Actually, the influence of that company is old news. Freenode people have now moved on with a new name. But the reason was that yes that company did have some

Actually, the influence of that company is old news. Freenode people have now moved on with a new name. But the reason was that yes that company did have some control over that domain name apparently. Go to the Freenode IRC (if it still exists) and talk to the people there. Then go to the Libera.chat IRC and talk to those people. You can confirm where the people are.