Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

Jacob Appelbaum #

December 30, 2012

I’m sorry that you took my comments as having sexist undertones. That certainly wasn’t intentional and I apologize.
I was trying to address the fact that human society overall seems to degrade *all* people who try or even express that they might want to try to improve things. Often when a hacker wants to build a thing, we see people only telling them that they shouldn’t bother or when they want to learn, a similar negative pattern emerges. I was merely trying to address that kind of generally oppressive attitude that is a quite prevalent subtext in our community. We beat up on ourselves and others too often.
I think you’re generally right about the issues of sexism in the community and it generally reflects the world at large. There is far too much hateful shit in the air – it comes from a lot of places and it would be great if we could resolve it overall.
…
As far as the Crypto Party/PrivateGSM stuff goes – I was trying to experiment with a new device that only supported PrivateGSM (ie: no redphone, textsecure, etc – iOS for the loss); sadly, PrivateGSM did not work on the platform that I was using and I simply ran out of time before the event. I thought I had apologized previously but well, obviously that wasn’t conveyed properly — so, I’ll repeat by saying that I’m sorry for not being able to participate after accepting your invitation.
…
I think I should add that I was quite surprised to find myself as an example in your blog post. I personally wonder why you hadn’t mentioned this harbored resentment to me during the private conversations we’ve had lately. It really feels disrespectful and I hope that in the future, if you’re upset with me or with something I have or haven’t done, that you’ll talk with me directly.

Asher Wolf 

December 30, 2012

Maybe I am disrespectful towards you nowadays. I apologise.
You used to be one of the ppl I looked up to. The interactions we had around cryptoparty definitely undermined my respect for you.
The first paragraph of the article explains it’s not just a post about sexism and misogyny.
The post explains the small events over time that led to me quitting. Some of the interactions I had with you around Cryptoparty played into the outcome.
You have resources, freedom to move, networks to do things. Every few weeks you’re traveling to a new hacker space, meeting a celebrity, working on an international project.
Each thing I do – each tweet, each email, each response – is scraped from a situation with barely no time or space to myself, with limited resources.
I suspect it may be impossible for you to understand what I go through just to do things that for you seem simple and easy.
If you did, I suspect you wouldn’t have tested out PrivateGSM on me, 48hrs before Cryptoparty launched here in Melbourne, without testing it on yourself first.
I spent hours feeling stupid, not understanding why PrivateGSM wasn’t working, having put in hours of working on it, not wanting to seem like I wasn’t trying.
Reading your comments on LiberationTech’s email list questioning if I was willing to learn – I was livid.
Of course I’m teachable, but sometimes learning conditions are impossible.
You never admitted PrivateGSM wasn’t working for you either until now, by the way. You told me you were installing it. And then you cancelled.
I only guessed that you’d had problems, when I asked a bunch of people to try it out for me and a number of them had problems installing it.
I apologise for not bringing these issues up with you sooner. I always restricted my private comments to you, trying only to engage on a basis of ‘getting things done.’
Community means talking about stuff publicly, not just code and crypto. And that dialogue wasn’t fostered. The technical suggestions you made to me didn’t work, the projects you suggested were out of my ability and the comments you made on LibTech left me feeling two-inches tall.
I felt like my contribution was consistently under-valued, abused, and taken for granted.
I should have raised issues, with a number of people, but felt the working relationships were too fragile to push the card by saying anything.
Anyway, now I’ve said how I felt and I’ve been hacked, d0x’d and had every private affair since 2001 raised publicly in the last 24hrs.
Thank you for your response. I’ll keep in mind your comments.

Jacob Appelbaum #

December 31, 2012

Apology accepted, I hope the feeling is mutual but I have the feeling that it might be not entirely.
I realize that the article is not just about sexism and misogyny; it doesn’t however feel great to be mentioned in the article as it conflates some non-sexist, non-misogynistic interactions we’ve had personally. Without our personal context, I think that people will read it as you calling me out for being a sexist, misogynistic jerk; a few people at the Congress here did actually ask me if that was the case. I found it to be utterly frustrating if only because our private context is entirely left out.
I understand that there are different things that challenge each of us and I have tried my best to support you in your efforts. I have also given my honest opinions and tried to be extremely understanding of the contexts. That is why I have tirelessly helped Nadim with CryptoCat, why I tried to give constructive feedback about CryptoParty, and of course why I offered you my full support in your other project that I won’t name here.
When you suggest that I travel freely, I feel that you downplay the issues that I have faced and still face. It feels extremely insulting and yet I don’t hold onto it. Just as I cannot know fully what your experience is and how much you struggle, I know that my life probably looks like a cake walk. Things are not as they seem and that is exactly why I stated in my keynote that conflict resolution, mutual aid and solidarity should be community goals. I think that working towards higher goals is a good idea!
I try my best to support your efforts and have put in quite a lot of time, energy and good will in solidarity with your causes. I try to give you the benefit of the doubt and harbor no ill will towards you; if I had an issue, I’d talk with you directly and honestly.
I didn’t “test” PrivateGSM out on you. I use it all the time – I simply had a new device and didn’t have my other normal device with me. As I said, I couldn’t install it properly. I was trying to hack it together to help you out – the issues you had on your end weren’t related to the fact that my setup wasn’t working. I’m sorry that the setup wasn’t a great experience but I hope you realize that in this case, we’re both users at the mercy of the software vendor.
I never at any point suggested that you didn’t want to learn – rather, I stated that the way you phrased things felt dis-empowering. Both in a self-deprecating manner and in a way that is all too common in our community. I was *trying* to be supportive with what I said and it doesn’t seem that even now my intentions are reaching you. I’m not really sure what else to say about the topic, so perhaps I’ll just stop trying to re-state my intentions.
I’m sorry you’re having a hard time and I think it i utter bullshit that you’re being attacked for having this dialog. I hope in the future that things will be more respectful all around.