23 Sep, 2024: Our collection of material documenting harassment, doxing and allegations of illegal behavior against MAPs, on the part of a purportedly "MAP" group, is now complete. A second article documenting a campaign of disinformation by said group is nearing completion, and will be shared here.
PCMA
The Pro-c MAP Activist (PCMA, f. April 2022) chat is a Matrix-federated MAP Activist workgroup formerly associated with the Yesmap campaign funded by Newgon. It is responsible for various online controversies, usually involving the mobilization of conservative outrage via psychological manipulation on platforms such as X (Twitter). Members of the workgroup offer live support and knowledge to others, and collaborate to make phone verification, cryptocurrency and account-creation services more widely available.
PCMA members have been described as trolls who use sock accounts to achieve their ends, but have employed a variety of tactics including arguing at length with members of the public, and impersonating antis in order to lose debates and project bad optics.
In 2023, PCMA and the Yesmap server, having achieved most of its publicity goals via the prior strategy, each moved independently towards a model of increasing visibility via community-building efforts such as expansion of the Fediverse.
Controversy
PCMA (and some of its predecessors) have been criticized, mainly by anarcho-communist MAPs, for tolerating lively debate (eventually this was moved to a separate space) and controversial opinions. Some members have also sought to mobilize chan culture. Yesmap server users have set up differing spaces as a result, embracing both leftist and libertarian philosophies, but no such group has thusfar been as active as PCMA in terms of offsite tactical operations.
Independence
In 2023, discussions on PCMA took a turn towards the political, and offsite operations waned. This followed attempts by Pediverse users to disrupt the activities of the group, which had some indirect success in that PCMA became more factional and less active as a workgroup.
PCMA then sought to become more independent of Newgon by hosting its own Matrix server, as Yesmap's server moved towards a model based upon social Fediverse hosting rather than chat support. While it has no remaining official link, Newgon maintains an interest in moderating standards of discourse in the group, and deradicalising new members where necessary.
Predecessors
A previous group called Zed existed on Matrix, sharing some members in common. The same can be said for the Greyzone Matrix chat, in its various incarnations.
A discord group by the name of Handsome Jack's Boys existed in 2021, with nearly all of its members moving over to the more secure Matrix in 2022, following Newgon's support of the initiative. Eventually, a Yesmap server was paid for by Newgon to secure the newly-named PCMA - which was piggybacking on the Midov server.
Many of PCMA's members were active together on the first edition of FreeSpeechTube.