Whonix is loosing their antifacist supporters

Reading comprehension 101 to the rescue!

The platform must be somewhat popular or show potential to become somewhat popular.

Popular as in number of users, not as in the “liked by you” kind of popularity. Somewhat popular is a subjective statement open to interpretation. Gab has a million users. “potential” means not popular now, but can happen.

Not in the criteria

This argument sounds awfully close to :

“Tor is used by criminals therefore you are a criminal if you support unconditional privacy”

“Facebook developed an exploit to attack a user therefore you promote user compromise”

Your fallacy is the same old and tired one made by Big Brother and it even goes beyond attacking platform safe harbor protections to associating opinions of other users with another user of the platform. Not even the US gov is that bad yet, but I am sure you will be both on the same page once they claim to be doing it to protect your views.

  • Asks for explanation
  • Get’s one
  • Pretends they can’t read and demands it again

People would respect you more if you say what you mean instead of feigning ignorance. Say you disagree. It’s OK! FYI in actual free societies, everybody is allowed to have different opinions including stuff you don’t like. It’s a feature not a bug.

Keep in mind that branding anyone who looks at you funny, “fascist” and “Nazi” is an insult to the memory of true victims of Fascism and makes you no different than the very Fascists you pursue.

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This drama is all sad, dull, stupid and pointless. I hope this won’t affect the continued development of Whonix more than it already did, and I hope Patrick will have enough mental energy to go through the nonsense and basic misunderstandings that he’s being forced to handle. The levels of sophistry that we have reached where we try to investigate and expose everyone for the slightest clues is crazy. 2020 truly is a sad year.

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The other commentators have already addressed your points adequately.

In addition, I will point out the unsubstantiated assertions stem from an inductive fallacy by the original claimant (the so-called “association fallacy”):

“if there exists any x in the set S so that a property φ is true for x, then for all x in S the property φ must be true.”

P1: A is part of group B.
P2: A is part of group C.
C: Therefore, all members of group B are part of group C.

The fallacy in the argument can be illustrated through the use of an Euler diagram: “A” satisfies the requirement that it is part of both sets “B” and “C”, but if one represents this as an Euler diagram, it can clearly be seen that it is possible that a part of set “B” is not part of set “C”, refuting the conclusion that “all Bs are Cs”.

So, in this case the inductive fallacy is:

  • The Gab platform (“A”) is utilized by Whonix project team members (“B”).
  • The Gab platform (“A”) is utilized by right-wing sympathizers (“C”).
  • Therefore, Whonix project team members (“B”) are right-wing sympathizers (“C”).

This is a basic failure in reasoning. If the same (twisted) logic was applied to the Tor onion network – which has a not insignificant proportion of “unsavory activity” (fraud, hacking, drug sales, illegal porn, counterfeiting, money laundering etc.) Dark web - WikiMili, The Best Wikipedia Reader Dark web - Wikipedia – then it could be claimed users/advocates/developers of that network (The Tor Project, Whonix, Qubes and countless others) endorse that activity.

Nobody makes that claim because it is patently false and likely defamatory.

In conclusion, the original argument is just a form of ‘baiting’, whereby a weak attempt was made to invent an imagined association between Whonix and an undesirable ideology. There is no case to answer, and personally I won’t be wasting any more energy on debating this topic.

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i just expressed my disappointment to micah for this exact reason. i honestly can’t express how surprised i am that he has fed into this. he maintains “torbrowser-launcher” for debian. maybe covid19 isolation is making people overly agitated for stimulation? i truly am shocked by this, as i am that someone would refuse to apply for a grant as a result. wtf? is professionalism just a thing of the past?

btw, you should have let them identify their own fallacy. i like to play a game with such people where after they refuse, i offer to donate $100 to their charity of choice if they’ll admit it. it makes the continued denial that much more interesting. :wink:

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The problem isn’t Whonix trying to be reachable to people who are against fascism on Gab. The problem is

  1. advertising privacy technology on a site that is known as a safe haven for neo-nazis to the extent its explained in the very first section on Wikipedia. Whonix is making privacy tech much more accessible to neo-nazis by being present in their domain. Whonix is also approving the site’s ignorance over the social issue.

  2. advertising Gab on Whonix website. This wouldn’t be necessary even if Whonix continued its existence in the social network. Advertising neo-nazi social media on Whonix project page isn’t right.

These are the reasons I see the Whonix project sympathizes with the neo-nazis and their enablers.

As for Tor, it’s different. It’s reasonable for Tor to enable onion sites of bad actors, it’s a problem that can’t be fixed without doing more damage than good to the society. If Tor was linking to Gab’s onion site on their home page, now that would be outrageous. If the Tor Project had had their own official account in the playpen site, and if they had offered opsec on a separate off-topic section, on the basis all users need proper privacy tech, I don’t think you’d have any trouble seeing the problem. Yet you’re not very far from that right now.

Like I said in the TFC thread, I’m also voting with my feet until you fix your shit.

well, i can hardly speak for the project. but, as a proud “antifa,” i’m fine with you voting with your feet. as i noted earlier, i have accounts on gab to keep them from being jacked for disinfo purposes. whonix has one too and, so far, nobody has identified a post there that they take issue with. it is more than fair for whonix to show what account on gab belongs to “whonix” to prevent silly games. but your issue is that an account simply exists, not the content of that account. you’ve lost the plot.

anyways, while i linked micah to this thread, he seems to want to keep it to twitter. feel free to jump in there. https://twitter.com/JetBlackCloud/status/1277078475350908929

in follow up, i’d like to see whonix dump the gab account. but where all of you screwed up is that you simply could have asked for that. instead, you dropped an accusation that the project was fascist because patrick, who runs a largely volunteer project that relies on donations and grants, didn’t respond to a logical fallacy. i’m personally offended by that and i dare you to accuse me of being “facist” or fascist friendly. this was approached in an entirely childish manner. you all should have known better. instead, here we are. to what end?

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Micah’s logical strawman:

Gab’s identity = political views of its leader

Gab = pedophile site on Tor network

Account there = pedophile

Reality looks more like:

Gab = Tor network

Account = onion

Unless anyone is aware of toxic postings from Whonix on Gab or elsewhere, this is BS.

Fallacy 1 = Tying the creation to the creator - this concept is so hard
for the feeble minded to understand. You don’t have to be ideologically on the same page with your bus driver, farmer, plumber to use their products and services and go about your life… Is Whonix associated with cooperation with spooks, aiding drone attacks and turning society into a surveillance dystopia because they have an account on Zuck’s site? Objectively Zuck’s beliefs and actions have done much more damage to humanity than some extremists on Gab.

Revelation: People can share common goals and needs without agreeing with one another. There isn’t a people with more diverse usage motivations than Tor users and their traffic provides cover for one another even if the actions of some are absolutely despicable. Their common goal is freedom from surveillance. It’s a sad day when Gab is providing more tolerance to diversity of views than most (all?) major platforms. You may be happy they are censoring your enemy’s speech, but just think what else they are doing. Links and mentions of Blueleaks are obliterated from Twitter. The canary in the coal mine is dead and rotting.

Fallacy 2 = Associating users’ beliefs with the creator. Hans Reiser the author of ResierFS stabbed his wife to death. Do Linux devs
endorse murder for carrying ReiserFS? Are ReiserFS users murderers?

Fallacy 3 = Creating Equivalence between Freedom of speech with child exploitation. You’ve really sunk so low when you resort to that argument. What are you even doing, pretending to promote the First Amendment? With supporters like you who needs enemies?

Whonix and its documentation is easy to find on the web and freely available to all. I don’t think they need Gab to become known.

@Tempest don’t waste your breath arguing with a clown like Micah. I’ve lost all respect for him when he called Julian a Nazi and a rapist.

There are great people and then there are the parasites and vultures that hope to prop up their own repuatations by bringing them down and destroying their life’s work.

Micah if you’re reading this, know that you will never amount to a tenth of who Assange is or what he has done for humanity no matter how hard you try to to smear him.

His attacks on Whonix are just the latest attempt to get another notch on his “activism” belt and “antifa street cred”

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Referring to Micah Lee’s writing on Whonix’s relation with Gab, I’m not having anything to do with your project until you distance yourself from the neo-nazi social media. I mean, what the actual fuck people?

Tinfoil chat sounds quite interesting. Also I read this article by Micah lee you mentioned no offense but it sounds pretty paranoid, I’m personally not a fan of Gab but I am interested by the mastodon software itself, Whonix has accounts for many platforms probably for extra outreach, I doubt it is an endorsement for the “ideologies of each of those platforms”?

If you like this project and want to participate you shouldn’t let something like that hold you back, it’s freedom software and at the end of the day anyone could potentially use or modify it for whatever, imagined ideological differences shouldn’t matter when developing a general platform because anyone can take advantage of the work regardless.

I support freedom software regardless of who uses it because I believe better ideas and solutions will win out on the free marketplace of ideas eventually and that availability of freedom technologies will change the world in ways we can’t fully even imagine yet.

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That’s not what I’m saying. You got it wrong.
I’m saying promoting a right-wing network is promotion of a right-wing network. Simple, right?

I’m noticing that I’m taking position against a white supremacy network, while you take the position of defending it.

There’s more important things to do, but everyone based on their capabilities and possibilities. …still, don’t underestimate the effects online communities have.
If all you can do is not defending white supremacists organizing, that would be better then this post of you.

I know, but I don’t know why you tell me this.

Read this again:
“fb, twitter and telegram are mainstream. Matrix is very popular in the free software community with the potential to reach mainstream. Gab is the only network that does not fit the criteria I just mention”

Gab is the only network that is not Matrix or mainstream that Whonix promotes, at the time this issue was brought to attention.
There are many networks that would fit the criteria that Whonix chose as a criteria to create a new account. BUT Whonix chosen only Gab as a non-mainstream network, beside Matrix. And the later is fame in the free software community that Whonix is part of.

I am calling nazis nazis. Gab is a network by Neo-Nazis. That’s the topic. I’m not insulting just “anyone”, I’m calling a neo-nazi network by what it is. Are you suggesting that calling fascists “fascists”, such as the people behind Gab, is no difference to what fascists do/did?

This can be done by one single page, instead of having it on hundreds (don’t know if it’s actually that much. just read it as “many”). Whonix is not just having an account on Gab, Whonix is promoting Gab on many pages.

as a side note:

Patrick supports at his youtube channel also german Neo-Nazis.
Sure this has nothing to do with Gab. It is only about free speeeczz.
No, don’t ask me why he basically only supports conspiracy theorists and neo-nazis there.

@antifacist_whonix_us i just want to ask you regardless to what you are saying , why do you mix politics or (can be) religion or other things which are unrelated to technology or digital world to it?

what will be added from technological point view to anyone here if this x image and link removed or not?

the only thing which someone can jump in with, is it legal or not legal.

if its illegal to put particular link and image please share with us that.

otherwise let the ppl experience their thinking on blog or twitter , no one can satisfy everyone and false information across the internet is far from anyone can count it.

Yeah circular logic is very simple indeed.

Tell me about it…

In America we don’t take away everybody’s fundamental rights because a few abuse them. Totalitarian bootlickers must be disappointed I know.

If Gab is censoring all other views except those of neo-Nazis, then you may have a point. However anyone is free to post there. I encourage you to go join Gab, appropriate their network and attack extremists views instead of whining about them over here.

You keep repeating your subjective interpretation of the criteria as if it’s supposed to mean something.

You still haven’t addressed the arguments above about why your logic about endorsement is problematic and what it implies. Fascists throw around arbitrary accusations and punish people for them without any logic or reason other than the victim not being part of their movement. Your behavior is the same even if your core beliefs are different.

Show me the post where Patrick actively asks anyone to join Gab? Having an icon is no different than what a Facebook “like” button is. It’s for current users of a network to share content not as an active call to join.

Yeah OK… because every book or video someone sees means they automatically endorse its views. Genius logic at work over here.

Here is what a Tails developer who’s met him at CCC says:

hxxps://twitter.com/DrWhax/status/1275107579530809344
hxxps://twitter.com/DrWhax/status/1275379490772877312

Patrick has videos where he preaches his support for the LGBTQ+ community, totally something a “fascist” would do…

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He does not and that’s easily verified, but nice attempt at character assassination.

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Thank you to everyone who joined this discussion and clarified to the OP our policy and the issues with their position.

Whonix has no political affiliations of any kind nor does it support any political ideology.

We have spent a better part of a decade developing and advancing a state of the art distro to protect the fundamental human right of absolute freedom of speech to all.

Our values are enshrined in our Code of Conduct where it is stated that we do not tolerate any attacks against members involving race, religion, sexual orientation or even personal reasons. They say actions speak louder than words. Don’t take our word for it, see for yourself what a friendly, positive, vibrant and inclusive community this is and will continue to be.

If anyone takes issue with our project, they are free to fork our code under the respective Libre licenses and start their own project and community that better reflects their ideals.

Further off-topic discussions about this issue proves to be non-productive and a distraction to our mission and therefore unwelcome here. It also runs afoul of our forum policies which is about sticking to tech discussions.

Thread closed.

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