A Tale They Would Remove On Dash Talk Discord
It felt as though this had been coming for awhile. Ever since the creation of the Dash Talk Discord, with its owner from Dash Force and the head mods also part of that organization, it was clear that this was not going to be a place where professionalism ruled the day. Even before I discovered it, they had allowed it to become a cesspool of anti-Dash Nation, anti-Tao and anti-Kuvacash nonsense. This came as no surprise to me, as these were the same moderators that I had to let go from Dash Nation for either not doing their jobs properly or showing lack of honor in establishing another Discord in secret while still being mods on Dash Nation. This was always coming.
The Back Story
Let me back up a bit. It will help to refresh you on the full story about my involvement with the main characters in this story. I will start with the creation of Dash Nation Slack. Here is the full chronology of events, with numbers to correspond to future (present) false narratives perpetrated by Dash Force and their supporters against me (seen at the end):
- Dash Nation Slack opened in the wake of the failed toxic Slack with a mandate for fairness and inclusiveness.
- Dash Force, which was Brian Freeman (Mastermined)’s idea that he enlisted the help of Splawik21 and myself to garner support for and get off the ground, was started. Yes, I was originally a part of Dash Force.
- Brian got the help he needed from me to get Dash Force off the ground, so now I became expendable. After hiring Mark Mason and TheDesertLynx, I was unceremoniously dismissed. I’ve kept that under my hat until now. (1)
- Dash Nation Slack became a success due to its fair approach to moderation and its insistence on citations for any potentially inflammatory narrative. In this days of fake news, having a place that you could be relatively sure that the posts are true is a very good thing. We are now seeing Toxic Slack repeat in Dash Talk. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. (2)
- The Dash Nation Slack proposal came into existence and represented an upgrade to the Slack. Mods were brought onto the payroll and financed by a part of the Dash Force proposal called “Mod Squad”. I didn’t see any problem with this, so I allowed it. (3)
- Dash Nation Slack couldn’t make it work with Slack HQ, so we migrated to Discord. Dash Nation on Discord was born.
- It wasn’t working out with Dash Nation mods being paid by an external proposal, so I ended that relationship and took over the finances of paying the moderators from the ongoing Dash Nation on Discord proposal. (3)
- There was a day when a discussion was had in the moderation channel about how we were to resolve disputes. I informed everyone there that as the proposal owner and the one responsible for the network’s trust, I would be the deciding vote in moderation if the other mods returned a hung jury, and I was responsible for most of the other non-moderation decisions made. The Dash Force-affiliated moderators were not aware of this, and took it very badly. (4)
- Unbeknownst to me, the Dash Force-affiliated moderators started a new Discord and failed to tell me about it while still serving as mods in Dash Nation.
- Upon discovery of this Discord, with its encouragement of anti-Dash Nation, anti-Tao, and anti-Kuvacash rhetoric which was allowed to permeate, I saw all I needed to about the character of the Dash Force-affiliated moderators. I promptly removed them from their positions and replaced them with more qualified candidates. (5)
- The two Discords began to exist in parallel, with separate MNO-ONLY channels (which I only frequent in Dash Nation, allowing the Dash Talk variant to be a prime place for Dash Force to spread or allow narratives to spread about me without being able to defend myself). Lies, spin and baseless narratives continued to permeate. In the #thunderdome channel, I was allowed to respond and tell my side, which was a small concession on their part, but I’m not there 24/7.
What happened next?
That brings us to today’s events. As I said, false narratives are allowed to permeate unchecked in Dash Talk. That’s important, because they claim to be a “public” Discord and a representation of the Dash community. As such, such blatant false narratives against users should not be allowed. In short, it’s becoming another Toxic Slack.
Surely you are exaggerating, Tao, right? Let’s see about that.
Ok, so now that we know the backstory and climate, let’s move on to today’s events. Last night, I was accosted by the following post. Do you think that this post should remain in a neutral, unbiased forum? Let alone pinned?
Now, this in itself is not enough to throw me, as I am professionally trained in my casino job to handle insults. It’s also worth noting that the people who direct this venom at me are people that I have moderated or let go in the past, so they obviously have axes to grind. I’m aware of this. However, what would happen the next day was the last straw that led to this expose.
Today started basically the same way as most days. I released my latest YouTube video I was proud of and showed Dash in a very positive way, did my Twitter tour, checked Reddit to see if some previous community members’ attacks had continued, and checked the Discords. All good on Dash Nation. Nothing to attend to. Went to the belly of the beast. In Dash Talk, there was various condescending and unchecked false narratives that are par for the course in this Dash Force-sanctioned smear Discord.
Here’s where the differences began. I began to defend myself with well-thought-out comments and a bit of trash talk, I will admit, but nothing that wasn’t par for the course in this lightly-moderated #thunderdome channel. A moderator, one who I actually respect more than the others, ironically, began to challenge my comments, saying that he didn’t want to see this “bickering” any more.
I then asked him to then clarify (as an official representative of the Discord) if he was taking sides against me defending myself against the usual accusatory false narratives. He responded by repeating that he didn’t like bickering. Clear as mud. It was interesting from my perspective that the lies and spin were not called out, but my responses were “bickering”.
- **Side note (before continuing): There was an attack thread against me last week by Kanuuker. It was when I was trying to bring the community together in this post on Reddit. I told him that I was on all the same forums as him and could defend myself against his false narratives as needed…
Well, that was the last straw for me. I said that I would be finally taking the time to do a full report on everything, and let the community know what was happening. This is a situation that I dealt with for far too long, and now the pretenses were starting to be dropped. There would be no fair treatment in this Discord. This Discord that purports to be a “Dash community” Discord. More like an anti-Tao boys club. The truth was coming out.
So, next thing I knew everything disappeared, and I was banned. I was banned for defending myself to the annoyance of a mod, and by telling them to clean it up or I would finally take it to the next level, which I am now doing. I’ve been told that the new narrative by Brian (Mastermined, former treacherous partner, former Dash Nation incompetent mod, current mod leader of Dash Talk, who pulled the trigger) was that I threatened to report the Dash Talk Discord to Discord. This is ridiculous, and an insult to my intelligence, as reporting a private Discord that enforces their own rules however they want would gather no concern from Discord.
So I guess there’s one forum where I can no longer defend myself.
- *I would like to explain why I care about this enough to make this post. The answer is simple: I’ve seen this in action already. The demise of the toxic Slack showed the power of spreading narratives with little basis in reality. It almost led to a Dash fork, and it’s not productive. In this case, I will tell you that I am a proud man, and very happy to contribute to Dash in any way I can. It’s something I take pride in. I love Dash, and will do anything to see it succeed. So, when I see neutral people making comments like “Don’t worry, Tao, you can get over your past mistakes.”, or “Don’t let your history get in the way.”, I get upset. This lets me know that the false narratives by people with obvious grudges that are currently in a position to influence opinion is working. It makes me sick, as an operator of a fair Discord. So that’s that.**
In the aftermath of my banning, more truths began to come out. The “bickering” moderator made an false assumption and claimed vigilance:
Hmm.
Now, in an effort to make it look legit, they “warned” the two individuals involved in the attacks and false narratives, but it’s too little too late. The mod log channel and its history is still there for all to see, and you will find next to no action ever taken against these people. So please don’t let that bamboozle you.
So, this is where the story ends. People who deserved to have action taken against them in other forums banded together to badmouth me in a new supportive environment. I’m banned from Dash Talk for defending my honor, and calling out biased moderation. So, what are my recommendations for proceeding from here? I have a couple.
- Dash (Dash Core Group) needs to acknowledge that the divisiveness and small-mindedness of the Dash Talk Discord is not conducive to a productive community, and discontinue official relations with this Discord.
- As Dash Nation on Discord has the history and proven track record of fairness and inclusion, I will offer it to Dash Core Group or the Dash Investment Foundation with the goal of making it the “official” community Discord, with elected moderators and voted on rules. The name can change if the community so desires. I have no desire to run it anymore, as I’m busy with more productive things.
- Or, there can be an effort to clean up Dash Talk Discord, disallow the false narratives and personal attacks, and reinstate me. This would require the moderators to actually perform their jobs in fairness, though, so we’ll see about that.
Thank you for reading, and for allowing me to get this long story off my chest. Sometimes in order to move on and create a beautiful omelette, you need to crack a few eggs. I look forward to your comments and concerns.
False Narratives
The destructive false narratives that are allowed on Dash Talk are numerous. Here are a few. The first relate to the history between myself and the Dash Talk moderators.
(1) Brian will try to say I wasn’t doing any work, but there is no proof of that, and the Dash community knows I’m a hard worker. He just got what he needed from me, and that was it.
(2) The narrative here is that use the speculation as fact rule to impose my will and silence people who disagree with me. This is patently false, no comments that did not break the rules were removed. This can be verified by the current mod team.
(3) There is a narrative that I withheld money from my moderators, and that Dash Force had to pay them because I selfishly kept all the money. This is false, it was a mutually agreed upon deal (Mod Squad) and all money given to me has been verified (Dash Watch reports).
(4) Brian will also say that I’m a dictator, and all decisions were always to go through me. This is not true, I am a very fair leader and always take my crew’s opinions into consideration. If I’m outvoted in a particular issue, I don’t veto. Don’t take my word for it, ask the current Dash Nation mod staff that were there previously.
(5) The departed mods claim that letting the mods go was only my decision, but I conferred with others before performing the action. To this day, based on their actions and lack of honor with the secretive forming of a new Discord, I believe that the action was justified.
(6) TheDesertLynx would have you believe that I censored and silenced him when I told him to stop badgering Drako about his proposal’s finances. Joel asked Drako, he declined to answer, but Joel kept on asking the question. Whether or not I support Kuvacash, this is badgering, and against the rules. He was spoken to accordingly. He has not forgotten. Neither have I.
(7) There will be a time you may hear that I “manipulated” data on Reddit, and lied about my flair disappearing. The truth here is that I did move the order of the Discords so that Dash Nation was on top, I admit that. I feel that it more accurately represents Dash. It was “fixed” and drummed up to be a bigger deal than it is. As for the flair, that was probably just me being an idiot. Still don’t know how it happened. Again, no big deal anyway.
(8) Yes, eight. There are over eight separate false narratives out there about me. This one insinuates that I report to Kuvacash, and that together we are conspiring to take over the narrative of Dash. Dash Nation is often referred to as Kuva Nation on Dash Talk Discord, and one individual in particular continues with this narrative daily. I’m not even going to comment on this one. Always verify, that’s all I’ll say.
(9) A prevailing narrative on Dash Talk Discord is that I had a hand in the defunding of Dash Force (as seen in Kanuuker’s pictured comment above). I voted against, I admit, but I’m but one man. This is another attempt to take attention off of their own shortcomings and an effort to turn me into a scapegoat. There is no evidence of any collusion on my part with others to sink Dash Force. Dash Force failed all by themselves.
That’s all I can think of for now, but in case they have more (which I’m sure they will), I will be around to explain why each and every one of them are BS, and an orchestrated distraction to take your attention away from their actions.
If you don’t take anything else away from this expose, please take away the fact that you need to always verify what people are saying about others. Consider the motives they might have, and always ask for proof before you believe something that could be damaging. In my case, I’m Tao Of Satoshi. Am I a content creator currently working for free, laying my heart out there for Dash, promoting it selflessly every day, or am I a leech: greedy and withholding money from others? I have a reputation for fairness that my current co-workers appreciate, or am I a dictator? When things don’t add up, please find out why. It’s really important.
Onwards and upwards,
Tao Of Satoshi
https://twitter.com/TaoOfSatoshi
https://youtube.com/c/CashAlternativeTV
