> Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 11:56 PM > From: "Giacomo Tesio" <giac...@tesio.it> > To: gcc@gcc.gnu.org, "Gerald Pfeifer" <ger...@pfeifer.com>, "Frosku" > <fro...@frosku.com> > Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers > > Hi Gerald,, > > On April 17, 2021 9:09:19 AM UTC, Gerald Pfeifer <ger...@pfeifer.com> wrote: > > On Fri, 16 Apr 2021, Frosku wrote: > > > In my view, if people employed by a small number of American > > companies > > > succeed in disassociating GCC from GNU/FSF, which is representative > > > of the free software grassroots community > > > > I find this insistant focus by some on "American companies" > > interesting - and quite pointless. And my passport is burgundy. > > > So much that in fact, we are talking about some of the most controversial > corporation in the whole world. > > And while we are talking about "toxic emailers", it's not lost to me > the irony that all this divisive debate about inclusive and righteous > behaviour started with an email of a Facebook employee that defines > working in Facebook "a joy". > https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235091.html > > Yeah the same Facebook that still does what Cambridge Analytica used to.
It's worse than that. Facebook provides the soil and nourishment for companies like Cambridge Analytica to grow. Some early work on "The Shift News" exposed facebook profiles used to spread rumours about the government’s perceived enemies including the family of slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017. Her police protection was removed entirely in 2013 when the Labour party - a frequent target of her investigations - returned to power. https://theshiftnews.com/2018/05/27/the-shift-news-disinformation-watch-fake-facebook-account-behind-unsubstantiated-attacks-on-opposition-mp/ https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/30/europe/daphne-caruana-galizia-qa-intl/index.html > > It also is a completely unwarranted attack on the integrity of the > > maintainers, contributors, and other leaders of GCC. Regardless of > > the color of their passports. > > This is a strawman. > > People are just concerned about the undue influence that these controversial > corporations can have on GCC through the influence they have on their > employees. > > It would be overly naive to pretend that the Steering Committee members' > are not influenced by their affiliations, even if we were not talking about > the > champions of surveillance capitalism. > > And this has nothing to do with their integrity. > > Why should they have declared such affiliations in the SC's web page, > if they were irrelevant? > > Because they acknowledge that their affiliations have a non-negligible > influence on what they do and what they do not. > > > Also this has nothing to do with their passports. > > In fact, as you say, > > > The majority of the FSF board, > > FSF leadership, and RMS himself are American from what I can tell. > > > It was Nathan who framed his request in term of culture, politics and > whiteness and priviledge... > > And since the GCC Steering Committe did what he requested, we have to > assume that these are the kind of arguments that we have to debunk, > providing you with a more varied perspective. > > But unfortunately you keep invalidating our perspective because... we are > "jerks". > > > Giacomo >
