Below I present a chronological note of 8 major internet groups I have singlehandedly founded and led. Along with lessons I learned from them, screenshots and personal my way of managing them.
Most of my groups were related to, but not limited to, computers, finance, education. All of them were created with psuedonyms and false identities, without leavraging my achievements.
While this article might be longer than my other articles, I assure you that it will be comparatively easier to read and I will be sharing both highs and lows. Reading this article will give you a wild ride of roller coaster of emotions that will pass through loop of every emotion.
Heading format: “<group name>, <platform>, <my age when I created>, <member count>”
After learning programming, cyber security for about 1.5 years, I at the age of 13, created this group. This was my first internet group. I got this idea by participating in a similar group. After creating it, I shared the links in the chatroom and left it, so I could focus on my own group. Just few hours later, I got lot of other members, not only from that chatroom but from others too. After few days I shared this group with some of my classmate and they joined too. One of the main member was a Nigerian person shown in screenshot above.
I know the name of this group might look “weird” to some, but to be honest, not a single member objected. Later I changed it by omitting my last name for privacy and to reduce my influence.
I also made $13 profit, which was made possible by referring members of this groups. While I was not able to withdraw it, but that’s a different story that I have already explained in my financial autobiography.
I left this group because I was kinda worried with my phone number being associated with such group. Also there were some people asking about black hat things.
I passed the ownership to one of my classmate and bid farewell. However, I still kept getting DMs from people even after weeks of my resignation.
At the age of 14, I started a YouTube channel where I uploaded unique tech tutorials. I did not share about this channel in my previous group. I closed it after I got strike on a video where I taught how to make and execute prank bat "viruses" on Android using Exagear, Wine implementation for Android, and an another strike for using copyrighted SFX in my botany video.
“Telegram Group” was the second group I created and it marked
golden age of my leadership this journey.
The reason I say it was the best one because Telegram offered me global audience, bots, freedom to manage my group as I wanted, all of things that WhatsApp lacked.
I made extensive use of bots to ease up management. I even created my own bot! Created an open source wiki and programmed bots to share relevant extracts on specific triggers. Set rate limit on messages, blocked certain file types and more.
I made plenty of good friends here, from all over the world, did collaborations with other groups. Including with a Russian gaming server, even though I dislike video games and don’t speak Russian, neither they spoke English properly, other than just one. I played video games with them and even defeated them 2-3 times.
As I learned more about internet privacy and security, notice the No Script extension in first screenshot, I decided to leave the group and pass admin role to one of the member.
However, he started changing group fundamentals including icon, description, name. So I had to cancel my plan of leaving, strip him of privileges and ban him.
Emotional messages from some of the group members, first screenshot of male, second of female, urging me to not leave also kinda made me to cancel my plan.
Though around two weeks later, I again made announcement, promoted two members as admin, left group and deleted Telegram after few days of announcement.
I initially did not want to include this group. But for sake of completeness and to cheer up readers somewhat, I have decided to include it.
Just like my Matrix Fanclub described below, this was also a group of people I knew. Though majority of members were female and not much tech savvy.
There was a huge platform problem. I refused to create an Instagram or Snapchat account. Instead, I “created” a private, web based chatroom. It was very minimalist and had no media upload feature. Hence using Pastebin like sites was encouraged. I managed to make around 9 people, all female, come there. Male members were directed to Telegram group.
In the conversation between me and R below, I start by acting like I forgot her, and ask her identity, if she knows [a nickname she gave me]. She then said that missed me, asks if I have Instagram, and if she is the only one who knows about this chatroom. I then joke her that some “Russian”, whom I did collaboration, and hacking group know, they don't. I then also joked that Instagram banned me twice for trying to "MITM their server". And also Github, my own platform, is unsafe, only Proton mail is safe, advised her to refresh webpage after every message.
![Me: And why are you here(asking politely), who told you about this site? Do you know [a nickname she gave me] R: Ya bro, I know <nickname>. Bro you only said to me about this site. Remember?? Bro I miss you a lot. Me: It was to confirm who are you. Russians also know and my hacking group also know R: K bro. Do you have an Insta id? Can I know plz? Me: No INSTA FB GITHUB [are] Privacy Leech(one in torrent) I only have Proton Github and Telegram. Instagram banned me twice for trying to MITM their server. Github, <my website chatroom> aren't safe now. Proton Mail and Telegram are only option now. me: Ps, always refresh webpage after every message.](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkgunni5p/image/upload/my-chat-website-insta-bad-convo-with-r_ilvjpb.jpg)
After that she created an Instagram account and gave it to me. Though still, I did kept joking to her about that I am going to block her on Instagram, and told her to continue to my website. She initially, as seen in the screenshot, used to take it seriously but stopped after adopting my lifestyle, ideology, and also stopped being insecure of her darker skin tone. She later even started learning Punjabi, my mother tongue, for me. Despite her native language being Tamil, a Dravidian language, which is polar opposite of Punjabi, which belongs to Indo Aryan branch. The genetic distance between Tamil and Punjabi languages is 78. She learned it pretty well that a newcomer thought she is Punjaban. Maybe her excessive use of "bro" played a role in it too.
![R: Im trying to learn Punjabi for u ..xd. few sentence I came to know ..lol. How are you? [Punjabi translation of such]](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkgunni5p/image/upload/r-learning-punjabi-for-me_wtcp5h.jpg)
Though sometimes we did really move back to my website. As seen in below screenshot where I mention, “This place looks like home”. And the she starts her usual “romantic drama”. See alt for extended chat.
![Me: Looks like home IDK why. Lol. I don't smoke girl. R: Ur so adorable 😃 Me: What does that mean. I am illiterate. R: it means [nickname she gave me].](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkgunni5p/image/upload/my-website-feels-like-home_1_qbdq55.jpg)
Even though it may look opposite, but I never actually blocked R or anyone else, I just joked. Here is another conversation between us on website to clarify that.
"Me: I am blocking you. R: Noo plz plz no. Me: No. R: No. Me: No No. R: plz bro plz don't. R: Why. R: r u busy bro Me: I did it. R: Nooo Me: Already done. R: Plz unblock plz. Me: No way. R: what do you want from me? Me: Nothing. R: Then why are you blocking me? 😞 Me: Wait. R: How much bro. Me: You are sending message coz you are unblocked. R: 😊 Me: Haha plz be smart next time. R: I will do anything for you bro 😀
That’s pretty much it for R. There were many other members like “U”, who supported my decision of blocking R, even though I never blocked her. But TBH, I feel like U's narrative should have been bigger. It was kinda short in my personal notes too, I did not even realize how supportive she was to me, until 4 year later.
There were others like E who insisted on that I should use Discord, and greet
her, like she does to me, due to which she clashed with R too. P,
R’s younger sister(same age as me), who randomly jumped into
conversation on my website and would "blackmail" R. A, who was
first female member of chatroom, but still wondered about How
many girls you have
. Another one who mass liked all my comments
but when I told her to not waste her time, she said she was doing
deed of friendship and I don't have to return, but I did. But to
keep this section short, I will end it here.
![E: Can I tell you something? Me: Tell.E: You should learn to greet people like I greet you nicely. Me: [R] told me. E: And you dont.](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkgunni5p/image/upload/t-insisting-that-i-greet-her_rjjrhq.png)
Unlike in other groups, I did not leave a successor behind. Because it wouldn't make sense to do so in here, because the chats were way more individual, many members had soft rivalry, and no one was influential or tech savvy enough to manage my website. I was using R's Instagram account, so she was technically successor, but even she herself deleted both her accounts, a week after my leave. Another thing, I noticed that was many others also deleted their accounts, even on other platforms, after me. E, who I wasn't close with, on just next day. U kept waiting on website for month, celebrated R departure, because I had told her I may return.
My reason for leaving was not dispute with any member. In fact, I never had dispute with anyone. But was privacy, to free up time, focus on Telegram group.
Seeing my previous groups, my classmates said that they also want to learn programming from me. So I created a private group on Signal and 6 of them joined.
Though none of them was really interested in programming, and had weird requests like hacking someone Instagram. Instead of denying altogether, or guiding them towards their request, I taught them the process of installing Linux, which I labelled as perquisite, technically which it is, but even that was too difficult for them. So instead, I switched to Termux,but even they couldn't do it either and told me to meet them. I refused and said, I won't do anything illegal, see alt for translation. So this group was deleted within a month, and I did not leave a sucessor behind.
![Translation of chat: Me: You haven't downloaded C++, how will you run Aria2 without it. He: Friend can you meet me? Me: [While pointing towards screenshot he sent] Instructions are there, follow that and install it. He: If you can meet me, then do it Me: No, I won't do illegal stuff, and it's very time consuming. I am only guiding you](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkgunni5p/image/upload/signal-group_ybsjfr.jpg)
I created this group at the age of 16, jshortly afterwards my exams were over and my high school has began. I had just learned about the Matrix protocol, and my purpose was to discuss my is Tor safe? 26+ reasons(with citations) which proves that it isn't. article, which I had published just 3 days after my grade 10 exams were over, 4 days before high school began, and general privacy setup.
I had no intention to create a group, as I was more busy in real life socilizations. The only reason I did was because I was banned from a tech community formy privacy views, for which they considered me that I am paranoid and need mental health suppport. That is why this group was not included in earlier versions of this article, but the only reason I am doing now is because this was a foundational event for my age 17 Fanclub creation.
So after I was banned from the tech community, I created a small, private group which was joined by 3 other members from that group. Out of which, C, was most enthusiastic about group, but she did not knew much about technology, as evident by her asking, but at least she was curious to learn. They other two just wanted to debate more on my Tor article.
Below is a screenshot when the topic changed to GPG. Where I, referred to as X in alt, was in favor of GPG, password store password manager, and against Bitwarden, being an ex-user of it myself. A was pro Bitwarden and found GPG to be overkill, and also suggested me to not use Matrix. C also jumped in confused, asking what am I try to argue abou.Then tagged me, asking what is GPG.
A day later followed another conversation on torrents, magnet links. C again jumped in to ask questions. This time another member, B, was also there, who was kinda dismissing.
C: What is a torrent? A: Complex thing B: Nothing you need to worry about. C: @X, what is torrent and magnet link. X: It's just a way to share files like Gdrive but without third parties. B: That's wrong. X: Okay that does not matter. What matters is torrenting over Tor is not safe. A: Many nodes block torrrenting for this reason. C: Why isn't it safe? X: Because I say so, lmao. It's literally given in my article. B: I2P allows it.
Within a two week, I closed the group without appointing a sucessor, deleted my Matrix account. We had understood that we can never reach a consenus. We engaged in some philosophical, abstract discussions, but I, and following me C, preferred to solve real life problems instead.
Unlike my other groups, this one was different. It was not composed just of random Internet strangers, but somewhat familiar internet people.
Members were very diverse from areas including Americas, Central Asia, China, Southern Europe. Though there were only 3 members from Indian subcontinent and only one, I, was active participant.
Diversity was not just limited to nations, there were all kind of genders, languages here. For example, one of a main member and future moderator, T, was a trans woman and also a refugee from rival then turned friendly room. Another main member and future moderator, A, was a ex muslim, gay communist. Despite me being none of those minorities. Additionally, there was no main purpose of this group, which can explain the high message count.
I created this group after I built up enough audience by talking in other groups, including X, It was intended to be a satire, not serious, hence it was initially named “<my username> fanclub” and was private. I did not even share a link. I just said “You should join my fanclub for fun.”
However to my surprise, it grew rapidly. On just first day it got around 400 messages. This made me serious and I temporarily made this group public, invited lot of other people.
Two months passed by but the group didn’t stop growing and
encryption started lagging. So I had to send an
m.room.tombstone event to this one and create another
unencrypted group on another home server.
Shortly after creating a public group, I discovered an abandoned anime roleplay chatroom with no active moderators. I managed to revive it by criticizing anime, and later by “acting” as a moderator of the group, promoting my ideology, encouraging members to move to my group. Soon they all shifted to my group. That also improved the gender ratio of my group, because the majority of members there were females, or at least they claimed to be.
However even after settling in my group, they did continue their roleplay thing though to a less extent, and even involved me as "Supreme Leader", despite me telling them to not use it as it sounds fascist. Here is an example. X is a placeholder for my username, P, Q both are from roleplay room.
- P: Supreme Leader is angry at me
- Q: is he?
- P: Q, tell X that P left the room
- P: He can't see me [She thought that I have blocked her]
- Q: okay i gotchu
- P: Just do it please
- Q: i will do it for you
- Q: <@X "Why are you crying lol"> hey P left btw
- X: I can see her though
- Q: uh im js saying what i was told
- X: Haha This P can't stop this lol. Tell her that I am bored of this at this point.
- X: I really did a mistake by letting refugees from rp room here.
- P: Supreme Leader is back :)Below is an example of an average day in that group. We were discussing a C++ algorithm but B posted the benchmark done on Microsoft Windows. Seeing it was done on Windows, we started bantering with B. Saying that opinion of a Windows user is invalid.
I even conducted a public, empirical study to measure the influence of selected members(n = 5) of Fanclub. My hypothesis were: I will have the most influence. The more the influence, the more the words will be repeated, through both replies and adoption.
I exported chat logs(n = 8,000) as plain text. With consensus of all participants created sets of signature, unique, words, phrases. Below is an excerpt from the set:
{"my_words": ["nice bait", "meds", "grp_nck_unity", "grp_nck_freedom", "not debating that", "for fun"],
"a_words": ["gulag", "grp_nck_communism"],
"t_words": ["omg", "seethe", "purr"]}
A designed a simple shell script using Jq, grep. I implemented bash arrays instead of looping JSON with Jq. I also wished to write it in C++ with B, as I was in my C++ phase then and it would be fun, but I didn't citing that it would take lot of time. I then counted how many times these words were used.
The results fulfilled both hypothesis. After me, A had most influence. T results were not as impressive because she didn't talk much with other members than me, and was not there for long when the data was collected. Other 2 members didn't seem to show much influence. Notably, B use of common words and using Windows might have contributed to it.
Other than showing objective metrics of influence, this study paved the way for other members to conduct more study. Which even made me create a sperate room which served as a "journal" for studies. The requirements to get published there was just to use the Markdown template provided, and add some metadata.
As group started growing even more, it started getting harder to moderate it. It regularly got raided by spammers who spammed NSFW media, malware and more. Since Matrix did not have much public bots, unlike Telegram, this became even more challenging. While there was an API, but to get most of it you had to host a home server yourself. I did create some scripts using client API, some of them are available on my Github too.
So I appointed a moderator. But unfortunately, he did not do any good job. Literally every thing had to be deleted by me, he instead deleted unrelated messages. I silently dismissed him as a moderator, but he didn't realize it till 6 days. When he asked me for reason, I made announcement stressing on his far right political ideology and my desire to keep mod team small. So I came up with idea of marking group private before going offline and making it public back when I came. I also reported these incidents to home server admins, who helped me by deleting their accounts, messages.
Another method I came up with to replace the previous method was as follows: set the default power value 0; set the minimum power value to send message as 3 to react as 0. Set the value of all trusted members to 5. Non trusted members to 4. I used client server API for this as I didn't have home server. Changing the value of individual members was required because without that, the members value would be whatever the defualt value variable is. After it was done, all new members were able to react(send m.reaction event), but they couldn't send message, until they were assigned power value of higher than 3.
my another reason for leaving was that an ex classmate(EC from C-1), also a bad debtor, to whom
i introduced matrix platform, somehow discovered x group, but not my Fanclub, ever. he recognized me there and started behaving like he was
familiar with me. members there immediately started being
suspicious of us. i was worried that he might dox me, which he has
history of, or if his opsec gets comprised, it will compromise mine
too. my another concern was his growing extremism after he combined far right propaganda with knowledge of evolutionary biology from me around 3 months ago. That was meant to debunk casteism but he twisted, which no other classmate had done. So just around hour later, i secretly got him banned from X
group from the hands of my moderator friend. i did not tell him to ban he himself said i can ban him if you want. i don't give a f...
. i then just thanked him and he actually did.
around a month later, ec met another moderator of x group in a hate group(hg) who not only unbanned him but also spilled the beans. hearing that, he also doxed my personal information to him. i’m not sure till what extent he did in dms, but as i saw chat logs of HG, he surely did enough. i had created an alt afterwards but still some users, including the members of my Fanclub, were aware of it, but not the reason of such. around just 20 days later, ec was banned from hg for not fitting their racial criteria, which he cried about to me, but he was on ignore list.
8 months later, he got himself unblocked by me, on Whatsapp as I had left Matrix by then. i did it out of respect, because he complained to my father that i blocked him, but did not reveal any story. though around a month later, he again got banned due to his weird behavior, pushing his gossips, far right, self hating political ideology. also his behavior of calling at my home is extremely childish. i don't even have his home numbers. i blocked him on my father's phone too.
So after 3 months of that dox event, I started sharing my thoughts of leaving the group and appointed two more moderators. They were really sad and some of them left immediately after I left, one of my close friend deleted his account too.
A day later, I came back from an alt account. I replied to one of the mod, T, and she was shocked that I have not blocked her. I replied with one of a my signature phrase “nice bait”. I then told mods that to prepare a list. T replied that all members left after my announcement, but I encouraged them that I will stay here for just for them, and even reclaim my throne as "Supreme Leader" and they got bit happy, see screenshot below.
![Me: Now make a list if anyone else says it. Even though it has happened many times [before]. T: The active users left after your announcements though Me: What? Where did all go? I think {censored nickname} is still lurking. Me: What is that... Well I am going to stay in $group_nick_unity just because of you and A Me: I don't want more mental... T: 😊 A: welcome back comrade Me: Thank you comrade. But I feel like nobody is smart enough to take my throne. T: yup nothing ever comes close cutie 😊 Me: So I have decided to take back my throne as &qout;Supreme Leader&qout; of [grp_nck_communism].T: haha now get back to arguing, i missed you. don't forget to take your meds. Me: I haven't taken any yet.](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkgunni5p/image/upload/v1732779940/matrix-active-usr-left-post-leave-anncouncement_tophyf.png)
Later when I did not return after 7 days, the group died, some more members left and told mods to invite them when I come back.
That’s it for this group. Though there are plenty of more things that I can cover, because it was the longest running group after all, but it’s already going very long.
Initially I did not want to include this, because Reddit content such as posts, comments, is public and easily accessible even post deletion of creator's account. Though, after 6 months of writing this autobiography, I have decided to include it. I will only be sharing screenshots of private chats to serve as "evidence".
Shortly after leaving my Matrix Fanclub, at age 17.5, I stumbled across a study material on Reddit. I created a Reddit account, with a pseudonym, messaged him to obtain it. I was thankful to him for providing me the raw scans, and even helped him by sharing my knowledge about stock market, technology, career, and letting him join Group-A. But it was in horrible condition and was around 50mb. The material wasn't also much useful to me during exams, and I preferred my own physical textbook, but it quenched my curiosity. But it helped others, and that's great because not everyone can afford expensive textbooks.
I ran it through OCR, trimmed it, broke it down into volumes, gray scaled, and compressed it to total size of just 18mb. I released the final version to public and it gained lot of supports, but some were still complaining that link isn't working, but it was but they just didn't see it as it was a direct download link. I started getting lot of chat requests on how I did it, and requests for additional resources. To deal with so many messages, I created a temporary chatroom(Group-A) for it. It gained around 13 members. I also shared some resources, scripts used in it, but members weren't able to use script due to it being tailored for Linux.
A member(P) from Group-A who wasn't able to fill his post graduate exam form because he was unable to properly convert and resize the required documents, despite claiming to try for a week. So instead, he shared those private documents including his Aadhar card, signature, mugshot with me to process. Despite being around 6 year older than me, he described himself as my "little brother". I ended up helping him, at 21:00 with my mobile and Image Magick, and he was too extremely grateful to me, and slightly insecure in himself. See screenshot and alt below for transcription.
Due to Reddit chats being extremely glitchy, lack of proper moderation tools, I created another group on Matrix. It was joined by 3 people from Group-A, including P, but I had accidentally forgot about it, because I was focusing on my fans. And due to it's more technical nature, it didn't succeed.
I ended up closing both groups, without leaving a successor, within a month to focus on other things, but not studies. My another reason to leave was a clash of ideologies and view points. Whereas, I don't care much of academics, because I don't think so that success can be achieved without deviating the norm, but they were very studios. I didn't victimize myself, but they kept saying how they were forced into this "rat race". While I didn't share my complete story with them, but I also faced more social pressure because I was favorite student of multiple teachers. See age 15 in Short Autobiography). Some of them also had a delusion that they were superior to me because they were in STEM and I was in commerce, but I didn't care enough to share my achievements. But my Matrix account remained for a while and I kept getting messages there.
Before leaving, I had gathered a group of around 4 fans, actually jealous men who were all older than me. They were never allowed into Group-A. One of most obsessed fan had said to my leave announcement, "Don't worry Sir, I will keep following you. You will always have a fan no matter what". Despite the mass down votes, I had also gathered more than 1,000 Karma.
I was invited to an unofficial group before the start of college. I noticed that people there were way older and they weren't interested in studies, but were openly doing drugs(alcohol, cannabis, hookah), insulting female members, making gangs, planning fights etc. There was also a language barrier with them speaking regional dialect while discouraging my usage of English, the common language.
In the conversation below, after first day, I ask them a question that if the place in video video they uploaded is our college, but they tell dismiss my question by telling me to smoke and sleep, even though I never talked about any drug there. See Translation in alt.
So I started my own group with same principles as of my previous groups. Advertised it as a safe space for serious studies and chit chat. I got joined by 11 members. The female members were expressing gratitude to me for creating a group where they wouldn't be insulted due to their skin color or accent.
The admins of the unofficial group were happy that I took serious students out of their group, so they could continue their activities more freely.
This group stayed there for few days until I went to my first day of college, technically the second day, and noticed the bad environment there.
The students were as I expected. Classroom were extremely dirty, crammed with around 90 students in ours. Teachers spoke local dialect and weren't very knowledgeable. One could not even pronounce "environment" correctly. There were no restrooms on our floor. Library was out of stock on almost everything. A group of unknown boys gathered near my seat. First they wondered that where I came from. I replied that I am Punjabi with a random village name, which doesn't even exist. They asked me how I'm so pale, if I hear Punjabi songs, which I replied no. I didn't tell them I was the one who created the unofficial group. One of them invited me to his bench, I denied it at first but later went.
When classes started, they couldn't even answer basic questions
like full form of PCB, difference between direct and alternating
current. I anonymously answered "Printed Circiut Board" and they,
including teachers, got so shocked that who answered it. A person
from group who earlier talked to me shouted, in a overexcited
voice, That black shirt Punjabi
while pointing towards me. I
then raised my hand, stood up, while giggling for a second, which
turned contiguous. Teacher asked me about my background and he was
also shocked when I said I came from non science background. I
didn't reveal my programming background either. Then that held a 5
seconds clapping session for me. After the college ended and some
people still congratulated me, joked, with 2 members from my group
who found me and didn't even ask for confirmation. One offered to
drop me, but I refused.
After that, I planned to leave the college itself. I saw that
few people of my group were wondering if that was me, but I didn't
respond. Earlier I had told them that I will come this day and they
will recognize me upon seeing.
I went back to my home the
next day early morning, without eating anything or telling to
landlady that I'm going forever, because I did not want to stress
her. After reaching home, I called her husband and told him that I
have left the college and will vacate his room on Sunday. The rent
was already paid in advance so there were no issues. Another
interesting thing I noticed, in a random video uploaded in group,
that at least 5 other males, who were sitting nearby me, 2 females
copied my black shirt, one did my metallic silver wrist watch. And
few others were sending Punjabi songs in their original unofficial
group. Despite teacher explicly announcing, on day
1 and repeating on day 2, that only white or navy shirt be wore,
with white shoes until uniform is issued. And black is often
considered taboo to be worn on beginning of important events. I was
flattered that how I got so influential, even in such random
decision, but still it didn't convince me to stay.
There were many other positive experiences such as a bus driver stopped midway just for me, when I was leaving and waiting for tuk tuk, and the conductor chatted me the whole journey, despite me not understanding his language. A middle aged, overweight, woman who got influenced by my unsweetened peanut butter choice. She asked me if it helps in weight loss, how to consume it and if it is tasty. I said that I only eat it because I want to gain weight. It can be connsumed with bread, roti, or milk, but I eat it raw, even though it's not "tasty". Though she still bought 1Kg of it, same quantity as me. Another old man who strangely came directly to me, from a queue, to get his keypad phone fixed, which automatically got fixed when I reinserted the battery and turned of Bluetooth. But that weren't reasons to stay.
My decision to leave was more complex than that. There were many other issues: staring; in place of living; language barrier; Hookah culture; education quality.
After few days of it, I revealed to them that it was me, who answered the questions, as they were wondering, and I left the group without leaving any successor behind.
I still got direct messages from some members who said they want to learn from me. As below conversation shows, one female member requesting my help, but soon I blocked her to focus on finding a good college, excluding the 120+ list of colleges I had made.
Few days later, on Sunday, I came back, with my father, collected all my belongings, got my documents from college and left forever.
Hopefully there was still time left and I was able to enroll myself into an open university and create another group, Freedomphiles, on first day of college, which is described below.
I was the first one to realize the importance of having an unofficial chat group and to create such. I created this group on very first day of my college.
Following me, many other created groups, but the reason they did not succeed much because they were not as tech savvy as me, all of them created specialization specific groups, and lack of freedom.
I promoted the fact that we all will be following same syllabus till first year and managed to unite several other unofficial groups under my community.
Just the next day I realized that there were few members among us who were connected to authorities of the college.
I deduced it by seeing their profile picture, where they looked older than average first year students, their behavior, attempts to help students, maintain discipline. The next day, they were promoted to admins which confirmed by suspicion even more. Also one such spy admitted being 23.
I added a note in description of my groups that whoever who is connected to college authorities will be banned on the spot. A week later, I banned two of them from my group, after failed questioning with them and an announcement, see screenshot below.
As you can see in screenshot below, I questioned him politely, after fulfilling his request of a code review. I also trapped him an accusation “If you are not connected with authorities then why are you admin? And why is your surname same as of the ex-admin”.
Later I also discovered few other ways including asking for screenshot of their Learning Management System(LMS) and tallying it with students list which was hidden in LMS. Below is the screenshot of a female spy who messaged me first but next day, I managed to make her send me her LMS screenshot which proved to me that she was in last year, so I had to ban and block her…
Translation of chat: “Her: Proud of you. Let me free you of one chore, so you can do rest. I will clear your doubt, is it right? <shares LMS screenshot>. Now breathe if I’m your favorite. Thank you. Me: Hmm Thanks lol”
Around 1.5 month later from the above event, I was kicked out from the official group for pointing out errors in study material along with screenshots and code example to support my claim. Seeing this, four members from my group raised their voice against it and they were kicked out too., see transcription and context in alt.
![A(Before kick): Why did you kick Sethi… otherwise who isn’t familiar with CS would get wrong information. A(When referencing kickout screenshot): As I told [you]. They removed me too Me: Oh welcome to the club. It’s a sign of bravery. B: Still I’m not removed. A, C: (Reacts with 🤣 to my message.) B: Wait Let me drop a banger. 💣 D: They kicked me out too.](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkgunni5p/image/upload/discussions-against-kick-freedomphiles_elvgi0.jpg)
Me: Welcome welcome to the club. B: I am gone too 🤣 C: Gone for
good 😹 Me: Haha, we are not going to stop at this. They can kick us
but this has already sparked the flame. E: Should I say something
too? Me: No you are our last hope for information. Don’t say
anything yet. Also don’t damage your image of studios student lol.
E: I will stay in group B: Knowledge is power 🤓
E then provided us detailed screenshots of chats, post our ban. Thanks to him. The second member to get kicked, C, was also able to get information from another source. Though even if they both got banned, I had plenty of other sources.
After analyzing post kick screenshots, I saw that many members were surprised who was kicked. But they didn’t say it directly. They said, “The one who pointed out errors”, “The one who was talking about getting a job offer at Microsoft”. There were no mentions of other martyrs which made me upset and I told E to share that other 4 male members, along with their names, of Freedomphiles were kicked too.
Surprisingly, one female member thought there were two people who pointed out errors: one male and other female, who was described as “behaves like she knows everything”, which is to be honest more the description of me. One member of my group tried correcting her that there was only one male, but she still insisted. She added that the member should try talking to her. What’s even more surprising that she was the one who firstly messaged me, two months before kick, used affectionate language, like she would with a male, and shared me notes, without me asking. I didn’t correct her, because I was not talking to her as I was busy.
Just few days later I observed that the group members who were kicked out seemed very nonchalant and they refused to email higher authorities regarding this. They were nonchalant on other issues and the ones that will happen in future too.
Around two weeks later, I discovered that the group was somehow unofficial. There was only an official community with teachers who we were familiar with. The university also repeatedly warned against unofficial groups saying they only had this community group, nothing else.
Though I refuse to believe that it was unofficial all the way as we got link of it through email. Maybe they took it’s authority later on.
I left this group because it felt like an unnecessary responsibility and talking to a wall. I could not express myself freely. I had to “dumb down” ideas because I was the only tech savvy person or active person here, others were not even willing to learn. I was the only one raising voice against the university, finding errors in study material. Like in many more cases which I have not mentioned here.
I passed the ownership to one of the member who later left himself and passed to another one.
Though still, I continued to speak against wrong things, help others in official college group. Below is an example of me being the first one in folllowing cases:to complete all of my first semester exams; announce the results are declared; discrepancies in them; help students in it. For the screenshots, and other related evidences, see this Gist
"Me: I have found the result. Is it final or will there be any changes? Because I noticed a discrepancy in my elective. S: Result is declared? Me: Yes D: Where did you find it? Me: Just go to Copilot site and then there is grading section in hamburger menu. Me: But another discrepancy is: there are total 7 subjects. 5 of them credit of 4. And rest two have 2. So that means 5*4 + 2*2 = 24 but total credit points earned is given as 182 to me. S: Same Me: So you also got 182? I have managed to deduce how SGPA is calculated. I have decided to not create a script for that as it's such a common thing and I already have one on Github for mean, SD time calculation. I am not sure from where did they pull the 182 from. I examined another homogeneous report card with all A, which means 8, and it's 192 there. So I would like to analyze some more. Can you send me a censored copy of yours? The results haven't been officially declared yet, despite it has been a day since I first announced it. So that's why I have not messaged college authorities regarding it."
“The members of the group don’t talk to each other. The conversations are almost always like DMS to me . They just come here to talk to me. The group is basically dead when I am offline.”
This is what I learned the hard way and wrote it in my personal notes during my tenure in Telegram group.
I also realized that mere transformational/charismatic leadership. I would have to introduce them force. It could be either benevolent or coercive. After all, if we look at some notable leaders in history, they all used some sort of force. Be is silencing dissent, isolation, or even "harmless* approaches like micro managing, manipulation.
Learning from my observations, I started encouraging participation through daily programming, doubt solving , memes and chit-chat threads, weekly non-fiction literature reading threads. Encouraged posting news, science articles.
I could also take a coercive approach and ban inactive people, ban links to other groups, force members of Freedomphiles to speak against my kick out, errors in study material from official group else get banned or guilt trip them, but I didn't.
However, it's not to say that influence is totally useless.
Because if we look at my fanclub example again, I was able to
gather lot of members just with a phrase You should Join My
fanclub for fun
From start, I have allowed plenty of freedom to members both in main group and by creating an off topic group.
My groups also had a rule which prohibited “restricting freedom of speech of others”, which was strictly enforced.
As I mentioned above, my groups were very free. However some things were restricted. I had create set of rules what was prohibited and how do I define that.
The restricted things included: pornography, gore, restricting freedom of speech of other, promoting commercial products or services.
There was a clear hierarchy of “punishments” and awards. Which ranged from 1 minute mute, mass social rejection(in form of blocks by members), to permanent ban. Though they were not necessarily punishments. As some people voluntarily requested mutes if the group was too addictive or distracting for them.
There was a system of appeals. Offenders could debate it in Janny Chat, and appeal by writing an essay acknowledging why were they banned, what rule they broke, and how would they act in future
Awards included badges, on platforms which support those, exclusive access to certain groups, leaderboard and more. Some members though “flexed” their status of having a high message count, and being an older member to newcomers but it was all playful banter.
Bots proved to be really useful and they are what made Telegram group so successful. I really missed them on WhatsApp and Matrix. But more on Matrix as it had a bigger spam problem and it was ironic that an open source social media standard did not any bot community.
Being a moderator is not an easy task. An ideal mod would have knowledge of local languages, tech savvy, respect for freedom, would not get triggered by insults, explict or shock content.
An ideal mod would also not block users. Because by blocking users, the mod is basically giving the chance to blocked users to break rules and go unnoticed. This is why I never blocked anyone. I admit that I did ignore many, but didn't block anyone.
Since all of the members were random internet strangers, giving them power to irreversibly destroy a group did not look like a fair deal to me.
Even if I had given power to some member, which I did at time of leaving by appointing successors, it would be unfair to others one. Because it would be all my subjective opinion and I might get accused of favoritism.
Thirdly, as you might have noticed above, they were in the group because of me. They did not connect with anyone else. They left when I left. So appointing a leader to which members did not connect would be wrong too.
Fourthly, The empirical study conducted in Fanclub proved that I had highest influence. The fact that none of the groups flourished after I left, even though I had appointed leaders, is an another empirical evidence for my claim.
However, that does not mean there was complete "fascism" in my groups, because I am myself against fascism and have taken action many time against it. In fact, I encouraged the members to participate in legal matters of groups by holding regular polls, and having a seperate chatroom named "Janny Chat" for anyone who wants to talk to me and mods.
A person asked me why did I create my own groups instead of participating in other's group. Well there are lot of reasons for that, such as lack of freedom, unfamiliarity, but the biggest reason is moderators.
In almost all groups I have been banned from, I was banned because the moderators saw me as a threat to their influence. After all, the true leader is one who has influence. And who likes getting their power getting snatched.
They didn't like how an outsider is leading conversations, influencing members to vote against his ban in polls etc. In some cases, even mods themselves have disputes on whether to ban me or not. As one of the mod unbanned me and invited me again, but I refused citing that I have created my own group.
However mods do not know that these bans do not do anything, other than temporarily reliving their insecurity. Because majority of groups do not have any USP, and bans are easy to evade. In many cases, like T in my fanclub, people who supported me have willingly left the group to join mine, and some of the groups I have created were result of ban.
If we look at above example, you can see that my influence was growing, students were reporting errors in study material, challenging authority. So the moderators bannned me along with 4 others who supported me.