09:43:25 I'm throwing it out there, then you decide what to do: As expected, Monero is being more and more linked to the far-right. We can pretend this is not true and that slate's article was just bad journalism, but this is something i've been recently warning about. Many alt-right and neo-nazis now use Monero and most of the vocal voices on social media have recently defended the decision of hosting a declared antisemitist and racist individial in a 09:43:25 Monero conference. 09:43:59 The link to the far-right and neonazi movement is really awful and doesn't respect reality, but doesn't come unexpected. 09:46:34 I propose to write a blog post where the monero developers and core team take distance from racist and neonazi movements and instead emphatise the importance of Monero for financial privacy as a human right andas a protection for persecuted minorities 09:48:35 I already warned not long ago about Monero being tide to alt-right racists movements. If we don't want to become untouchable we need to clarify this situation exactly like Tor does. There will be more and more article picturing Monero as a tool for racists, homophobesand company. It's time to take the distances and claim Monero as a legit project. 09:49:00 The blog post can be signed by individual or workgroup, but i think would be important to have the signatures of the core team as well 09:49:11 luigi1111 binaryfate ^ 10:12:48 Monero is a neutral tool, free of politics. I would prefer to keep it that way and focus on positive use cases. 11:10:56 I created a draft of the blog post: https://github.com/erciccione/monero-site/blob/post-hate/_posts/2021-11-18-freedom-not-hate.md 11:11:27 if core is willing to sign something along these lines i can PR it and then we can tweak it 11:13:11 I warned about it before. Monero will be made untouchable because it will be considered a tool of the alt-right. This post will clarify the uncensorable nature of Monero, but also that the project is inclusive and refuses discriminations. 14:09:58 While I appreciate your intentions, I believe this would elevate the core team as aiming at being too much of gate keepers. It would also give the wrong picture to externals of Monero being a somewhat top-down organised organisation, more than the reality we are pushing for. The effect on community would also be very divisive, since such a post would be intepreted in lights of recent context of events within community. Effectively I believe 14:09:59 this would likely be a net negative result to the project. 14:10:50 I'd encourage everyone to write and posts things with similar tone and quality, and reach out to journalists as well. 14:19:09 Maybe an "open letter" posted somewhere else and signed by prominent community members would have the same tone without the downsides? 14:19:35 Rather than getmonero.org I mean 15:13:00 Yes, in case it wasn't clear I encourage everyone to communicate on what they deem important but the "official" website is not the right place IMHO, for that it would have large negative side effects 15:17:46 A good heuristic for decision is usually "what would people do if the same was happening with Bitcoin?" (or the past version, "what would people have done when Bitcoin was the size of Monero"), as Bitcoin is largely known and recognized as "decentralized". 15:18:28 If it was Bitcoin, I don't think anybody would assume authority to post anything remotely "official". However, many parties would voice their opinions in various ways and plateforms, including with the press. I think that's a good direction to aim for with Monero as well. 15:20:04 Bitcoin has/had its fair share of notorious bad associations as well, not much different from Monero. Hence that heuristic is quite valid to me in this case. 15:22:48 The flipside is that a reddit post with the same content will not convince many journalists. Not sure what the ideal platform would be. I think it would be useful to have a statement similar to this with endorsement from anyone who is interested, so that it can be linked in response to trash articles. 15:40:41 I disagree, but at this point i just lost hope. 15:44:57 binaryFate: Would you be against posting the blog post on getmonero even if not signed by core, but by workgroups? 15:46:56 actually i don't care. I'm sick of trying to fight this battle alone. When it will be too late you'll figure it out.