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Comment by IceWreck | Hacker News Reader

I just got a message from the staff on freenode:

[Global Notice] Hi all. It feels like my moral responsibility to inform all users that administrative control of freenode and its user data will soon change hands, and I will be resigning from freenode staff effective immediately. It's been an honour to help you all.

Sad to see a hostile takeover of Freenode.

Its controlled by Private Internet Access now.

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What’s the connection to PIA?

EDIT: Andrew Lee is founder of PIA. From Wikipedia:

> The company was founded by the American-born Andrew Lee.[6][7] London Trust Media also owns the Freenode IRC network.[8][failed verification]

It's not owned by PIA now. PIA and London Trust Media was sold by Lee; who moved most other holdings to "Imperial Family Companies", which is effectively the owner of freenode: https://imperialfamily.com

So interesting it seems he's going all in on the royalty branding using Korea's former royal house's seal. I saw a news article of him being named 'crown prince' of Korea by one of the pretenders to the throne despite not being closely related.

A related article (by SCMP): https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/tech-design/article/312...

Very cheap.

Private Internet Access has no connection to Freenode at all anymore. It WAS owned by London Trust Media, which also owned PIA, but Kape acquired PIA in December of 2019 and has had no connection since then. We do not have any involvement or knowledge of any takeover of Freenode.

This is what's known as a "flounce".

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