Audacity fork creator steps down. Claims his life is in danger

https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity/issues/99

198 111 5 years ago

shadowgovt3• 5 years ago

When all is said and done, in this era moreso than ever, interpersonal concerns influence software decisions at least as much as technical concerns.

immibis4• 5 years ago

Software has always been a social thing. Everything is. What use would Linux be if people didn't write Linux programs? What use would Audacity be if sound was conventionally stored on tapes? What use would Audacity be if there was a better free alternative?

ohazi• 5 years ago

I say this as someone who has used Audacity and Musescore for years, and who has been subscribed to Tantacrul's Youtube channel since before he got involved with Musescore because I thought his UI/UX rants were hilariously good.

I've been trying to follow this story as closely as I could manage, but even I don't understand what the fuck is going on anymore.

db48x2• 5 years ago

They are hilariously good. No matter what else happens, those videos are worth watching.

philpem• 5 years ago

They may have been funny when they were released - but his relentless shilling for muse has made it very clear what the purpose of them was. Dunk on the competition, to big up Muse and his own profile.

They're (IMHO) unwatchable when you follow the money trail and realise what they are, and always were: thinly veiled shills.

tomrod2• 5 years ago

Weird. Why does 4chan care about this?

Ygg23• 5 years ago

Same as always. For the lulz.

Edit: Upon closer inspection, it seems cookiengineer had a vote for fork name. And Sneedacity won. After deleting that option 4chan went on a frenzy.

dathinab• 5 years ago

Yes, but also because someone instigated them to do so.

Maybe the person just did so out of a random thought of finding it funny, or maybe because of personal dislikes or maybe because of other reason.

Let's not forget people which go to extrems "for the lulz" tend also be easy to be used if you are lucky (i.e. just need to pitch the right idea to the right person in a "innocent" way, through it also comes at a considerable risk for you because you can never be sure who they end up harassing in the end).

netr0ute• 5 years ago

Actually, we should wonder why they would have the "audacity" to do this.

DevKoala6• 5 years ago

I think that they don’t trust the maintainer. However 4chan raids like this are often run by third parties that can benefit from attributing this type of behavior to “anonymous” individuals.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the people who bullied this individual had the goal of getting the original independent fork abandoned while also getting the new fork cancelled on the grounds of hate speech all along.

I visit 4chan and the site is full of propaganda from government and entities with enough capital to pay astroturfers or build bots. At this point it is safe to assume that “anon” is not always some edgy hacker kids but a government, bank, large company, etc.

Ygg23• 5 years ago

Damn, that's some sci-fi level shittery. Reminds me of something I watched - where a person created an impromptu hacker persona, to expose a corporation corruption.

Then that hacker pseudonym was reused by other corporate actors to cause PR nightmares for each other.

pigbearpig• 5 years ago

So you're telling me that a bank is going on 4chan to start raids? Please, no CEO knows what a 4chan is.

meowface3• 5 years ago

Any anonymous website, including 4chan, is extremely easy to "game" in the way you describe, but "the site is full of propaganda from government and entities with enough capital to pay astroturfers" and saying it's safe to assume a government, bank, or large company is secretly weaponizing 4chan to raid this repository owner sounds very similar to one of the standard paranoid conspiracy theories that circulate on the site (Pizzagate, QAnon, etc.).

I'm sure some shady interference from external actors does sometimes happen on the site, but in a scenario like this, I would bet a lot of money 99 - 100% of the people involved are just /g/ trolls who think it's funny to harass the guy. This "it wasn't us!" reasoning reminds me a lot of the Gamergate people who insisted anyone harassing people was actually a false flag by someone trying to make their side look bad.

shadowgovt3• 5 years ago

Fork creator put up a poll to name the fork, and a 4chan meme won. Fork creator then decided that name was dumb and discounted the poll result.

4chan then did what 4chan do.

bawolff• 5 years ago

Does anyone have a tl;dr as to wtf is going on? How does something like this escalate to this level?

boomboomsubban• 5 years ago

Audacity gets forked, forker puts up vote for new name with a joke option, forker regrets decision, trolls go to war over memory of Boaty McBoatface.

elevaet• 5 years ago

Agreed, this is completely baffling. Either I'm missing something in the story, or my model of how the world works is broken.

kapp_in_life• 5 years ago

Name for a fork of audacity was polled, 4chan trolls/raiders voted for sneedacity[0][1] won, maintainer chose to use a different name instead, 4chan trolls were unhappy and escalated their efforts.

[0] https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity/issues/33 (now deleted)

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sneeds-feed-and-seed

senectus1• 5 years ago

now this makes sense. (I'm not saying it's good or right, just that it 's now understandable how this bizarre situation happened)

4Chan is the devil you think you know but don't really.

pelagicAustral• 5 years ago

This is hard to understand, I think... mainly because not many people are fond of sites like 4chan and so the culture in there is quite particular, even changing dramatically from one board to another...

What happened, beyond the fact that Audacity's maintainers decided to include some telemetry and made some changes to the PA, was that the community around Audacity reacted with anger, and some people called for a fork to be made.

A developer took the call and forked the project. They assembled a team and unfortunately, now is when the actual shit storm begins, they came up with the idea of asking the community on Github to vote for a new name for the fork... Word of this got to 4chan's /g/ (technology) board and they decided to participate with the name 'Sneedacity' (which refers to a meme you can find by searching 'Sneed feed and seed').

They eventually won the vote but the maintainer, realizing this was obviously a piss-take by 4chan decided it was reasonable not to rename the fork. This should've been the end of it, but because this is the internet what on most cases would've been the correct cause of action became a direct inflammatory action against the /g/ board.

From here on there was numerous threads created on 4chan that more or less meme'd around with Audacity's fork new maintainer. At the moment, there's about 10 threads each one with around 300-odd replies (due to bump limitation). Most of them are quite satirical and at the most perverse and abusive but there is a distinct lack of 'calls for action' which further exacerbated people on 4chan, since there are several claims of this kind made on Github.

Personally I did went through every thread and there is an open debate over the fact that at least part of the new Audacity (fork) team seemed to have been posting self-doxing statements... Because posts on 4chan are anonymous it is virtually impossible to confirm this...

Either way, I'm sure this has been quite an unpleasant experience to the developer that forked Audacity. Its a classic prank going out of control because some people are just likely to push things to the limit, specially if they can do so in total impunity.

owlbynight• 5 years ago

There need to be harsh, harsh penalties for showing up uninvited to someone's house based on something that's happened or been said on the Internet. This is little kid shit and they either need to learn or have their toys taken away so they can't keep doing it.

shadowgovt3• 5 years ago

Step 1 is catching them, and it's the nature of this sort of attack that doing so is deceptively hard. This kind of harassment is basically a flash-mob.

jbluepolarbear2• 5 years ago

Pretty easy if they’re dumb enough to bring their phone with them.

aaomidi• 5 years ago

Really hard to do that when the state has been behind incidents like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

One could argue that the FBI could be behind this too, for reasons we won't find out for another couple of decades.

ggreer2• 5 years ago

I get where you're coming from, but my guess is that such a law would cause more harm than benefit. Think of all the potential for abuse. Politicians (and other government officials) could use it to imprison almost anyone who protested outside their homes.

AussieWog932• 5 years ago

Politicians (and other government officials) could use it to imprison almost anyone who protested outside their homes.

Honestly, I'd support politicians' right to have a bit of privacy and space in their own home.

There is a time and a place to stage a protest and after hours at someone's family home is not it.

pjc502• 5 years ago

Why does the internet make this magic? There's plenty of real world harrasment that goes on every single day. Usually relationship related. People get killed over it. Often after making a long series of calls to the police.

Besides, on this forum you'll have plenty of people arguing that abuse is just speech and it's wrong to ban people from organizing harassment on the internet. I don't agree, but that's the wellspring of this culture.

panny• 5 years ago

There need to be harsh, harsh penalties for showing up uninvited to someone's house based on something that's happened or been said on the Internet. This is little kid shit and they either need to learn or have their toys taken away so they can't keep doing it.

Interestingly, this happened on a much larger scale yesterday too,

https://twitter.com/DannyEFreeman/status/1412193024734601216

Same rules? Lock them up?

immibis4• 5 years ago

Yes, he should be safe from that sort of thing at his house, they can protest outside his government office or something.

Ancapistani• 5 years ago

In my country, and where I live (a relatively rural section), there are just such penalties - there’s a non-zero chance that if you show up at someone’s house, you’ll get shot for your efforts.

Obviously I’m not condoning this, but does actually seem relevant to this discussion.

remram• 5 years ago

Realistically, in your country, the assailant would have had a gun themselves rather than a knife, and OP would be dead.

risky_opinions• 5 years ago

Not posting this under my main account for reasons, but 4chan harassed me for developing software too. They're a bunch of anonymous assholes that have nothing better to do. Their commentary was degrading and demoralizing.

They thankfully didn't find me in real life, but I pulled down all social media to avoid them.

Edit: I want to say one more thing. Sometimes people defend 4chan and say stuff like "that's just how they are", "they don't really mean it", or "you have to understand their community". But places like 4chan do real, measurable harm to people.

Just recently, Near/Byuu (SNES emulation) took their life after relentless doxxing and harassment. It wasn't 4chan, but these communities all harbor the same type of anonymity-enabled "for the lulz" harassment that brings out the worst in people.

SilverRed6• 5 years ago

I have to say I usually find the /g/ antics to be funny but they certainly cross the line from jokes to genuinely harassing someone to what the OP post is describing which is horrific.

numpad03• 5 years ago

Is there the wall of shame/hall of fame pages for 4chan-related doxxing incidents? Are those greentexts the only content they share?

In 2000s there used to be external wikis for ops done in a local BBS in my country, and those used to summarize timelines and key informations that led to development. They were probably doing for their own fun but were also useful for defending side.

SilverRed6• 5 years ago

I don't think there is anything organized but the stuff ends up in youtube "documentaries" and similar. Well known incidents like the reddit boston bomber incident get remembered and turned in to memes.

deathlight• 5 years ago

There was a young teen girl who was bullied into killing herself which she did by drinking bleach (a quite horrific way to die). I don't remember how much of a hand the 4channers had in the actual bullying but after her death she was relentlessly mocked and made into a snide and pitiless meme that has thankfully died out by now.

There has been a long slew of young girls (and some boys) who have been tricked into sending explicit photos and have had their lives ruined over it in connection with 4chan and sites like it.

fito• 5 years ago

The kind of people who hang around 4chan is fucked up; I've always said that.

neom2• 5 years ago

4chan is still a bit of a black box to me. I mean, I guess that's the point? I am pretty curious who these people are, mostly how old they are. I occasionally go rummage through it to see if it's still 4chan, and it always is. 4chan is one of the few places/things on the internet that makes me genuinely uncomfortable.

SilverRed6• 5 years ago

4chan mostly is an interesting place because of how extremely toxic everyone is to each other but how little their insults mean to you because everyone is anon. The problem is when they start targeting real individuals and posting their personal info. It goes from jokes to real harm very quickly.

But I'm not sure its really any worse than mainstream social media. Witch hunts start on all of the large platforms. WhatsApp and Facebook are responsible for countless literal witch hunts where the accused were killed or brutally beaten. 4chan seems tame in comparison.

young_unixer• 5 years ago

People are fucked up, 4chan is just fucked up in the direction opposite from everyone else.

sillysaurusx4• 5 years ago

Am I the only one who would just … walk outside and talk to the 4channers who showed up? Probably offer them a cig and a meme.

I’ve been thinking of tweeting my home address, so this is a relevant concern. What do you even do when someone comes to your house, other than listen to them?

It could also be true that they did something a lot less friendly, like “bang on the windows and run away laughing.” That would be unsettling to experience, particularly at night.

This is a sad situation. Their Internet notoriety is the source of the problem, one way or another, and they felt like they couldn’t continue. I respect that; family is #1.

willhinsa• 5 years ago

It could very likely not be 4channers who show up at your house, but a SWAT team looking to take you out for holding someone hostage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting

applefangirl• 5 years ago

Or more they may send pizza deliveries and subscribe you too every mailing list known to man. Don’t post your address. Use a PO BOX if you must.

newbie7892• 5 years ago

I would strongly advise against tweeting your home address as some sort of experiment.

immibis4• 5 years ago

Obvious follow-up: do you think it's illegal to tweet your home address plus or minus 5 houses?

DenseComet• 5 years ago

The issue with having your address known isn't a random person showing up to your door, because the chances of any of them actually coming to your place is very low. The issue is having the police showing up at your door with guns blazing. This has become a huge issue for live streamers and youtubers and has led to deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting

AussieWog932• 5 years ago

If you are seriously that naive, don't post your address on Twitter. It is a bad idea.

bingidingi3• 5 years ago

that’s an incredibly bad idea, 4chan posters have actually assaulted people, people have died from swatting, some of these people are very unstable

todd3834• 5 years ago

I'm guessing you don't have kids

sillysaurusx4• 5 years ago

You're right. I wish we did though. IVF is so expensive in America that it's cheaper to fly to South Korea and get the procedure done there, by $10's of thousands.

Even still, would 4chan really dare mess with someone's kid? Generally they try to avoid going to prison, or vigilante retribution.

I guess you're right though. Thanks for pointing that out. I can think of a few ways 4chan could troll someone's child without risking themselves.

tzs2• 5 years ago

I’ve been thinking of tweeting my home address, so this is a relevant concern.

Giving out their home address didn't work out well for Tony Stark in "Iron Man 3" or for this guy in New Jersey [1], but they both had done things to get some people really annoyed with them.

So at the very least make sure that you don't have anyone out there who is really annoyed with you and has only been prevented from forcefully expressing that annoyance because they do not know where you live.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-man-who-went-on-a-racist...

SilverRed6• 5 years ago

The news article makes me wonder if you could do the same thing except give someone else's address. Mob justice isn't known for calm and logical analysis.

throwaway43576• 5 years ago

It could also be true that they did something a lot less friendly

I mean, they cut the guy in the arm with a knife, on his own yard, haven't you read that? Surely you wouldn't expect anyone to have a friendly attitude after that.

benhurmarcel• 5 years ago

According to that link, they showed up with a butterfly knife and slit his arm.

personjerry• 5 years ago

The absurdity is that these trolls clearly found Audacity useful. But because of them not knowing when to stop, they're going to end up with a much shittier product, possibly having just killed the future of Audacity, without the support of real devs like this one.

After all, what serious developer would continue working on this knowing this project is going to endanger their life?

"Congratulations, you played yourself"

pjc502• 5 years ago

They're not interested in making the world better.

bingidingi3• 5 years ago

they can’t play themselves because their only goal is chaotic harm

smoldesu2• 5 years ago

I'm pretty sure most of them pirate Ableton Live.

throwaway93892• 5 years ago

OK, so who knows of any completely anonymous alternatives to Github? Something blockchain based perhaps?

SilverRed6• 5 years ago

You can use github anon. Like everything, its a pain in the ass and you have to carefully analyze everything you do online to avoid linking personalities.

Solnezio• 5 years ago

what? Just use a different username and change the email you use in the commits to the github email (@users.noreply.github.com)... (should be "git config --global user.email 12345+foobar@users.noreply.github.com")

throwaway93892• 5 years ago

Sure, like another comment said though it is easy to mess up and reveal your identity for all commits in one swoop. I know there is GitMask [1] but it's not open source or decentralized.

https://www.gitmask.com/

carrolldunham• 5 years ago

I think these topics keep getting flagged because there's no evidence that any of this is actually happening.

smoldesu2• 5 years ago

All I'll say is that Cookie also provoked the trolls by changing his Github bio to some of their comments [0]. There's no right side here, but if you're ever put in a position where the majority of your users disagree with the way you're handling a project, it's probably best to step down rather than confronting them. That kind of democracy is what keeps open source development viable.

[0] https://archive.is/ZqK2T

pseudalopex• 5 years ago

What makes you think they would have stopped the ongoing harassment if the maintainer just hadn't quoted them?

Yielding to 4chan trolls could be prudent. It isn't democracy.

yissp• 5 years ago

It's like the Boaty McBoatface debacle. Lesson learned, don't ask the internet to name things.

bingidingi3• 5 years ago

what can be done about these chan sites? can they be further deplatformed or are they all hosted in safe havens now? just last week I was reading about how the bsnes creator was driven to suicide

kurofune• 5 years ago

This site is the most disgusting place in the whole world, and I think all the people that are active in /g/ should get put in jail and be ashamed of themselves for making the world a worse place than it already is. They are cyber terrorists, not cringe cancel kiddos.

I sympathize with his case but this post seems a delusional, hyperbolic rant that will make his harassers target him with renewed fervor.

They are trying to get on his nerves, he should go to the police and stop seething on the internet cause he's giving them plenty of what they really want.

emerged• 5 years ago

Seriously I don’t know how people fail to realize they feed off this type of response. It’s like trying to fight a vampire by throwing your blood at them.

edly• 5 years ago

If you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Your logic is living proof that we still don't take the very real harm 4chan can do seriously. We laughed at "POOL'S CLOSED" and cheered with Operation Payback because it was fun, but now that 4chan is long dead and what remains is this.

If you want examples other than 4chan, look around. The state of several first-world countries (you probably live in one of them) is the result of threat ignorance.

szszrk• 5 years ago

So people should just shut up and get beaten, but less? That's exactly what is wrong with "our" attitude and he is right on this one.

jfengel• 5 years ago

There is zero chance of the police doing anything. The harassers are almost certainly not in their jurisdiction.

It's the FBI's jurisdiction, and they're not going to do anything, either. To them, it's just another of the billions of death threats sent every day. Don't call them about it until you're already dead.

It would be great if somebody, occasionally, decided to follow up on one of these felonies. Maybe people would think twice about it. But as it is, going to police is exactly as effective as complaining about it on the Internet: not at all.

ezoe• 5 years ago

So, the moral of the story is, to develop a free software, avoid living in a place where 4chan thugs can physically harass you. So basically, avoid English speaking countries.

Or get enough capital to hire the armed security who guard your house 24 hours a day.

Erwin• 5 years ago

He seems to live in Germany, near Heidelberg (as the German federal police, BKA, of Heidelberg are investigating). The town has a large university, and used to have one of the largest US Military presences in Germany though I think they've all withdrawn now.

failwhaleshark• 5 years ago

I don't understand how noise from worthless losers on "social" media translates into a threat to life.

I just shrug and keep doing what I'm doing.

Their hell is their lives. I don't need to get involved.

seszett• 5 years ago

Well, the person says people showed up with knives at their home and physically harmed them.

I'd say this qualifies as a threat to life, and shrugging is unlikely to work in this situation.

Thorentis• 5 years ago

Conspiracy: Muse Group posted some anonymous posts on 4chan, hoping this type of response would result, in order to stop the fork from succeeding.

sschueller• 5 years ago

Why is this post flagged? I don't see if violating HN guidelines.

Audacity fork creator steps down. Claims his life is in danger

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