Post by @cwebber@social.coop

The US has declared Autistici/Inventati, an Italian anarchist hacker (in the classic sense of the term) collective, a terrorist organization. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/

But what you really ought to read is this article about A/I's history, and what this means https://web.archive.org/web/20260828071449/https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2026/08/10083/2

I'm concerned that the US government is starting to identify decentralized media infrastructure as a threat to its survival. Repost information about this broadly, and if you have media contacts, inform them of counter-narratives; there could come a time where the fediverse, or any decentralized network infrastructure, is a target as well if we don't sound the alarms now.

EDIT: I linked to the wrong page! The second link is now fixed :)

EDIT 2: A/I's domains have been revoked! So added an archive.org link

26 Replies

50 Boosts

herbert

@hvdsomp@w3c.social 29 min. ago

@cwebber more back on this https://www.wewillfreeus.org/the-server-called-paranoia-defend-autistici-inventati-before-september-25/

We Will Free Us

The Server Called Paranoia: Defend Autistici/Inventati Before September 25

Defend Autistici/Inventati

Claudius Link

@realn2s@infosec.exchange 1 hr. ago

@cwebber
We just had a very interesting season on this at #SoCraTes26

wakest ⁂

@liaizon@social.wake.st 1 hr. ago

@cwebber https://noblogs.org and https://www.inventati.org have not been revoked. looks like only autistici.org has been affected.

autistici.org - Welcome to Autistici/Inventati

Autistici/Inventati provides internet support to activists and collectives coming from the world of grassroot and social movements

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop 1 hr. ago

Autistici/Inventati's domains have now been revoked. I updated the link in the above post with a wayback machine copy.

Every now and then someone tells me, "We have a decentralized naming system, it's called DNS!" and I say, no we don't, DNS is extremely centralized? And if that wasn't clear to you before, hopefully it's clear to you today.

Dźwiedziu

@dzwiedziu@mastodon.social 1 min. ago

@cwebber
DNS is so centralised that neither the “D” nor “DD” in “DDNS” don't stand for “decentralised” \s

It was more decentralised when you manually passed `/etc/hosts` around.

Navi :therian:

@navi@catcatnya.com 40 min. ago

@cwebber stares at the entire ActivityPub network having a huge dependence on fucking domain names

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop 8 min. ago

@navi I wanted to fix this but I don't think there was, or still is, much interest. It would be a lot of work to do something different, at this stage.

MrTHF

@mrthf@meetiko.org 3 min. ago

@navi@catcatnya.com @cwebber@social.coop how much cash do we need to finace that? I'm not rich, but I can donate

1 more reply

Infoseepage

@Infoseepage@mastodon.social 1 hr. ago

@cwebber We have a global communications network, many fundamental aspects of which are controlled by the US federal government. There has been concern over this in the past, but past administrations have had the good sense of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What we have now is not best described as an administration, but a fascist regime, one which has rapidly moved to use every possible lever to extort other countries into doing what it wants, up to and including unprovoked war.

Cara V

@cararemixed@mastodon.social 1 hr. ago

@cwebber I'm all for setting up alternate roots and also supporting smarter DNS resolvers like unwind in more places. (I still resolve that domain just fine but it's not clear if it's unwind hitting something with a longer ttl somewhere or a nuance in how it was "revoked")

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop 1 hr. ago

@cararemixed "alternative DNS systems" doesn't really help though, because the TLS CA system is designed to work with the centralized view of "DNS truth"

Cara V

@cararemixed@mastodon.social 1 hr. ago

@cwebber Well sure, there's a lot in the stack that is slanted towards central planning and control but it's a little odd painting DNS as necessarily stuck as we use it today. Likewise with certificates and PKI in general. ACME helps a bit as do other forms of trust building. Most of these things have some fixing needed but it's not a gap we can't close.

Cassiopeia 🔞

@cassiopeia@thicc.horse 1 hr. ago

@cwebber wait why do they tell you this

Gadfly (-booq-)

@gaditb@icosahedron.website 1 hr. ago

@cassiopeia @cwebber You need to first talk about how DNS works to explain parts of what ActivityPub is.

Arie van Deursen 🇪🇺🇳🇱

@avandeursen@mastodon.acm.org 9 hr. ago

@Marloezovic Iets voor NRC?

Marloes de Koning

@Marloezovic@mastodon.nl 8 hr. ago

@avandeursen Ik denk het wel, maar heb er nog niet op bij kunnen lezen helaas. Eerst de Meta schikking. Dank voor het doorgeven.

optimista 🏴‍☠️🏳️‍🌈

@optimista@mastodon.online 9 hr. ago

@cwebber the history link is down 😞

Uriel Fanelli

@uriel@x.keinpfusch.net 9 hr. ago

Link is gone. Domain wise.

herbert

@hvdsomp@w3c.social 9 hr. ago

@cwebber second link still does not work for me. server not found.

DFX4509B (Joshua Mason)

@dfx4509b@mas.to 13 hr. ago

@cwebber
> There could come a time where the fediverse, or any decentralized network infrastructure, is a target as well if we don't sound the alarms now.

- As I explained in my quote for this post, alt OSes are already being targeted too, the US is turning into NK, and worst-case, could be locked to a state intranet with its own Red Star OS.

There could be a time also when Linux desktops and laptops are targeted like alt Android phones are being targeted right now.

RevSPLR

@RevSPLR@dobbs.town 15 hr. ago

@cwebber USA=1970s USSR, we became the evil empire we opposed.

Carmen-Lisandrette

@carmenlisandrette@mastodon.social 15 hr. ago

@cwebber

This is a threatening development.

I say this with love, even though it's going to sound a lot like hate.

They desperately need a short and sharable description of the problem for people who aren't leftists and don't like leftists.

You know, something that points out why this this a bad thing for everyone, yada yada yada.

That blog post isn't sympathetic at all if you aren't another leftist.

Tomasz W. Kozłowski

@twkozlowski@mastodon.social 16 hr. ago

@cwebber Thanks for sharing the news. I tried to donate to A/I about 12 hours ago via Liberapay, but their payment processor PayPal wouldn’t allow me to send money without creating an account, which I was not willing to do.

I tried again just now—and PayPal have locked A/I’s account. I hope no money of theirs got frozen. Let’s hope the Italian banking system is beyond the U.S. government’s reach for now and SEPA transfers still work.