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Comment by riccardomc | Hacker News Reader

I fail to understand the strategy behind this. They're driving all users away. What is the plan?

I'm genuinely baffled. Anyone know why?

One thing to remember is that nobody thinks of themselves as The Bad Guy. (Some people may come to believe that Previous Them was The Bad Guy, but that transformation is rare, and doesn't happen in the heat of the moment.) So when people do things that any clear-minded person would describe as Bad Guy behavior, they have to distort reality in order to maintain their Good Guy image in their own eyes.

If Andrew Lee simply wanted to destroy Freenode, he could have just pulled the plug on the domain name and/or shut down all the servers. It's clear, however, that he wants freenode to continue operating, just under his control; which means he has a reason why what he's doing is the Right Thing to do. Which means all the people advocating that their channels move over to Libera are either deluded or evil and are destroying communities. So in his mind, he's fighting the Bad Guys by seizing control of channels where the Bad Guys are abusing their privileges to destroy communities.

I mean yeah, it's easy for an independent observer to see that it's actually him who's abusing his power, and that those attempts will be counter-productive. But he's not an independent observer.

We've all got a thumb on the scales when evaluating our own behavior; its just more noticeable in a situation like this, where the thumb is more like both arms and a foot.

It's a microcosm of a lot of real-world politics.

Lee is a person unironically considering himself a prince. This explains a lot about his governance model.

Why leverage personal attacks? That's totally uncalled for.

Because this whole thing is about one person being sh*tty?

My policy when people are being unpleasant is to try as much as possible to stick to the facts and let them speak for themselves. This is for several reasons:

1. It's easy when you're angry at someone to paint things more black than they are, or to interpret neutral actions poorly intentioned. Forcing yourself to state the facts helps make sure you're not exaggerating or misinterpreting things. (In fact, occasionally when I've gone through that exercise, I decide that I was overreacting and they didn't mean what I thought they meant anyway.)

2. Laying out the facts is much more convincing. Some guy on the internet says, "He things he's a prince"? Well, OK, one guy doesn't like him. Laying out specific actions he's taken that are consistent with considering himself a prince? Well, now I have data with which to form my own judgement.

Keep in mind that the "prince" thing is not a gratuitous attack or some joke created because of Freenode, it's real:

> In October 2018, Yi Seok, a member of the House of Yi and one of the pretenders to the defunct imperial throne of Korea, declared Lee the crown prince of Korea at a ceremony in Los Angeles attended by city officials from Los Angeles and Jeonju, the family's seat. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lee_(entrepreneur)

I did find that out afterwards, but because of the way the comment was phrased, it wasn't at all obvious. I would probably have said something more like:

> NB that Andrew Lee literally considers himself a prince:

>> [Your wikipedia quote & reference]

> That may have something to do with his governance style.

It's not an attack, he literally claims he is the crown prince of Korea.

Being the pretender to a defunct imperial throne says a certain amount about somebody.

Typically, to be honest, that they are unhinged.

Driving away the "free beer" guys to turn it to corporate chat so then VCs will invest and pump up their valuation to the moon and then dump it in the public markets and buy yachts?

Bruised egos lead to bad decision making.

Perhaps to vacate community of old members? Lots of F2P/P2W games do this kind of community destroying changes, probably to restart growth, with a letter of sincere apology to follow without reverts for changes.

They are driving away an active and vocal part of the community. Perhaps they're hoping to capture a more general audience reaching for support, and somehow monetize it?

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