Never heard of A/I and I have no idea what they are about, but rather than a government communication this statement reads like an angry rant with lots of unhelpful name-calling.
I would expect a government to be professional and just stick to the (proven) facts and avoiding labels; that would also be more convincing. Oh well.
I’m not familiar with A/I, but this sounds pretty damning – the ideological vetting of users in particular seems to discount any sort of neutral utility defense.
The use of the word “ideological” in text with a US Gov-anything byline is tantamount to a fart. Its whining “I dont like this thing but I cant cry like a child about it.”
Sure, sounding damning is kind of the point of this kind of statement. But its also cheap and easy since there is no requirement that any of the claims are justified by any facts.
I'm not familiar with A/I, but I'm familiar with americans, and they look completely ridiculous talking smack about others doing allegedly "bad things". And they have no defense about supporting war criminals or genocidaires.
"violent" is used many times in this announcement, but it would seem that one of the most violent entity in the world right now are the US? Also, it's so weird that "antifa" (antifascists) has become a bad thing. If antifa is bad then it must mean "fa" is good? So we should bring back the Nazis?
The "Western hemisphere" (which, of course, is neither) tolerates the US and the way it enforces its decisions outside its own borders, because it used to provide some assurance of stability and protection. But as the US rescinds that policy, weakens Nato, declares a tariffs war to every country on earth, etc., there will be less and less justification as well as, probably (hopefully) less and less public acceptance for any of this posturing.
Here’s the thing though: if even some of the examples given in the state department page are true (some of them are rather silly), that A/I knowingly provided services to groups that verifiably did some rather violent things they are accused of, I’m not sure how they expected to hide behind their mission.
My impression is that they didn’t say “hey we don’t have customer information but we don’t service violent groups and we will responsibly investigate and discontinue service to offenders.”
Their vibe was much more defiant, like, “we designed this to be anonymous and specifically intend/expect for it to be used in any way regardless of legality and are okay with it.”
Is it right for the US to be the global arbiter of this issue and domains in general? Of course not.
> “we designed this to be anonymous and specifically intend/expect for it to be used in any way regardless of legality and are okay with it.”
That is also what Signal does. Or absolutely any end-to-end encrypted communication service at all - these are explicitly designed not to retain details of communication.
I think the difference they alluded to is that they manually vetoed new users, presumably based on their self-declared goals and ideology, whereas Signal etc are neutral platforms.
We can also pragmatically understand why having rules around about not starting violent revolutions, especially when we’ve already established an okay-ish democratic system, generally benefits most people.
in interviews, they said if you give them examples of "xyz" is prohibited by applicable law, they would remove it. They would not help you spy on them probably, by backdooring their infra or sth.
Most of this has me rolling my eyes (“cadre of radical hackers”? really?), but this part is interesting:
> The A/I Collective… manually vets all potential users for ideological affinity before granting them access to its infrastructure.
What is the truth behind that? Such behaviour would undermine A/I’s claim they are akin to Gmail if they explicitly are not a neutral ISP. After that, it becomes a question of degrees: what were their specific criteria for access to the platform?
Asking out of genuine curiosity. I wasn’t familiar with this group before today.
A lot of the state department’s claims of “violent groups” are BS but it also seems like a non-zero number of them are pretty violent organizations.
There’s a big difference between “we have designed our devices to be zero-knowledge but we act swiftly against violent/illegal activity if it’s discovered” versus “we actively endorse the views of our user base.”
That's exactly the point though: if you are choosing to platform some and not others, and some (many? most?) of the groups you are choosing to platform are violent groups, you very quickly run out of plausible deniability.
Basically, far right extremists targeting antifascists through mechanisms of political repression while having the gall to call themselves pro free speech.
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.
This. When the US government decides to label you “terrorist organization”, it means that you are now targeted by the most potent state actor on earth, which will go as far as blowing up weddings in your neighborhood to stop you.
So unless you're willing to become a literal terrorist organization and die with a bunch of your friends in an uphill battle (not technically unwinnable, but at least lopsided and the casualties will be tremendous), the only option is to cave.
> violence or the threat of violence used as a weapon of intimidation or coercion
> especially: violent or destructive acts (such as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands
Now, which actor in this story does this sound like? The webhoster exercising their speech rights or the apparatus bombing schools and weddings in order to get their way?
It sounds like that until you realize that the baseline behavior is for countries that are not in NATO to be subservient to NATO. So, as you can see, it is the governments and populations that are coercing and intimidating themselves and NATO is helpfully returning them to normalcy.
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.
The US Republican party has been inventing an increasingly elaborate alternate reality fiction in order to convince their voters to keep voting for policy positions that obviously work against those voters' own interests. One component of this alternate reality is a fictional terrorist organization called "antifa." They claim that anyone who does not align with their policies is a member of this organization. This allows them to use the anti-terrorism laws passed in the wake of 9/11 and similar incidents against their political opponents. The US government claims someone who used the A/I service was a member of this fictional organization, and used those anti-terrorism laws to declare that A/I is supporting terrorism and so threatened sanctions against the banks A/I was using. No access to banking means A/I is shutting down.
You're just not confronting reality, man. The President of the United States personally called for Gavin Newsom to be arrested in June 2025. In September of that year, in response to Newsom's post calling Gestapo chief Stephen Miller a fascist, Miller went on TV to complain that nobody is allowed to call him a fascist and Newsom was encouraging violence by doing so.
Lots of maga are idealists (even if their ideas are not based in the real world), a number of them are LARPers and a small number are hard core intent on eliminating “the enemy”. To think that no maga member is violent and entertains violent options, is denying reality. Also it’s disingenuous to think they are all out of their minds looking to overthrow the government. Many just have ideals that don’t align with the mainstream.
... But also, there's no organization called antifa, and no antifa members. It's an accusation levied against people the right wing wants to call terrorists.
> Why do so called anti fascists act fascistically
Because anyone call themselves anti-fascist, doesn't make them so. While most people who are, well, not fascists probably don't wear or care about the label. You just proved the point comment you're replying to right.
> I’m sure there are supremacists “organizations” that are also hard to pin down.
You mean the ones that aren't organizations? Let's say all the people who are racist in the world, are they an organization? Even all the people who really hate the same "race", if that's all they do, does that make them an org? Is everyone making inane arguments be part of a global group of people working in concert trying to diminish the cognitive capacity and level of discourse in society?
> If so, why carry those flags and bandanas on their faces?
The flag just symbols that this person is against Nazis. Nothing more, nothing less.
It can be held by anyone. Here in Germany, we have (amongst others) religious Christians (often of Lutheran Protestantism), Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, other denominations of Communists, Anarchists, Greens, Social Democrats, Antiimperialists, Zionists and sometimes even the occasional Conservatives showing up under the Antifa banner.
People sharing similar values does not make them an organization. “Why do they wear masks?” because they don’t want nazis to interfere with their jobs, friends and families? You’re asking questions there are very obvious answers to. Seems like a disingenuous comment or you’re unable to do the most basic research
"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.
The US government is labeling anyone who says they're "anti fascist" as terrorists, and shut down a major Italian private email provider using that rationale.
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.
Njalla is not ICANN accredited, so they cannot register domains. They buy them and then lease them out to you.
The issue is, now they are the legal owners and liable for the content of the website, and they also support PayPal, which will absolutely drop them the moment they get sanctioned.
Funny, the same US "free speech absolutists" get upset about "censorship" outside the US (mostly in EU countries) all the time, so it would be completely on point.
Did you really though? I never understood the "free speech absolutists" to care about speech they disagreed with. They made it clear that they only accept "patriotic" speech a long time ago.
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.
What I find wild is that this control over international banking, and the sanctions it enables, is a key benefit of the US-led world order that Trump is trying to dismantle. I’m quite sure he doesn’t understand this, but a key consequence of his efforts to stop the US from getting “ripped off” is that we will soon no longer have the ability to impose these sorts of sanctions as the global economy re-routes around American control.
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
Unfortunately decoupling payments within the EU is insufficient if the US can just threaten to sanction your bank, and in doing so force the bank to drop you as a customer. Even in the presence of an internal European payments network, those banks still need to transact with the US and other US-sphere countries...
No but then you can have local bank that will not have US interactions but can still serve you. Since the French judge of the IPC was sanctioned, it’s clear that the EU must completely decouple from the US.
For now, but not forever. Skate to where the puck is going to be. Decoupling continues, with the target being independence. Quote this comment five years from now.
How many of these millions only had to migrate to the US because the US destroyed their countries with war, economic sanctions, covert CIA operations, or other attacks?
As Stephen Miller loves to remind us, we had the first net emigration in decades this year. They're rounding up legal immigrants and putting them in concentration camps where they're dying because they're being denied medical care.
If you don't see an issue with the White House constantly posting straight up Nazi memes then that's on you. There's also plenty immigrants in Europe who vote for fascists, so? Turns out you can't just leave your "former" country behind like an old coat, it's still your upbringing and horizon. You are grateful "to the country", but what does that mean while also shrugging off what the people in "the country" are saying? What is left of "the country"? A bunch of papers, rights and money, opportunities for you; let the goons roam and fill their warehouses, keep children, even infants in despicable conditions, because you (think you) have nothing to fear?
It really is not the fault of the US that Mexico has drug gangs that kill people at random. It's not the fault that Pakistan and India are nearly at war forever. It's not the US fault that many countries support and require female genital mutilation. The US is not as evil as you think.
> It really is not the fault of the US that Mexico has drug gangs that kill people at random
This is a direct result of the "war on drugs" perpetrated by the US.
The other two are genuinely not the fault of the US, but bringing up two examples where the US wasn't the source of the problem doesn't exactly contradict the original claim.
The war on drugs definitely didn't cause the drug trade or the murders. If anything it's the fault of leftist US government stance on drugs that weaken border security and allow drugs to get in (and therefore fund more drugs to be produced). And besides all that, the drug trade has been going on for far longer than you know. And including the murders.
> Which is partly or mostly our fault.
It does contradict the original claim because it's 3 examples of things we didn't cause - and he said "mostly our fault". If it takes 3 seconds to think of things we didn't cause, then the world's craziness is not mostly the fault of America. Mostly the US has a hand in stopping communist governments where the citizens are kept as slaves.
> whose centre is firmly to the right compared to the rest of the world.
Not really, no. Most of the world is under authoritarian regimes that would be seen as more right leaning. Most democracies are also right leaning. What characterizes the US is being extremely capitalistic and pro-corporations
I would agree that's true for Y Combinator, but my experience in the HN _community_ for almost a decade now has suggested that the heavy anti-American sentiment started right around the start of the current administration.
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.
IRGC, Hamas, Hizballah and maybe others are far right organizations, so I don't think this is purely left/right.
And what about signal? I am pretty sure many violent/terrorist groups use it too.
I don't have an opinion about this group, because I didn't even know it existed. But, like often with things related to the free speech, I think this topic is more complex than you make it out to be.
Very clearly untrue. Just search for "people waving hamas paraglider flags" on Google and you will find plenty of sources[1], like this.
Basically every movement/organization on earth has activists who support their activities, why would Hamas be any different? There are people everywhere who don't mind violence/killing and there are people everywhere who are anti-semitic. You think the intersection of those two cohorts is empty?
Substack knowingly and openly platforms neo-nazis, allowing them to profit from their rhetoric while taking a piece of the action. Even if the authors avoid specific calls to violence to skirt the ToS, it still gives them fertile ground for recruitment and funding of their activities.
By your definition, then, Substack should be labelled as a terrorist organization and shutdown, yes?
Their public position, before the sanctions at least (https://archive.is/5TWWu), was that their services were manually vetted and provided "exclusively to individuals or groups we feel we have an affinity with".
Hizballah and Hezbollah are different spellings of the same thing, with Hizballah probably being more accurate and the one regularly used by the US government.
Should have focused on Monero donations from the get-go. Banks are a plague. Like what is a group like this using banks for or at least diversifying??
It's like choosing not to use E2EE.
It's not even left political groups that get debanked or screwed—it's everyone often.
Even GrapheneOS, but intelligently, they use crypto heavily:
>Unfortunately, PayPal permanently locked our GrapheneOS Foundation account today. No reason has been provided for the account being locked. All we've done is accept donations. We added our bank account information yesterday in order to begin withdrawing money and it was locked.
I still think a decentralized DNS alternative could scale, if done the right way. I also think that the majority of sites would be more secure if they used a system like ssh to deal with certificates, and government-controlled trust chains should be left for banking and other "official" stuff.
So, in 2021-2022 I publically called the See I Ayyy terrorists and advocated against accounts that algorithmically looked to astroturf or divide people on Instagram.
They showed up as actors in my commune where I lived (it was open-to-join, that was the mistake I made among being naive publically thinking truth prevails). I found after that the many past abuses of our government have not stopped and simply adopted to the modern age. Organizations whose interest it is to protect their shadow interests care not about what’s actually good for Americans, their interests are for maintaining status quo.
Status quo supports what - questioning AI and attempting to reverse the power structures or following along obediantly without question? I always wondered if my commentary led me to be put into a database of some kind. After Formerly holding a clearance, and letting it lapse, I’m recently reapplying and let’s see if “calling a government organization a terrorist org” discounts me from that. After reading the article I wouldn’t be surprised if like school yard bullies a leader in the orgs with power respond to viral accusers by marking them in a database as terrorists. Edit; please don’t accuse me of having mental health issues, I’m fine and I am working with my senators office and a “investigatory” agency to look into the abuses. I don’t yet feel hopeful the 3 petter org will reveal anything tho about my case due to security reasons.
> 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).
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.
The problem is that, as A/I themselves explained (https://www.inventati.org/who/collective), they worked hard to ensure that they do not possess any evidence of or data about who is using their infrastructure.
"We provide our services strictly for non-commercial use, in order to provide support exclusively to individuals or groups we feel we have an affinity with. In order to verify the existence of these pre-conditions, each and every service request is processed manually by one of our volunteers and is in a dialogical form. All requests are anonymized and will be destroyed."
Anonymized how? Before the first contact? After the conversation?
If anyone here wants to set up a similar service: This is patently stupid for an ISP to attempt.
All that demonstrates is that they operated a public email/messaging server. One could have coordinated the exact same things using ProtonMail or Signal.
How do you think LGBTQI+ rights came exist? It was not a pretty, blood-free, submissive process. And we're still far from LGBTQI+ rights being normalized.
How about workers rights? Slavery? Any progress that you'd think of as civilizing was not achieved without blood.
I don't remember any LGBTQI+ wars here in the Czech Republic, so "blood free" actually seems like a good characterisation. Sometimes the system just works.
See also the Velvet Revolution for a pretty large shift away from totalitarianism without any deaths.
You go from "I have no clue what I’m talking about here, though. Strange situation and too little information..." to "That’s at best a simplistic framing."?
And allude to specific incidents without links? WTF?
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.
Good point, it's not a particularly new behavior. It's just depressing what kind of utterly horrible shitshow the US has become. I was pretty open to and almost planning to move to the US 25 years ago and now I'm so happy I didn't.
Indirectly is doing a lot of work there. The US is an extremely disenfranchised place, and the choices are both pro-capital and will never actually represent the people in any meaningful sense. This liberal individualism framing only serves to bolster nationalism and divide groups when what we really need to be doing is recognizing our shared goals, with "we" being the international "we", and figure out who our enemies really are.
I think people are downvoting you for several reasons:
- Taking administration propaganda pieces at face value (such as the batshit insane page you linked to)
- Referring to "violent antifa cells". That's the spin Trump has been trying to put on the groups of people who have been resisting fascism. (Do you know what "antifa" stands for?)
Thanks for explaining, I will work on my approach, I didn't think I said anything that presented I agree with or believed the PR, only that it was context for why the A/I situation.
> 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.”
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.
I'm sure they're aware who they are hosting, at least blog wise. We're not talking about a massive company with no ideological affiliation, they vet who they provide access to before they do so, so in many ways it is more of a partnership than simply providing services. Not that necessarily I think it was worth labelling the organization themselves terrorists, but it still isn't something that should be whitewashed.
Actual terrorists have a right to speak too, you know. Intrinsic to the whole idea of rights is that even people we don't like (or are even mortally opposed to!) still have them. The problem with "firebombs on anti-abortion pregnancy crisis centers" is obviously the firebombs.
Parler was "ripped off the Internet" because it was delisted from app stores and dropped by AWS for violating their ToS due to having (If I remember correctly) approximately zero content moderation, which is not really compatible with the mainstream distribution model they wanted. The owners were not subjected to sanctions by a foreign government.
Check the <li> near the bottom. Some are named, such as Armed Proletarian Justice, Revolutionary Class Self-Defense, and Jane’s Revenge, but some unnamed ones as well (at least their actions have been described).
I have no way to verify whether the collective really helped the violent acts that are cited in the designation[1] but, as an Italian, given the dialectic and rhetoric in their statements and in their websites, it would not surprise me if this once they - the US government - were not wrong. "A broken clock marks the right time twice a day" and all that.
I have experienced this kind of language personally back when the collective started (they have root in the no-global movement, a protest group that contributed to the violence at the Genova G8).
At the time I was a young activist on their side, but the 'we are not violent' wink-wink nudge-nudge attitude was not main stream but very much all over the place and became hard to ignore.
I would expect a government to be professional and just stick to the (proven) facts and avoiding labels; that would also be more convincing. Oh well.
By this logic any right wing message board would be designated terrorists the moment one person who has posted there commits a violent act.
This is meant to chill domestic left-wing activism. Just like the person who got 30 years for delivering some zines (https://freedom.press/issues/texas-man-sentenced-to-30-years... https://portside.org/2026-06-25/injustice-how-leftist-zines-...)
The "Western hemisphere" (which, of course, is neither) tolerates the US and the way it enforces its decisions outside its own borders, because it used to provide some assurance of stability and protection. But as the US rescinds that policy, weakens Nato, declares a tariffs war to every country on earth, etc., there will be less and less justification as well as, probably (hopefully) less and less public acceptance for any of this posturing.
Pun intended?
My impression is that they didn’t say “hey we don’t have customer information but we don’t service violent groups and we will responsibly investigate and discontinue service to offenders.”
Their vibe was much more defiant, like, “we designed this to be anonymous and specifically intend/expect for it to be used in any way regardless of legality and are okay with it.”
Is it right for the US to be the global arbiter of this issue and domains in general? Of course not.
That is also what Signal does. Or absolutely any end-to-end encrypted communication service at all - these are explicitly designed not to retain details of communication.
Do you want to declare them terrorists too?
Now, if you are against private conversations, please state so clearly so we know which side of the fence you lean towards.
Meanwhile, Signal requires a phone number, so it knows much more about your identity than A/I did.
If that's disqualifying, a lot of US government contractors are in trouble.
There are very logical reasons why the state wielding force and violence is preferable to the alternatives (gangs, cartels, etc).
Seems like there are some pretty clear historical exceptions to this rule.
We can also pragmatically understand why having rules around about not starting violent revolutions, especially when we’ve already established an okay-ish democratic system, generally benefits most people.
We have pardoned Jan 6ers convicted of "wielding force and violence" for political goals in goverment positions now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch is uncomfortably close to the situation.
> The A/I Collective… manually vets all potential users for ideological affinity before granting them access to its infrastructure.
What is the truth behind that? Such behaviour would undermine A/I’s claim they are akin to Gmail if they explicitly are not a neutral ISP. After that, it becomes a question of degrees: what were their specific criteria for access to the platform?
Asking out of genuine curiosity. I wasn’t familiar with this group before today.
A lot of the state department’s claims of “violent groups” are BS but it also seems like a non-zero number of them are pretty violent organizations.
There’s a big difference between “we have designed our devices to be zero-knowledge but we act swiftly against violent/illegal activity if it’s discovered” versus “we actively endorse the views of our user base.”
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nspm-7-labels-commo...
So unless you're willing to become a literal terrorist organization and die with a bunch of your friends in an uphill battle (not technically unwinnable, but at least lopsided and the casualties will be tremendous), the only option is to cave.
> violence or the threat of violence used as a weapon of intimidation or coercion
> especially: violent or destructive acts (such as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terror
Now, which actor in this story does this sound like? The webhoster exercising their speech rights or the apparatus bombing schools and weddings in order to get their way?
No one is claiming that Amy Klobuchar or Gavin Newsom is a member of antifa.
Lots of maga are idealists (even if their ideas are not based in the real world), a number of them are LARPers and a small number are hard core intent on eliminating “the enemy”. To think that no maga member is violent and entertains violent options, is denying reality. Also it’s disingenuous to think they are all out of their minds looking to overthrow the government. Many just have ideals that don’t align with the mainstream.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1153982516232...
https://www.gettyimages.com/videos/jan-6
It pretty explicitly changes that fact. Inb4 ehrm actually, we all know bro.
Why do so called anti fascists act fascistically asking for killing and or imprisoning whomever they see as their current enemy via simple accusation?
I’m sure there are supremacists “organizations” that are also hard to pin down.
Because anyone call themselves anti-fascist, doesn't make them so. While most people who are, well, not fascists probably don't wear or care about the label. You just proved the point comment you're replying to right.
> I’m sure there are supremacists “organizations” that are also hard to pin down.
You mean the ones that aren't organizations? Let's say all the people who are racist in the world, are they an organization? Even all the people who really hate the same "race", if that's all they do, does that make them an org? Is everyone making inane arguments be part of a global group of people working in concert trying to diminish the cognitive capacity and level of discourse in society?
The flag just symbols that this person is against Nazis. Nothing more, nothing less.
It can be held by anyone. Here in Germany, we have (amongst others) religious Christians (often of Lutheran Protestantism), Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, other denominations of Communists, Anarchists, Greens, Social Democrats, Antiimperialists, Zionists and sometimes even the occasional Conservatives showing up under the Antifa banner.
"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.
That's why I asked: what did the authors ever do to _support_ free_speech, i.e., speech that they _don't_ agree with?
You don't get credit for supporting dissemination of your own views only. That's just “free speech for me, but not for thee”.
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.
[1] https://njal.la/domains/
The issue is, now they are the legal owners and liable for the content of the website, and they also support PayPal, which will absolutely drop them the moment they get sanctioned.
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.
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
Which is partly or mostly our fault.
Maybe we could concentrate on doing less of that.
This is a direct result of the "war on drugs" perpetrated by the US.
The other two are genuinely not the fault of the US, but bringing up two examples where the US wasn't the source of the problem doesn't exactly contradict the original claim.
> Which is partly or mostly our fault.
It does contradict the original claim because it's 3 examples of things we didn't cause - and he said "mostly our fault". If it takes 3 seconds to think of things we didn't cause, then the world's craziness is not mostly the fault of America. Mostly the US has a hand in stopping communist governments where the citizens are kept as slaves.
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.
Not really, no. Most of the world is under authoritarian regimes that would be seen as more right leaning. Most democracies are also right leaning. What characterizes the US is being extremely capitalistic and pro-corporations
I would agree that's true for Y Combinator, but my experience in the HN _community_ for almost a decade now has suggested that the heavy anti-American sentiment started right around the start of the current administration.
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 what about signal? I am pretty sure many violent/terrorist groups use it too.
I don't have an opinion about this group, because I didn't even know it existed. But, like often with things related to the free speech, I think this topic is more complex than you make it out to be.
Basically every movement/organization on earth has activists who support their activities, why would Hamas be any different? There are people everywhere who don't mind violence/killing and there are people everywhere who are anti-semitic. You think the intersection of those two cohorts is empty?
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-68275185
Because "pro-Hamas activists" don't exist.
By your definition, then, Substack should be labelled as a terrorist organization and shutdown, yes?
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.
That part sounds a little like telling on oneself.
Is that Hezbollah's little brother?
https://www.inventati.org/donate
Should have focused on Monero donations from the get-go. Banks are a plague. Like what is a group like this using banks for or at least diversifying??
It's like choosing not to use E2EE.
It's not even left political groups that get debanked or screwed—it's everyone often.
Even GrapheneOS, but intelligently, they use crypto heavily:
>Unfortunately, PayPal permanently locked our GrapheneOS Foundation account today. No reason has been provided for the account being locked. All we've done is accept donations. We added our bank account information yesterday in order to begin withdrawing money and it was locked.
https://xprivate.lol/GrapheneOS/status/1684663777273233408
https://xprivate.lol/GrapheneOS/search?f=tweets&q=Pay+monero...
While this is very heavy handed censorship, there are plenty of ways around it.
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
It means the government won.
They showed up as actors in my commune where I lived (it was open-to-join, that was the mistake I made among being naive publically thinking truth prevails). I found after that the many past abuses of our government have not stopped and simply adopted to the modern age. Organizations whose interest it is to protect their shadow interests care not about what’s actually good for Americans, their interests are for maintaining status quo.
Status quo supports what - questioning AI and attempting to reverse the power structures or following along obediantly without question? I always wondered if my commentary led me to be put into a database of some kind. After Formerly holding a clearance, and letting it lapse, I’m recently reapplying and let’s see if “calling a government organization a terrorist org” discounts me from that. After reading the article I wouldn’t be surprised if like school yard bullies a leader in the orgs with power respond to viral accusers by marking them in a database as terrorists. Edit; please don’t accuse me of having mental health issues, I’m fine and I am working with my senators office and a “investigatory” agency to look into the abuses. I don’t yet feel hopeful the 3 petter org will reveal anything tho about my case due to security reasons.
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
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.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260826145332/https://www.autis...
"We provide our services strictly for non-commercial use, in order to provide support exclusively to individuals or groups we feel we have an affinity with. In order to verify the existence of these pre-conditions, each and every service request is processed manually by one of our volunteers and is in a dialogical form. All requests are anonymized and will be destroyed."
Anonymized how? Before the first contact? After the conversation?
If anyone here wants to set up a similar service: This is patently stupid for an ISP to attempt.
All that demonstrates is that they operated a public email/messaging server. One could have coordinated the exact same things using ProtonMail or Signal.
Give me a break. Ends to not justify all means. This is a completely appropriate response by the state department.
I mean, the capitalist system is a barbaric system with defenders that do make opposition illegal...
How about workers rights? Slavery? Any progress that you'd think of as civilizing was not achieved without blood.
See also the Velvet Revolution for a pretty large shift away from totalitarianism without any deaths.
And allude to specific incidents without links? WTF?
If anyone from A/I is reading this know you always have a place to stay/eat if you need it
I really worry about the future of free and open expression over the next few years.
- Taking administration propaganda pieces at face value (such as the batshit insane page you linked to)
- Referring to "violent antifa cells". That's the spin Trump has been trying to put on the groups of people who have been resisting fascism. (Do you know what "antifa" stands for?)
Yes I am well aware of what antifa means.
> 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.”
I'm sure they're aware who they are hosting, at least blog wise. We're not talking about a massive company with no ideological affiliation, they vet who they provide access to before they do so, so in many ways it is more of a partnership than simply providing services. Not that necessarily I think it was worth labelling the organization themselves terrorists, but it still isn't something that should be whitewashed.
How long do you think you could resist a tier-1 nation state coming after you on terrorism charges?
What kind exactly?
Check the <li> near the bottom. Some are named, such as Armed Proletarian Justice, Revolutionary Class Self-Defense, and Jane’s Revenge, but some unnamed ones as well (at least their actions have been described).
How are the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doing?
I have experienced this kind of language personally back when the collective started (they have root in the no-global movement, a protest group that contributed to the violence at the Genova G8).
At the time I was a young activist on their side, but the 'we are not violent' wink-wink nudge-nudge attitude was not main stream but very much all over the place and became hard to ignore.
[1]https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
edit: forgot the link to the designation