> themselves into ownership of freenode is closely associated
Wonderful. Using a guilt by association to discredit a project due to someone else's involvement rather than critiquing the technology and its goals.
Facebook have been involved with allowing the spread of misinformation, hate crimes, etc and have built systems that use Rust to aid this and are also a platinum member (Amongst other surveillance big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc) involved with funding the Rust Foundation.
Given that deep association, does that mean you should stop learning and using Rust?
By close association, I mean the co-founder of Handshake is also responsible for the downfall of freenode, personally. Even disregarding the hostile takeover of a community, it was rasengans ineptitude that fueled the massive exodus.