Context: Jack Dorsey is giving a talk and Drew DeVault is organizing a protest against that
<a href="https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/20/2025-01-20-FOSDEM-protest.html" rel="nofollow">https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/20/2025-01-20-FOSDEM-protest...</a>
Sigh.<p>The people who spend a significant amount of time (often in my experience
unpaid) arranging a conference have to mix and match and probably make
some unpopular compromises for reasons know best to them.
I do think one should get them the benefit of the doubt as to why.<p>Just dont attend the talk.
It is that easy.<p>The ultimate protest would be a nearly empty room.
That would be quite humiliating for the person giving the talk.
A nice reminder by Jan (who is not defending the selection committee) <a href="https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/113862181623385975" rel="nofollow">https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/113862181623385975</a><p>(Drew's latest posts has similar reminders)
Why would any event accept or welcome people who are there to sabotage it?<p>"Our purpose is to peacefully disrupt Dorsey’s talk" then do it outside, that is where your Protest belongs and where you actually have a right to protest. Obviously anyone who comes to an event with the goal of disrupting that event needs to be removed or just not let in.<p>It seems extremely uncontroversial to ban everyone involved in the planned protest from attending.
> if a peaceful protest were to take place during the talk in question, we will not take action, provided the protest is indeed peaceful and does not disrupt the proceedings<p>Would staging a sit-in explicitly intended to prevent the booked speaker from speaking be classed as “disrupting the proceedings”?
Related:<p><i>No Billionares at FOSDEM</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42725057">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42725057</a>
Whats going on with the special snowflakes trying to get attention? First the WordPress-guy, now this one. Maybe we should all acknowledge that we are much less important than we would like to. And thats OK.
This doesn’t say anything about what the talk is, who is giving it, who is protesting it, or why.<p>I hate this style of press releases. It’s rude to assume your readership is hip deep in the scene drama.