Oh gosh, there is also this about Suji Yan https://www.todayonline.com/world/meet-chinas-fabulous-cross-dressing-computer-coders

Maybe we should file a trademark application. Are we formally incorporated or still just an opencollective instance?

We are not. We have a fiscal sponsor but are otherwise an unincorporated association. I believe we should register as a cooperative society with the FCA. Happy to help with the efforts on this, though possibly the details should be handled by the legal working group or something?

Regarding a trademark application: where do we file it? Unlike copyright, trademarks aren't universal, and it would get pretty expensive to protect the name everywhere.

I do agree with this in principle though.

dang foiled by the fact that there's no way I'm putting my credit card into this webzone to look up more info

I use throw away virtual one time card details for such things. I use Revolut app https://www.revolut.com/ , but there are other options out there too. Indeed, I think even Open Collective offer virtual cards for some collectives (I think at present just the collectives they host), powered by privacy.com last I read about it (but I think planning to connect with other providers too).

I think getting a trademark is a good idea, and I'd even suggest a trusted member could do it so sooner rather then later under their own name, then transfer it to a proper legal entity once we've cobbled one together.

To @Sven Shipton's point, I think it's probably wise to at least cover a couple jurisdictions where we have a sizable number of users, or hope to have users. The main risk, imo, is they stand-up a Mastodon server that is similar enough to social.coop that it confuses users who think they're joining our instance, whether that's intentional or not. If those users are in a location we have TM, it seems like it would lower that particular risk, but (obligatory) I am not a lawyer.

Sadly, I've known others in the FOSS community who've been forced to deal w/ TM issues. This is one resource I've found helpful in the past:

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/likelihood-confusion-how-do-you-determine-trademark-infringing.html

I know the folks behind Social Coop and they have agreed to stop using the name. (Also in this thread is a record that I have discussed Social.coop with them in the past.)

well, awesome. thanks for handling that. and that is uh a... revealing? approach to moderation?

Also what the heck kind of coincidence is that, just like Google those words and it would be clear there is already a thing named that.

@Nathan Schneider How solid is that commitment to change the name? Will they actually change it, or just not use it in their promotion?

Yes, we need more than a text message confirmation.

Suggestion that has come up in conversation: we should probably say somewhere publicly that we are not affiliated with "Social Coop Limited". A fair number of folks are freaked out by corporate buyouts on Mastodon, so there's conversation flying about the whole thing.

I don't know who would craft an official statement, or where we would put it -- just passing on the suggestion, which makes sense to me. Even if the company does change their name, the news reports aren't likely to be updated to reflect that.

could it be as simple as "we are not affiliated with Social Coop Ltd, the company that owns pawoo and jp?"

Could be -- just not quite sure what the right way to go about it is.

Agreed. I would suggest a short post from the @[email protected] account, maybe something along these lines:

You may have read about an entity called "Social Coop Limited" acquiring a Japanese Mastodon instance. This entity has no relation whatsoever to social.coop. Due to the risk of confusion, we have reached out to them requesting a change of name.

social.coop is a co-operatively run Mastodon instance that was founded in 2017. Read more about us here: https://wiki.social.coop/home.html

Why overdoing Jonny's version? People don't come on Mastodon to be pointed to wiki pages. It makes sense for us because we socialize mainly on Loomio, AFAIU it Mastodon is both a co-owned personal microblog and coop advertising platform, and an excuse to put experience on our resumes and hang out here. But people want information to drop in their TLs, to be consumed effortlessly.

I'm fine with a short toot, but some context might be helpful, and I'm always in favor of pointing people to more information about who we are.

Who can actually post from the @[email protected] account though? @Nathan Schneider are you able to?

I'm on call right now and can do that if you'd like; anyone else have comments on what we should say before I send it out? The above sounds fine to me.

That would be great, thanks @Sam Whited and happy holidays :)

Done: https://social.coop/@SocialCoop/109568760275192558

A lot of places are getting this mixed up... Crunchbase is reporting that social.coop acquired pawoo...

And by the way, that page has a link directly to our wiki. I second the idea to put a temporary 'emergency banner' or some such directly on the wiki.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/social-coop

Oh yeah, that's quite bad...! I fired off an email to [email protected] to tell them... (only email address I could find on their site in <1 minute...).

I also just called Crunchbase out on Twitter with a link to our statement. Hopefully that does the trick.

Second the suggestion for putting an emergency banner on the wiki.

Update on this. I also contacted crunchbase and was told that all company listing are user-created and editable. So I made an account and edited our entry. So at least that is taken care of.

Thanks so much, Josh

I think we should make another toot from the admin account reporting that Suji Yan has agreed to change their name (because I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't). I have a very, very difficult time believing that this was just a coincidence, given that Nathan had already discussed our group with them. My guess is that the name "confusion" was done intentionally, specifically to hook progressive types. It's not exactly a new tactic. Given that this is a crypto "entrepreneur" we're dealing with, we should expect that nothing is being done in good faith, imnsho.

This thread is publicly accessible.

Um...not just for our members?

anyone who has the link, seems like @Richard Hull must have selected that option when starting the thread (I think they default to members only)

No. I didn't deliberately make it public at all. I have no idea how that happened, and I have not shared the link anywhere or with anyone.

My mistake! I just checked and our default privacy setting for all threads is public.

Phew! But that needs to be changed surely? I had believed it was private to members.

So, some of the subgroups are private to members, but any thread or poll by itself can be made open to "guests." We can change the main setting to "closed." I, too, had assumed that was the default setting...

I'm not too sure why this poll has decided to be in Spanish (ignore the French it is my set language)

I'm also seeing the response options in Spanish, though my language is set to English.

Are we talking about threads on Loomio specifically?

Assuming it's Loomio, if the default is public, do we then have the option to select private for a specific thread?

This is for Loomio threads. I don't see an option to control privacy for public threads, but you can add guests to a private thread... (I use Spanish for my interface, didn't realize it made all my polls Spanish, too! I like the French/Spanish combo above, though.)

@Matt Noyes - I think you probably need to redo this poll, its clear many people (incluing myself) weren't clear which threads you meant (mastodon or Loomio), and will have already ignored the confusing notification. (I don't have a strong opinion on whether they are public or private)

I'm new here, so I don't know the norms for discussing proposals. Another group I was part of that used Loomio had a discussion thread prior to a separate voting thread, which made it easier to discuss issues and ideally come to a consensus before formally voting, rather than trying to hash them out while voting, which Loomio seems to encourage by default. I see this poll is a temperature check, so I'm assuming not binding and so less formal, but the idea may still apply.

In the rare instances when there is need, we can discuss privately in a secure room on Matrix. However, as a general rule, the Internet is an insecure medium. One should be circumspect about what one says and does because though things may appear to be secure and private during one moment, that can and does change to expose previously thought private conversations and actions to public view. The Internet is not the place for clandestine activity. Cooperation and consensus requires open honesty among the members of a collective.

This side-issue of public v private seems to have made us forget that we need to make a public statement distancing social dot coop from Social Coop Limited. There seemed to be an agreement on a brief statement on our wiki but it has not happened?? This is now urgent as some right-wing outlets have started to claim (based on those three servers run by Matrix/Dimension/Sujitech Suji Yan) that "most of mastodon is pedo" - see here https://social.coop/@[email protected]/109625608959101663

We posted https://social.coop/@SocialCoop/109568760275192558

Lippard at infosec.exchange has edited their post to distance from us. And to be fair to Sunji Yan, they have also put up a notice on Mastodon dot cloud saying same - but that won't stop the right wing press. https://mastodon.cloud/@TheAdmin/109563760376240629

Oh sorry Sam, yes of course, I even boosted that!! I forgot. But might it be an idea to repeat that on the Wiki?