRC seriously, I had to get off the train because I was chatting more on mobile than not and the mobile clients were basically un-serviceable (IIRC, protocol is too chatty and stateful for reliable connection on a device continuously changing its physical network connection).

irccloud is a third party thing that makes this as seamless as other persistent chats but its not free

Re: Last remaining 1000+ user community channel seized by Freenode staff

#96

Post by ogre_codes »

tyingq wrote: post #29

Freenode: Current global users 49980 Libera: Current global users 32769 Freenode's decline in users over the past month: http://www.hinner.com/ircstat/Socip_F_2.gif Comparison showing Freenode decline and Libera rise: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php Probably won't be long before Freenode is effectively dead. Edit: Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27502059 for a projection and more stats.

Services like this have a very large network effect. As the informed users leave, the quality of discussion drops and the remainder of users end up leaving too.

Re: Last remaining 1000+ user community channel seized by Freenode staff

#97

Post by yzombinator »

LocalH wrote: post #3

Wow, they really think they own the communities just because people chose to use them for IRC? How fucking entitled and arrogant . I don't even use it, but death to Freenode. Obviously somebody thought they found a gold mine, but in their tunnel vision is so focused on "owning" something that they never owned, that they're willing to burn the whole place down to keep "owning" it.

Haha, HN doesn't even allow you to delete comments, man. They own your comments in perpetuity in the name of whatever. What's permanent about an IRC channel? Its name?

Re: Last remaining 1000+ user community channel seized by Freenode staff

#98

Post by xpressvideoz »

ConcernedCoder wrote: post #71

Anthing to do with this? https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7ev8y/freenode-open-source-...

Wow, I didn't know Lee was a "nominal" crown princee of South Korea. As a South Korean myself, I really hate the former royal family. It embarrasses me that their negative influence contributed to the collapse of not only their own country, but also Freenode.

Re: Last remaining 1000+ user community channel seized by Freenode staff

#99

Post by makomk »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #37
tutfbhuf wrote: post #33

The reasoning is quite simple: Lee wants to force everybody away from Freenode to Libera so that he has full control and power over an empty Freenode network.

Why, though? How does that benefit him in any way?

I think the answer is that it doesn't, and what he actually wanted was the minor prestige of (sort of) owning and funding (part of) Freenode and having his company's logo in the corner of the site whilst leaving the actual operations to the existing staff. That is to say, basically the same status quo as the last few years.

From what I can tell, somewhere along the line some of the staff decided that wasn't OK and kicked out the person who'd actually been in charge of the network since the founder died, his newly-appointed replacement demanded that the Freenode domain be transferred to him personally and rejected Lee and others' suggestion of giving control of it to the community instead, and things went downhill from there with attempts to lock Lee and people seen as affiliated with him out of the network, threats of mass resignations and bogus claims of unprecedented advertising intrusion on the Freenode site, selling people's personal info, etc...

Re: Last remaining 1000+ user community channel seized by Freenode staff

#100

Post by techrat »

junon wrote: post #80
techrat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That, combined with a fragile ego and controlling personality... Oh, people barely know the half of it... and for those wondering just how bad it can get, peruse one of the court cases currently against him personally. https://corrupt.tech/1708590130-ocr-compressed.pdf

Holy shit. This is crazy if it's true. > For example, he told-LTM employees that he wanted to hire a female candidate simply because he wanted to have sex with her. Similarly, Lee expressed his desire to set up a "modeling agency" in the Hollywood Hills that would actually be a front for illegal prostitution (i.e., the "models" would be paid escorts). To that end, Lee circulated a memo to male LTM executives advising…

It gets so much trashier shortly after that segment.

> Making matters worse, Lee also had an ongoing relationship with a mistress that he brought to company functions and the LTM offices, despite people knowing that he was married. Lee met his mistress through a company offering female companionship for money. Lee abandoned his wife and newborn child to spend time with this woman, and their relationship was toxic. His mistress was physically and verbally abusive towards Lee, erratic and unpredictable, and caused Lee to act over-emotionally.

> The two fought on a daily basis. And this happened in front of LTM employees, including Plaintiffs. For example, a few days after the February 2015 Meeting, Lee and his mistress had a violent altercation at a club in front of Park, Ken, James, and other LTM personnel. His mistress became infuriated and violent when Lee did not pay attention to her to attend to a conference call concerning LTM business. She punched Lee in the face, causing Lee to lose a tooth.

All that MtGOX money couldn't buy class.

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