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@anneroth @cavallette And this is exactly why the loss of A/I can't be treated as some niche problem for the nerds.
We’ve been tracing how a 25-year-old autonomous infrastructure project ended up here, and what its loss means for everyone who depends on infrastructure outside corporate control:
https://sabot.media/post/kirk-to-ai
Let us have a thousand servers.
@MissConstrue check out our reporting and dedicated campaign and investigation pages all about this ordeal with A/I at https://sabot.media
@clitical_____hit @BASH they announced it earlier. It's done.
@poor_labsafety @BASH runs NomadNet nodes on Reticulum. So until our guide is published look up both of those.
To our knowledge, Reticulum handles the networking layer, discovering paths between nodes and routing encrypted packets without IP addresses, DNS, or centralized servers.
NomadNet sits on top of that and provides text pages, messaging, and node-hosted resources. Nodes can connect over whatever transport is available, including Wi-Fi, Ethernet, LoRa, or other links.
It's a decentralized resilient network that can carry internet-like services without depending on the internet itself!
A/I may be ending. The story is nowhere near over.
For twenty-five years, #AutisticiInventati showed what it could mean for movements to build and control their own communications infrastructure. Its loss should not send everyone searching for the next single service to replace it.
It should send us looking in a hundred directions.
In Boise, the Boise Autonomous Solidarity Hub is experimenting with one of them. @BASH has put a small independent publication on NomadNet, a system running over Reticulum rather than relying solely on the conventional web. It has articles, archives, submissions and contact functions, reachable through a cryptographic network destination instead of an ordinary domain.
99a904b9ab830b7baa9d5115eb8854d7:/page/index.mu
That is not the answer. That's what makes it interesting.
Other projects are trying other things: cooperative infrastructure, self-managed servers, RSS, mirrors, print, radio, downloadable archives, federated publishing and networks that barely resemble the commercial web at all.
We don't need to find another A/I. We need to understand how to build a thousand different pieces of what made A/I possible.
Sabot is beginning a living guide to autonomous media and infrastructure, aimed especially at small and rural projects: how to publish, archive, distribute, host, mirror and keep going when a platform, host, domain, provider or collective disappears.
Coming Soon:
BECOME THE THOUSAND SERVERS
A living guide to autonomous publishing, infrastructure and survival
Follow the people experimenting. Follow small radical media. Preserve what matters.
Then build something.
URGENT: Autistici/Inventati says Banca Etica is terminating its banking relationship and blocking access to donated funds, leaving A/I unable to pay suppliers or maintain services. A/I says it will pursue legal action.
Read. Share. Preserve. Organize.
Read A/I’s Sept. 5 statement
https://keepitfree.ai/announcements/banca-etica-shuts-down-a/i-funds/
Ever since this #AutisticiInventai designation I am feeling more connected to and inspired by autonomous movement networks than ever before.
Thank you @thefinalstrawradio for hosting Sabot Media and @crimethinc on your show for an interview about A/I today!
Had a wonderful time!
Crimethinc left us with this gem:
"The wrong Amazon is burning, the wrong ICE is melting, the wrong AI is being designated as terrorism"
Join us for conversation about A/I that doesn't suck when the episode drops! Keep an eye out
RE: https://kolektiva.social/@AberdeenLocal1312/117176991965442202
Don't sleep on this y'all
NEW FROM SABOT MEDIA:
A NETWORK CALLED “RESISTANCE”: AN INTERVIEW WITH AUTISTICI/INVENTATI
Days after the United States placed the twenty-five-year-old Italian communications collective on its terrorism blacklist, A/I spoke with us about what happened next.
Their PayPal account was terminated. Their autistici.org domain disappeared from normal internet resolution. Their bank relationship came under threat. Ordinary users were forced to reroute email accounts and mailing lists—all because the U.S. government decided to collapse the distinction between communications infrastructure and the people who use it.
“The United States—and Trump specifically—destroyed multilateralism and international diplomacy,” A/I told us. “They are saying they own the infosphere and all networks.”
We asked about encryption, antifascism, financial isolation, autonomous infrastructure, the danger this creates for other providers and what meaningful international solidarity could look like.
A/I’s answer: “Let us have a thousand servers, a thousand networks.”
And when we asked what the network created around a server called Paranoia should be called now, they answered with one word:
“Resistance.”
Read the complete interview:
https://sabot.media/post/a-network-called-resistance
An audio edition—with Ash Budding reading the questions and a Sabot Media comrade reading A/I’s written responses—is coming soon. Stay tuned.
Sabot Media is an independent publication and is not affiliated with or acting on behalf of A/I.
#AutisticiInventati #DigitalRights #FreeSpeech #InternetFreedom #Antifascism #IndependentMedia
ONE RULE FOR BIG TECH. ANOTHER FOR MOVEMENT INFRASTRUCTURE.
Section 230 says an online service generally cannot be treated as the publisher or speaker of information supplied by its users.
That protection is not technically reserved for Facebook, Google and X. But those corporations have built empires behind it. They host propaganda, threats, organizing materials and communications from practically every political tendency on Earth without automatically becoming legally responsible for everything their users say or do.
In *Twitter v. Taamneh*, the Supreme Court went further. It rejected an attempt to hold Twitter, Facebook and Google responsible for an ISIS attack merely because ISIS used their widely available platforms. The Court said aiding-and-abetting liability requires conscious, culpable participation—not simply failing to prevent bad actors from using a communications service.
Now look at Autistici/Inventati.
The United States has designated a 25-year-old volunteer communications collective as a terrorist entity largely by pointing to organizations and publications that allegedly used its infrastructure.
The government’s public case does not show that A/I planned the cited attacks, chose their targets, authored the communiqués or consciously participated in particular operations. It repeatedly moves from “this material appeared on their infrastructure” to “the infrastructure provider supported terrorism.”
Section 230 does not directly override an OFAC designation. These are different legal mechanisms, and Section 230 contains exceptions, including for federal criminal law.
But the contradiction is impossible to miss.
When gigantic commercial platforms provide generally available communications services to people accused of terrorism, American law recognizes a distinction between the provider and the user.
When a volunteer, antifascist, privacy-preserving collective provides communications infrastructure outside corporate control, the United States collapses that distinction.
Facebook collects identities, maps relationships, profiles behavior, recommends material algorithmically and sells access to its users’ attention.
A/I minimizes logs, rejects advertising, protects identities and does not build a commercial surveillance apparatus.
Which one has the United States subjected to financial isolation as a terrorist organization?
This is not simply hypocrisy about platform liability. It reveals what kind of infrastructure the state considers acceptable.
Corporate platforms may host radical speech as long as they remain centralized, surveillable and responsive to institutional pressure. Autonomous infrastructure becomes threatening precisely because it denies governments and corporations those points of control.
If providing communications tools makes A/I responsible for every user, the same reasoning could reach independent email providers, radical publishers, community servers, encrypted messengers and movement archives.
The principle has to remain the same:
Providing the road is not driving every car.
Operating the phone network is not speaking every sentence.
Maintaining a server is not committing every act discussed through it.
Infrastructure is not authorship.
Read the reporting and follow the campaign: https://sabot.media/
Sources:
47 U.S.C. § 230: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
*Twitter v. Taamneh*: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1496_d18f.pdf
*Gonzalez v. Google*: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1333_6j7a.pdf
looking for humans able to translate our publishing into other languages
DM if available
Request to sign on to the open letter here https://bit.ly/sabotopenletter
For Orgs there is now an open letter to sign onto.
For individuals there is a personal letter you can send to officials involved.
https://sabot.media/post/open-letter-ai
reach out
our open letter in support of A/I
https://sabot.media/post/open-letter-ai
our original article on the incident and A/I's history
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