muckrights-sans-merde
bonum fabula frat
### why-its-never-good-to-be-quoted-by-roy
other pages:
=> how-to-do-the-scooby-doo-maneuver.html how-to-do-the-scooby-doo-maneuver
*originally posted:* sep 2021
facebook used to (perhaps they still do) grant themselves permission to use your photo to promote anything they wanted. users took issue with this.
ive said on more than one occasion that large corporations behave like narcissists.
the lesson of this article is that narcissists also behave like large corporations.
instead of a photo, roy abuses things ive contributed. he does the same to things i have NOT contributed, where he did not bother to use attribution or let people see the original that he took from, despite it being a requirement of the license.
but actually, this article has roughly zero to do with copyright. it is simply about integrity and dealing in an honest way with people who have worked hard to help you-- even at your request.
like facebook, roy is mostly unaccountable. there have been exceptions. when he used a painting someone made for him as a political meme, the artist said she was uncomfortable with that and it was fixed. this exception is noted because there will always be exceptions, so that roy can trot them out to try to refute the rule.
when i contacted roy (by email) to complain that he had misrepresented me in an article, he said it was a "misunderstanding" and he told people in irc it was "flippant" for me to suggest that he was dishonestly (or inaccurately) representing what i had said. in fact, after years of contributing i said i was leaving over it. he convinced me (gaslighted me) to stay. i finally left months after this, at which point he began a months-long smear campaign based on complete lies in retribution.
since then, he has attempted narcissistic hoovering, and tried to act like he is showcasing my work or making use of my research.
the problem is, he doesnt do so accurately or honestly. the inaccuracy can be demonstrated, the dishonesty can be proven-- over and over again-- but roy is (like facebook) unaccountable for how he uses me to prop up his own work.
the quotes and mentions (the most recent one was 3 days ago on social media and irc, hence why im addressing this now) may occasionally be accurate. at this point, the misuse is so frequent that im sceptical as a rule-- but the point of this article is that it doesnt matter if some of the uses are accurate. theyre part of a larger pattern of dishonesty, misattribution, smearing and abuse.
when this happens i will sometimes complain to other former contributors, who are well aware of my protests. instead of just complaining though, its more useful to explain this to the public, since the abuse is public and the public is also being manipulated with roys tactics.
i am getting caught up on the past few days of logs-- ive just recently lost a substantial amount of irc logs (i probably have most of the years intact, but not in a form that is easy to work with) so in terms of convenience, im down to the most recent stuff (the past few days, actually) but ive been reading the logs for most of a year, so im really just catching up from the 31st to today. and in fact i dont read everything, but im thorough in a variety of ways (the logs are saved and searched complete, but i read only partially to keep up with them).
roy has every right to mention me, though he does not have a right to lie and mislead. the most recent mention (august 31, 3 days ago) is about veganism and the fsfe.
it needs to be said that in this instance (ive noted countless others) its not even worth checking to see if this is accurate. here is what i know:
* as he says, the fsfe has used veganism to promote free software-- this is true.
* i have myself used veganism and vegetarianism (i am neither personally) as a metaphor to explain free software vs. open source.
this was (on my part) a response to people painting the two as "extremist" vs. "reasonable". i dont think veganism is inherently extreme, it really depends on where youre coming from and where you go with it. trying to avoid (even completely avoid) products that involve the "exploitation" of animals is not by itself an extreme act. which isnt to say im never critical of veganism, but as a metaphor (one i havent used in a while, but i may have used it as recently as a year ago) i think it could be somewhat useful.
whether the fsfe has compared the two or i compared the two and roy has conflated these positions and events-- it isnt worth the effort to check, so much as a reminder of the many other times that similar (and in those instances at least, demonstrably false) claims were made simply to prop up some argument roy was making, or in fact just as a way of advertising his website or insinuating that i still endorse it.
the example is not very important, the trend is the issue here. if you participate in roys work at all, he will use that (year after year) the same way that facebook does: for advertising, for implied endorsement where one does not exist, and even to present your own positions in a way that is contrary to what you have said and contrary to facts as well.
if it were an honest mistake, you would be able to have these things corrected. instead, it is roy who is extremely flippant and he will lie to you directly about what he is doing. then he will keep doing it. for years. even after youve left in protest.
this idea that you are property and cannot opt out, is typical of narcissistic abuse, it is typical of the way that facebook and microsoft treat their customers-- helping themselves to your internet bandwidth to help distribute their software without you knowing it (according to a story i read on muckrights and i believe, elsewhere as well) or helping themselves to your own image to endorse things you never (explicitly) agreed to endorse.
roy treats people as his own property because he truly believes they are his property. it is the way he interacts with the world.
and just as he has complained about github refusing to delete his account, there is no way to opt out of this implied endorsement, no matter how strongly you argue that its the only moral or ethical option.
of course if your software (or article) is under a free license, then microsoft (and roy) has a legal right to copy, modify and distribute those works. i do not deny this right exists, i feel very strongly about this and its a matter of taking the good with the bad-- i still put my work under a free license because i believe the good of society doing this outweighs the abuses. (also as i think the extreme example around richard stallman demonstrates, the "protection" that no-derivs or verbatim copying licenses afford compared to truly free licenses is mostly imaginary in practice and everyday life, and like drm costs honest or rule-abiding people more than it really prevents abuse).
there are other rules (outside of legal and license requirements) that are more complex to weigh at times, and i am not in favour of society becoming obsessed with academic rigour so much as i am interested in the most obvious and basic level of honesty and accountability. when someone is routinely protesting your misrepresentation of them, and their protest is demonstrably valid (its also possible for the accuser to be dishonest, not just the accused, so some level of proof is still important) then your "right" to misrepresent and lie about people simply does not exist.
beyond this, roy has (or may have) a doctorate which is built on principles that condemn this very sort of behaviour-- it is far beneath his certification and training and education to do this, and it brings shame to the institution that (probably) certified him.
he also proudly claims to be a member of toastmasters, and they have a code of ETHICS (probably better than a code of "conduct" designed as a code of censorship or hypocrisy) that surely forbids this sort of thing. i assume his membership is an actual thing, but once again, he uses this to prop up his legitimacy when he wont even stop lying about his own contributors-- people who have spent hours doing work for free that helps his website. does the "code of ethics" endorse, condemn, or remain neutral to such actions?
i ask because participants in beauty pageants can lose their crown for sometimes very petty transgressions, and im curious if toastmasters actually holds their members to a standard of this sort (i should add, i dont know if toastmasters even NEEDS this. but if their goal is to prevent people using their name as undeserved prestige, it is at least relevant here).
the effort to milk anything people have done for every drop of promotion, legitimacy, agreement where in actuality, disagreement (of both intent and facts) exists, needs to be balanced by integrity and not driven by shameless exploitation.
but the way you will be exploited-- by facebook, by microsoft and even by muckrights, is truly and utterly shameless.
with the github example, i agree (quite strongly) that microsoft should delete your account at your request. they failed to delete mine when i requested it as well, and instead replied with a nice self-promotional message about how they will retain their commitment to developers ("developers, developers!") but obviously, they will not honour the requests of those they made such promises to.
freely licensed material does not conflict with this. microsoft has a (legal) right to mirror whatever freely-licensed software they please, provided they honour the terms. it is the very nature of the license itself.
however they do not (in my opinion) have right to retain your account, which they misuse as an implied endorsement, and which they use to inflate their numbers. this defrauds both the user and the public, and what roy does is (on the relative scale of muckrights, of course) similar in more ways than it is different.
of course the only way that roy is going to ever stop acting like a large corporation in his use and misuse of people is if he ceases to be narcissistic. this is extremely unlikely (almost as unlikely as microsoft ever being an ethical company) though it is not impossible. if roy dedicated his life to moving past his abuse and exploitation of people (more likely it would be a charm offensive, like the one microsoft pulled with their "loves linux" campaign-- but i mean if he actually worked sincerely to move past all that) there are actual programmes that would assist the person whose goal is sincere.
at that point, roy would exploit people noticeably less, it would not cease-- it would drop substantially lower in its frequency and level of treachery. but most narcissists do not ever (even try to) overcome this. roy clearly worked hard as a bodybuilder, but one must ask what would happen if he worked half as hard to build his character and his integrity?
if roy will (like facebook, like microsoft) not stop exploiting his contributors and his audience in this fashion, then the thing to do is warn people: being quoted by roy is NEVER a benefit. it is a cost. it is against the backdrop of a trend of using people, of incredible dishonesty, of exploitation.
only a corporation would try to rebrand exploitation as "helping" you. and narcisists and large corporations have this much in common.
i speak mostly about the instances where roy has done this to me (i am for obvious reasons, a favourite target-- the one who fights back and stands up to this shit) though i know at least 2 or 3 other contributors he has done this to as well. some have complained, others have let it slide. its not my desire to drag them into this, though one of them has contributed public complaints about (very) similar exploitation by roy, and roy repays him by still using his contributions to promote muckrights-- even while twisting the facts around regarding the research he was doing in part as a contribution. its the same as what he does to me.
even when roy gets the quote and the context right, its just to borrow credibility so he can do you wrong again later. wasnt that what microsofts "charm offensives" were all about?
perhaps instead of giafam it should be "giafarm", but thats giving him way too much credit.
if you noticed that this article was really just about the scooby doo maneuver, you can give yourself a point for being right. its a bit more detailed, it explores the topic further, but all of this is certainly covered by the scope of that handy abstraction. whats his is his, whats yours is his, and you are his. this is the nature of monopoly, and narcissists are monopolies, too.
=> https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org