Riseup

[gst]

Quoting from https://help.riseup.net/policy/social-contract/ :

"We ask that you do not use riseup.net services to advocate any of the following: Support for capitalism [...]"

So why should I use such a provider that restricts my freedom of speech?

[IsaacL]

From their policies page (https://help.riseup.net/about-us/political-principles/), the Riseup Collective makes it clear that they are a radical left-wing organisation.

"We ... [provide] ... communication and computer resources to allies engaged in struggles against capitalism and other forms of oppression."

I personally don't agree with their viewpoint. However, I also don't understand the belief that they should be a platform for contrary viewpoints. They're not Wikipedia.

[phaer]

You should not. In fact they page you have quoted says it quite clear. They want users who don't like capitalism and if you like capitalism you may express your freedom of speech on one of the thousands of pro-capitalist providers. That's the great thing about a market: You don't have to use services you don't like.

[fwdbureau]

Great point. Let's imagine a group of right-wing survivalists starts using the service: they probably don't support capitalism, but they're all for "self determination, local autonomy, ecology, and communal economics", in their own way. How long before they get booted? It's funny and highly illogical how the term 'activist' these days means solely left-wing militants (i don't specificaly condone right-wing survivalism here, this is just an observation)

[mcantelon]

Riseup is an anarchist organization providing services under the anarchist principle of "mutual aid" (you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours). They are offering services not to the general public, but to those who share their values and will contribute to a shared vision of a world free of dominance by oligarchies. TLDR: They're not Hotmail.

[Confusion]

  So why should I use such a provider that restricts my 
  freedom of speech?

If you feel their limitations restrict your freedom of speech: you shouldn't. That's exactly what they are telling you: don't use us for certain forms of speech. Is there a point to your question?

[aneth]

As much as I admire the effort to provide tools to oppressed people, I would strongly oppose this group. Capitalism and market economics are the single greatest tool for raising living standards, liberating people from oppression, and unleashing human creativity for the common good. Destruction of capitalism would bring the worst forms of oppression, from ignorance, to disease, to fascism.

[rabble]

Riseup has been doing great work for over a decade now. A lot of their security work, both linux kernal patches, and how to documents, have informed startups. I know they were very influential in Wesabe.

http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2007/view/e_sess/1049...

Their privacy and security work was influential in OAuth and know they're also looking at federated social networking.

http://www.slideshare.net/rabble/implimenting-privacy-oauth-...

More recently they've been building Crabgrass, a social network tool for collaboration. https://we.riseup.net/ It's open source and has been adopted by various UN agencies.

[tommi]

Isn't that more insecure approach than distributing your communication? What if riseup gets hacked or taken down by government?

[gst]

If I were the government I would definitely operate a site such as riseup (and monitor the communication of the individuals using it). And even if it's not operated by the government, as the servers are based in the US, they are affected by things such as National Security Letters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter).

As an activist I would use something such as TorChat (http://code.google.com/p/torchat/), RetroShare (http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/), or Syndie (http://syndie.i2p2.de/) for communication instead.

[troels]

Just guessing, but maybe they simply help people set up distributed systems. Eg. act as an information hub, rather than a technological platform. Don't know if that's the case, but it would make sense if.

[fungi]

hehe i'm guessing none of the upvoters are leaving comments.

if anyone in aus/nz is looking for a similar group of social justice/eco orientated techs try axxs.org

[mrjbq7]

I'm getting an error on their status page (https://status.riseup.net).

Error 202 (net::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID): Unknown error.

[MasterScrat]

> AUTHORITY_INVALID

Now that is just great.