FYI - I was permabanned from reddit

[rezzme]

I've deleted the offensive comment, but this is pretty insane. Someone reported it nearly immediately after the comment, because I was banned within 20 minutes.

The offense was for a comment that contained the "real name" of btcdrak.

"Hello. The comment was this one which contained the real name of a non-public figure:


If you are able to delete or edit the name from your comment then we'd be happy to change your suspension to be temporary instead of permanent."

And it's not even provable that it is a real name! It's literally another alias with five other anonymous posts on internet dev forums!

Christ. Banned for writing a name in a comment with no other "dox" information.

EDIT: Also worth mentioning, I've been reddit gold since Nov 2013, I've gilded other comments two or three times, my email is verified, and I've never had a prior offense.

 

[solex]

Sorry to hear this. They are very fussy about dox info, warranted or not. Similar happened to @Norway

 

[cypherdoc]

that's funny. they don't care when i get doxxed. in fact, @frankenmint a r/Bitcoin mod, doxxes me all the time. what a shithole.

 

[KarmaKameleon]

Let's talk about the mysterious BtcDrak a little.
He seems to shy away from actual light, unlike me (<--- see, that's me in full sunshine).

His posting history on bitcoin-dev begins in Oct 2014. Fairly new to Bitcoin, you say?
It seems you'd be wrong.

Because not even two months earlier, someone going by the email drak at zikula.org stopped posting on the mailing list.

Is this BtcDrak in a previous incarnation?

Let's dig a little, to find out what's known about the old 'Drak'.
His first post on the bitcoin-dev mailing list is from 3 Dec 2013.
Before then, it gets a little murkier.
We find the address he initially used on bitcoin-dev to be associated with the Zikula project, of which he was apparently the lead developer (you can find a public reference to this in [1]).

He also seems to have dabbled in some PHP programming [2]. Apart from that, he seems to have little actual contribution to the Bitcoin source code, as pointed out by others [3].

But you know what's real strange?

His supposed "real name", which I have agreed not to mention on this forum (because I don't have 100% proof that it's not the name of an actual person) - it seems fake as hell. You won't find an actual person by that name identified on the Internet. It's a mashup of Tibetan names which actual Tibetans will tell you it doesn't look like a real name, but rather "made up". It's not identified with a Tibetan spelling anywhere on the 'net. In short, I am 100% sure it's not a real person's name, but just another alias (*). But don't just take my word for it.

So why the aliases upon aliases?
Seems a little weird for someone entrusted with so much power.

[1] archive link: http://archive.is/bRKCJ
[1] https://packagist.org/packages/drak/native-session-bundle
[3] np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4bvzs6/p2p_alert_removed_is_it_not_strange_that_the/d1cvq9a

(*) the mention of which will get you permabanned on reddit for apparently posting "personal information". Reddit admins would do well to look into BtcDrak more carefully...

 

[cypherdoc]

@KarmaKameleon

i'd actually be interested in knowing who he really is.

 

[rezzme]

Literally, I have been paying for reddit user for three years. What other business treats it's effing customers like this? On Earth? The DMV treats me better than reddit.

It wasn't even a dox, that's the fucking problem! It was another alias. Literally empirically impossible to prove it's a person. And I said the name - no links or other information - a bloody name that's a bloody alias.

And I can't even respond to my own admin thread that it tells me to respond to appeal the ban. Fuckin' ridiculous.

 

[cypherdoc]

isn't btcdrak a mod of r/Bitcoin? could be wrong but there's craziness everywhere.

 

[KarmaKameleon]

@cypherdoc : so would I. Let's dig a little deeper, shall we? I'm thirsty, and the water seems deep underground.

If you follow my links, you come up with his fake name. Obviously you've done that, since you say you would like to know who he *really* is. I don't know yet, and if I do find out, I can't say it. That's how the game works. Let's play.

Exhibit A:

He went missing / AWOL from the Zikula project [1] sometime in 2015. They were about to replace him when he made a sudden re-appearance. Nothing too significant that can be gleaned from that, except that even among his project colleagues, no-one seems to know who he really is. Again, a little weird for some random PHP developer, but hey, some people might want to go to great lengths not to have that on the CVs.

Exhibit B:
French Wikipedia article [2]. Archived, because I'm a paranoid Kameleon. What tidbits might we find here?

Les membres fondateurs de la Fondation Zikula sont Harry Zink (Fizbin Consultants, LLC), Mark West (Chef du développement), La Fondation Zikula Allemande (représentée actuellement par Andreas Krapohl), Drak (HostNuke?), et Vanessa Haakenson (Distance-Educator.com).

Hmm, the only anonymous member of Zikula in that list is ... 'Drak' !
But what's that - Hostnuke?

(sound of magnetic drives spinning up to access archives)

. . . match! -> [3]

Ctrl-F "Hostnuke":

viacoin.org: mail: mx.viacoin.org, hosting: behind CloudFlare, closed registration (ContactPrivacy) through Hostnuke.com

Hmm, ViaCoin, interesting. Now that much we already know about BtcDrak. But slightly odd that the Wikipedia article mentions him in connection with Hostnuke...

Still haven't hit paydirt, have we? But this is fun, we'll keep on playing this game.

Whaddayaknow. There is news underground!

Thanks to Drak I was able to tune my coding and Linux skills in a large production environment as well as help keep my family alive with a nice little sum every month. On top of that Drak is also the HostNuke owner who hosts UGN Security.

Confirmation alright that Hostnuke.com and Drak are a couple.

Oh, yes, and he sure is mod of /r/bitcoinwizards, and /r/bitcoincore, and /r/viacoin, and now the bitcoin-dev mailing list ...

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/php-fig/DXhZpC3pFDI
[2] http://archive.is/A9d22
[3] https://archive.is/JkgRR
[4] http://archive.is/dgnzL

 

[KarmaKameleon]

Read this instead: https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/dont-panic/
[doublepost=1458957677][/doublepost]

[doublepost=1458958140,1458957118][/doublepost]@rezzme

And it's not even provable that it is a real name!

What about provably not the real name?
[doublepost=1458958629][/doublepost]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chameleon_vision

Photo by Hans Bernhard (Schnobby) (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

[Bloomie]

Post deleted. @KarmaKameleon I asked you very clearly not to post his real name. No manhunts on this forum.

 

[KarmaKameleon]

You know I never posted his real name. I did not even post his fake "real name".

On reflection though, I did overstep the line I did not want to cross myself.
I respect your decision.

 

[Norway]

Why don't you give us your own name, KarmaKameleon?

 

[KarmaKameleon]

Because I don't censor anyone. I am a lowly chameleon, not interested in spitting on people from high up in the tree.

I don't get people like thread OP kicked off social sites by inventing a fake persona and then claiming others are disseminating "personal information" when they link to public records of aforementioned fake persona.

All I want to do is catch flies.

 

[KarmaKameleon]

Furthermore, BtcDrak's actions are public knowledge.
Anyone doubting that can re-read the following thread:

https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/425ihq/someone_calls_out_btcdrak_and_peter_todd_for/

I will quote the top post from that thread citing Mike here, with emphasis mine, because it is so very spot-on given what BtcDrak demands of others:

BtcDrak is a Bitcoin Core development list moderator. Who is he? Who pays him? What's his real name? He hired Peter Todd as consultant for ViaCoin, where did he get the money to do that? If it's OK to demand I answer these sorts of questions, Drak should go first. Real name, profession, and sources of income please. After all, he has more influence on Core than me.

Most importantly, the point of Bitcoin is that how people get paid or who they are shouldn't matter. This principle has broken down due to Core's insistence that There Be Only One™, telling people that competing developer teams are "trying to do a coup", the bitcoin.org admins forbidding linking to anyone who supports XT (let alone XT itself) and so on. In such a world who those developers are and who pays them matters a great deal because they're effectively dictators: it's extremely hard to get rid of them even if you want to.

[doublepost=1458980983][/doublepost]The following quote from that thread is also worth remembering:

He's also the Core slack channel admin.

Bear the following in mind if you venture onto Core Slack:

 

[nicked]

The tone of the text sounds very familiar. I wonder...

 

[KarmaKameleon]

btcdrak: Brit here, I approve of Oxford comma!

"On the Decay of the Art of Lying" (Mark Twain)