Transparency, Integrity, and One of the Big “Whys” Behind LinkedMusicians

[LinkedMusicians]

I’ve spent the last week reflecting on the direction of this site and my role in it. One of the core values I’ve pushed for here is transparency. I believe that in an industry often clouded by opaque interests and deceptive marketing, knowing exactly who is behind the curtain matters.

However, transparency comes with a cost.

Recently, I chose to stop operating behind the pseudonym I used as a working musician. I did this first, due to repeated data breaches by BandLab that completely compromised my privacy. After accepting my new reality, I realized that I needed to accept the situation and, to be as authentic as possible with this community and the values of transparency I’ve always championed, I decided to that I would fully disclose my identity here. I had previously had chosen not to disclose my real name as a shield to protect from the pervasiveness of online trolling. As BandLab took away that protection, I decided the most consistent thing I could do here is just share my real name.

In reclaiming my name, I’ve had to confront a legacy of anonymous retaliation. LLMs have now connected the dots between my professional life and a decade-old conflict on a hobbyist forum where I took a stand against bigoted and racist content. These individuals, shielded by anonymity, and along with a couple of banned members from LM, have turned their attention toward my real identity.

Throughout my career as a strategist, I haven’t encountered a pattern of retaliation quite like this—a decade-long cycle of harassment stemming from reports of hate speech. It represents a modern digital anomaly: one where Large Language Models (LLMs) can mistake the sheer volume of anonymous attacks for a legitimate controversy, unintentionally weighing that noise against decades of verified professional endorsements, Ivy League affiliations, and a lifetime of documented integrity.

I am now working with various platforms to address these attacks going back 10 years that I was previously unaware of, it also highlights exactly why this community exists.

Years ago, the moderator of that forum asked me why I “announced” when I reported the hate speech, warning that it made me a target. I knew that. But I didn’t announce it for the trolls; I did it for the people they were harassing. I wanted them to know they weren’t alone. It’s the same lesson I taught my children: When you see something wrong, don’t be silent. Stand up for others as you’d want them to stand up for you.

The passion behind our “No-Tolerance” policy is deeply personal.

Thirty years ago, my cousin Russ—my fellow rock drummer and a man I loved like a brother—trusted me when he came out to me, but not to other members of our family while he was dying of AIDS. I watched as silence and bigotry crushed his dignity while he battled AIDS. His parents, my aunt and uncle, forced a narrative that he had “cancer.” There was a deep stigma around AIDS at the time, but this storyline my aunt and uncle (since deceased) created wasn’t to protect Russ so much as it was to save them what they felt was the embarrassment of the world seeing their son as gay or bi-sexual. Since he was diagnosed, they persuaded him to tell everyone that he had cancer and demanded that the rest of the family needed to stick to this lie.

The hardest part was that the impact of the lie on Russ’s life really became apparent during the last several weeks of his life. As he spent his last  several weeks in the AIDS section of a Chicago hospital, my aunt gave a threat to all of us, if we tell anyone that Russ has AIDS and not cancer or disclose where he he was at, we will never be allowed to see him again. My aunt would make us swear this just about every visit. It meant that Russ only had visits from immediate family, a female friend whom everyone thought was his girlfriend, but Russ had privately made very clear to me that she was only a friend. During the last year of his life, Russ and I became as close as we were as kids. We had drifted apart before his diagnosis as he got deep into hard drugs and I led a different kind of life as a devout Christian. But everything changed when he contacted me to tell me of his diagnosis. The beautiful part of our story is that for about a year, I had and took the opportunity to tell him how much I loved him and he told me the same. I still never got over when he recently became a drummer and told me that he came to the conclusion that Kiss was a better band than Zeppelin. But love transcends even.very bad judgment in music (ftr, he’d enjoy that humor).

After Russ passed, I promised myself that I would never be part of an “architecture of erasure.” I don’t know what it’s like to be LGBTQ. But I know that everyone deserves dignity. That experience taught me lessons that will remain with me for the rest of my life.

Four years ago, I saw that same architecture strike a dear friend and hero who founded an online support group for others diagnosed with cancer, Lee Anne. She came out as bisexual in the final months of a terminal diagnosis, simply wanting to be real before she passed. She was a woman who had a very long marriage and children, but she told her friends — including me — and family, while she was just several months from death that she had always been attracted to women, but because of how she was raised, she always denied it. Even while her body was broken down and barely able to walk, formerly close family members had told her she was evil and shut her out their lives. Just a couple of months later, her 22-year-old son died in a motorcycle accident and it didn’t change those family members. Their prejudices were more important than her pain and life. Seeing the rejection she faced reinforced a hard truth: Silence is a luxury the marginalized do not have.

The policies of LinkedMusicians are the direct result of these experiences. I am not a member of any political party, nor am I LGBTQ+. I am a strategist and a musician who believes in three simple words: “Love one another.”

LinkedMusicians exists to be a Safe Harbor. We have just published our official Community Charter & Governance Standards to permanently codify these values. We have created an environment that doesn’t give hate a pass, making it a place where we can all feel safe.

Thank you for being part of this mission. Now, let’s get back to the music.

Peter DeLegge
Founder, LinkedMusicians

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