If you are reading this, you have probably noticed that we have a new website with Network23. Our old Noblogs site has not been updated since the end of August and will likely go down in the near future. We have ported over a lot of our old site, but for the time being many links and files on ported pages and posts will refer to the old Noblogs site and it will take us a while to work through them all and correct them. The reason for this change-over is that the provider of Noblogs, the Italian Autistici/Inventati (A/I) collective, has been forced to shut down by US sanctions. From there own announcement at the time here:
“On August 26, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, through OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control – the authority responsible for managing and enforcing economic and financial sanctions) sanctioned Autistici/Inventati (A/I), an Italian collective that has been providing digital infrastructure – email, hosting, mailing lists, chat, videoconferencing and other privacy-friendly online services – to movements and activists since 2001. Washington designated it as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), alleging that it has provided financial, material or technological support to terrorism and to organizations already subjected to sanctions. A/I rejects the allegations and declares that its activities consist in providing tools for digital self-defence and infrastructure for the freedom of communication.”
This is not automatically a drone strikes and forever prison kind of terrorist designation, at least not outside of the US, but instead one used to deploy economic sanctions. Likewise, this is not a designation that countries outside of the US have to respect. However, due to the central position of the US in the world economy, this still had a devastating effect on A/I as organisations rushed to disaffiliate themselves; A/I very quickly lost their PayPal account and the Public Interest Registry blocked access to autistici.org. A/I’s bank, Banca Etica, froze their account despite being under no legal obligation to do so under Italian law. A good interview with A/I about all this can be found here.
The closure of A/I and Noblogs has caused a lot of damage to radical internet presence. Many organisations and projects relied on A/I services and the remaining radical providers are struggling to fill the gap caused by their shutdown. While we were able to get a new site from Network23, they later had to start refusing new applications for sites due to the strain caused by the spike in demand. Other smaller local providers are likely facing a similar situation. We recommend that people donate to Network23 to help keep them up and running.
The broader implications of this attack on internet freedom are grim. The US could use the same tactics on any other radical organisation providing hosting and communication services, anywhere in the world. Likewise, it could use the threat of a terrorist designation and sanctions to force more mainstream providers to police their own customers and deny service to radicals. If this is just the first salvo in a more concerted attack on our online spaces, then radical infrastructure will have to become more decentralised and may be forced to be more temporary and ever-shifting in order to survive. As A/I themselves have said:
“But now it’s time to take a step further, to push our imagination beyond the shrinking horizons of possibility these dark times force on us. Our hope is that this attack on the freedom of networks unleashes powerful and creative collective resistance. May a thousand platforms bloom, may a thousand hacktivist collectives be born, may a thousand servers spark up! May the end of A/I produce a myriad instrastructures of dissent as we could never imagine before.“
Which makes this a good time to remind everyone that this site is not the only way to stay up to date on what we are doing. We have a radar.squat page for events, and we have a mailing list you can be added into by contacting us here. We will have more to announce on this front soon, and even if we get thrown off the internet, we hope to see you in the workplace and on the streets!