How a cyberphilosopher convinced followers to cut off family
A portrait of the Mississauga man behind Freedomain Radio

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081212.wgtfreedomain13/BNStory/Technology/home/?pageRequested=all

Edit:
The original links to the Globe and Mail article seem to be broken. Try this one instead:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/how-a-cyberphilosopher-convinced-followers-to-cut-off-family/article727644/
Otherwise, go to the Globe and Mail site and search on Molyneux.

That's a new version, isn't it? A lot of links back to FDR threads in there.

Thanks Patience.

It is a new article showing an extraordinary amount of research by Tu Thanh Ha. He has discovered things I had not found after months of searching. I'm so pleased that some parents were brave enough to speak to him. The quotes from former members of Freedomain Radio confirm that it is possible to break away eventually, which gives me some hope.

My heartfelt thanks to Tu Thanh Ha for his investigative work which resulted in this stunning article, to Kate Hilpern for her original piece in the Guardian and to all the parents and former members who took part.

Did anyone know that Stef was a radio DJ....?

About half of the links to the boards link to dead pages. He removed the threads, either putting them under the protection of donator-only boards or removing them altogether. I can imagine why. The weird thing was that I got two e-mails around 3 AM last night from FDR, consisting of what I presume to be the original posts of two of those threads. I attempted to search the boards for those two thread titles without luck.

On Stef's income: the reporter assumed that everyone with a donator icon got it by donating $X/month, rather than it being an accumulation of years of donating. When I left FDR, I was a Philosopher King, but at the time I was only donating $20/month, not $50/month. This will tend to inflate the estimate. On the other hand, some people donate without joining the boards, which will tend to decrease the estimate. I wonder why Stef is so secretive on this point. Well, I have my theories, but I wonder which one is right.

I wonder how The Community is going to react to Stef's desire to pull back from spending so much time online.

[edit: Did the LiMi people who were quoted in the piece contact the reporter, or did the reporter contact you guys?]

I thought it was funny that he called FDR a "Canadian success story". What is this, an appeal to national pride?

Funny. After almost an hour on the phone, I get paired down to a sentence. Oh well. I was worried that I'd come off as petty or obsessed or that he'd use the most crazy sounding parts of our interview and that the FDR folks would come after me online (like they've done to Conrad and Barbara) as a result. Really, there is nothing there, in that one sentence, that I think even the most dedicated Molynaught could argue with.

DP - I was contacted, I did not go looking for or contact Mr. Ha. He came to me.

Thank you to everybody who participated in this article. I hope it will open some eyes.
I'm very grateful as a defood parent for all the support that the families are getting.
This would be even more difficult to deal with alone.

Apart from the reporter's use of the term 'pied piper' (which, being a non-native speaker, I assume has derogatory connotations) the article is quite balanced, giving Stef's perspective (often quoting him directly) as well as the perspective of the critics, and it provides documentation so that people can make up their own minds which supposedly is what Stef would want.

I mean, what parts of the article are false or taken out of context? the mere fact that it is not just or mainly Stef's perspective in the article is probably what he dislikes about it, but what could he legitimately attack?

perhaps the part 'who encourages people to cut contact with their parents', but this too is simply what he does in a lot of cases (i can only think of one instance where Stef said to a listener that it was too easy to blame the listener's parents for his current problems), so even this is not false or deceptive

I think btw that Stef's emotional manipulation of listeners is the most damning aspect of FDR and Stef, and I can understand that in the short space of the article there is no room to really analyze that in a lot of detail and that is a shame, but I think the reporter did a good job including the fragments from the podcast with Tom (and then including Stef's (lying) response) that serve as an illustration of this phenomenon (don't know if the reporter also saw it that way though)