Re: Censorship in Debian
On 20/12/18 22:14, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> writes:
>
>> I was recently at the UN forum on business and human rights, listening
>> to an Iranian dissident talk[1] about the extremes that his country goes
>> to in censoring and silencing people who don't agree with their rulers.
>> I would encourage people to watch the video.
>> At that very same moment, the anti-harassment team were censoring[2] a
>> Debian Developer's blog from Planet Debian. Chilling.
>> I actually looked at Planet shortly after attending that panel
>> discussion and immediately noticed that Norbert Preining[3] had been
>> censored. Disappearances of Khashoggi[4] and Kamphuis[5] came to mind.
> Entirely apart from the merits of the rest of your discussion of whether
> the project should republish this blog using project resources, this
If people want to clarify the way Planet can be used, they can create a
policy and maybe put it to a vote. Retrospectively sanctioning people
without strong grounds based on policy is not right though.
People may expect a newsletter or another official publication to be
curated to some degree but I always had the impression that both Planet
and packaging are at the discretion of the individual developers.
Personally, I welcome the diversity of views there and if it is going to
be curated now, I would volunteer to host an uncensored alternative to
Planet for those with similar feelings.
> framing is appalling and blatantly dishonest. It intentionally conflates
> issues of government censorship and journalistic freedom that have cost
> people their lives with a dispute over whether Debian should *republish*
> content that has not been censored, restricted, or removed in any way, let
> alone been subject to threats of physical violence.
>
> I object in the strongest possible terms to this framing of your argument.
> You should be profoundly ashamed for choosing this path of malicious
> exaggeration phrased as an attack on the work of fellow developers. It
> was completely unbecoming of a Debian project member.
>
and I reply with the strongest possible evidence, personal experience
and scientific research.
Having been rear ended by a utility van, thrown off a motorbike half way
across a roundabout and having also received abusive and threatening
messages from people within the Debian community, I feel that the
physical pain caused by the latter was more than the former. Those
people should be ashamed of themselves.
Research confirms[1] this phenomenon.
If people want to pursue an anti-harassment objective in good faith,
then please start by realizing the existing team and their approach
needs careful examination, they need to make it a priority to put at the
front of their mind the welfare of every single person they come into
contact with, even if they don't understand or can't related to that
person's behaviour and they probably need to engage outside expertise
both for the benefit of the community and their own state of mind.
Regards,
Daniel
1.
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/roger-covin/cyber-bullying-suicide_b_3996518.html
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