Really sad, and also a testament of the fact that as much as we think we try to be indipendent, eventually once somebody starts putting enough pressure on the people around you (and you turn from "a neutral customer" to "a liability") the path to isolation is very short.
Could someone point me to some background on this whole incident or write a quick one? I don't know who they are or what's going on but it seems important.
"After 2005 we have been constantly pestered by prosecutors and security forces (and even by the Vatican! [4]) asking us to hand over users’ data and identities and we are proud to say we were always able to answer: we are sorry, but we do not have them."
This is tech guys supporting with infra real freedom of speech! even more important nowadays!
jumping to the violent antifa narrative means ignoring a lot of important things.
And yes, they could relocate to TOR, I2P, use P2P websites, torrents, and only accept cryptos for donations. But eventually you'll need to put down a credit card on file to buy a domain, and that domain needs to be owned by somebody.
>But eventually you'll need to put down a credit card on file to buy a domain, and that domain needs to be owned by somebody.
You don't need to pay to host onion websites (.onion domains are free and have no central registry). Though that of course really limits the possible outreach, because most people are not used to browsing onionsites.
Which is why efforts by China to stand up independent cross border payment rails are important. You have to cut the US out of any ability to control activities outside of their boundaries.
and Europe. Europe should also decouple itself from the U.S. as much as it is possible, and not repeat the mistake of overreliance with China. not because China is somehow worse, but because you always should be able to say "no", no matter how good your partners are
If that's what you characterize the US government as, I can only imagine what you characterize some of the other governments around the world. Particularly, from the millions of us who migrated to the US legally and willfully and who are very VERY grateful to this country for providing the opportunities people like myself could only dream-of in our former countries.
Hey friend, don't be discouraged, HN is extremely left-leaning and fairly anti-US. But plenty of us independents lurk here and mostly stay quiet on these subjects because of dogpiling.
Some of the claims are interesting - "Decision making in the group takes places collectively instead of through majority voting." - isn't explained by the sourced article.
I think we can all see the potential problems with this, even if a specific group is awful.
“The specific claim: a far-left media group that describes itself as a “tool” for militants to share information “to be acted upon” used A/I’s services to publish communiqués and calls to action for U.S.-designated terrorist groups, including FAI/FRI, the IRGC, Hamas, Hizballah, ELN, NPA, PFLP, and PIJ. That same media group was cited in a federal complaint against a domestic terrorist sentenced to 19 years for attacking a federal building and a police car with IEDs.”
If you knowingly provide services to violent/terrorist groups you deserve to be shut down. The only reason anyone is upset by this is because they were left aligned and had they been providing services to the far right, neo-nazis, etc everyone would be rightfully cheering.
>The day we discovered we had been designated a global terrorist organization, we promised that we would try to resist as long as this was possible
Eleven days?
-
As a sidenote, I'm rather confused why most sources referred to A/I as simply offering services for "left wing activists"; while this is true, they also offered services to actual, inarguable terrorists. Their services were used to announce firebombs on anti-abortion pregnancy crisis centers.
Now, I don't think they should have been labelled an outright terrorist organisation by many means, but I am astonished by the level of whitewashing.
I’d like to have more information about what “offered” means here. I’m sure that regular email and hosting providers have been used by terrorists without being designated a terrorist organization themselves.
It's in my opinion insane that the US can get away with this without serious backlash from other countries, and it confirms the disappointing reality that the US has become the biggest force for fascism and the biggest motor for the suppression of freedom of speech in the world.
Apparently they provide the digital infrastructure for violent Antifa cells and because of a 9/11 related executive order, the A/I is able to be branded a sponsor of terrorism.
I guess this makes it a crime to give them money or provide aid to them (if you are a US citizen).
EDIT: who is downvoting and why? The 2nd sentence in the PR says "Autistici/Inventati (A/I Collective) is an Italy-based extremist group that builds and operates the digital infrastructure for violent Antifa cells and other far-left militants across the world" Are you mad that I quote the article or mad that you disagree with Trump? In either case, why are you downvoting me exactly? I am genuinely curious.
> Oregon-based Rose City Antifa has relied on A/I Collective tools and services to organize and incite violent and criminal acts domestically, including an attack on Customs and Border Patrol helicopters that led to a federal indictment. Rose City Antifa also used A/I Collective tools and services to disseminate doxing lists and release illegally obtained personal information of Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with calls for targeted attacks on ICE agents in the streets and “in their homes.”
> We are stopping, but the Resistance and ideas do not stop. Stay human.
How will that be if the resistance is not visible to the public. What are all the people using their services supposed to do? I’m guessing there are plans to reform in a few years. Why is the Italian government not protecting them?
Resistance and revolution happened before the internet. People have become lazy and complacent, and want their resistance served up over the wire. Thats not how real resistance happens, but it does make people feel like they are doing something, sucking up their energy while the biggest impact is TikTok memes, the modern version of the sternly worded letter.
This is exactly where the power structures want the struggle to be , online, with no real consequences that matter.
The best thing that could happen to the internet and society would be that it would be absolutely illegal to post anything inciting resistance or change of any kind on the internet.
Then, the resistance would go back to being real people in real rooms, secrets and whispers and actual plots to effect change in society for a more equitable and prosperous human future.
Because that’s how real change takes place. The powerful don’t try to make change by posting on instagram. (Advertisement and PR of course, but it’s not the organizational nexus) they gather in conference rooms, talk in person, and have social gatherings where they decide your future.
When they do use the internet to coordinate, it’s not in public forums, it’s encrypted communications, targeted and limited in scope.
The internet is useful, of course, and encrypted communication in private groups, even darkweb resources. But thinking you can use the official structure of the internet (public domain infrastructure, dns, walled gardens) as a primary means of subverting the dominant paradigm is foolish at best, suicidally counterproductive on the normative.
The internet was once subversive in and of itself. It no longer is. Now you’re just wearing signs at the mall.
The revolution thrives underground, not out in the open.
It should be noted that this is a very sensible thing to say even if you are not stopping; the only case where you cannot say this is if you are carrying on with the same branding, which is typically necessary if you are carrying forwards funds (which have been seized) or brand recognition (which may not be important for a group who focuses on interpersonal relationships).
Fuck you Trump and fuck you US (and the government of a small country in the Mediterranean who's behind all this). Thank you Autistici/Inventati with whom I had my first email account in the dialup era.
I can't wait to see the American hegemony slowly crumble over the next few decades.
I also oppose fascism, militarism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, like what A/I do... And none of that is illegal... At least not in any civilised society. So what did they do to trigger so many? I remember the Norwegian stuff (since I’m Norwegian), and I remember thinking it sounded like bullshit to copy their entire server drive when they wanted access to the blog of two people.
From what I could gather, it seems various governments accused them of deliberately providing infrastructure to groups whose violent activities they supported, such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with communications associated with railway sabotage, attacks on energy infrastructure and the “Jane’s Revenge” arson campaign (whatever the hell that is).
Here’s a snippet I found on the net: "Italian police installed a server backdoor in 2004 during an investigation into the anarchist collective Crocenera. It was discovered in 2005. According to contemporary EDRi reporting, the access potentially exposed communications belonging to thousands of unrelated users; EDRi explicitly noted that actual collection of unrelated data had not been proven. EDRi’s contemporary report"
Huge disclaimer on this, since it’s just my musings: This might be one of the situations where both sides are in the wrong. It’s possible that A/I willfully turned a blind eye to actual illegal activity by its users, and refused to cooperate with legal investigations. At the same time, various governments, including mine, overreacted and behaved unethically and maybe even illegally because A/I “didn’t want to play ball.”
Just speculation. But the fact that I can’t easily find concrete examples of what A/I supposedly did wrong makes me inclined to feel sympathy for them. I hate unspecific allegations like “facilitation of problematic and terroristic-adjacent activities.” That’s some 1984-ish bullshit.
I have no clue what I’m talking about here, though. Strange situation and too little information...
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20... This designation offers some specific examples of violence being coordinated using their systems. Some are indeed extreme, if true. That doesn’t invalidate their mission or overall contribution to the world at large; it just was sufficient ammo for extinguishing another threat to power.
This does not show what they (A/I) did. The only concrete examples are of bad behavior by some users. Then there’s a bunch of generic claims against A/I, with NO specifics.
So, yeah, it might be true. But I find no concrete examples of what bad stuff A/I themselves did, just their users. Personally, I would like for there to be at least SOME concrete examples. Like, “This convicted terrorist had a blog on their infrastructure, and A/I refused to hand over data they had, even when presented with a valid court order.” Or something like that. Is it too much to ask that the government provide some concrete evidence, not just abstract vage accusations, when doing something as drastic as designating someone a terrorist organization? It would seem so...
This is a knock on the state.gov item, not your comment. Your comment was good.
They happened to host some people who "vandalized" (a couple of graffiti ...) Trump's golf course in Scotland. That action was called "terrorism".
Their site noblogs.org also hosted some PKK friendly articles. like 10 in total. Now that is bound to happen if you host left wing bloggers in the EU. But that was also called terrorism support.
Their problem is that they actively selected the customers and demanded that they abide by their CoC and rules. You should not do that as an ISP.
That’s at best a simplistic framing. Something was going on long before Trump was elected. The hubbub in Norway happened back in 2010, before Trump was elected. And the Child Exploitation and Internet Pornography Act was used for the very first time to take down their NoBlogs site in 2007 (according to Wikipedia).
"After 2005 we have been constantly pestered by prosecutors and security forces (and even by the Vatican! [4]) asking us to hand over users’ data and identities and we are proud to say we were always able to answer: we are sorry, but we do not have them."
This is tech guys supporting with infra real freedom of speech! even more important nowadays! jumping to the violent antifa narrative means ignoring a lot of important things.
You don't need to pay to host onion websites (.onion domains are free and have no central registry). Though that of course really limits the possible outreach, because most people are not used to browsing onionsites.
China, Egypt to do away with the use of the US dollar - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49555056 - September 2026
China nears launch of mBridge as alternative to Swift - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636931 - June 2026
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49225112
You people are hilarious.
> But plenty of us independents lurk here
Man, you're defending Elon, Flock and ICE in your post history. What an independent.
What kind of mickey mouse political left are you using for reference here? The Dems?
HN is extremely american-leaning, whose centre is firmly to the right compared to the rest of the world.
Which is partly or mostly our fault.
Maybe we could concentrate on doing less of that.
Parler was ripped off the Internet for 1% of this.
You reap what you sow. If you don't support the freedom of people you disagree with politically, I don't support your freedom either.
Covid has forced me to take a hard stance on this.
What kind exactly?
Some of the claims are interesting - "Decision making in the group takes places collectively instead of through majority voting." - isn't explained by the sourced article.
I think we can all see the potential problems with this, even if a specific group is awful.
“The specific claim: a far-left media group that describes itself as a “tool” for militants to share information “to be acted upon” used A/I’s services to publish communiqués and calls to action for U.S.-designated terrorist groups, including FAI/FRI, the IRGC, Hamas, Hizballah, ELN, NPA, PFLP, and PIJ. That same media group was cited in a federal complaint against a domestic terrorist sentenced to 19 years for attacking a federal building and a police car with IEDs.”
And I don’t see anyone hand wringing about that list of bad guys. Calling some of them “left” is pretty ridiculous in the first place.
While this is very heavy handed censorship, there are plenty of ways around it.
Eleven days?
-
As a sidenote, I'm rather confused why most sources referred to A/I as simply offering services for "left wing activists"; while this is true, they also offered services to actual, inarguable terrorists. Their services were used to announce firebombs on anti-abortion pregnancy crisis centers.
Now, I don't think they should have been labelled an outright terrorist organisation by many means, but I am astonished by the level of whitewashing.
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
It means the government won.
If anyone from A/I is reading this know you always have a place to stay/eat if you need it
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
Apparently they provide the digital infrastructure for violent Antifa cells and because of a 9/11 related executive order, the A/I is able to be branded a sponsor of terrorism.
I guess this makes it a crime to give them money or provide aid to them (if you are a US citizen).
EDIT: who is downvoting and why? The 2nd sentence in the PR says "Autistici/Inventati (A/I Collective) is an Italy-based extremist group that builds and operates the digital infrastructure for violent Antifa cells and other far-left militants across the world" Are you mad that I quote the article or mad that you disagree with Trump? In either case, why are you downvoting me exactly? I am genuinely curious.
That’s Trump propaganda language, no? It’s describing something that doesn’t actually exist.
Have we all forgotten that antifa is short for “anti-fascist”?
> Oregon-based Rose City Antifa has relied on A/I Collective tools and services to organize and incite violent and criminal acts domestically, including an attack on Customs and Border Patrol helicopters that led to a federal indictment. Rose City Antifa also used A/I Collective tools and services to disseminate doxing lists and release illegally obtained personal information of Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with calls for targeted attacks on ICE agents in the streets and “in their homes.”
How will that be if the resistance is not visible to the public. What are all the people using their services supposed to do? I’m guessing there are plans to reform in a few years. Why is the Italian government not protecting them?
This is exactly where the power structures want the struggle to be , online, with no real consequences that matter.
The best thing that could happen to the internet and society would be that it would be absolutely illegal to post anything inciting resistance or change of any kind on the internet.
Then, the resistance would go back to being real people in real rooms, secrets and whispers and actual plots to effect change in society for a more equitable and prosperous human future.
Because that’s how real change takes place. The powerful don’t try to make change by posting on instagram. (Advertisement and PR of course, but it’s not the organizational nexus) they gather in conference rooms, talk in person, and have social gatherings where they decide your future.
When they do use the internet to coordinate, it’s not in public forums, it’s encrypted communications, targeted and limited in scope.
The internet is useful, of course, and encrypted communication in private groups, even darkweb resources. But thinking you can use the official structure of the internet (public domain infrastructure, dns, walled gardens) as a primary means of subverting the dominant paradigm is foolish at best, suicidally counterproductive on the normative.
The internet was once subversive in and of itself. It no longer is. Now you’re just wearing signs at the mall.
The revolution thrives underground, not out in the open.
The Italian police wiretapped them for one year without them knowing.
It is also not like Palestinian activism is blocked on X, despite people here saying that only Nazis are on X and everything is censored:
https://x.com/intifada
I can't wait to see the American hegemony slowly crumble over the next few decades.
From what I could gather, it seems various governments accused them of deliberately providing infrastructure to groups whose violent activities they supported, such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with communications associated with railway sabotage, attacks on energy infrastructure and the “Jane’s Revenge” arson campaign (whatever the hell that is).
Here’s a snippet I found on the net: "Italian police installed a server backdoor in 2004 during an investigation into the anarchist collective Crocenera. It was discovered in 2005. According to contemporary EDRi reporting, the access potentially exposed communications belonging to thousands of unrelated users; EDRi explicitly noted that actual collection of unrelated data had not been proven. EDRi’s contemporary report"
Huge disclaimer on this, since it’s just my musings: This might be one of the situations where both sides are in the wrong. It’s possible that A/I willfully turned a blind eye to actual illegal activity by its users, and refused to cooperate with legal investigations. At the same time, various governments, including mine, overreacted and behaved unethically and maybe even illegally because A/I “didn’t want to play ball.”
Just speculation. But the fact that I can’t easily find concrete examples of what A/I supposedly did wrong makes me inclined to feel sympathy for them. I hate unspecific allegations like “facilitation of problematic and terroristic-adjacent activities.” That’s some 1984-ish bullshit.
I have no clue what I’m talking about here, though. Strange situation and too little information...
So, yeah, it might be true. But I find no concrete examples of what bad stuff A/I themselves did, just their users. Personally, I would like for there to be at least SOME concrete examples. Like, “This convicted terrorist had a blog on their infrastructure, and A/I refused to hand over data they had, even when presented with a valid court order.” Or something like that. Is it too much to ask that the government provide some concrete evidence, not just abstract vage accusations, when doing something as drastic as designating someone a terrorist organization? It would seem so...
This is a knock on the state.gov item, not your comment. Your comment was good.
I mean, the capitalist system is a barbaric system with defenders that do make opposition illegal...
Their site noblogs.org also hosted some PKK friendly articles. like 10 in total. Now that is bound to happen if you host left wing bloggers in the EU. But that was also called terrorism support.
Their problem is that they actively selected the customers and demanded that they abide by their CoC and rules. You should not do that as an ISP.
I really worry about the future of free and open expression over the next few years.
You are all monsters, sucking other peoples blood.