Closing Matrix and LinkedIn

Librecast is an explicitly political project. We’re a Human Rights focused organisation masquerading as a FOSS project. We’re pretty open about this. This July our politics have come into conflict with the networks we associate with others on.

LinkedIn

Librecast has closed its LinkedIn account.

As a project we have struggled with having an account on LinkedIn. Esther Payne made the decision to make a page for Librecast back in 2017. Librecast stayed on the network as NGI and it’s various funds and partners were also on LinkedIn.

As an EU funded project we felt that it was important to keep NGI and it’s partners in the loop.

Both LinkedIn and GitHub have been acquired by Microsoft. Back in 2022 Librecast made the decision to give up GitHub. It is now time to give up LinkedIn too.

On the 29th of July the Open Terms Archive published a notice that LinkedIn had updated its policy on hateful and derogatory content. It has removed hate speech protections for transgender individuals. For us this is the last straw.

As a project that considers Human Rights to be its raison d’etre that is unacceptable to us. So Librecast will be deleting its LinkedIn page. You can still keep in touch with Librecast easily.

Matrix

On the 29th of July Esther got a message from the matrix.org homeserver about terms and conditions for that homeserver that includes the requirements for age verification. This matters because we have a Librecast Matrix Room that is hosted on matrix.org. When the room was started it was bridged to Libera.chat. Then Matrix.org had to shut down the bridge, so for some time our community chat has been split in two, with Esther monitoring the matrix room, and the IRC channel. The development and packaging team has never joined Matrix.

As a Human Rights project, we disagree with the UK Online Harms Act, which is where the Matrix.org foundation and homeserver is domiciled. Governments around the World are age gating our communities using the “think of the children” argument.

Age-gating our community is unacceptable to us. We are not aware of any reason why Librecast discussions would be considered adult themed, or subject to the Online Harms Act. Ultimately, the Internet is full of a wide range of content of all sorts, and regulation by a single country is unlikely to have much impact on that. If someone has unsupervised access to the Internet, we must assume that they are either mature enough to decide for themselves what content is suitable for them to access, or that their parents or guardians have made that determination on their behalf. The UK Government has overstepped both their authority and ability. They are insisting we can hold back the sea with our bare hands.

We do not want our community to put their data and privacy at risk by using age verification services. Librecast has therefore decided to close our Matrix room on the matrix.org homeserver. As we do not have the resources presently to maintain our own matrix server this means we will no longer be on matrix for the foreseeable future.

This will cost the project. We will not be able to attend the NLNet Business hours that are hosted on Matrix.org. As we argue in Zen and the Art of Multicast:

We can claim to have certain Values, but it is not until a choice is before us that we find out if we have the courage of our convictions. What price are we prepared to pay to stay true to our Values? Our Values demand a sacrifice.

Without actions, our Values are untested. Without sacrifice, Values are just words.

The concept of the Matrix protocol is very attractive. However there is a failure in community support. Should any of our development team ever want to join Matrix, they would have to find a homeserver. Matrix tends to recommend it’s flagship instance. Matrix.org.

With these choices for its flagship instance, Matrix is showing us that there is a conflict between our values and theirs.

We are not opposed to having a Matrix Room. However it would need to be on a Matrix Instance that didn’t ask for Age Verification. This is a hard rule for us, we would also need to bridge the room with Libera.chat so we would need some help with this. We do not want to abandon our folks on Matrix, although at the moment, all of our resources are focused on our NGI Core Work so you will need to contact us using other channels.

How to keep in touch with Librecast and it’s community

One of the great things about Free/Open Source Software is that you can talk with the people who make it. A project like this is about community as well as code, so we want to make you feel welcome. That’s why we have a Code of Conduct and Contributing guidelines.

There are several ways to get in touch with us. Follow us on the Fediverse. We announce new releases and project updates on Mastodon. @librecast@chaos.social.

We have low-traffic mailing lists for announcements, general discussion related to the Librecast Project and development.

In addition, you can contact:

We’re also on IRC thanks to Libera.chat, there’s a guide that has a list of clients and IRC bouncers you can use to access this decentralised network.

Our channel is: #librecast on irc.libera.chat

Thank you to our contributors on both LinkedIn and Matrix. I hope you keep in touch with us as we work on building Librecast.