One problem we didn’t share - Guenter

A few months ago we wrote a long article with all the problems Precious Plastic is facing. It was all there. But one problem we left out. Guenter. We avoided bringing this up in the hope things will get better and not give extra attention to it. We're bringing it up now because this problem is growing and affecting the future of Precious Plastic, other workspaces, volunteers and the team.

Who is Guenter?

Guenter has been around for a while within the Precious Plastic Community. If you have been following for a while you might remember seeing him in an old monthly news video. He is German but operates in Spain. There he runs his own business selling plastic recycling machines. Under several names like PlasticHub and PP Catalonia, osr-plastic, polymech.info.

Like many others his business is built around Precious Plastic and small scale recycling. Selling machines and moulds. He has been around for +6 years. But in the meantime he is very critical of Precious Plastic decisions, tools, and people. We like receiving constructive criticism as it helps us to improve. We get it on a daily basis from our global community. But his remarks are… inaccurate and edgy.

As an example. When we shared our recent 'Precious Plastic in trouble post' he says

To be accurate, we don't have investors, it's all developed on donations. Plus we are a non-profit with the goal to actually build a community. But inaccurate and insulting comments are just the tip of the iceberg.

The illegal things he does

1) He is stealing data
He copied our entire old forums (+30K posts) + tutorials (+150) from the community platform and location data from the map without the consent of any users. Which means users also have their information, files, tutorials on his website. Whether they agree or not.

2) Sockpuppeting
Yes this term was new for us as well. The definition of Sockpuppeting: “when someone creates multiple fake identities/accounts to rejoin, manipulate, or avoid detection.” Guenter is banned from our platforms. (Up until now it's the only person we've ever banned). We removed +50 accounts on Discord alone, hidden under different usernames trying to get back in. In the image below you can see a few of his accounts, and him saying proudly he created 240+ accounts (imagine the time he spends on this). It's hard to tell in the beginning if it's him but after a few messages he always shows his true self.

On top of this all. Discord is just one of the platforms he uses. He is also active on reddit, direct emails, direct messaging, youtube, facebook, instagram and probably more that we are not aware of…

3) Harassment
He harassed and stalked the team with insults and even death threats. We have lots of messages, mails, audio messages below just a few to get a glimpse of what we mean. Some community members were deeply affected by his behavior (on a personal and professional level) and tried taking legal action but online harassment is not easy to take legal action against.

4) Defamation
He spreads incorrect information about us, both as an organisation and as people. The same goes for others in the community like Mad Plastic, Easymoulds, The Flipflopi, Sustainable Design Studio, below are his latest targets on Instagram. He publishes these things online, sends out newsletters and publishes on his blog. Not just twisting facts but fully inventing them. It's made-up stuff, not based on reality. And that's defamation.

5) impersonation
He does impersonation, using peoples photos and names to create fake accounts. Many of our team members have been targets of this but also other community members. Below is an example of him using the face of a team member to spread his messages.

The Impact

Team
As you can imagine this has quite an impact on the team and volunteers working on Precious Plastic. Being threatened and insulted when trying to recycle plastic or moderating conversations is very demotivating.

Precious Plastic
We are an open source community project which relies on people, donations, contributions, having false information out there isn't helpful as it breaks the trust towards the organization.

Workspaces
Some workspaces in Precious Plastic sell great quality machines and are successful with their business. Guenter targets them, as he does to us. He finds their emails, social media accounts and spams them and their network and clients. Plus he attacks them on his own social media platforms and website with long in depth articles full of inaccurate information. This is bad for workspaces that already have enough challenges to sustain a business on plastic recycling. His intense actions and attacks create a fear to stand up against him as he will make you his next target.

Community
Overall it creates a very hostile environment for people in the movement, especially newcomers. As people that have been around got used to his behaviour and are most of the time able to spot it. But for newcomers it creates a very unpleasant introduction to plastic recycling. Especially when you find out you think it's multiple people but it's one guy taking the entire digital space.

Why No (legal) action?

We have banned him from our platforms since 2022. But as you can see he keeps coming back and finding a way in. He is very skilled with databases, IP addresses, VPN's and AI to bypass lots of these things. It's a lot of attempts, which means we spend a lot of time manually moderating this, but banning is only possible on our own tools. He also continues to be active on many other platforms out there.

Legally, as an organisation up until now we never took legal action. We preferred to focus time and resources on fighting plastic waste, not fighting internet trolls.

Why Share This Now?

For one, it's been going on for too long, leaving a big negative impact in the community. It's hard to see these actions being healthy for anyone involved. Secondly, Precious Plastic wants to develop a Version 5 for the entire community and we're starting with a crowdfund. But he recently started targeting large donors that helped fund Precious Plastic V5 to move forward. Which as you can imagine is very unhelpful when doing a fundraiser.

To be honest we are not sure what to do and don't have the solution. But being transparent and Open Source made Precious Plastic what it is. So our best bet was to share it so others can help out.

How You Can Help

1️⃣ First one. Spot the Guenter
We like to keep our community a nice and fun place to be.
Guenter goes against that. So it's useful to be able to recognize him so we can take action.
Here is how you can recognize him.
He Starts critical > Goes Off topic > References to old forums > Links to his own forums > Uses words like maffia and facism > Escalates into violent language.

Once you see this you can post this message:
☝️Hey here a message for context. This is likely Guenter. A community Troll that is not welcome here for various reasons. Read more about it here.

And if you're seeing this on a platform like Instagram or Facebook. Report or flag the content!

2️⃣ Second. Legal steps.
We aim to pick this up as it seems the only way to make this stop. If you are a lawyer or experienced with cases like this and want to help. Let us know. We have lots of (private) messages with insults, complaints, threats and locations.

3️⃣ Third. Visibility.
If you ever had problems with him or his machines let us know in the comments or send a message (hello@preciousplastic.com) if you prefer it privately. We're planning to set up a group where others affected by him can team up.

Future

We hope sharing this information will make it more possible that a solution will arise. It's been too many years, too many insults and too much time wasted. We have a big mission ahead to get rid of plastic waste and build Version 5. Things like this don't bring anything good for us and the community. Hopefully we find a solution.

Precious Plastic team