Their own manifesto says they use their limited resources to support groups they align with. They aren't some neutral infrastructure provider. And even if they were that doesn't mean the US shouldn't sanction them for supporting terrorism.
If they choose to support the PKK, which the EU, UK, and US have all deemed a terrorist organization for over 20 years, then of course the US should sanction them and they have no moral ground to stand on.
> If they choose to support the PKK, which the EU, UK, and US have all deemed a terrorist organization for over 20 years, then of course the US should sanction them and they have no moral ground to stand on.
No moral ground to stand on? Would you say that about Amazon who supports the US regime, which is in the business of bombing Iranian schoolgirls? Is that less terrorist?
This collective of course has much more of a moral ground to stand on than indeed Amazon.
>And even if they were that doesn't mean the US shouldn't sanction them for supporting terrorism.
careful, if you start going after neutral infrastructure providers, that means google, amazon, microsoft, meta, and more will also need to go. i guarantee more terrorism-related content is discussed via those providers than a/i.
we should probably also go after internet service providers, too. maybe the companies that make the fiber optics?
(has anyone checked who is providing terrorists with electricity?)
>To be explicitly clear, a "neutral infrastructure provider" does not describe A/I so your scenario is hypothetical.
i am replying specifically to your comments about neutral providers (that's why i quoted the part of your comment that i did)
>No, because they actively respond to removal request.
there is still orders of magnitude more conversations going through the providers i mentioned, related to terrorism/csam/etc., which is simply not reported or not known. right now, meta is facilitating significantly more terrorism than a/i.
in any case, this isn't really about terrorism. they've just overused the child-safety angle lately, and needed to drum up some anti-privacy/anti-encryption using the terrorism card.
> i am replying specifically to your comments about neutral providers
Right, which is not A/I.
> there is still orders of magnitude more conversations going through the providers i mentioned, related to terrorism/csam/etc., which is simply not reported or not known.
So no one knows about these conversations but you know there are orders of magnitude more? Walk me through that.
Even if that were true how would that change anything? They still comply with the US government and their mission statement isn't to empower, protect, support political activists which in practice include terrorist designated organizations.
It's true that "terrorism" and "left wing extremism" is sometimes a boogeyman. Just not this time.
>So no one knows about these conversations but you know there are orders of magnitude more? Walk me through that.
sure. whatsapp is used by literal billions of people. add in a few more billion people through facebook, instagram, gmail, outlook, amazon.
would you like me to walk through the statistics calculations? or can you extrapolate from the billions of users? now make a guess how many people a/i has facilitated. a few thousand? a hundred thousand? a million?
>Even if that were true how would that change anything? They still comply with the US government and their mission statement isn't to empower, protect, support political extremists.
because it demonstrates that the goal is not to curtail terrorism.
Did you create this account, deep_state_shil just for this comment? Created 12 minutes ago and this is your first/only comment. That seems kind of interesting.
All the providers you mention here work with the US government in situations where their platforms are being used by terrorist organizations. It sounds like the a/i folks are specifically offering free services to a militant group, so that's why they're being sanctioned. I don't think your argument flies.
i would agree there as long as the providers are actually neutral they should be free from culpability. we shouldn't encourage providers to restrict who they serve because of potential liability, that's giving them way to much power.
we should be careful not to assume that the eu, uk and us set a good moral standard to follow.
you might ask who is right; the groups like google providing services to the us military, or the groups providing services to those opposing the us military.
Yes, we are talking about a communications service, one specifically focusing on political speech.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Email, chat, websites, blogs - these are all speech! A/I's overt political statement (that you are indicting them for) points to their primary interest being to facilitate political speech - a type of speech with some of the strongest protections (that whole "assemble ... and petition the Government" thing)
Beyond that, they're presumably a neutral conduit like every other service provider. If some users of their services are communicating to coordinate crimes, then unless A/I is getting directly involved in those conversations, it's the exact same dynamic as every other email/hosting provider.
> If they choose to support the PKK, which the EU, UK, and US
But they are not choosing to support the PKK.
They accuse it of being “a major far-left tech collective whose services are used by the most active and violent Antifa cells in the United States and across the world.”
The far left is a terrorist group? Where are all these violent "antifa cells"?
They labeled this groups as a terrorist organization so they could claim that anyone protesting the fascist Trump regime will easily be labeled terrorists and thrown in jail without a trial.
If you have real operational security concerns, your provider shouldn't know anything about you; should in fact have bilateral shielding between themselves and you to prevent either counterparty from learning stuff. That's how Signal works.
Meta and TikTokUSDS let anyone in but they will actively remove stuff like this by request:
The anarchist cell responsible for sabotaging the Transalpine Pipeline (TAL) in March 2026, which temporarily halted crude oil flows to Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic, relied on A/I Collective tools and services to claim responsibility for the attack and publish official communiqués, as well as to disseminate a manifesto calling for additional attacks on critical infrastructure and referring adherents to another A/I Collective platform, which provides detailed sabotage manuals as well as maps of vulnerable critical infrastructure across North America.
The article is quite long, but these two give a brief idea of what is going on:
a) According to that article, what it seems they are about:
> Its manifesto describes the project in explicitly political terms. A/I is antifascist, anti-capitalist and antimilitarist. It promotes free software, encryption, pseudonymity and the independent circulation of knowledge and cultural work. It reserves its limited, volunteer-run resources for people and projects broadly compatible with those principles rather than businesses, political parties, organized religions or institutions already possessing the means to make themselves heard.
b) And the issue U.S. has with them:
> The United States alleges that A/I supplies specialized digital architecture, encrypted communications and hosting to antifascist groups and other radical movements, including organizations already designated by the United States.
I clicked around a bit, read the manifesto, I still have no idea what these people do. I guess they claim to have been around for a while, but a bunch of the links don't work and the manifesto has definitely been updated to reflect 2026 opinions.
> A/I was born over 20 years ago to provide internet support (through website hosting, e-mail accounts, mailing lists, chat, blogs, and much more) to activists and collectives coming from the world of grassroot and social movements.
they are a group of people providing services to activists. services include email, web hosting, chat, and other anonymity services. (see https://www.inventati.org/services/)
> We support individuals, collectives, communities and groups whose political and social activities fit within this worldview and who share with us some fundamental principles: anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-militarism
I suspect they have some "not mainstream" political views; although I think understanding what these views are requires more in-depth reading of the blogs that they host.
> The A/I Collective exclusively offers its tools and services to radical left-wing actors and manually vets all potential users for ideological affinity before granting them access to its infrastructure.
Autistici/Inventati is an Italian collective, active since around 2001, that runs free digital services for activists, grassroots groups and anyone who wants to communicate without being profiled.
It provides email accounts, mailing lists, blogs, websites, chat and VPN access.
Anyone? Like the PKK which The EU, UK, and US have labeled a terrorist organization ~20 years ago because they've killed thousands in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria since 1984?
Do the US then also sanction themselves? Cause the numer of people they have killed in that region of the globe since 1984 easily exceeds that number by orders of magnitude.
And the platform hasn't done any killing. They merely provide email etc. Are we going to sanction road builders too because a murderer has driven on their road since 1984?
Does AWS do business with anyone? Like the Israeli government who has been labeled perpetrators of genocide by the UN ~1 year ago because they've killed tens of thousands in Palestine since 2023?
"Al-Sharaa, who until recently was known by his alias "al-Julani," was a longtime jihadist who was part of the ranks of organizations associated with al-Qaida and ISIS, and even orchestrated an attack against Israel – milestones that led to his designation as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" by the US, with a reward of approximately $10 million for information leading to his capture. President Trump decided to lift the sanctions on al-Sharaa, who has transformed into a political leader following the collapse of the Assad regime in December, when he assumed Syria's presidency as the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham."
Is that more, or less, than the 1.2 million people Musk has killed so far with the illegal dismantlement of USAID? Musk aggressively advocates for the forcible ethnic cleansing of Europe.
I see people posting links to x.com which he uses to promote those views as well as platform other hate groups calling for violence and genocide against immigrants, trans people, etc.
Do acts gain moral validity under color of law alone?
> The State Department on Wednesday designated three groups based in Europe, including two that advocate Palestinian rights, as transnational terrorist organizations.
> The move is part of the Trump administration’s fight against what it calls a “resurgence of far-left political terrorism” worldwide, a focus that many security experts say is disproportionate.
> In a statement, the department said that it would impose sanctions on Palestine Action, which is based in Britain and organizes acts of support for Palestinians and opposition to Israeli policies; Masar Badil, another pro-Palestinian group with branches in Western Europe and Canada; and Autistici/Inventati, known as A/I Collective, which is based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world.
a/I collective in the OP is the third on this list.
> based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world
Palestine Action has been designated a terrorist group in the UK as well after sabotaging military aircraft (the article says they sprayed paint, but does not say it was sprayed inside jet engines, rendering them inoperable). Masar Badil supports "armed struggle". One of the other groups ("hammer") recently designated a terrorist group (and linked to A/I Collective in another article I read ) got its name by attacking people in Germany with hammers.
Designating A/I Collective a terrorist group is different as it is not directly supporting violence, but it is providing free services to people who do, and it says it provides services to groups its aim is to "provide support exclusively to individuals or groups we feel we have an affinity with.". On the other hand their terms forbid "military use" which is broadly defined enough to rule out terrorism.
I think its likely they do have sympathy for violent groups, n the other hand, unless they have been going out of their way to support violence in some way I do not see reasonable grounds for banning them. Lots of commercial services have dodgy users. My fear is that is is heading in the direction of "if you do not hand info to the US authorities on demand you will be deemed a terrorist"
As far as I can tell, there were no credible criminal charges against this group, except that they are effective organizers on the opposite side of political spectrum. In the White House’s deranged logic, this qualifies them to be officially designated as domestic terrorists [1].
Can we all agree that this is an assault on the First Amendment?
I don't know, but they did say a month or two ago that they discovered Iran pivoted from funding their normal terrorist groups in the west since the US and EU cracked down on it so hard domestically, to funding more radical leftist groups since politicians were turning a blind eye to them.
Given the timing around putting economic pressure on Iran, I'm assuming that they had some financial connection to Iran.
Keep in mind we're talking about communications services here, and one focusing on political speech at that.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
In general I think the free lunch of centrally hosted services and persistent doxxable identities is nearing a close. It was inevitable that governments would meddle more, and more, and more - implicitly treating communications are something other than speech due to how encompassing the digital world has become - and now here we are.
The current United States government is very keen on pushing the idea that there is a vast and shadowy international left-wing conspiracy waging war on it.
> Our financial strategy relies exclusively on voluntary donations.
That is not a sustainable strategy in the long term. Sure after this news they will get lots of donations, but long term it is not something that is realistic.
Since they are now "sanctioned" by the US you cannot legally donate to them even if you wanted to...*[0]
[0] *Unless you now know why this collective needs crypto more than ever.
Given administration's obsession with Antifa being in the room with them at all times, it's impossible to take anything they say in relation to this as even close to factual.
"The Autistici Inventati is an Italy-based far-left organization that provides a range of technological tools and services to violent left-wing extremist groups, including website hosting on foreign servers, encrypted email accounts, chat and video conferencing, and digital architecture associated with its “Noblogs” platform. Autistici Inventati identifies itself as an “anti-fascist” and “anti-militarist” organization opposed to capitalism and exclusively provides its services to vetted individuals, collectives, and groups it perceives to be aligned with its ideology, including to sanctioned terrorist organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been designated by the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union for its use of terrorist tactics leading to thousands of deaths in Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria since its establishment in 1984.
Autistici Inventati is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended, for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism."
How quaint. The MEK (Iranian People's Mudjahheddin) were designated as a terrorist organization but collected money in EU streets all the time. Now they are useful against Khamenei.
The US would also like to use the equivalent of the PKK in the large Kurdish part of Iran against Khamenei.
Nothing to say of using the PKK rebranding of SDF in Syria as well as receiving "global terrorist" Al Jolani in the White House.
• Bank accounts and payment processing.
• U.S.-linked donations and fundraising services.
• Hosting, cloud infrastructure and upstream network services.
• Domain registration and related technical services.
• Certificate, security and email-delivery accounts.
• Software and communications services.
• Relationships with non-U.S. providers frightened by American secondary sanctions.
• Access for people in the United States who currently use A/I’s services.
the first few sentences of this link, and their about page, and their services page all make it clear what they do. i am unsure of where you confusion comes from.
They host blogs and digital infrastructure for autonomous anarchist/leftist collectives and are deeply connected to global free speech movements since their founding in 2001. If you expect to see a two sentence
mission statement or a product summary, you’re going to be disappointed.
Everyone’s missing the big picture here which is that this targeting of infrastructure providers as “terrorists” is unprecedented and concerning: https://decode39.com/16319/autistici-inventati-case-sets-a-n...
If a radical group sets up shop on I2P, are I2P users and devs now terrorists? This is a problem.
What about Monero users/devs? Veilid? Tox? Signal?
Their own manifesto says they use their limited resources to support groups they align with. They aren't some neutral infrastructure provider. And even if they were that doesn't mean the US shouldn't sanction them for supporting terrorism.
If they choose to support the PKK, which the EU, UK, and US have all deemed a terrorist organization for over 20 years, then of course the US should sanction them and they have no moral ground to stand on.
> If they choose to support the PKK, which the EU, UK, and US have all deemed a terrorist organization for over 20 years, then of course the US should sanction them and they have no moral ground to stand on.
No moral ground to stand on? Would you say that about Amazon who supports the US regime, which is in the business of bombing Iranian schoolgirls? Is that less terrorist?
This collective of course has much more of a moral ground to stand on than indeed Amazon.
>And even if they were that doesn't mean the US shouldn't sanction them for supporting terrorism.
careful, if you start going after neutral infrastructure providers, that means google, amazon, microsoft, meta, and more will also need to go. i guarantee more terrorism-related content is discussed via those providers than a/i.
we should probably also go after internet service providers, too. maybe the companies that make the fiber optics?
(has anyone checked who is providing terrorists with electricity?)
To be explicitly clear, a "neutral infrastructure provider" does not describe A/I so your scenario is hypothetical.
>careful, if you start going after neutral infrastructure providers, that means google, amazon, microsoft, meta, and more will also need to go.
No, because they actively respond to removal request. Open by default, supporting request for removal.
The difference comes in when you are open by default and tell the US to fuck off when they ask you to stop supporting terror groups.
>To be explicitly clear, a "neutral infrastructure provider" does not describe A/I so your scenario is hypothetical.
i am replying specifically to your comments about neutral providers (that's why i quoted the part of your comment that i did)
>No, because they actively respond to removal request.
there is still orders of magnitude more conversations going through the providers i mentioned, related to terrorism/csam/etc., which is simply not reported or not known. right now, meta is facilitating significantly more terrorism than a/i.
in any case, this isn't really about terrorism. they've just overused the child-safety angle lately, and needed to drum up some anti-privacy/anti-encryption using the terrorism card.
> i am replying specifically to your comments about neutral providers
Right, which is not A/I.
> there is still orders of magnitude more conversations going through the providers i mentioned, related to terrorism/csam/etc., which is simply not reported or not known.
So no one knows about these conversations but you know there are orders of magnitude more? Walk me through that.
Even if that were true how would that change anything? They still comply with the US government and their mission statement isn't to empower, protect, support political activists which in practice include terrorist designated organizations.
It's true that "terrorism" and "left wing extremism" is sometimes a boogeyman. Just not this time.
>So no one knows about these conversations but you know there are orders of magnitude more? Walk me through that.
sure. whatsapp is used by literal billions of people. add in a few more billion people through facebook, instagram, gmail, outlook, amazon.
would you like me to walk through the statistics calculations? or can you extrapolate from the billions of users? now make a guess how many people a/i has facilitated. a few thousand? a hundred thousand? a million?
>Even if that were true how would that change anything? They still comply with the US government and their mission statement isn't to empower, protect, support political extremists.
because it demonstrates that the goal is not to curtail terrorism.
>would you like me to walk through the statistics calculations?
yes
okay, great. we can do this together.
lets start with this: how many terrorists do you think a/i has helped?
Find a fricking PKK link in noblogs that hasn't been taken down, government shill.
How is your precious Nvidia PAC going?
Did you create this account, deep_state_shil just for this comment? Created 12 minutes ago and this is your first/only comment. That seems kind of interesting.
All the providers you mention here work with the US government in situations where their platforms are being used by terrorist organizations. It sounds like the a/i folks are specifically offering free services to a militant group, so that's why they're being sanctioned. I don't think your argument flies.
if the argument is harm reduction and reducing the overall incidence of terrorism, my argument flies.
Provide working noblog links to PKK or GTFO.
i would agree there as long as the providers are actually neutral they should be free from culpability. we shouldn't encourage providers to restrict who they serve because of potential liability, that's giving them way to much power.
So since The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will US sanction him too?
Or since ONU has declared illegal the occupation of territory in West Bank, will US sanction Israel?
Or will the United States only sanction those who simply see things differently from them?
> Their own manifesto says they use their limited resources to support groups they align with.
Woah, with radical statements like that, we might have to go after mutual aid groups, PACs, and churches.
You miss the point. It establishes they aren't neutral. Of course it's not necessarily bad to support things you agree with.
I mean, I think it entirely depends on the nature of the groups they support?
we should be careful not to assume that the eu, uk and us set a good moral standard to follow.
you might ask who is right; the groups like google providing services to the us military, or the groups providing services to those opposing the us military.
Cherry picking bad one organization doesn’t make me feel any better about this over-broad order.
Maybe but this thread is specifically about A/I colletive so I am certianly not cherry picking.
No need to worry about hard-earned rights like the freedom of speech, I guess?
Weak men create hard times. The founding fathers are rolling in their graves.
Can you articulate this more? Are you saying the first amendment gives A/I a constitutional right not to be sanctioned?
Yes, we are talking about a communications service, one specifically focusing on political speech.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Email, chat, websites, blogs - these are all speech! A/I's overt political statement (that you are indicting them for) points to their primary interest being to facilitate political speech - a type of speech with some of the strongest protections (that whole "assemble ... and petition the Government" thing)
Beyond that, they're presumably a neutral conduit like every other service provider. If some users of their services are communicating to coordinate crimes, then unless A/I is getting directly involved in those conversations, it's the exact same dynamic as every other email/hosting provider.
> If they choose to support the PKK, which the EU, UK, and US
But they are not choosing to support the PKK.
They accuse it of being “a major far-left tech collective whose services are used by the most active and violent Antifa cells in the United States and across the world.”
The far left is a terrorist group? Where are all these violent "antifa cells"?
They labeled this groups as a terrorist organization so they could claim that anyone protesting the fascist Trump regime will easily be labeled terrorists and thrown in jail without a trial.
If you have real operational security concerns, your provider shouldn't know anything about you; should in fact have bilateral shielding between themselves and you to prevent either counterparty from learning stuff. That's how Signal works.
Isn't it just as likely they are using facebook, instagram, and tiktok?
Meta and TikTokUSDS let anyone in but they will actively remove stuff like this by request:
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/A/I was never a politically neutral host, not that that would save them from sanctions: https://www.wewillfreeus.org/the-server-called-paranoia-defe...
There is also an article on we will free us [1] if you want to dive deeper into that rabbit hole.
[1] https://www.wewillfreeus.org/the-server-called-paranoia-defe...
The article is quite long, but these two give a brief idea of what is going on:
a) According to that article, what it seems they are about:
> Its manifesto describes the project in explicitly political terms. A/I is antifascist, anti-capitalist and antimilitarist. It promotes free software, encryption, pseudonymity and the independent circulation of knowledge and cultural work. It reserves its limited, volunteer-run resources for people and projects broadly compatible with those principles rather than businesses, political parties, organized religions or institutions already possessing the means to make themselves heard.
b) And the issue U.S. has with them:
> The United States alleges that A/I supplies specialized digital architecture, encrypted communications and hosting to antifascist groups and other radical movements, including organizations already designated by the United States.
Seems like this should be a/the top level link
I clicked around a bit, read the manifesto, I still have no idea what these people do. I guess they claim to have been around for a while, but a bunch of the links don't work and the manifesto has definitely been updated to reflect 2026 opinions.
What is this?
The "About" page seems fairly clear:
> A/I was born over 20 years ago to provide internet support (through website hosting, e-mail accounts, mailing lists, chat, blogs, and much more) to activists and collectives coming from the world of grassroot and social movements.
i thought the page says it pretty clearly.
they are a group of people providing services to activists. services include email, web hosting, chat, and other anonymity services. (see https://www.inventati.org/services/)
They host blogs and email used by many activists.
Did you click on https://www.inventati.org/about ? (I also tried reading the manifesto first.)
From it:
> We support individuals, collectives, communities and groups whose political and social activities fit within this worldview and who share with us some fundamental principles: anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-militarism
I suspect they have some "not mainstream" political views; although I think understanding what these views are requires more in-depth reading of the blogs that they host.
It is intentionally vague. From the State Dept:
> The A/I Collective exclusively offers its tools and services to radical left-wing actors and manually vets all potential users for ideological affinity before granting them access to its infrastructure.
Autistici/Inventati is an Italian collective, active since around 2001, that runs free digital services for activists, grassroots groups and anyone who wants to communicate without being profiled.
It provides email accounts, mailing lists, blogs, websites, chat and VPN access.
Anyone? Like the PKK which The EU, UK, and US have labeled a terrorist organization ~20 years ago because they've killed thousands in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria since 1984?
Do the US then also sanction themselves? Cause the numer of people they have killed in that region of the globe since 1984 easily exceeds that number by orders of magnitude.
And the platform hasn't done any killing. They merely provide email etc. Are we going to sanction road builders too because a murderer has driven on their road since 1984?
that would technically fall under the definition of "anyone", yes...
Not just technically. Also in practice. That's the reason cited for the sanctions. Seems reasonable.
it would be more reasonable, maybe, if the sanctions weren't primarily being used for the anti-encryption, anti-privacy crusade.
Does AWS do business with anyone? Like the Israeli government who has been labeled perpetrators of genocide by the UN ~1 year ago because they've killed tens of thousands in Palestine since 2023?
They should have hosted for Al Qaida and ISIS. Then they would have been invited to the White House and been sprayed with perfume by Trump:
https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/11/12/donald-trump-ahmed-al...
"Al-Sharaa, who until recently was known by his alias "al-Julani," was a longtime jihadist who was part of the ranks of organizations associated with al-Qaida and ISIS, and even orchestrated an attack against Israel – milestones that led to his designation as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" by the US, with a reward of approximately $10 million for information leading to his capture. President Trump decided to lift the sanctions on al-Sharaa, who has transformed into a political leader following the collapse of the Assad regime in December, when he assumed Syria's presidency as the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham."
Is that more, or less, than the 1.2 million people Musk has killed so far with the illegal dismantlement of USAID? Musk aggressively advocates for the forcible ethnic cleansing of Europe.
I see people posting links to x.com which he uses to promote those views as well as platform other hate groups calling for violence and genocide against immigrants, trans people, etc.
Do acts gain moral validity under color of law alone?
well USAID where I live finances regime changes and I guess these are very net negative in terms of lives killed.
You see it everywhere.
Don't worry, the regime change part of USAID has been moved directly to Rubio in the State Department. Only the aid part has been removed.
For those like me who don't have context, here is the New York Times article on this recent news / event
https://archive.fo/e8Gss
> The State Department on Wednesday designated three groups based in Europe, including two that advocate Palestinian rights, as transnational terrorist organizations.
> The move is part of the Trump administration’s fight against what it calls a “resurgence of far-left political terrorism” worldwide, a focus that many security experts say is disproportionate.
> In a statement, the department said that it would impose sanctions on Palestine Action, which is based in Britain and organizes acts of support for Palestinians and opposition to Israeli policies; Masar Badil, another pro-Palestinian group with branches in Western Europe and Canada; and Autistici/Inventati, known as A/I Collective, which is based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world.
a/I collective in the OP is the third on this list.
> based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world
Palestine Action has been designated a terrorist group in the UK as well after sabotaging military aircraft (the article says they sprayed paint, but does not say it was sprayed inside jet engines, rendering them inoperable). Masar Badil supports "armed struggle". One of the other groups ("hammer") recently designated a terrorist group (and linked to A/I Collective in another article I read ) got its name by attacking people in Germany with hammers.
Designating A/I Collective a terrorist group is different as it is not directly supporting violence, but it is providing free services to people who do, and it says it provides services to groups its aim is to "provide support exclusively to individuals or groups we feel we have an affinity with.". On the other hand their terms forbid "military use" which is broadly defined enough to rule out terrorism.
I think its likely they do have sympathy for violent groups, n the other hand, unless they have been going out of their way to support violence in some way I do not see reasonable grounds for banning them. Lots of commercial services have dodgy users. My fear is that is is heading in the direction of "if you do not hand info to the US authorities on demand you will be deemed a terrorist"
> I think its likely they do have sympathy for violent groups
The US regime is an extremely violent group, so I that's certainly the issue.
Thank you! Kind of nuts they posted this with that title but no explanation.
As far as I can tell, there were no credible criminal charges against this group, except that they are effective organizers on the opposite side of political spectrum. In the White House’s deranged logic, this qualifies them to be officially designated as domestic terrorists [1].
Can we all agree that this is an assault on the First Amendment?
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/desi...
I don't know, but they did say a month or two ago that they discovered Iran pivoted from funding their normal terrorist groups in the west since the US and EU cracked down on it so hard domestically, to funding more radical leftist groups since politicians were turning a blind eye to them.
Given the timing around putting economic pressure on Iran, I'm assuming that they had some financial connection to Iran.
I guess bombing them got some pushback.
Everyone's a terrorist nowadays.
Related discussions:
US sanctions Italian hosting provider Autistici Inventati
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451343
US Government designates host of noblogs.org a "global terrorist"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49464391
seems like PIR (the .org registry) now also suspended their main domain: https://www.whois.com/whois/autistici.org (it is on serverHold)
Seems like a great organization
Streisand effect at work again
Keep in mind we're talking about communications services here, and one focusing on political speech at that.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
In general I think the free lunch of centrally hosted services and persistent doxxable identities is nearing a close. It was inevitable that governments would meddle more, and more, and more - implicitly treating communications are something other than speech due to how encompassing the digital world has become - and now here we are.
The current United States government is very keen on pushing the idea that there is a vast and shadowy international left-wing conspiracy waging war on it.
This is, to be clear, lying nonsense.
Actual link: https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2026/08/10076
Title: A Statement by A/I Collective About US Sanctions
Maybe they should try couping the Italian government, rename themselves to Ragazzi Orgogliosi. That should help.
> Our financial strategy relies exclusively on voluntary donations.
That is not a sustainable strategy in the long term. Sure after this news they will get lots of donations, but long term it is not something that is realistic.
Since they are now "sanctioned" by the US you cannot legally donate to them even if you wanted to...*[0]
[0] *Unless you now know why this collective needs crypto more than ever.
>That is not a sustainable strategy in the long term
they've been around 25 years, which is nothing to sneeze at
Given administration's obsession with Antifa being in the room with them at all times, it's impossible to take anything they say in relation to this as even close to factual.
https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2026/08/10076 - Direct link to the sanctions declaration.
The actual Treasury Announce here - https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/
"The Autistici Inventati is an Italy-based far-left organization that provides a range of technological tools and services to violent left-wing extremist groups, including website hosting on foreign servers, encrypted email accounts, chat and video conferencing, and digital architecture associated with its “Noblogs” platform. Autistici Inventati identifies itself as an “anti-fascist” and “anti-militarist” organization opposed to capitalism and exclusively provides its services to vetted individuals, collectives, and groups it perceives to be aligned with its ideology, including to sanctioned terrorist organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been designated by the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union for its use of terrorist tactics leading to thousands of deaths in Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria since its establishment in 1984.
Autistici Inventati is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended, for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism."
How quaint. The MEK (Iranian People's Mudjahheddin) were designated as a terrorist organization but collected money in EU streets all the time. Now they are useful against Khamenei.
The US would also like to use the equivalent of the PKK in the large Kurdish part of Iran against Khamenei.
Nothing to say of using the PKK rebranding of SDF in Syria as well as receiving "global terrorist" Al Jolani in the White House.
What does it entail, in practice?
They are sanctioned, okay, and? What happens practically.
They will become pariahs financially speaking. Nobody will be authorized to wire money to/from them. It's brutal.
Anything between having their google profiles deleted to abducted and tortured at a CIA blacksite.
in this case, it mostly means trouble getting money, as they are funded via donations
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479122
The consequences may include the loss of:
https://www.wewillfreeus.org/the-server-called-paranoia-defe...My question now is whether European hosting providers sprouting up in the face of the US CLOUD act will step up to provide those services.
When an organization is intentionally vague about what they do, it’s usually a red flag.
the first few sentences of this link, and their about page, and their services page all make it clear what they do. i am unsure of where you confusion comes from.
They host blogs and digital infrastructure for autonomous anarchist/leftist collectives and are deeply connected to global free speech movements since their founding in 2001. If you expect to see a two sentence mission statement or a product summary, you’re going to be disappointed.
They aren't?
They are very clearly providing IT support for free to anti fascist organizations.