As such, if a peaceful protest were to take place during the talk in question, we will not take action, provided the protest is indeed peaceful and does not disrupt the proceedings.
However, the link you gave explicitly states: “Our purpose is to peacefully disrupt Dorsey’s talk”.
I think I side with the FOSDEM organizers here; I am not OK with disrupting anyone’s talk. Protests are fine, actual disruptions are not.
Your rhetoric hinges on a wilful conflation of the two meanings of the word “disruption”. Also, who says I approve of bypassing labor laws, banking regulations, or copyright?
Bypassing labor laws, banking regulations, copyright? All right! Making a fuss when they are talking? Uncivil, not OK, who do you think you are!
Many "tech thought leaders" are, for lack of a better word, clinically relevant narcissists. In their view, the world revolves around them and their ideas, everyone else has to stand aside for their grand plans, and god forbid you try and shine a spotlight on their bullshit - then you are the enemy.
That also explains the hard shift towards the (far-)right observed over the last weeks, with pledges of allegiance made in Florida. It's not just about the 47th threatening revenge against anyone not supporting him, it's more about the simple fact that the progressive/left doesn't provide the positive feedback that these "leaders" crave like nothing else.
Protesters do not have an untrammelled right to be disruptive; others in society do not have an obligation to facilitate or tolerate that disruption. If you want to stand outside the venue and shout, that's your prerogative. If you want to come inside the venue and cause disruption, then the organisers have the right to throw you out.
Strictly speaking, what we're discussing is direct action rather than protest. The aim of these protesters is not merely to make a public display of their disapproval, but to take active steps to prevent something from happening, i.e. to prevent a talk from taking place by "occupying" the stage. The participants in that action may feel morally justified and may indeed be morally justified, but that doesn't negate the consequences of their actions. Giving anyone impunity to break whatever rule they like if they feel it's justified is a very short path to anarchy.
Protesters do not have an untrammelled right to be disruptive; others in society do not have an obligation to facilitate or tolerate that disruption
Go on then, polite member of society who doesn't understand the point of protests. I'm looking forward to your counter-protest that will not disrupt anything, will largely go unnoticed, be super polite but still be a huge success and change the status quo.
I'm not saying that protesters shouldn't be disruptive, I'm saying that they don't have a right to be disruptive. If you believe that your cause is just, then you have to accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions. Disrupting a conference may well be a more effective way to highlight your grievance, but you don't get to play the victim if the organisers throw you out or refuse you entry. You have a right to protest, but that right does not supersede the rights of other people to go about their lawful business. The alternative to that balancing of rights is nothing more than mob rule.
Yes, this is what modern protests do not understand. Of course they don't have the right to protest however they want. That's why Martin Luther King was arrested some 29 times. Many of the protesters I talked to in other movements all want to be protected from arrest or any harm to their well-being. In other words, they don't want to push their protest into civil disobedience.
People risk their livelihood and lives to protest because they think something is is wrong enough that it needs to be changed that desperately.
People today will complain all day about Amazon and Jeff bezos but ask them to cancel their Amazon prime subscription? No way!
Just look at what Sam Hussain and Max Blumenthal, the reporters, did the other day, and that should give people an idea of civil disobedience.
What FOSDEM is saying is that they don't want civil disobedience, only protests. And they want to set the rules for the protest. So FOSDEM is turning into the state.
Anarchist here. Anarchy is the practice of establishing social order without central authority, coercion, or intimidation.
This is clearly an attempt by the minority of attendees to use coercion to limit the free speech of someone they dislike.
If a minority of people reject broad consensus and to prevent any person from peacefully speaking in an assigned time slot, they are not participating in anarchy. They are simply being dicks.
Adults respect the right of their enemies to speak peacefully. Quietly hold up signs, wear T-shirts, but respect peaceful free speech. Next year submit your own talk with an alternative prespective to try to form consensus on why billionaires and or companies with higher-than-x carbon emissions should be unwelcome, or propose an alternative method to gain broader community consensus on approving talks
IIUC, the word “anarchy”, when being used as a synonym for “chaos”, is a simple political slur; like calling some country a “Socialist Regime” in the context of state overreach. It implies a negative but does not state it, in hope of creating an associative link between the two concepts. The word “anarchy” is merely one such (very old) slur which really took hold, and most people now believe the word “anarchy” actually means chaos.
FOSDEM is a conference for open source software, possibly one of the most functional demonstrations of anarchy working in the modern world. Seems only fitting to me.
Anarchy does not mean mob rule. Allowing protests to censor anyone from talking opens up a huge security hole: anyone can then organize a “protest” to censor anyone.
Civil disobedience is not synonymous with protesting and you can do the latter without the former. There are tradeoffs with everything and protests conducted with the tacit approval of the event organizers might be more convincing or more impactful than a disruptive protest that gets the protesters kicked out of the event.
... we do not object to the need for sponsors generally at FOSDEM ... we do object specifically to Jack Dorsey and Block, Inc. being selected as sponsors and especially as speakers.
... Our purpose is to peacefully disrupt Dorsey’s talk, and only Dorsey’s talk ...
... His complicity, along with his present-day activities at Block, Inc. and the priorities of the company that he represents as CEO — its irresponsible climate policy, $120M in fines for enabling consumer fraud, and the layoffs of another 1,000 employees in 2024 despite posting record profits on $5B in revenue — are enough of a threat to our community and its ethos to raise alarm at his participation in FOSDEM.
"""
I'm a little at a loss for context. A shallow reading is that DeVault's contention is that Dorsey sold Twitter and is now involved in many cryptocurrency focused companies. Is this too reductive of a reading?
As far as I can tell, a significant portion of Block's codebase, as well as other sibling organizations, are FOSS.
Oh, wow. I have come to expect nonsensical silliness from him but this is a new level of ridiculous posturing.
Disrupting a talk simply because you don’t like AI or fintech is, for lack of a better term, lame. A payment processor isn’t responsible for the climate emergency, and a company isn’t evil for having a wealthy founder or having to do layoffs.
"To maintain the peaceful nature of our protest and minimize the disruption to FOSDEM generally, we ask participants to strictly adhere to the following instructions:
Do not touch anyone else, or anyone else’s property, for any reason.
Do not engage in intimidation.
Remain quiet and peaceful throughout the demonstration.
When the protest ends, disperse peacefully and in a timely manner.
Comments
Context: Jack Dorsey is giving a talk and Drew DeVault is organizing a protest against that https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/20/2025-01-20-FOSDEM-protest...
Seems there is a conflict brewing. TFA says:
However, the link you gave explicitly states: “Our purpose is to peacefully disrupt Dorsey’s talk”.
I think I side with the FOSDEM organizers here; I am not OK with disrupting anyone’s talk. Protests are fine, actual disruptions are not.
Funny how tech thought leaders always praise disruption, and suddenly it is not fine when they are the ones disrupted.
Bypassing labor laws, banking regulations, copyright? All right! Making a fuss when they are talking? Uncivil, not OK, who do you think you are!
Your rhetoric hinges on a wilful conflation of the two meanings of the word “disruption”. Also, who says I approve of bypassing labor laws, banking regulations, or copyright?
Many "tech thought leaders" are, for lack of a better word, clinically relevant narcissists. In their view, the world revolves around them and their ideas, everyone else has to stand aside for their grand plans, and god forbid you try and shine a spotlight on their bullshit - then you are the enemy.
That also explains the hard shift towards the (far-)right observed over the last weeks, with pledges of allegiance made in Florida. It's not just about the 47th threatening revenge against anyone not supporting him, it's more about the simple fact that the progressive/left doesn't provide the positive feedback that these "leaders" crave like nothing else.
Tangential but I can't wait until some startup starts working on mind reading AI so the brain becomes nothing more than an organ
Right. Because protests (however stupid they are) should be silent and easy to ignore, they should not disrupt anything or inconvenience anyone.
Protesters do not have an untrammelled right to be disruptive; others in society do not have an obligation to facilitate or tolerate that disruption. If you want to stand outside the venue and shout, that's your prerogative. If you want to come inside the venue and cause disruption, then the organisers have the right to throw you out.
Strictly speaking, what we're discussing is direct action rather than protest. The aim of these protesters is not merely to make a public display of their disapproval, but to take active steps to prevent something from happening, i.e. to prevent a talk from taking place by "occupying" the stage. The participants in that action may feel morally justified and may indeed be morally justified, but that doesn't negate the consequences of their actions. Giving anyone impunity to break whatever rule they like if they feel it's justified is a very short path to anarchy.
Go on then, polite member of society who doesn't understand the point of protests. I'm looking forward to your counter-protest that will not disrupt anything, will largely go unnoticed, be super polite but still be a huge success and change the status quo.
I'm not saying that protesters shouldn't be disruptive, I'm saying that they don't have a right to be disruptive. If you believe that your cause is just, then you have to accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions. Disrupting a conference may well be a more effective way to highlight your grievance, but you don't get to play the victim if the organisers throw you out or refuse you entry. You have a right to protest, but that right does not supersede the rights of other people to go about their lawful business. The alternative to that balancing of rights is nothing more than mob rule.
Yes, this is what modern protests do not understand. Of course they don't have the right to protest however they want. That's why Martin Luther King was arrested some 29 times. Many of the protesters I talked to in other movements all want to be protected from arrest or any harm to their well-being. In other words, they don't want to push their protest into civil disobedience.
People risk their livelihood and lives to protest because they think something is is wrong enough that it needs to be changed that desperately.
People today will complain all day about Amazon and Jeff bezos but ask them to cancel their Amazon prime subscription? No way!
Just look at what Sam Hussain and Max Blumenthal, the reporters, did the other day, and that should give people an idea of civil disobedience.
What FOSDEM is saying is that they don't want civil disobedience, only protests. And they want to set the rules for the protest. So FOSDEM is turning into the state.
Anarchist here. Anarchy is the practice of establishing social order without central authority, coercion, or intimidation.
This is clearly an attempt by the minority of attendees to use coercion to limit the free speech of someone they dislike.
If a minority of people reject broad consensus and to prevent any person from peacefully speaking in an assigned time slot, they are not participating in anarchy. They are simply being dicks.
Adults respect the right of their enemies to speak peacefully. Quietly hold up signs, wear T-shirts, but respect peaceful free speech. Next year submit your own talk with an alternative prespective to try to form consensus on why billionaires and or companies with higher-than-x carbon emissions should be unwelcome, or propose an alternative method to gain broader community consensus on approving talks
Finally an articulation of the difference between anarchy and chaos. (Not being ironic.) Thank you.
I don't agree with the position, but I appreciate the distinction.
IIUC, the word “anarchy”, when being used as a synonym for “chaos”, is a simple political slur; like calling some country a “Socialist Regime” in the context of state overreach. It implies a negative but does not state it, in hope of creating an associative link between the two concepts. The word “anarchy” is merely one such (very old) slur which really took hold, and most people now believe the word “anarchy” actually means chaos.
FOSDEM is a conference for open source software, possibly one of the most functional demonstrations of anarchy working in the modern world. Seems only fitting to me.
Anarchy does not mean mob rule. Allowing protests to censor anyone from talking opens up a huge security hole: anyone can then organize a “protest” to censor anyone.
Protesting should be about raising awareness of disagreement on a topic. It does not have to be disruptive to reach that objective.
Sometimes it does, but that's when protest turns into civil disobedience.
Martin Luther King was arrested 29 times and then he was shot.
Allowing protests to escalate to disruptions is equivalent to allowing protests to censor anyone they don’t like.
Civil disobedience is not synonymous with protesting and you can do the latter without the former. There are tradeoffs with everything and protests conducted with the tacit approval of the event organizers might be more convincing or more impactful than a disruptive protest that gets the protesters kicked out of the event.
Guaranteeing freedom of speech and preventing a talk from happening seems contradictory.
Drew is just ridicolous. Dorsey is the least of our problems.
I'll be even there this year. But not interested in this event
In the words of my former manager "one of the good ones" there's levels to the barons
Some more information:
Jack Dorsey's slot at FOSDEM 25:
https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4507-infu...
Block's GitHub:
https://github.com/block
Selections from Drew DeVault's post:
"""
... we do not object to the need for sponsors generally at FOSDEM ... we do object specifically to Jack Dorsey and Block, Inc. being selected as sponsors and especially as speakers.
... Our purpose is to peacefully disrupt Dorsey’s talk, and only Dorsey’s talk ...
... His complicity, along with his present-day activities at Block, Inc. and the priorities of the company that he represents as CEO — its irresponsible climate policy, $120M in fines for enabling consumer fraud, and the layoffs of another 1,000 employees in 2024 despite posting record profits on $5B in revenue — are enough of a threat to our community and its ethos to raise alarm at his participation in FOSDEM.
"""
I'm a little at a loss for context. A shallow reading is that DeVault's contention is that Dorsey sold Twitter and is now involved in many cryptocurrency focused companies. Is this too reductive of a reading?
As far as I can tell, a significant portion of Block's codebase, as well as other sibling organizations, are FOSS.
His main objection seems to stem from the fact that Jack Dorsey's net worth is $5.6 billion.
His main objection is that FOSDEM is not CNBC. Should not be endorsing pretense of interviews, that are just marketing pitches.
I thought this was a pithy remark but it looks like it's actually pretty close to the truth.
From a recent post by DeVault [0] titled "No billionaires at FOSDEM" (thanks to belter [1]):
"""
In my view, billionaires are not welcome at FOSDEM.
"""
[0] https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/16/2025-01-16-No-Billionares...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42778478
Fair. You do not become a billionaire without being a massive POS.
Oh, wow. I have come to expect nonsensical silliness from him but this is a new level of ridiculous posturing.
Disrupting a talk simply because you don’t like AI or fintech is, for lack of a better term, lame. A payment processor isn’t responsible for the climate emergency, and a company isn’t evil for having a wealthy founder or having to do layoffs.
His upset is misplaced.
"have to" is carrying a lot of water for the fintech with >5 billion in revenue
Honestly it's past time we recognized a lot of open source orgs and participants have an adulting problem
That's not at all limited to open source orgs and participants I've found. Seems to be a large percentage of the world these days, really...
Here’s the talk description: https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4507-infu...
This is better to understand the context of the protest
""No billionaires at FOSDEM" - https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/16/2025-01-16-No-Billionares...
Also these are the recommended actions:
"To maintain the peaceful nature of our protest and minimize the disruption to FOSDEM generally, we ask participants to strictly adhere to the following instructions:
Do not touch anyone else, or anyone else’s property, for any reason.
Do not engage in intimidation.
Remain quiet and peaceful throughout the demonstration.
When the protest ends, disperse peacefully and in a timely manner.
Leave the room the way you found it. "