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The Call for Participation for the #Decentralized Internet & #Privacy devroom at #fosdem2019 was published 
It would be great to receive proposals from a diversity of people.
Please boost widely !
https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosdem/2018q4/002769.html
@loic FOSDEM 2018 had one of the world’s largest surveillance capitalists as its primary sponsor. Who are the sponsors this year?
If Google is sponsoring again, there is no way either I or @indie would take part.
It’s time events that purport to be about freedom stop legitimising and whitewashing surveillance capitalists. And it’s time those of us with legitimacy in this area stop being complicit in that practice.
@aral in 2018 @framasoft presented their initiative to de-googlize internet during the decentralized part of the devroom. And the #SecureDrop project presented technology to evade surveillance, Google included during the afternoon dedicated to privacy. As an organizer I did not feel any kind of pressure, explicit or implicit. I can assure you that if there was even the slightest I would be very vocal about it 
But I acknowledge that promoting Google by accepting them as sponsors is wrong.
@aral I agree that having Google has major sponsor and promoting internet decentralization is bit strange.
But boycotting because of this sounds wrong too. I prefer thinking about how to make things better? Fosdem is one of the place where decentralization is promoted.
How much sponsor brings to the event? Is it material, money? What kind of good sponsor can help the project?
@valvin @loic @indie I suggest we have the Saudi royal family sponsor FOSDEM. How about some neo-Nazi sponsorship? Is there anywhere you would draw a line at and say “I’m not taking that money?” If so, why are you not drawing that line at surveillance capitalism and corporations that exist by violating our human rights?
@aral @loic @indie I'd rather say the strange part is Google willing to sponsor the conference, which promotes all the things that go against its core business model at some degree. I think it's fine as long as they are willing to pay the contribution without interfering anything. They have much more to gain in industrial consortiums where they can actually lobby.
@ghost @loic @indie To understand why they sponsor, you must understand what they fear above all else: regulation. “I wake up every day and fight regulation. It’s what I do. It’s my job.” <– Eric Schmidt to me, a few years ago. If they lose the PR game/become socially unacceptable, they also lose the regulation game (see Big Tobacco). To continue unabated all they need is the surveillance capitalism equivalent of the doctors in the cigarette ads.
@ghost @aral @indie I don't find strange that Google is willing to sponsor an event that hosts a majority of people who are opposed to them. If they do that long enough, the hope is that more and more people will forget that Google is actively working to undermine the Free Software movement, every day of the week (software patents, DRMs, proprietary services, etc.).
@aral *cash-washing would have worked a bit better here since it's more specific to their bleaching technique ;)