A while ago, because of a network issue, I asked around in various places and eventually joined the community for the immotalwrt project. There were plenty of experienced people there, and some of them really did help me think through the problem. I was genuinely grateful.
Tonight, with nothing else going on, I went back and looked through the group chat. When the conversation turned to the issue I had been facing, I mentioned that my home broadband is from Chongqing Mobile. That immediately drew a wave of complaints from a few of the more senior members.
From my own point of view, Chongqing Mobile’s broadband has improved a lot compared with years ago. At least during the nearly one year before this recent problem, my experience had been pretty good. Speeds no longer fell apart during evening peak hours like they used to, and when I connected to Tencent servers for gaming, the latency was low and stable. I’ve never used China Unicom’s broadband, but in my view Mobile broadband is definitely better value than China Telecom.
While the complaints were going on, another admin suggested that I should switch providers, and said that if I wanted Unicom, I could contact him. It sounded like he was a first-tier agent for Unicom. In the later conversation, someone mentioned that Unicom had sponsorship involved too — though I’m not sure whether that meant sponsoring the community or the project.
I’m not planning to change providers for now. My two-year contract has been running for less than a year, my employer pays for it anyway so I don’t have to spend extra, and most importantly, I’ve already managed to solve the network problem for the moment by tweaking smartDNS in depth. Mm... it really does seem possible that the ISP’s DNS was the issue.
Once it became clear that I wasn’t going to switch broadband, the tone in the chat changed. The discussion shifted from mocking the earlier “Dog Brother” in the group to mocking me, asking whether I was his alt account. I tried to defend myself and said I had my reasons, of course I had my own justification for not changing providers.
At some point, the admin even started talking about kicking me out of the group. It felt like I had suddenly become a heretic, even though I was never some fanatical Chongqing Mobile supporter.
I understand, and fully respect, everyone’s freedom to make their own choices. People are independent individuals. I think China Telecom is expensive, but for some people it isn’t. I wouldn’t mock Telecom users for being wasteful with money, because I don’t think a company being expensive is the fault of its customers. By the same logic, I’m just an ordinary broadband user, not a Chongqing Mobile employee. If someone has a complaint about Chongqing Mobile, they can take it up with the company directly. That dislike shouldn’t be shifted onto users.
It’s the same as not liking a certain phone brand: I can choose not to buy it, but that doesn’t mean I should insult or look down on the people who do.
To me, that’s basic decency. What did consumers do wrong?
After being mocked and dismissed like that, I asked a simple question: so even open-source communities have this kind of discrimination?
Anyone who has read my earlier posts should know that I’ve praised and respected the open-source world more than once. I’m deeply grateful to all the people who quietly contribute to open-source projects. To me, they’ve always seemed like wandering heroes, sword in hand, cutting away injustice and helping the world where they can.
But this time, that sword ended up pointed at me. And I’m not an operator, and I’m not a stakeholder. I’m just an ordinary user.
It also made me even more determined to keep writing my independent blog, because there are always places where you don’t even get the sad little chance to speak up for yourself, let alone defend yourself.