Another day, another cancel : Shame on Farida Nabourema and Africa Bitcoin Conf
2099 sats \ 9 comments \ @theariard 3 Nov 2023 meta
Dear community,
Another day, another cancel. I've been informed today by Farida Nabourema, lead organizer of the Africa Bitcoin Conference that my speaker slot on technical bitcoin and lightning subjects accepted in date of the 30 August 2023 was cancelled due to being pressured by her financial stakeholders.
Please find her mail received from fnabourema@afrobitcoin.org conference provided here as a screenshot: https://gist.github.com/ariard/948a91a2f80ff7efd67d7dbe29469606
From my appreciation, the Africa Bitcoin Conference is financed on sponsors package ($100k platinium, $75k gold, $50k silver and $20k exhibitor) from few "silicon-valley" VC-funded corporate entities and other non-profit, where "virtue signaling" is very important to appear the most "progressive", and sell tech products and services under this marketing flag. It was the playbook in the 2000s and 2010s, the thing is we’re living in a changing world so I'm not sure about that type of narrative anymore.
Shame on Farida Nabourema and shame on Africa Bitcoin Conference organizers to break their words.
I understand the Africa Bitcoin Conference organizers taking a decision by fear of retaliation by their financial backers if my invitation was not cancelled. This is issue when you're living on someone's else charity and somehow a generalized issue in the Bitcoin development space, where a lot of people don't have statutory protections in their work contracts to guarantee a high-level of independence and autonomy in their public open-source decisions (few Blockstream engineers and Bitmex templates have those protections).
To express further my thoughts here, this is cheap talk from Farida Nabourema to build a conference on her image of a human right activit and pro-democracy fighter over the last decade, challenging political threats in her country and shaking the flag of universal human values to give in privately at the first pressure. Without consideration for the hundred years principles of the rule of law (presumption of innocence, due process and respect of the contradictory) in the realm of human affairs.
I can only invite her to meditate on Edmund Burke's British classic "Reflections on the Revolution in France" for a finer understanding of human rights in situ. I think this is someone sincere and real in her fights though her current decision appears very confusing to me on what principles she is loyal to.
In my perspective, this is a direct follow-up of the issues exposed in stakers news post 298135: #298135
As a community reminder, end of 2021 someone in the development community plainly broke its words towards me in a complete unethical fashion. I did question this behavior, and since then more and more people have tried to cover up in an unfairly and non-neutral fashion, damaging their own reputation in my eyes by doing so.
Spiral cancelled a business commitment towards me in October of 2022, giving on "silicon valley" style of considerations. Chaincode and NYDIG's Wolf did cancelled my invitation to the LN summit 2023 in the US giving on same "silicon valley" style of considerations. Then we have the Africa Bitcoin Conference joining the dance of the cancel culture in the Bitcoin space. All those cancels without respecting any contradictory process, or material or factual ground and very often with lies by omission or blatant duplicity.
From my appreciation, some people assuming public responsibilities in the open-source and industry space have a hard time to self-police their emotions and harden their personal decision-making to not let affect their technical or professional decisions. If you're a bitcoin developer working for a californian or new-york based entity and you have a hard time to self-police your emotions, this is my pleasure to pay you therapists consultations in a long-term fashion. It's okay sometimes to take short-sighted decisions driven by strain and weariness, as long as we take time after to repair the consequences of them and apologies for them.
Beyond, I'm inviting you to consume the classic of US literature, e.g Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau for the lessons on practical stoicism. Very open to talk about classic of US literature with anyone in the Bitcoin community, next time I'm in the US.
Open in the future to talk on a public media with Farida Nabourema at a time of her convenience on the subject of cancel culture, democracy and human rights, Bitcoin in Africa, Africa political landscape, post-colonialism and Edward Said, affirmative diversity and inclusivity (or any other subject of her interest) and rebuild a trustworthy relationship step by step. And correct any communication confusion if any.
For the coming time, maintaining my travel to Ghana for december and other african countries this winter, as this is an opportunity to enjoy the pleasant weather and build for the real grassroots bitcoin communities there.
As a side-note, I don't think the cancel culture as we're seeing poisoning modern technology landscape has more than 4 or 5 years to live in a world where you have technologies like Bitcoin (censorship-resistance money), Nostr (censorship-resistance communicaiton) and Opentimestamp (chainstamped, auditable and verifiable electronic communications) and "distrust-the-admin" peer-to-peer technical architecture.
I'll look forward to develop those ideas on long-content in the future, though all to say, I think people playing cancel culture are like luddites at the beginning of the XIXth century fighting against the steam machine. Good luck with that.
Cheers, Antoine
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432 sats \ 1 reply \ @harrr 3 Nov 2023
Dunno, but it seems like you self-censored by halting your involvement. Personally, I'd try to move on and not dwell on things that make me unhappy.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @theariard OP 3 Nov 2023
Nothing related with the security issues disclosed recently as they were discovered after some inter-personal issues mentioned (e.g the ones with spiral) did happen.
Beyond I don’t know exactly what you mean by “halting my involvement” as well as I’m still active on bitcoin development and still staying a bit on the lightning-side for the transition period on some complex technical issues.
On the happiness recommendation, if you have already contribute to open-source projects on long-periods, they’re definitively time when you have to do boring stuff (e.g refactors or test coverage) which doesn’t make you immediately happy, however on the long-term bring you personal satisfaction.
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @chovyfubar 3 Nov 2023
find a different conference.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @theariard OP 3 Nov 2023
Doing my conferences schedule 6 months ahead as most of the time you have travel logistics to deal with.
A conference saying you “yes” then “no” as a speaker it’s wasting my time, time I could have invest contributing back to bitcoin in a pure foss fashion.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ProofOfWorkFitness 4 Nov 2023
I'm sorry to hear about this but thank you for bringing what you thought was a serious issue up to our attention.
We recently went over it in greater detail at a local Bit Devs. It's still a bit over my head which is why I think it's very important that people like you speak up and raise the alarm if there's something that you feel is a threat.
With the implementation of Taproot and stablecoins being transferred on a lightning Network seeming like the Killer App we have been waiting for,it's challenging for a new threat to emerge that could unravel it all.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @theariard OP 5 Nov 2023
At the origin, it has been an issue between another lightning dev and myself, which has not been cleanly and properly mediated. Some other people at spiral and chaincode have heard about it, and rather to put in place adequate mechanisms of mediation has taken a biased position for the other person.
I'm always acting with the highest standards of integrity and probity in both my public and private life, and I don't take opportunity of matters happening in private to follow lesser ethical standards (one can read Plato's republic on the philosophical leaning).
From my viewpoint, they have been only partially informed of the facts, and their positions have come as the prejudice for my professional interests, though also for my works as a security researcher and open-source protocol developer.
Those last concerns coming as a damage for the whole bitcoin ecosystem as they're poisoining the usual Bitcoin technical development and maintenance of the ecosystem critical softwares.
I won't say more to protect people private lifes (starting by my own), though this is not the first time we have inter-personal issues in the bitcoin technical community affecting the development of protocols and regular lifes of bitcoin codebases. For some even relatively recent issues, where I've not been involved at all, one major developer had to step down from his career, in a completely unfair fashion from my viewpoint and the information I'm aware off. And I know few which are pre-dating the times I started to be active in Bitcoin development.
Root of the matter lay when people are nurturing deep friendships and romantic relationships, which happen very often in professional life beyond bitcoin circles. However, in bitcoin we don't have robust code of ethics, established cultural norms and inter-personal conflicts resolution process yet in place to handle such situations smoothly.
Somehow I'm still sad than my elders at Chaincode and other bitcoin organizations around like Spiral, who has done and are doing the work of onboarding and nurturing technical talents in this space have never invest sufficient resources to solve and prevent those issues of personal matter. On one hand I understand some people in charge there, who might not have healed well their own conflicts in human affairs from their previous non-bitcoin-related professional careers, and as such have a hard time to be comfortable to talk about those issues, even in private and even if they're regarded as "big boys" by the public.
On the other hand, it's now encumbering on my shoulders (and the ones of few others), of someone who is 20 years younger than them, has a very busy bitcoin and technical career to manage and who is not an english native, to do the hard work on nurturing better ethical and cultural norms and put in place better inter personal conflicts resolution process among developers and technical stakeholders of the bitcoin space, akin to more mature technical community like the IETF or the ACM.
Working with my lawyers, some other persons and the people conerned (spiral, chaincode, etc) to advance in this direction with time and patience. As of today, I'm confident we'll build alltogether better social norms and a more healthy environment, for now it's a matter of patience and calm.
All that said, optimistic for the future of lightning, taproot application and other cool things. With time.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @2bithits 3 Nov 2023
Is she just anti bitcoin? I think I remember her from twitter
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50 sats \ 1 reply \ @theariard OP 3 Nov 2023
I don’t know her bitcoin background, I’ve never met Farida Nabourema in real life, we have only exchanged over mails.
I think this is someone sincere and really trying to move things forward in Africa, and I fully understand it’s hard to organize there an international conference, bring people from all over parts of the world, find the sponsors, manage the organizing team. Overall sounds more a cultural issue, especially when people have a wide variety of past professional backgrounds.
Like I said as a private reply to her when she sent her mail, I’m very fine to talk about it privately to build an arrangement and keep my speaker venue to the Africa Bitcoin Conference. No reply from her so far. Some conferences they have clear and transparent code of conducts e.g TABConf in the US.
This is not clear to me who has pushed for the cancel from her mail, if it’s “silicon-valey” VCs or other bitcoin organization entities, because of some cultural difference or some communication confusion. I still think this is a shame to bully african people like Farida and her team really working hard to move things forward in Africa.
Looking forward to a bright future of Bitcoin in Africa, a lot of things to build as a community.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @2bithits 3 Nov 2023
I think we'd all like to see a bright future of Bitcoin in Africa.
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