Trump's new platform and the Affero General Public License of Mastodon | Hacker News Reader

Trump's new platform and the Affero General Public License of Mastodon

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Is this the same platform that's going public via SPAC [1]?

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/spac-tied-trumps-new-soci...

I think so. Similar story described in the NYT. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/technology/trump-truth-so...

Imagine taking a web forum public. Maybe hackernews will go public next.

Reddit is rumored to do an IPO.

"Sell high"

This is what we thought about Yahoo! way back..

No, but the platform is just part of the company - Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). In the future, TMTG intends to take on all the major tech outfits on the planet - AWS, Azure, Netflix, you name it.

I love how they think they can simply pivot from a hosted Mastodon installation into being a major public cloud.

No one's going to want to work for these folks. This has "hostile working environment" written all over it.

Well, Amazon went from selling books on the Internet to running most of it, so maybe that wouldn't be that weird of a pivot.

It's just a fork, one click on GitHub.

They don't need to. They just need to get in power, blatantly abuse it to broker contracts for the govt, and then sublease it to anyone they like.

i would. and i dont necessarily think the work environment would be hostile.

how do you think life is for a conservative at FAANG?

By “conservative” do you mean: one book, one news channel, one social media platform?

I hate terms liberal and conservative they don’t mean anything anymore.

Stop identifying with some label and ask yourself: am I learned? Do I try to understand? Do I empathize? Do I sympathize? Do I produce? Do I consume? Do I consume more than I produce? Do I take action? Do I blame others? Do I litter in the park? Do I take care of myself and others?

If you think about it, communism is all about: one book, one news channel, one social media controlled by the government. How do these “conservatives” who pride themselves patriots think living in a moderated cesspool of misinformation is any better than a government controlled one?

I'm not sure they ever meant anything concrete. The editor of the local newspaper has been conservative longer than I've been alive, and still wrote opinion pieces arguing in favor of trans rights, BLM, marriage equality, and other modern "conservative" rage points from what he considered conservative first principles. His argument boiled down to: people who spent decades screaming about people coming for their rights can't turn around and deny rights to others.

Most conservatives I've met are not like that. What does the word mean when two people can have such contradictory understandings?

For example:

>> "If you think about it, communism is all about: one book, one news channel, one social media controlled by the government."

I've never met a communist who would agree with this, but I'm sure they exist. The communists I know are more about forming communities and cultures of mutual support by mutual consent, and they read lots of books.

It seems you haven't run the process you used to reach your feelings on liberal and conservative on other terms. This word is just as hard to pin down.

Well, there again a dangerous label. Communist and “communism” are two different things. Modern communist nations and “The Communist Manifesto” are not the same.

What I was referring to is modern communist nations and their blanket surveillance and content-enforcement of journalism and social networks. One singular content moderation network above all social networks and news organizations.

So, I didn’t literally mean: one book, one news, one social media platform. But if modern communist nations have their fingers all up in every media organization, saying what can and cannot be published, does this not equate to one voice above all else?

A conservative focuses social network is nothing but a singular voice with a political agenda. Able to amplify nonsense at their discretion.

I remember when "conservative" meant "The Chicago Tribune" and not "let's claim the vote was stolen without any evidence whatsoever".

What would happen if you were seen with a copy of "The Chicago Tribune" on the corridors of a FAANG company?

absolutely nothing

privileged.

It would currently appear to be, marginally, the least imaginary bit of the company, though. It kind of exists, whereas the rest seems purely aspirational.

It's a half baked effort to capitalize the Trump name, because of money losing ventures under the same brand.

Is this a joke?

It was up ~300% today, at one point... ~%100 yesterday, I think

I don’t get why this kind of thing keeps happening. It’s on a par with organizing a press conference outside an industry lot.

It takes relatively little money to bring in competent programmers to do things properly.

How many competent programmers (including being reasonable to work with) do you know who would willingly work for their campaign?

Contractors from a country that does not give a fig about American politics? So plenty of options are on the table.

But... But... That would go against what their platform says!

/s, I know, but: A platform is a mechanism to obtain power, not a prescription for how power is practiced.

I dunno most contractors like to get paid. I’m not sure but the Trump company does sort of have a history of not paying workers. I’m not arguing whether or not they should’ve. But it is kind of a _thing_

But those would then be immigrants, right? And likely will need to come in under H1B or something. How will owners of that platform react to hiring to immigrants?

> But those would then be immigrants, right?

No?! Why on earth would that be the logical conclusion? This is almost funny in how Americentric these threads become. You can outsource your project elsewhere. It's very common. America isn't the only country in the world that has software engineers who are competent.

MAGA hats were pretty famously made in China. That doesn't mean they were made by immigrants (though, I don't know anything about immigration in China)

Source on this? I thought they were American made but the manufacturer feared for their life so they never publicly said who made them

Ah, my mistake. The story doesn't appear to be entirely clear-cut, but the hats labeled 'made in china' are apparently knock-offs.

https://apnews.com/article/archive-fact-checking-6391630154

You honestly think there are no trump supporters among very competent programmers? I personally know at least 3.

Programmers are some of the most contrarian people out there, after all.

No they're not!

I disagree

You are incorrect

Would the Trump-supporting programmers you know be fine having "Trump Social Media Platform" as the latest job on their resume?

I'd guess fear of ostracism in mainstream tech would filter out more people than actual politics.

Regardless of your politics, you should never avoid doing something you believe in just because someone might dislike you for it.

My health insurance is tied to my employer. I have more to risk than being disliked by building the next e-commerce platform fo r Trump Steaks.

If the dislike translates into being jobless, you bet I would be keeping my trap shut.

They are pretty public about their position but they are in HFT

Of course there are. But it's not just about there being competent programmers "willing" to do this work.

You need:

* A competently run business

* Competent funding

* Competent recruiting

* Competent management

Programmers will generally want to be paid. They'll need a well-run organization, and before you can even hire and pay them, you have to find and recruit them. Not just someone interested and willing to do the work, but interested and willing to forego their existing role, and to forego their existing role for one that is, frankly, not likely to be around in another 6 months, given the track record of these kinds of organizations.

Yep very valid points

I'm not sure they'd want to _work at his company_ though. Imagine what a shitshow the management will be.

It seems inconsistent to believe this _and_ still want him to run the country.

They're just fine with all the incompetence and racism because they think he'll punish the people they don't like, but then they're disappointed and surprised when it backfires on them.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/tr...

>“He’s not hurting the people he needs to be”: a Trump voter says the quiet part out loud

>A Trump voter hurt by the shutdown reveals the real reason the president attracts hardcore supporters.

>[...] “I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Minton told Mazzei. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

>He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.

>Think about that line for a second. Roll it over in your head. In essence, Minton is declaring that one aim of the Trump administration is to hurt people — the right people. Making America great again, in her mind, involves inflicting pain.

>This is not an accident. Trump’s political victory and continuing appeal depend on a brand of politics that marginalizes and targets groups disliked by his supporters. Trump supporters don’t so much love the Republican party as they hate Democrats, a phenomenon political scientists call “negative partisanship.” They like Trump not because he sells them on the GOP, but because they believe he’ll stick it to the Democrats harder than anyone else.

I would do it just to stick it to Big Tech and their censorship.

Still, as a rule I don't work for governments and politicians because they are perpetrators of violence and they're mostly unpunished by society.

A lot of programmers work for FB also despite everything. Also, many work for other ethically questionable companies.

So, for the right price, I’m sure a lot.

However, given what has been reported about wage theft and lawsuits, whether they will pay is a whole different question.

Beyond their shameful business operations they bring deep engineering expertise, practices and processes and a founder who understands code and running a massive scaled technology firm.

That is not the case here.

I'm sure prominent Trump supporter Peter Theil can find a few.

The Trump group is not known for bringing in competence or doing things properly.

Trump's whole business career has been a grift of doing things that he knows are illegal, and then dragging out court proceedings until the people he's ripping off give up.

Why would he change now?

Competence does not seem to be a core value of these people, we've seen that over and over and over again.

Are you trying to tell me that the folks at Cyber Ninja, the firm that conducted the Arizona audit, are not competent?

Does anyone even really need to be told that?

< It takes relatively little money to bring in competent programmers to do things properly.

But even then there's much time and risk saved by using readily available solutions instead. The problem isn't basing your work on OSS, the problem is the license violation and that can easily be avoided.

> the license violation and that can easily be avoided

And easily cured. What secret sauce could there possibly be in their modifications that early on?

I like to imagine someone is frantically deleting a QAnon bot right now.

Merit isn't the dominant criteria.

"Money" isn't the issue.

It's "having people who understand the meaning of 'properly.'"

The number of people who understand the idea that "free OR open source code" is not equivalent to "I can take whatever source code I find anywhere and use it literally however I want" is vanishingly small, EVEN WITHIN THE IT INDUSTRY.

This. I've Interviewed multiple senior engineer and dev manager candidates who couldn't tell me anything about software licensing, anything.

That’s a question for legal to handle, unless you’re a two person shop.

You can escalate to legal for edge cases, but you should be able to handle base cases yourself. As an example, I work at Google on an Apache 2.0-licensed open source project, and we have dozens of third party dependencies: https://github.com/google/nomulus/blob/master/core/build.gra...

It wouldn't remotely scale across Google if we had to escalate to legal every single time we pulled in a new dependency. Instead, there's a company-wide allowlist of accepted software licenses, and you only need legal help for exceptions beyond that.

So yes, we do have to know some basics of software licensing. It's just part of being a SWE.

So a SWE just needs to see if the set of allowed licenses contains the project license. That doesn’t require any knowledge of the license itself, other than “they exist”.

It does though. Like why waste time if you know a viral GPL-style license or a patent encumbered license would be a no go?

This is akin to saying SWE’s don’t need to understand GDPR, COPA, HIPPA, DMCA or whatever. Obviously there might be cases where someone never touches code in a GDPR or HIPPA context. But any SWE working in those areas should damn well understand the basics of the law — at least enough to flag inadvertent, but none the less blatant violations.

SWEs are all Star Wars trivia nerds, surely they can handle a few software licenses and GDPR rules and stuff.

No, At serious BigCo's developers (and their managers) are undergoing training on how to evaluate OSS software and only accept dependencies according to the company policies.

You don't develop complex software by having to go through legal for each of your dependencies.

Licensing isn't brain surgery. There is a grand total of five or so licenses that are in broad use today, perhaps a couple more if you include the LGPL and AGPL families. It's perfectly possible to learn what each of them do, or limit yourself to only using the ones that you understand.

So legal is going to tell you which NPM package to use in your NodeJS project? Is legal going to be sitting beside you when you're surfing github and see an awesome library that just happens to have an Affero GPL license?

If you're lucky, you'll have automated source scanning, legal will be informed after the fact, and you'll spend a week backing out the offending code and finding a replacement.

What's more likely is that it will be shipped to production and sit there until someone notices or you get sued ;)

Another one that likes to bite is the very not-open source Oracle extensions to open source Virtualbox / Vagrant... How many devs at big corps just click through that splash screen?

Thinking legal is going to protect you is wishful thinking... Devs need to know the basics.

No response proves my original point better than "That's a question for legal to handle, unless you're a two person shop."

Or perhaps even further -- it clearly demonstrates a reckless or willful ignorance of the entire topic.

Why? What are the odds of me going to jail if I violate an open-source license in a small company? I think we are past societal norms at this point, and definitely post-shame.

This is relevant because we are talking about Trump, who I see as a termite of civilization, ignoring un-enforced rules and norms. "Who is going to stop me?"

I mean, it presumably takes relatively little money to bring in competent lawyers to do things properly, and yet that Four Seasons Landscaping thing happened. You're not, generally, talking about someone who appears to value (or perhaps even understand) competence.

The someone also has a long history of screwing over many people he does business with, forcing them to waste time and money in court to get paid. It boggles my mind that anyone would still do business with him without having a legal team on staff.

I understand that these licenses are pretty straight forward legally when it's obvious a company is violating the terms. What I've never understood is how these can be enforced when someone puts effort into obfuscating their usage of a covered piece of code. Do the aggrieved parties have a way to request an inspection similar to that used by the Software Alliance?

I'd imagine the normal civil lawsuit processes would apply?

You can probably just sue and figure it out for sure during discovery? (I'm not a lawyer)

That's what the "discovery" phase of a law suit is, yes.

That makes sense. I was just wondering if these licenses had provisions that would allow bypassing courts where I can imagine this type of violation would be very hard to prove. e.g.: if they were openly using another product with the same or similar license.

Everyone always has the right to sue and hope a judge agrees that an audit be performed. But commercial software organizations can do so without a rigorous process (not that that's a good thing).

I suspect you're onto something here and that if a company did a good job of obfuscating their use of an AGPL backend, they could protect themselves from discovery. Without existing evidence, it seems unlikely to me that a judge wouldnt agree to throwing out the case before discovery with a motion to dismiss. I'd love if a good lawyer could weigh in.

> Do the aggrieved parties have a way to request an inspection similar to that used by the Software Alliance?

Yes. That's what the legal discovery process is for.

Surely a judge won't make a company provide their source code in discovery unless you can provide evidence that it uses code stolen from you. I think that's what bink is getting at -- if you suspect that someone is using your stolen code but they remove any public-facing evidence that would convince a judge to have them provide the code to you, what recourse do you have?

> Surely a judge won't make a company provide their source code in discovery unless you can provide evidence that it uses code stolen from you.

In this particular case, there appears to be ample public evidence that the code was stolen (people have demonstrated that the stylesheets and assets distributed by TRUTH were taken directly from the Mastodon project). So I suspect, in this particular case, that a judge would not object to a source code audit during discovery.

To the more general point: there are mechanisms that the court can avail itself of in more ambiguous situations. For example, a judge would be perfectly within their power to require the defendant to provide their source code to an independent evaluator.

No, it's right.

In the US you can sue them if you suspect they're using your software in an infringing way, then use the discovery process to unearth this evidence.

You can try, sure. But AFAIK you can't just serve someone papers and compel them to turn over documents; a judge's discretion is involved in the process. If you say "I wrote some open-source self-driving car code and I think Waymo is using it", there's no way they're just going to hand over their self-driving car code.

No, obviously. They can appoint an expert to do this fact-finding. Sure the defendant will file a motion to dismiss the whole lawsuit probably claiming that it's frivolous, or whatnot.

> they remove any public-facing evidence

You screenshot the evidence before letting them know that it exists, and then you take that to the judge. "But we took down the site" isn't going to stop them from ordering discovery or stop your screenshots from being evidence... It can't be a total fishing expedition, but it doesn't need to be much more (as I understand it, not a lawyer).

There's also always the human element, someone on the inside let's you know (and indeed, you might compensate them for that, like the Software Alliance does).

There's also the fact that most software isn't exactly... subtle... about what it is in the backend. Error pages and such are often quite distinctive.

I see the ambiguity now, but I meant if they remove the evidence before making it public. Sure, if the code itself spans the client/server boundary, it's easy to find it, but it doesn't really work if they're just using a library on the backend that isn't exposed directly to the user.

This is exactly what I was getting at. In the case of commercial software so long as the suspected violation occurs at a company with a license agreement that allows these audits then they can be audited at the drop of a hat.

I can picture an open source project knowing that a company must be using their code but not really having a way to prove it in front of a judge ("their software is behaving suspiciously similarly ours"). These projects are unlikely to have the resources or desire to go through the legal steps necessary to get an audit granted by a judge.

Or in this case, they at one point were using the software in violation of the license, but if they claim that they are no longer doing so and have obfuscated the front-end so it's not possible to prove anymore... I'm curious how that would play out.

The thing I don't get is that this new platform hasn't been officially released to users. Are they really required to make the source code available if it's an internal service, before the official launch?

It wasn't internal, it was on the internet. Thus they must comply with the AGPL.

It had been officially released to users for a short period of time before it was taken down, as the article states. Since it was public, that public use of the code needs to be published as it was when it was public.

No. AGPL requires to provide source code only to users of the server [1]:

It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server.

Also, AGPL does not define a method for providing source code, be it publishing on a web server, sending by email, delivering on a floppy disk via messenger dogs or printing it on a papyrus and sending it with pigeon mail.

And lastly, you claim the service was 'officially released'. According to Trump's official statement, the official launch of a service will be in January.

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

Anyone that signed up and used the service is legally entitled to the source code, even if they are internal users. From reading the article it looks like some external users successfully signed up.

But what if nobody asked for the source code? Did anybody ask for it?

FTA, they’re very Vocally asked for it

I missed that at first reading. Any examples of users "very vocally" asking for it?

The developers of the original product have been asking very vocally, and they’re also parties in this case, having been harmed by the actions.

But presumably they weren't users of the product, which is what seems to matter for the claim? The developers of the original product also have the source code already.

The developers of the original product have a right to the source code of all modified versions as well, under these licenses. Which is enough to matter for the claim.

The articles suggests they did:

> However, when you put any site on the Internet licensed under AGPLv3, the AGPLv3 requires that you provide (to every user) an opportunity to receive the entire Corresponding Source for the website based on that code. These early users did not receive that source code, and Trump's Group is currently ignoring their very public requests for it.

Ah ok - any citations for them demanding it?

Not in the article, no. Feel free to take a look!

Yes.

Where?

> But what if nobody asked for the source code?

That doesn’t matter. The regular GPL demands that (at the least) a written offer of source code on request is provided along the binaries. If (at the least) no such offer is provided, the GPL has been violated.

The AGPL, additionally, requires that web-accessible software have a “download source code” link on the web site. If the original software had such a link, but no such link is present on the web site in question, the AGPL has been violated.

In no case is it necessary for the end user to ask for the source code and be denied. Doing this is a pure nicety on the part of the user, offering violators a way out of being sued by that individual user, which does not have to be offered.

OK, but what damages would a court be likely to assign to this severe error? What is the typical punishment for such license violations?

Internal testing: no. Public testing; yes.

Launch and release has no legal meaning, gmail was in beta for years. What matters is who can access it?

That is actually an interesting question.

Does a non-user of a services have the right to request for the source under the current AGPL 3 legal framework?

No, code must be provided only to the users of the server running AGPL code [1]:

"It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server."

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

Now another question. Lets assume EULA is applicable world wide and enforceable. If you ask a user to sign EULA which agrees to not ask for source code.

So in this scenario you cant ask for source code whether you are a user or not?

Your obligation to provide source code comes from your agreement with the copyright owner of the source code.

You can make users agree via a EULA not to ask for the source code, but that does not change your obligation under your license from the copyright owner. If your user breaks the EULA and asks for the code you must provide it or you are in breach of your license and the copyright owner could come after you.

You could then also cancel that user's service, or do whatever else you normally do when a user breaks your EULA.

No, I think that conflicts with section 10 of the AGPL where it says

> You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License.

Thanks. And that is why I asked what I thought was a valid question but likely getting downvoted for morale reason.

From the license (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html):

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph

Sounds to me like the 'all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network' part doesn't distinguish between an internal service and an external service. If it has users, you must comply with the license.

I'm not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice.

The article touches on this:

> Finally, it's worth noting that we could find no evidence that someone illegally broke into the website. All the evidence available on the Internet (as of 17:00 US/Eastern on Friday 2021-10-22) indicates that the site was simply deployed live early as a test, and without proper configuration (such as pre-reserving some account names). Once discovered, people merely used the site legitimately to register accounts and use its features.

I don't think the idea of a "launch" is present in either the license or copyright law; making the service available for use (which they did, inadvertently, it seems) seems to trigger the requirement.

I find this part very concerning.

I held my nose and voted "against" Trump both times. I don't like the guy. But I really don't like IP trolls. Software patents. SCO. The RIAA. "You wouldn't download a car." The aggression with which people are picking up the pitchforks over this is shocking.

It was a test. It was a mistake. People weren't supposed to see it or use it, and it's not up anymore. What damage was even done?

It leaves a foul smell around AGPL-licensed projects and Mastodon. I'm deeply discouraged from ever hosting a Mastodon instance if any changes I make to the source are going to summon a lynch mob if I haven't made them public within hours, especially if it's only a test deployment.

Even if you think Trump and his fan base are total monsters, don't go forgetting what Nietzsche said about fighting monsters.

You put it up on a public domain and have open signups, it’s public.

the AGPL license grants rights only to server users. General 'public' has no business in this. Only those who were able to register on the server may require to be provided with the source code.

Note, that the server operator is free to provide the code in ways different from publishing it on GitHub.

This isn’t royalties, IP, or trolls. This is licensing and if you don’t like it you can take a hike cause licensing keeps people fair. Without it everyone could and would take everything and anything protected under copyright.

I have a right to control the works that I have made. I don’t care who you are, if you blatantly steal my work and claim it as your own you better lawyer up cause I’m coming after you! Just as any software developer would, open-source or not.

> This is licensing and if you don’t like it you can take a hike cause licensing keeps people fair. Without it everyone could and would take everything and anything protected under copyright.

Which is exactly what SCO were saying. How soon do we forget how much we hate it when the corporate interests take their turn at bat over licensing? If your license permits you to be "that guy", it's clearly not libre. Maybe no one ever claimed AGPL was libre but this is definitely a huge reminder that it's not.

Mind, I'm not arguing that they didn't violate the license. My issue is the ruthless animosity with which people suddenly seem to love aggressive software license enforcement. Maybe I'm too old and crusty, but I would hate to be in a position like this, and would hate to put others in the same position. Especially when all signs point to this being an accidental go-live.

> Especially when all signs point to this being an accidental go-live.

If they're going to use mastodon they might as well start releasing the source code now because they'll have to do it when they launch anyway.

It doesn't really matter. If they are gonna run with using Mastodan when the official product launches, soon, they'll have to release the source then anyway. If they scrap using Mastodan, then nothing is lost by releasing the source.

They're a billion dollar company ran by a billionaire, they should be held to a higher standard then your average joe, since they have way more resources to do things correctly.

Compromise: Everyone who visited the site is given the source code, and charged with "unauthorized network access". I'm joking, but hey it could actually happen. A journalist is being threatened for right-clicking some DIVs.

So basically the question boils down to AGPL requirement to make source code available to users? That shouldn't be a problem at all.

Apparently it was!

Likely, the cause is simple ignorance. Modern developers of certain age just use whatever code they can fork from GitHub, think about licenses later (if ever).

> Likely, the cause is simple ignorance. Modern developers of certain age just use whatever code they can fork from GitHub, think about licenses later (if ever).

Sure, that's entirely possible. Nobody has attributed malicious intent to them. But the terms of the AGPL are clear.

The author of the article phrased it like this: " Once caught in the act, Trump's Group scrambled and took the site down."

I think that implies malicious intent ("caught in the act" - you "catch" criminals).

I don't know. It feels like a factual claim (they were, in fact, caught violating the AGPL) mixed with a pretty standard English idiom.

I can see a much more positive reading of that sentence: that the TRUTH engineers rushed to correct their AGPL violation by turning off the service. But that would be just as much of an unjustified interpretation.

You mean malicious intent by the author of the article to present the rather mundane situation as a nefarious crime and paint a picture of an evil wrongdoing by a group of obvious scumbags? The language certainly suggests that.

Yes - but I was replying to the claim that nobody accused them of malicious intent. Imo the author of the article tries to frame the actions of the Trump team as malicious.

Yes, exactly, and framing the story like that is malicious.

There was a lot else going on at the same time. There were users creating parody accounts for famous politicians and the site was only intended for testing. I think they would've taken it down regardless of the license issue.

my tiny startup talks to lawyers and uses sense

this isn't some casual side project - it's a company!

Yep, that's precisely it. It's not a particularly onerous requirement, nor is it a hidden one: it's the entire raison d'etre for the AGPL.

As someone who doesn't jive with those politics, but I have to think though that they missed a real opportunity to just share the source. That'd be "the truth", that'd prove that social media companies aren't just hard coded to be echo chambers by some kind of evil political robot, but yet the dark patterns are hidden in code that isn't nearly so obvious. Plus it would show they weren't trying to do anything evil with the results? I don't imagine they will be making money with the tech anyway, it would probably end up being advertising?

They've already made a ton of money [1]. I'm sure there will be a few more false starts to grab some more, and then it will just end up in the grift recycling bin for reuse in 2024.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/spac-tied-trumps-new-soci...

Gab also used Mastodon but they don't anymore anymore. They did run as a Mastodon instance[1], but after being blocked from most instances and even at the software level by most Mastodon apps, they stopped using Mastodon and wrote their own new backend that does not federate.

Gab has also been banned from Fdroid[2].

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentr...

[2] https://reclaimthenet.org/f-droid-bans-gab-app/

It's pathetic all they did to Gab and it shows how biased the open source community at large is.

“Biased”. As if your own point of view isn’t.

People have their limits. Most people aren’t absolutists, taking their philosophy to the extreme and utterly unable to make exceptions to their rules when egregious examples show up.

Turns out, most people don’t just dislike gab, they think it’s dangerous not to take action and don’t want to be on the eventual wall of people who Did Nothing when retrospection comes.

That’s not really bias, it’s called having a moral compass. You’re free to disagree with its tuning of course.

>People have their limits. Most people aren’t absolutists, taking their philosophy to the extreme and utterly unable to make exceptions to their rules when egregious examples show up.

If your morals don't hold up when pushed to their limits, it's that you have a poor understanding of what your morals are. A lot of people like free software because it's hip, but when faced with the very reason free software exists they turn back on it very fast.

That's a very simplistic way of looking at the world. It turns out that things are frequently more complicated than absolutist rules allow for, and the world isn't a series of black and white with bright lines between them. Most people are actually very much okay with "Thou shalt not kill" being quite a bit more nuanced in reality, because it turns out most real-world moral questions are a little more complicated than single questions.

>Most people are actually very much okay with "Thou shalt not kill"

I don't think that's true. Most people are very vengeful and do not hold that view.

>It turns out that things are frequently more complicated than absolutist rules allow for

imo "absolutist" is mostly used pejoratively. It's dissonance to believe both "People should be able to express themselves however they way" and "Racists should be ostracized." The logical consequence of the second is to disallow racists to speak. It might be OK according to your moral compass, but that's antithesis to free speech and more akin to "people should be able to express themselves if what they say is something I allow."

> If your morals don't hold up when pushed to their limits

I think you're missing the point here that their morals aren't your morals and they can be entirely self-consistent and do what they're doing if they don't share your exact priorities. They obviously prioritize other concerns above freedom of speech absolutism and they aren't hiding that, thus remaining entirely consistent within their frame of reference.

I don't doubt they have their own morals, but these same people say they hold free speech as moral. The whole point of free speech is to allow for speech you find reprehensible. If not, what's the point?

> The whole point of free speech is to allow for speech you find reprehensible

No one is stopping Gab from speaking.

FDroid is just refusing to amplify their speech.

Since when did "free speech" == "freedom to force other people to publish my speech"?

But you know what, here's an idea: I have a sign I want to put on your lawn. I'm afraid it's an incredibly offensive sign and you and your neighbours might not like it. But I wanna put it on your lawn anyway.

Judging by your comments here, I assume you're totally cool with that, right? I mean, according to you, denying my request to put my incredibly offensive lawn sign in front of your house would be an abridgement of my freedom of speech, right?

But my lawn is not a platform. And even then, FDroid is a small enough platform that they should be allowed to do whatever they want. But then it's OK to point out the perceived hypocrisy in having a free software platform that censors apps they disagree with.

Free software is not really about free speech, but usually both philosophies are held together since they are somewhat related.

> But my lawn is not a platform.

Sure it is. It's a platform of one.

Or are you now saying these rights kinda depend? If so, what's the threshold? What makes your lawn special? Does it need to be a particularly big lawn? Do you need to have control of a lot of different lawns? I'm really confused. You seemed so certain that free speech was an absolute right, and that I can force others to amplify my speech, but now here you are suggesting there may be caveats...

> Free software is not really about free speech, but usually both philosophies are held together since they are somewhat related.

According to you. I certainly don't see them as being connected whatsoever.

Maybe your real problem is you and FDroid see the purpose of open source and free software differently.

I think you're being disingenuous, I don't use my lawn to distribute other people's apps/signs, it's not its purpose, and I don't advertise it as such.

Also:

>FDroid is a small enough platform that they should be allowed to do whatever they want. But then it's OK to point out the perceived hypocrisy in having a free software platform that censors apps they disagree with.

> I don't use my lawn to distribute other people's apps/signs, it's not its purpose, and I don't advertise it as such.

And I suppose somewhere FDroid advertises itself as an open, censorship-free site for app distribution with no caveats or restrictions?

If so, please, point me to your evidence.

If it's just because "but they claim to value free software", see my reply (which included ninja edits): free software != free speech. No, they are not in fact related in any way. One can be supportive of free software without being an absolutist regarding freedom of expression.

Of course, that's understandable confusion. Free (as in no cost), free (as in I can control my own systems and products), and free (as in I can speak without government censorship) are all very different uses of the word "free", and I can see how folks might get them mixed up.

>If it's just because "but they claim to value free software", see my reply (which included ninja edits): free software != free speech.

I agree with you on this. The reason I believe they're somewhat related is that free software ensures users always have access to a software and can modify it if they disagree with the author. The spirit of that I think concedes that users should be allowed to use the software whoever they are/whatever they say/etc.

Now of course free software doesn't require you to provide them with the platform to run the software, but in spirit it definitely enables a discrimination-free permission to use it. EDIT: So having a platform deny access when it values such spirit is somewhat disagreeable.

> So having a platform deny access when it values such spirit is somewhat disagreeable.

If Android required a platform for software distribution, I might agree, but Gab can (and does) post their APK right on their website. So Gab is experiencing no curtailment of their speech rights by FDroid refusing to traffick in their speech, nor are the users experiencing any curtailment in their right to use their device, or the software, as they see fit.

You'd have more of a leg to stand on if this was about iOS and the Apple store, which doesn't allow for any kind of sideloading.

But Android? Sorry, I have no sympathy and I see no hypocrisy in FDroid's actions.

"free software ensures users always have access to a software and can modify it if they disagree with the author."

IMO this is a really terrible reason to use free software/open source, and not a positive point in its favor. Forking is a really costly process and leads to fragmentation and most of the time is unnecessary. To me the main benefit of open source is that it leads to a global collaboration and cooperation, and it gives new avenues for people to be able to agree with each other. From what I've seen, projects where the maintainers are just disagreeable all the time usually don't even tend to get off the ground at all.

>I think you're being disingenuous, I don't use my lawn to distribute other people's apps/signs, it's not its purpose, and I don't advertise it as such.

That's irrelevant, at least under US law. If your daughter sells lemonade on that lawn, is it more of a platform? Can I then post signs all over your lawn about the dangers of lemonade or citrus?

Of course not. Because on your private property, you exercise your own free speech rights by allowing/disallowing what ever you choose.

Why should it be any different on F-Droid's private property? Do the people who own F-Droid have less free speech rights than you do? If you believe so, please explain your reasoning, as I don't see the difference.

They don't think that's the point, which is what matters. They clearly have limits to free speech that you don't have because they are not free speech absolutists (like most people) while you are a free speech absolutist. They probably draw a limit at speech that they consider harmful[1], as most people do. If most people didn't have these limits, then harassment, death threats and so on would all be generally acceptable and legal, but they aren't.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

>If your morals don't hold up when pushed to their limits, it's that you have a poor understanding of what your morals are.

No, that's not the case. Morals don't have to be black and white because the world isn't black and white.

Nuance is the name of the game in morality. The world is shades of gray, everything has more context than you can imagine. Morals isn't mathmatics, you can't put it on an equation and say "X always equals Y in all situations"

Here's an example. Stealing is wrong. But what if you're stealing bread because that's the only way you can get food, and you're stealing it from Jeff Bezos who was just going to let it rot. Is that still wrong? Even if it has no value to Jeff B? Even if it means your death if you don't?

Context and nuance is what makes us all human.

>Stealing is wrong. But what if you're stealing bread because that's the only way you can get food, and you're stealing it from Jeff Bezos who was just going to let it rot. Is that still wrong? Even if it has no value to Jeff B? Even if it means your death if you don't?

Which is a misunderstanding of what you really mean by "stealing is wrong."

In that example, Bezos doesn't care about the sandwish, so perhaps you mean "stealing is wrong if it deprives someone of something they cherish." Or maybe you hold your life above your morals, but then you have to recognize what you're doing is amoral.

>Turns out, most people don’t just dislike gab, they think it’s dangerous not to take action and don’t want to be on the eventual wall of people who Did Nothing when retrospection comes.

The vast majority of people who support this deplatforming have been whipped up into a hysteria by their peers and media and unironically believe that half the country belongs to the party of racism and white supremacy and anti-science, and that platforms like gab are merely hangouts for extremism and insurrection plotting.

Ironically, this sort of treatment is going to breed extremism, and if I may say, rightly so. You don't demonize and dehumanize half the country by associating them with "whiteness" and nazism, especially while claiming to be anti-racist.

At best, this path leads to construction of a parallel society, with it's own infrastructure. At worst, genocide, but which side will do the genociding is hard to predict, the way things are going.

There's no excuse for this blatand politicization of all of our institutions, and the way that they all implicitly and explicitly collude to effectively deny voices to half of the country while worshipping SCIENCE! as though it were some unreproachable religion.

I agree that demonizing and “othering” people on the Other Side is a bad idea for the reasons you state. I also agree with your overall point.

I disagree that deplatforming gab is demonizing anybody. It’s tackling an absolute cesspool of a community. It’s among the worst of the worst that’s available out there. I’m sure they’ll survive without it.

That's only because our media does not scrutinize the other side with the same intensity. You have literal communists LARPing about the coming revolution on reddit alongside entire subreddits dedicated to celebrating deaths among so called "plague rats", on a platform where the TOS ostensibly state that there is no tolerance for such behavior. But it's not surprising given that for a brief period last year the TOS explicitly stated that hate against the "majority group" (i.e. white people) is totally fine.

If this were legitimately about extremism it'd be one thing, but the way it is shaping up, one side's extremism gets a pass, and that bias is toxic to a functioning society. The same way that excuses were made by all of our institutions for the nationwide, year long protests during a pandemic. Our institutions have clearly chosen a side.

And I'm not necessarily saying that the act of deplatforming gab is demonization, but what I am saying is that this one sided demonization/dehumanization is used as an excuse to target platforms like gab.

Your problem is not with the actions taken against gab but with the lack of consistent actions taken against similar cesspools.

There’s nothing I can do about that. Nothing will be achieved by hooking onto this in a whataboutist format, it’s just irrelevant.

I read your post as a hopeless grievance but rest assured that I have concerns of my own about how much leeway is given to left leaning platforms as well. But that doesn’t invalidate how bad Gab is. This world view is consistent.

It might be considered unkind to make fun of the dead and dying but arguably such examples are made after the persons own stupidity killed them and the point of the example isn't merely to glory in their death but prevent others from joining them in the grave.

Anyone who can't tell the difference between look at suzy she's made sarcastic comments about vaccines every day up until the day she died of covid don't be like suzy and keep your powder dry pretty soon we shall all get together and murder the libtards isn't looking very hard.

One encourages death and violence the other mocks the harm that has already come about and will continue to come about. The former is against most civil discussion forums rules and the latter is allowed many places. Before they decry uneven enforcement they might do well to understand the rules.

>It might be considered unkind to make fun of the dead and dying but arguably such examples are made after the persons own stupidity killed them and the point of the example isn't merely to glory in their death but prevent others from joining them in the grave

You're talking about a virus with a 99.99%+ survival rate in healthy people under 40, not the damn plague. And I know we're not allowed to discuss it, but can you explain why cases are as high as they've ever been in, say, Israel and England, when they're 70-80%+ vaccinated, if these vaccines are so safe and effective? Why does media continue to push the lie that the majority of deaths are in the unvaccinated when official UK data shows vaccinated and unvaccinated death rates at approximate parity with vaccination rate? I.E. the DATA clearly shows that vaccines are not nearly as effective as claimed.

Don't you think it's a little ridiculous that there is effectively no platform outside of 4chan where such questions can even be asked? How is that good for society, to unquestioningly follow the same institutions that have repeatedly and massively blundered while pursuing their own personal financial interests? Do you deny that the authoritarians making this policy are humans like you and I, subject to the same errors and temptations as anyone else?

Informed consent is predicated upon freedom of discussion, of which there effectively is none, because suddenly citizens across the western world are cheering on mass censorship and suppression of the very dissent that is required for a functioning society.

And just as you don't need to be an expert in astrology to understand that it is bunk, you don't need a PHD in virology to see the glaring institutional issues in academia/industry/regulation which cause incentives to align perversely. If it is in fact true that the vaccines are innefective and/or dangerous, there is now the momentum of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of careers and reputations on the line, potentially keeping this fact under wraps. It's not a conspiracy, its emergent pressure. In such a case it is up to laypeople to hold their governments accountable, but instead we are welcoming our own censorship. Something is going to break.

You seem to have gotten sidetracked by an example.

Regardless there are plenty of platforms outside of 4chan where you can discuss this. You just need to have some initial trust that people are having good faith discussions. Even here unfortunately almost all the time I’ve seen people bringing up the effectiveness of vaccines, it was to make an antivax point. That’s not good faith, it’s agenda driven trolling.

> You just need to have some initial trust that people are having good faith discussions

>That’s not good faith, it’s agenda driven trolling.

Your self-contradiction is an example of part of the problem. There's an assumption that any "anti-vax" (also a dishonest conflation, people are arguing about the covid vaccine, not all vaccines) is automatically in bad faith/part of an agenda/trolling.

You only see "anti-vax" posts because pro vax is the default and is the only allowed perspective among submissions. This is what dissent looks like, its not "trolling" or "bad faith".

>Regardless there are plenty of platforms outside of 4chan where you can discuss this

Nonsense, exactly because of the attitudes like yours. Anything not in line with "safe and effective" propaganda is banned/deleted as "misinformation" or dismissed as "bad faith trolling".

You're applying the same bias to my posts, that you're accusing me of.

I've myself been plenty critical of the COVID vaccines and/or rules when it was warranted, and I was able to make my point pretty safely and discuss it without it being dismissed as trolling or deleted as misinformation.

So maybe, just maybe, the stuff that is deleted/banned/dismissed is in fact a duck. Because most anti-vax points as argued today on HN are misinformation-driven. If you disagree with that, you've been the victim of misinformation. And if you disagree with that, I can't do anything for you, you have to be open to being wrong sometimes.

(And it's easy to turn that last sentence into "yeah well what if YOU'RE wrong". If I am, that is my cross to bear, but I'm absolutely open to it being the case. It doesn't change the above.)

People are either for free speech or against it. If a site that states "supporting free speech" as reason for their existence decides against free speech, it is disappointing.

Of course everybody can decide what they want, but it can still be disappointing and a betrayal of trust.

"Most people," huh? You sure are an expert on what "most people" think. Maybe just replace that phrase with "I" if you want to stop being intellectually dishonest.

Would you care to take a guess at which field of study makes one an expert in figuring out what most people think?

Okay, let's see your source that proves "most people don’t just dislike gab, they think it’s dangerous," Dr. Statistics.

This is actually pretty disheartening honestly, being blocked by other instances is one thing, but everything else solely for political reasoning, especially F-Droid, is further evidence of diminishing integrity in this space.

Or, just a different sort of integrity than you had in mind.

I wonder if you can always say this about anything, replacng the operative word “integrity” here with whatever

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_discord

I honestly think that is the cause of half of arguments that occur, not that the same people wouldn't disagree even if they paid attention to this, but it's certainly where they seem to get stuck.

And that sort of integrity is... what? Only supporting speech that you agree with?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Ah, this again.

People who are intolerant only to the intolerant are intolerant, period. And if they consider themselves tolerant, they are also a hypocrites.

Ah good old bastardised Voltaire

I think many people are perfectly content with being called intolerant, if that's what it takes for others to understand nuance. There is nothing wrong with not supporting hateful jerks and bigots.

Toleration doesn't imply support. That's the whole point of toleration.

Allowing these groups to use your software and platform literally supports their operation. And again, it's perfectly fine to call this intolerance.

Well yes. But if say Nazi Germany were annexing Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and finally France, should the USA do something about it?

Because popular opinion in the 1940s (even after France's collapse into pro-German "Vichy France") was "Stay neutral and don't join the war". That is to say, we were "tolerating" the events and trying to keep our hands clean of it, and we ultimately only joined after Pearl Harbor forced our hand.

-----------

Its not hypothetical. There were other groups who "tolerated" the Nazis. IIRC, its a common criticism of the Catholic church for not going more anti-Nazi than they did (they were more neutral as well). Hard to criticize them IMO when the US tried to be neutral for so long though!

Eventually, there's a line that is crossed and we must become "intolerant" of other people's actions. Nazi Germany is perhaps the last example where the country truly unified itself against that threat, but... even as late as 1941 (well after the fall of France), USA was nominally neutral in the conflict. Was that the correct move? Should we have "Become intolerant" of the Nazis sooner?

---------

Don't believe me? Look up Charles Lindberg (yes, "Spirit of St. Louis" pilot for the first Trans-Atlantic flight). Look up the speeches he gave for the "American First Committee", a popular antiwar group in 1940 and 1941. USA was 100% willing to give up on France and Britain back then, and it was incredibly popular despite the atrocities that continued in Europe.

It all of course changed when Japan made a strategic blunder on December 7th, 1941. But remember: USA was largely reacting to Hitler's rise with a big "should we even care" ?? If it weren't for Japan, I don't think we would have joined the war in earnest.

--------

"Tolerance", keeping neutral, etc. etc. is the wrong answer sometimes. I think we can all look back with shame upon the US's reluctance to kick Hitler's ass. Like, we Americans make fun of Chamberlain's appeasement, but its not like our country did much about the situation until a few years later.

Actually, the US declared war on Germany after Germany declared war on the US.

    12/07/41: Pearl Harbor
    12/08/41: US declares war on Japan
    12/11/41: Germany declares war on US

Funny note: under the Tripartite Pact, because Japan was the aggressor in Pearl Harbor, Germany didn't have to declare war on the USA.

Of course, politics overrides contracts. Hitler wanted close relations with Japan, and gave them his word that Germany had Japan's back on Dec. 4th. So Japan used that to attack the USA (knowing Germany would help). Germany, much like Japan, underestimated the strength of the USA and didn't expect them to be a big deal.

But WW2 could have just had US vs Japan, but kept "neutrality" vs Germany ... if circumstances lined up just right. Apparently there were many German advisors who were trying to push for this scenario, and didn't think Germany had anything to gain for keeping its verbal agreement with Japan. We can imagine an interesting parallel-world where maybe some Advisor managed to convince Hitler of this plan and Germany going down this path instead.

----------

USA wouldn't get first-hand witness accounts / pictures of the Holocaust for years. The Holocaust was happening, but US citizens wouldn't know about it. (The first whispers of the Holocaust were given to the US State department in 1942, but were written off/ignored)

New York Times had the Holocaust discussed on its 10th page in December 1942. (Not even front-page material). So once again, news of this genocide was largely met with a shrug. War-plans to bomb concentration camps were discussed, but pushed out as a low-priority. Some rescues happened, but it was clearly not a focus of the war effort.

I think people greatly underestimate the USA's capability to be isolationist. Yeah, we play the world's policemen at times, but we also don't like doing it.

In any case, by the time our soldiers found the concentration camps and gave first-hand accounts of them... the Holocaust was largely accepted as fact. But we weren't exactly proactive at stopping it.

> Toleration doesn't imply support. That's the whole point of toleration.

Except that in this case we're seeing people who feel entitled to everyone else's support demanding it under the guise of tolerance.

Think about it. We're talking about a federated self-hosting social networking service, and how a group renowned for a political leaning that lies somewhere between authoritarian and full-blown fascist, not to mention the significant amount of racism, is not benefiting from being able to freely connect to each and any node made available by anyone in the world. It's not tolerance that's being expected, but benefiting from having free access to everyone else's services.

Why would any sane person be tolerant to intolerant people? If you wish I were gone, why would I enable you in any way?

Because there is no principled way to draw the line.

One side says not using someone's preferred pronouns is intolerant to their gender identity. The other side says being forced to use them is intolerant to their religious beliefs. Now what? Tie goes to the one with the most guns?

If you don't allow censorship, nobody gets censored. If you do allow censorship, there will always be somebody who wants to censor you.

Well, I'd argue that the one imposing on others more loses.

Proselytizing religions have no moral leg to stand on from an imposition point of view.

Plus, let's be honest here, your example is just people being jerks with each other. The real debates are about physical harm, economic harm, etc., in which case it's far less fuzzy figuring out who's wrong.

> Well, I'd argue that the one imposing on others more loses.

In which case the party trying to impose censorship always loses.

> The real debates are about physical harm, economic harm, etc., in which case it's far less fuzzy figuring out who's wrong.

Nobody is talking about laws against violence or monopolization. Charging someone with a crime for beating you with a billy club is not censorship.

> Well, I'd argue that the one imposing on others more loses.

For the preferred pronoun question, which one is more imposing? Getting other people to call you by your preferred pronoun, or refusing to call people by their preferred pronoun? You can make plausible arguments for either side.

For one, if my name is Joe and you don't call me Joe, that's highly insulting. I doubt there's any culture in the world where it's not.

What do religions say about pronouns?

>One side says not using someone's preferred pronouns is intolerant to their gender identity. The other side says being forced to use them is intolerant to their religious beliefs. Now what? Tie goes to the one with the most guns?

Except the paradox of tolerance clearly states that simple disagreement isn't intolerance, nor does it prefer censorship in all cases of disagreement, so your scenario isn't a refutation of it:

    In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress
    the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational
    argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly 
    be most unwise.

What the paradox of tolerance considers to be intolerance, and thus open for censorship, are views which do not allow for rational debate, or respect the existence of opposing viewpoints, but which resort to violent suppression of those viewpoints and the people who hold them:

    But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it 
    may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational 
    argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to
    listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer 
    arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

That seems like a clear principled line to me.

This is a classic motte and bailey. The motte is that "intolerance" only means the denunciation of rational argument and calls to violence. The bailey is that this justifies blocking the entire opposition because they are declared to be violent criminals who have abandoned rational argument, or expanding of the definition of "violence" to mean (warning: irony) any rational debate about sacred cows.

>The bailey is that this justifies blocking the entire opposition because they are declared to be violent criminals who have abandoned rational argument, or expansions of the definition of "violence" to mean (warning: irony) any rational debate about sacred cows.

I never made or implied any such claim, you're not arguing in good faith here.

Then your response was a non-sequitur because the context here is that entire platforms are being blocked and the "paradox of tolerance" was put up as a justification.

My response was not a non-sequitur.

You claimed the paradox of tolerance allowed no principled way to draw the line between what should and shouldn't be censored, I quoted the principle as stated verbatim. And rather than make an argument against the paradox of tolerance as written, you decided to switch to ad hominem.

If you want to actually convince anyone of anything, you're going to need to argue against what people actually say and believe, rather than strawmen.

> Because there is no principled way to draw the line.

In this case the line is pretty clear, and very crisp.

You're talking about a political group that advocates overthrowing the results of free and fair elections aimed at subverting a democratic regime by installing a dictatorship whose supporters are very adamant in their embracing of racist world views.

Challenging election results is not the same as “overthrowing elections”. The Democrats literally challenged the election formally in 2000, 2004, and 2016. For anyone keeping track, that is all the recent presidential elections in which they lost. They even had legislators voting against certification. Polls showed that after the 2016 election, most Democrat voters believed (and probably still do) that Russia literally altered the votes of the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton claimed for months that this election was illegitimate. Yet to you, challenging an election result is only a problem now? That seems oddly one-sided.

As for your claims about dictatorships, racist world views, and so on - all of these are vague attacks that generalize an entire half of the country. There’s little evidence to support such claims.

Hillary didn't encourage a coup and all the Democratic candidates were graceful in accepting defeat.

It's one thing to clench your teeth and complain a bit and an entirely different thing to try to overthrow the democratic system in place.

And keep in mind that except for 2004, the popular vote went the other way so for sure there were enough people to send marching on the Capitol.

Any sane person would support free speech principles. Harm from restrictions of free speech far outweighs harm from hate speech, etc.

I wonder if the victims of hate speech would agree with that.

There are no victims of hate speech. There are victims of hate crimes, like murders, rapes and beatings. Speech doesn't cause physical harm, violent actions do. Thus, violent actions must be stopped, not words.

Oh, and if you will claim that speech insites actions, i ask you one thing: who determines what hate is? In Russia, talking about corruption and opposing Putin is extremism and hate speech.

If a mobs screams racist obscenities at someone is that a hate crime?

Screaming anything is not a crime.

Well, that's not true. Death threats are. And my point was that, even though it may not be a crime, there's still someone who would be a victim.

> Well, that's not true.

If you want to argue that some spoken words can be prosecuted in some jurisdictions, chose another opponent. I state my personal opinion that anything spoken should be protected under free speech rights, and even the death threats. Yes, because words do not kill. Killing requires action, and actions must be stopped, not screaming.

You didn't say "shouldn't be a crime" you said "is not a crime". And I'm not saying that words directly kill. I'm saying words have their own power that can absolutely hurt. Speaking words is an action and it can cause harm.

Politicians can declare anything a crime, and same act can be legal and criminal in places spaced 2 meters apart, that's why there is no point arguing about that. Regarding speech "crimes", see my earlier comment about Putin's Russia.

Thus, sane people MUST fight against criminalising any kind of speech, because speech is not a crime. Just like sane people fought against slavery, segregation and Holocaust, all of which were legal.

Are you of the belief that words can never hurt? It wouldn't bother you to have a crowd of protestors making untrue accusations about you loudly and vocally, where your family and employers could hear, ruining your reputations and relationships?

>Any sane person would support free speech principles. Harm from restrictions of free speech far outweighs harm from hate speech, etc.

A reasonable position. And one I, for the most part, support.

However, the other side of that coin is that private actors (i.e., not the government, at least in the US) have free speech rights too. And that includes the right not to allow or support speech on their private property.

As such, if you attempt to force private actors to host/support speech they do no wish to host/support, then you are violating the principles you espouse.

Let's say there is a village somewhere who are not tolerant of X. Let X just be any outsiders, but it can be anything.

I can perfectly tolerate those people - as long as they do not come to my village to tell me what to do, but stay among themself.

It is called live and let live.

Nobody's arguing against your strawman.

If your intolerance is in your own tightly sealed sandbox that doesn't impact me, sure, knock yourself out.

Erm, we are talking here about virtual villages and whether intolerant people should have the right to have one. And since I am sanely tolerant, I say yes.

Even though there exist no tightly sealed boxes and everything is connected to everything in the long run - I do not want to impose my ideology on others, I can tolerate people I despise, as long as they leave me in peace. And my experience is, that they often think like that, too. Except for the fanatics with world conquering motives, sure. But planning for a coup d'etat is no longer free speech btw., but preparation of a crime.

Best to be intolerant to, say, the Taliban, than to the Girls Scout.

Nobody argues with that. Just don't call yourself tolerant if you fight Taliban for their views. It's perfectly normal to NOT be tolerant, but simultaneously claiming to be tolerant is hypocrisy.

The questions is, who decides who is intolerant?

In this scenario Democrats will claim Republicans are being intolerant and vice versa.

I don't know, and in the airless vacuum of a message board debate, that's a good question to noodle about. But in the case of Gab, it's not hard to make the call. Maybe it's more difficult in the case of "Truth" or Parler or MeWe or whatever, but we can all be pretty clear on the intolerance baked into the site on which the Tree of Life shooting was planned and cheerled. Gab is a site where even the person who posts inspirational cat and landscape photos turns out, if you scroll down far enough, to be an overt white supremacist.

The laws shouldn't be different for sites like Gab than they are for sites like Twitter. But in communities based on free association, it's praiseworthy not to associate with Gab.

This whole thing about who draws the lines as to what's acceptable speech is like saying "who decides what a legitimate political party is?" It's a good question. But regardless of the answer to it, we can all agree that the American Nazi Party is not a legitimate political party (or, if it is, we need to change our definition of "legitimacy").

This kind of thinking requires you to absolutely set aside the human ability to make "reasonable" judgments. That free speech is so unassailable that nobody is justified in declaring an expression or utterance to be dangerous. Our justice system is built on setting standards of proof like "reasonable doubt" with the implicit expectation that humans can, in fact, make reasonable judgments and those judgments can be of what is and isn't within their legally protected freedom.

As a reasonable person, I think that overt racism, opposition to public health measures, attacks on voting and democracy and unwillingness to accept responsibility for damage to the environment we all share are simply not reasonable points of view. I think the consensus for what is unreasonable is actually quite a bit narrower than that (no one has ever been deplatformed for climate denial). A lot of pro-Trump forums have devolved into exhortations to violence that lead to a deadly insurrection. No digital platform out there wants to be responsible for something like that and it's not just because of politics.

By all measures you are characterizing something like a 4chan. Why do we put up with 4chan? I suppose they are hilarious that’s why.

Look, the alt-right has a right to spew their bullshit on the internet. I really believe this, and it’s important we protect this right. Now, if we find a case where they coordinated something like the Jan 6 capitol riots, then we also expect places like Gab and Truth to cooperate with authorities.

I’m not sure what the big deal is here. I’m never going there, and I actually never go to 4chan either. If we come to a situation where sites like these don’t cooperate with the law, we’ll handle that. But, give them a chance to exist at least.

Incoming pretentiousness:

I know human beings a little bit. They are bored, and love gossip, and shit talking, and lamenting about something. Every subgroup, subculture, this kind of thing is a cheap escape that many many people enjoy. My own mother (getting super anecdotal now) can’t stop gossiping, her friends can’t, they looove to talk shit about this and that and who.

The alt-right, like the woke-left, love this fight, like a terrible couple that has great sex. And that’s all it is mostly, a bunch of shit talkers.

————-

The vigilance necessary is to see that it doesn’t spill into the streets. I know what I’m advocating for is the precursor to such an event, but I really hope it’s just plain old human nature at work here. A bunch of bored assholes, on both sides, picking on each other in a digital mma fight. Neither can exist without the other. The woke-left needs this Truth app to exist.

The law says we can't ban or enjoin gab or 4chan over what they allow on their platform. It doesn't say platforms are obligated to host it.

>As a reasonable person, I think that overt racism, opposition to public health measures, attacks on voting and democracy and unwillingness to accept responsibility for damage to the environment we all share are simply not reasonable points of view.

That's a reasonable position to take, IMHO.

However, that position is irrelevant to the law in the US. In the US, the government (except in very narrow circumstances[0]) may not censor or restrict speech.

However, private actors are not restricted from censoring or restricting speech on their private property.

That's how the law in the US works. If someone doesn't like it, they can try to get the law changed. For those who advocate that, good luck -- you're gonna need it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

For one, exhortations to violence are an explicit exception to free speech. And secondly the amendment only prevents laws being passed to prevent speech. Not private businesses from disallowing content.

Actually there are a lot of restrictions and requirements when it comes to speech on private property. For example telecommunication services are treated as common carriers and must allow speech to transit even if they disagree with it. It is clear that big tech platforms behave more like utilities and should be regulated like common carriers. In this case with an open source project restricting use via its license, maybe that’s not applicable. But I would argue that F-droid, as a platform with network effects, should be subject to the same requirement to not censor.

>It is clear that big tech platforms behave more like utilities and should be regulated like common carriers.

The operative term there is "should." I don't agree (and not for the reasons you probably think), but if you think that's how it should be, I respect that.

But that's not the law here in the US. As I said, [i]f someone doesn't like it, they can try to get the law changed. For those who advocate that, good luck -- you're gonna need it.

Edit: Clarified my thoughts about current law and the likelihood of changing it.

> As a reasonable person, I think that overt racism, opposition to public health measures, attacks on voting and democracy and unwillingness to accept responsibility for damage to the environment we all share are simply not reasonable points of view.

One of these things is extraordinarily not like the others.

You don’t think it’s reason to have debate about public health measures.

That is definitely something I strongly disagree with. Now look, I’m double mRNA vaccinated against COVID19, and I gently advocate for others to do so.

Do I think governments should mandate COVID19 vaccination? Absolutely not, and there’s a massive amount of health debate to back up my, what I consider, reasonable position.

I’m Australian, so found this podcast between Canadian psychologist Jordan B. Peterson and former Australian Deputy Prime Minister from 1999 to 2005 John Anderson, intellectual heavyweights railing against mandatory vaccination and lockdowns particularly relevant

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-jordan-b-peterson-...

Your proposition is that I shouldn’t be able to listen to two people have such a conversation. My government should ban this sort of dialogue?

That is an absurd position.

At the beginning of the pandemic the Spanish authorities literally said that masks not only were not useful but they could be harmful because they gave a false safety feeling.

Since then it has been proved over and over again that masks, even when misused, stop the spreading of the virus.

So I absolutely agree with you. We should be able to question them.

Any medical intervention has a non-zero risk of being a net negative now or in the future.

It should be self evident governments should be very conservative in mandating medical treatment, and for very obvious historical reasons.

The odds are that mandating covid vaccination starting in the first month of availability would have saved somewhere between thousands and hundreds of thousands of lives including vulnerable individuals who died despite vaccination.

I don't agree that you shouldn't be able to have that conversation but I don't think its a hard argument that people ought to have been forced to vaccinate. People would have freaked out and still be bitching today but they would be alive.

I think you’re deeply misunderstanding something here.

Nothing good can ultimately come from that sort of scenario.

What it directly results in is a massive mistrust of government authority.

Make the vaccine available at no cost to the individual, and it’s effectiveness data available for scrutiny. That’s the only justifiable course in my opinion.

This more forceful approach has considerable long term negative consequences on trust in government authority that will most certainly have arse-biting consequences for those who wield this power.

It’s an idiotic way to wield power and trust.

Stupidity.

My wife is vulnerable despite vaccination. I would venture to guess most people have a relationship with someone who is thus. I would happily sacrifice your freedom for her life. Given a completely free choice I would venture to guess we would ultimately have 60% of those over 18 and 35% under 18 by preference.

If 74% are over 18 the most we could reasonably hope for is around 53% of the population vaccinated despite the data being overwhelmingly in favor of vaccination. If we make it challenging to work or go to school we might hope for 80-90% ultimately based on only 9% being dead set against vaccination no matter what according to pew.

In such an environment my family will be vastly safer. When your health choices aren't a reasoned choice but an expression of political fealty I give it less weight.

They are free. And the data is published. Been that way since the start. You're not accounting for the relentless disinformation being spread. That's the whole point of this thread.

No I'm not saying that. Obviously not all policies are above reproach but you know full well that a lot of opposition is based purely on disinformation. "Government mandate of COVID-19" is hopefully a typo but vaccine mandates for government employees is well within their right as are the myriad private mandates. The efficacy and safety of the various approved vaccines are well studied and the benefits to everyone far outweigh the dangers. Anyone spreading deliberately incorrect information like covid is fake or vaccines cause autism (remember that one?) are simply not reasonable.

And Jordan Peterson is a professional snowflake who makes fragile white males feel good about themselves. He is supposedly trained in psychology and has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to epidemiology but is unencumbered by his lack of expertise due to his monumental ego.

Fixed, thanks.

You’re misrepresenting my argument.

I’m not arguing an anti-vaccine stance.

I’m arguing that forcible mandates (get it or lose your job) is a preposterous method to convince an already doubting person. Note, I’m not the person that needs convincing, I’ve already had two doses and am now actively asking when I can have a third.

The goal isn't to convince. It's to keep your workers safe. My company nearly revolted to get the CEO to put a mandate in place because the vast majority didn't want to be in an office with unvaccinated people.

I think philosophers have done an amazing job [1] already but in the end each individual and community will have to decide for themselves; there's really no alternative.

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration/

I don't know, I see plenty of users unironically defending ideologies like communism in Mastodon.

They seem to tolerate some specific kinds of intolerance.

Please don't post canned arguments to HN. They point to super-repetitive/generic places, and those usually get nasty, as indignation rushes in to fill the curiosity vacuum.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Are you saying you disagree with the US Constitution and Supreme Court?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

Free speech starts at home, wouldn't you agree?

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-tr...

1. What does gab have to do with "truth social"? From a skim of the article it doesn't look like they're related, aside from them both being right wing social media apps.

2. being a hypocrite is bad, sure, but I don't see how it's a "get out of jail free card" when it comes to having integrity. If your principle is "always tell the truth", and you encounter a pathological liar that calls other people out for lying, does that mean you can suddenly start lying to the guy and still claim you're a man of integrity?

> What does gab have to do with "truth social"? From a skim of the article it doesn't look like they're related, aside from them both being right wing social media apps.

It's a proto-fascist/full-blown fascist political movement that advocates the subversion of free and democratic elections to install a dictatorship, not to mention the prevalence of racism in their views and policies.

Also, I feel that labeling this particular political movement as merely "right-wing" is a blatant attempt to white-wash extremist views and push for a "us-vs-them" mentality. What this particular political group advocates has absolutely nothing to do with the typical right-wing political tropes of fiscal conservatism, small government, individual freedom. In fact, some of the policies they advocate goes completely against some of these core right-wing values.

>It's a proto-fascist/full-blown fascist political movement that advocates the subversion of free and democratic elections to install a dictatorship, not to mention the prevalence of racism in their views and policies.

That doesn't answer the question. Even they're both doing the same unsavory things, it doesn't follow that you can accuse one of them of being a hypocrite because the other is a hypocrite.

>Also, I feel that labeling this particular political movement as merely "right-wing" is a blatant attempt to white-wash extremist views and push for a "us-vs-them" mentality.

I feel like this violates the HN guidelines:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

For the record, I went with the generic "right wing" label because I wasn't sure whether a more precise label (eg. alt-right) would apply to both. A quick skim of wikipedia confirms this. The page for gab straight up says it's far-right/alt-right, but the page for truth social only has a passing mention of it being "alt-tech" in the reception section.

You're trying way too hard to ascribe malice where there isn't any.

> That doesn't answer the question. Even they're both doing the same unsavory things, it doesn't follow that you can accuse one of them of being a hypocrite because the other is a hypocrite.

You're being disingenuous if you're trying to pretend that Gab and Truth Social's targeted userbase, and the political movement driving their adoption, is not the same.

Just to make it very clear, Gab was the social networking service initially adopted by this proto-fascist/fascist political movement to serve as a stopgap solution to being kicked out of Twitter due to their prevalence of hatespeech and disinformation, as well as supporting a coup to overthrow a democratically elected government to install a dictatorship.

The same political movement is now organizing themselves to adopt their leader's Mastodon-based social networking service, Truth Social, as the official social networking service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_use_by_Donald_Tru...

> I feel like this violates the HN guidelines:

Care to point out which guidelines?

> For the record, I went with the generic "right wing" label because I wasn't sure whether a more precise label

It's not a matter of precision, it's a matter of trying to whitewhash extremist political movements by bundling them with mainstream innocuous political groups, particularly when they have barely any ideological common ground.

>You're being disingenuous if you're trying to pretend that Gab and Truth Social's targeted userbase, and the political movement driving their adoption, is not the same.

I am? What makes you think that?

>The same political movement is now organizing themselves to adopt their leader's Mastodon-based social networking service, Truth Social, as the official social networking service.

Okay, but what does that have to do with accusations of hypocrisy? If marxist group #1 is complaining about getting deplatformed/supressed, and why does marxist group #2's moderation policies invalidate their concern?

>Care to point out which guidelines?

I literally quoted them.

>It's not a matter of precision, it's a matter of trying to whitewhash extremist political movements by bundling them with mainstream innocuous political groups, particularly when they have barely any ideological common ground.

Again, you're ascribing malicious intent where there isn't any. Not every commenter who mislabels that political movement is doing so as part of a conscious effort to "whitewash extremism".

If the question you want answered is

> What does gab have to do with "truth social"? From a skim of the article it doesn't look like they're related, aside from them both being right wing social media apps.

They were both formed as a response to prominent users being kicked off of other platforms, they both forked Mastodon, and they're both having bumpy launches for similar reasons. Regardless of what argument you're making, it seems perfectly reasonable to bring up Gab as part of the conversation. If we were talking about Rivian trucks, I don't think it would be off topic to mention Tesla.

[originally replied to the wrong comment; reposted here]

>Regardless of what argument you're making, it seems perfectly reasonable to bring up Gab as part of the conversation.

It is? I took the comment to argue something along the lines of "well they're hypocrites, therefore it's totally okay to censor them in return". For that to work, you'd need them to be the same entity. Having two sites that operate independently, and having separate policies doesn't seem hypocritical to me. In that context, bringing up gab is a total red herring.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28962107

I'm likely confused. The next parent above your question that mentions Gab is currently this one:

> Gab also used Mastodon but they don't anymore anymore. They did run as a Mastodon instance[1], but after being blocked from most instances and even at the software level by most Mastodon apps, they stopped using Mastodon and wrote their own new backend that does not federate.

...which seems like a pretty plain statement of facts? Is there some encoded animosity there I'm missing? The comment you replied to was a link to a Rolling Stone article that also doesn't mention Gab. (As an aside, I think Rolling Stone is a terrible source of news or information).

Whoops, I got the two companies confused. My original objection was with this comment[1], which was talking about the moderation policies of another company, truth social. That part seemed irrelevant to me, because the moderation policies of one site (truth social) shouldn't make the grievances of another site (gab) less valid.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28962107

There's an idea floating in some internet circles that because you aren't tolerant of some speech you disagree with, you're assumed to not be tolerant of all speech you disagree with. It is quite obviously fallacious.

The definition of integrity literally includes "consistent and uncompromising adherence".

>Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values.

It's hard to say you're consistent and uncompromising, if you make exceptions and compromise when it's convenient/beneficial for you.

Strong is not the same thing as absolute. One of my strong ethical values is that neo-nazis and fascists should be deplatformed to the greatest extent possible.

>Strong is not the same thing as absolute

"strong" is a modifier for "moral and ethical principles and values", not for "consistent and uncompromising adherence". If you swore to support and defend the constitution, and then subsequently violated it to torture terrorists, I doubt you'd be called a man of integrity. This applies even if your other "strong ethical values" is "protecting the american people", or that you think that "terrorists are really bad people so they totally deserve it".

>One of my strong ethical values is that neo-nazis and fascists should be deplatformed to the greatest extent possible.

I have a feeling that's not the ethical value that OP was talking about, nor was it the ethical value f-droid founders had in mind when creating it.

Freedom of speech should include the freedom to not speak on behalf of others. And then there’s freedom of association, which one might consider far more fundamental — it’s what you lose when you go to jail.

Indeed. There's nothing in the F-Droid Inclusion Policy that covers the removal of Gab.

Considering that it's a list of what _can_ be included, this just seems like a rhetorical blowfish.

What do you mean?

you could alternately classify their reasoning as 'basic humanity' rather than political. When we are discussing the value or humanity of certain groups the discussion goes well beyond the label of 'political'

but everything else solely for basic humanity reasoning...doesn't have the same ring.

Tearing down freedom of speech values doesn't scream pro-humanity to me, but I'm sure the project has justified it to themselves using some political arguments.

Freedom of speech has always included the right to choose not to give a platform to speech with which you disagree. Compelled speech by definition is not free speech.

The ACLU has repeatedly defended the KKK and other white supremacists. The premier free speech organization disagrees with you.

Defending their right to free speech isn't the same as providing a platform for it, so I'm not sure what point you're making.

The ACLU sued in order to force the local government to allow the marches to take place. They were quite literally demanding that a platform (the city streets) be provided for the speech they wanted to have.

The First Amendment prevents governments' ability to abridge the freedom of speech, not private citizens.

As a private citizen, I do not have to allow the KKK a platform on my property, nor would I have to publish their speech as the owner of a newspaper, or broadcast it as the owner of a television station.

>The ACLU sued in order to force the local government to allow the marches to take place. They were quite literally demanding that a platform (the city streets) be provided for the speech they wanted to have.

Operative terms: Government and City streets.

In the US, the government may not restrict you from speaking (with some very narrow exceptions). City streets are public and under the control of the government.

F-Droid is not a government. Nor is its private property (its servers and infrastructure) in any way public.

As such, your analogy is flawed.

If what you appear to be advocating were true, I could come to your house, project (duly licensed, of course) gay, midget furry porn on your walls at max volume and you would have no recourse.

Private entities (specifically, those that are not the government) are under no obligation to host or promote the speech of others. And that's a good thing.

If you wish to stand on some sort of principle over this, I'll be by your place later with the foulest legal content I can find.

tl;dr: In the US, restrictions on speech only apply to the government. If you disagree, then you, me and everyone else would have to allow any content (whether you agree with it or not) on your private property.

> The ACLU sued in order to force the local government to allow the marches to take place.

Your examples refer to government not being able to prohibit the exercise of free speech.

Yet, you're using that example to try to justify forcing specific private companies and organizations to provide services to a specific political group, against their own will and even terms of service, just because it's convenient to the political group and it suits their political goals.

This line of reasoning also sounds very hypocritical given that said political group has been advocating for the right of said private companies and organizations to deny service based on political views, and going as far as publicly praising the companies that enforce that blend of politically-motivated denial of service.

The argument you are arguing with is predicated now on what free-speech is it isn’t but on situating one side as the victim of free speech crimes. It is a typical fascist argument that is characteristic of pretty much every version of fascist ideology that has come into existence

> The argument you are arguing with is predicated now on what free-speech is it isn’t but on situating one side as the victim of free speech crimes.

No, not really. I've pointed out the mistake of conflating the right to free speech, as in the governments not being allowed to stop people from expressing their ideas and opinions without fear of retaliation, with the privilege of using (and abusing) someone else's services or infrastructure to advance your political ideals.

Convenience and rights are not the same thing, and not being able to benefit from the services provided by someone else does not mean your right to free speech is infringed upon.

To put it differently, just because you can say whatever you want that doesn't give you the right to grab someone else's megaphone to do it.

Clarifying…we agree

You are trying to explain this point to someone who’s entire belief structure relies on not understanding it.

You are right, damn right, but I’ve learned it’s not worth your time.

>"who’s entire belief structure relies on not understanding it."

That's rather pompous, how do you know your interpretation / understanding is objectively correct and theirs is objectively wrong? Why is your personal understanding the correct one that other people are unable to grasp?

When it comes to platforms, meaning something with a network effect and limited equivalent substitutes, the difference between a government and a private service is academic at best. The reality is both can have lots of power and influence and the impact of their limits on civil liberties such as the freedom of speech are similar. Your interpretation of that freedom seems to stop at what the first amendment provides. But freedom of speech is a much more fundamental concept.

> Defending their right to free speech isn't the same as providing a platform for it

I have no mouth, and I must scream.

You can still download the app, it's not banned from your phone.

Some people just don't want to sell it in their store.

You can't force people to sell your shit in their store.

I don't really see what this debate is even about?

> You can't force people to sell your shit in their store.

I think this is actually the crux of it. Almost all communication now takes place on privately owned platforms in applications with curated availability. Metaphors comparing it to someone else's store (or someone in thread mentioned protests on your own lawn) are useless. They are so far removed that they aren't even wrong.

Why? Because there is vanishingly less space for public speech/press. We have a problem where what we mostly agree is a human right is now heavily under the control of private interests, and you are not going to like it when the pendulum swings the other way.

they've actually stopped doing this recently because they're getting "canceled" via loss of donations every time they do. people don't want defenders of freedom of speech anymore. they want internet points for virtue signaling.

Freedom of speech is with respect to the state, not other people. If you can show that these platforms are acting on behalf of the state — sure. But, I suspect they’re not.

You could declare that the only way to show basic humanity is to precisely agree with the political zeitgeist in the correct left-wing circles and that the only reason to disagree with any of their political prescriptions is becaues you see certain groups as subhuman. I've seen plenty of activists do so; in a lot of circles it seems to be mandatory in order to actually be seen as human. Of course, there's the small problem that often the members of those groups don't actually support the political prescription, that it destroys the ability to actually challenge the people pushing those political views - who, by definition, have substantial power compared to the minorities they're claiming to help - and that it's lead to horrendous bigotry like TERFism. But that's not worth contemplating, because to qustion the righteousness of all this is to ignore the humanity of the people we conveniently don't have to listen to if it gets in our way.

Your comments have many characteristics of a bad faith argument, for example confusing well defined and easy to separate concepts in an effort to create ambiguity. The best way to address a bad faith argument is to label it as such and not engage with it because it is not a meaningful contribution to discourse about a topic. That’s what I’m gonna do from here on out, and I suggest other, Commenters do the same.

There is no reasonable confusion between compelling an individual to host speech and preventing the government from interfering by with individuals speech. I suspect you know that.

Freedom of association also implies freedom to disassociate with people you don't like ;)

That was achieved by the instance level blocking. Clients breaking protocol to antagonize instances the developers don't like and F-Droid arbitrarily kicking apps despite them following the inclusion policy is where this breaks down.

Nonsense. F-Droid kicking apps is still freedom of association, as is Clients changing their protocol. They are also run by entities that have freedom of association.

Just as you have the freedom to not use those apps if you don't like them.

If I was the developer of a chat client app, I certainly wouldn't want to see screenshots with my app branding in them alongside alt-right content and I would do the same to prevent it from being used for such things.

I will point out that Facebook has just as abhorrent discourse yet the third party clients for it still exist on F-Droid. Which of course they should, F-Droid is a platform that encourages the proliferation of free and open source software. To block access to an open source Facebook client would be antithetical to it's mission.

Yet when a rising social media company chooses to deliberately use an open source project as their first party platform, this is when F-Droid decides an exception has to be made? I thought we wanted the world to embrace FOSS, but apparently not.

To the extent that Facebook does have such discourse (and it does), it's mostly failure in their implementation of their community standards policy, not a laissez-faire community standards policy.

F-Droid doesn't need to be consistent or explain their desire to dissociate in any way (legally speaking).

So let's speculate: perhaps they agree with you that Facebook has abhorrent discourse but also felt that FB had some beneficial content as well so decided to not ban it not to mention it's popularity. Association with Gab clearly provided no such benefits.

Legally speaking F-Droid can do a lot of things, but the law has no bearing on the discussion of whether it was the right thing to do, if it will help with FOSS adoption or finally if they are somehow absolved from criticism for their inconsistent and politically biased policy enforcement.

I see no reason why we should restrict FOSS adoption to only people within an arbitrary and unrelated political sphere. Everyone wins when everyone is using FOSS, even the people we don't like. Unfortunately F-Droids decision on this matter hurts FOSS adoption from conservatives who will only continue to associate FOSS with the left-wing.

So as an opinion between F-Droid team vs. a random Internet forum poster, one could be reasonable in trusting F-Droid team on what would promote FOSS.

Sophist nonsense, I am critiquing them on a public forum for breaking their own policies and for what I perceive as harm to the FOSS movement. If you choose to rely on vague trust in authorities in lieu of an actual discussion, then don't reply at all.

>If I was the developer of a chat client app...

How about if you were the developer of a web browser?

This exists currently. Many web browsers block third-party cookies. I say, let the developers develop as they must, let the users use as they must, and let us all be free to choose.

Personally, I find it very annoying that clients block these alt-right instances. It feels like a layering violation.

You are not entitled to use F-Droid's distribution network, anymore than they are entitled to be installed on your phone.

It's really disappointing to hear F-Droid is just as censorious as the Google Play Store. I guess I assumed they'd be beyond the politicization of Google policies.

You are not entitled to use F-Droid's or Google's distribution network, anymore than they are entitled to be installed on your phone.

Why? Most of the junk gab is famous for would get you banned here on HN too. Content moderation is... just content moderation. Gab has an absolute right under the first amendment to be able to speak. No one has an obligation to repeat what they say.

> Gab has an absolute right under the first amendment to be able to speak.

Gab has an absolute right under the first amendment to be able to speak most of the time without government intervention.

ftfy. Speech is not unlimited. Freedom of speech only applies regarding government censorship.

Freedom of speech is the concept, and 1st amendment is an implementation. The maximal possible implementation given the rest of constitution that came before it. So it's not just government in principle, only in practice.

At best, it's against government intervention and in public spaces.

If you come to my house and start shouting nonsense you will be very unceremoniously and quite authoritarianly be kicked out and not much anyone can do about that :-)

It's a fun metaphor but there are so many ways in which it does not apply to the topic at hand. This isn't about an individuals autonomy on their own property, it's more about a societal contract and expectations over civil liberties / human rights. Comparing it to kicking people out of your house is not even on the same level.

I like to say that the Eight Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment likewise only applies to the government.

Freedom of speech is an ethical value. The first amendment is a legal element.

Homosexuality used to be banned in the name of "decency" too.

"We have to platform Nazis because otherwise bad things will happen to gay people" is not an especially compelling approach, given that Nazis won't grant gay people the same rights if they do ever take power.

If sane people are in power, we can simply protect gay rights.

If fascists are in power, they won't hesitate to take rights away from people they don't like.

If Trump was re-elected tomorrow, do you want him to have these same powers? Do you trust your political opponents to use these same powers wisely?

Humans are terrible arbiters of truth. The Hunter Biden laptop story was censored and now it's been confirmed. Was that "good" censorship?

No man is fit to play the censor, regardless political party. Even Biden was anti-gay until the Obama administration and that was well past when many of us were arguing for LGBT acceptance and equality.

> If Trump was re-elected tomorrow, do you want him to have these same powers?

Uh... what powers? There's no government action at work here. We're talking about the refusal of a bunch of Mastodon services to federate with Gab. I wouldn't expect that to change at all under a different administration, precisely because the first amendment severely constrains the government's ability to regulate speech. Trump can't make Mastodon clients carry Gab any more than Biden can force them to ban it, and for exactly the same reason.

> The Hunter Biden laptop story was censored and now it's been confirmed.

This one I thought was hilarious. That story was covered full time for like six weeks on the most watched news network in the country! "Censored", pfft.

I don’t believe that Trump particularly cares about what I think.

This is the entire point of my argument. “But we didn’t censor you when we were in power” is not a real argument because people will just say “tough shit” and throw you in prison.

We were talking about F-Droid removing Gab from their platform. This has nothing to do with Trump/Biden/politics at all.

Freedom of speech has utility for 2 reasons:

- It's the best method for approaching truth (for several reasons, one being challenge)

- It allows disputes to be settled ("fought" might be a better term:) without recourse to violence.

If Nazis are willing to fight their corner without using violence then I'm happy because their arguments are easily beaten (hence, why they needed to use violence to gain power in the past).

The problem that social media companies have wrought is not giving people too much free speech, it's siloing opposing views away from each other because it makes some people uncomfortable. Without challenge, speech becomes dangerous, it is not free it is restricted. It's essentially a form of blasphemy law, its effects are just the same, but now we can have several different streams of negative thought growing unchallenged alongside each other because social media has been chopped up into silos.

Insane people can't get into power as long as they can be challenged, that requires free speech. As long as these silos exist there is not free speech and we are in greater danger of insane or authoritarian government.

Nazis are only willing to fight without violence (generally) now because they currently aren’t able to use violence without retaliation. I don’t believe that this “commitment to non-violence” would hold any sway whatsoever were they to hold real power.

I also think it is just observably false that insane people cannot get into power if there is sufficient speech to resist them.

You don't have to trust their commitment to non-violence, it's beside the point. As long as they are being non-violent and as long as we all have free speech then whatever problems National Socialism might bring if implemented cannot come to pass.

> I also think it is just observably false that insane people cannot get into power if there is sufficient speech to resist them.

You might provide an example.

> Nazis are only willing to fight without violence (generally) now

Er, Nazis keep fighting with violence recently, so I’m not convinced that this is accurate at all.

This is true, but I’m trying to give the poster a steel man since I don’t really think that nazis behaving nicely is a justification for platforming hate speech.

You haven't steel manned anything - which part was the steel man? Was it this?

> Nazis are only willing to fight without violence (generally) now because they currently aren’t able to use violence without retaliation.

So what? That doesn't affect my argument in the slightest (as I've already pointed out[1]). I won't be taking up your offer of taking the strongest interpretation of my argument, thanks, because you're either creating a straw man (how ironic) or you've misunderstood the argument presented.

Further, I would suggest that if someone were really steel manning an argument they wouldn't be telling others about it, they'd have continued to respond to the challenges put to them. I don't see such a continuance. What could you be waiting for?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28965174

> Nazis keep fighting with violence recently

Where? And if so, what relevance does that have to those that refrain from violence? If the United States government sanctions an attack by its forces does that make all United States citizens liable for retaliation? If some Muslims commit an act of terror does this mean that all Muslims must be held accountable for those acts?

Or do we, quite rightly, separate out those who commit violent acts from those who don't?

Most of the stuff Reddit is famous for would also get you banned here.

> but everything else solely for political reasoning, especially F-Droid, is further evidence of diminishing integrity in this space.

Supposedly F-Droid is 'Free software' but also violated the first freedom on how a user should user their software as they wish.

So does that mean F-Droid is NOT free software and on top of that FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, Mastodon or Matrix clients should also not be packaged because there are bad actors on those platforms who are harassing other users?

Oh dear.

There are some big misconceptions about FOSS software here. F-Droid is FOSS, this means that the source code for both the client and server are available, can be copied, modified, and used by anyone for any purpose.

This does not mean that f-droid.org and the official f-droid android app — a particular installation and distribution of the software has to do… well anything really outside of complying with the license terms [1]. That’s kinda the point. They’re not obligated to host any content they don’t want for any reason no matter how inconsistent, they’re allowed to build or not build additional features as they see fit, and provide or refuse service to anyone — at least as far as the license is concerned.

Absolutely no software freedoms were violated by fdroid.

[1] And even then since they’re also the copyright holders they technically don’t even have to do that.

F-Droid's repository excludes several projects because it might cause them trouble. For example, they block forks of the Signal client that connects to Signal's servers, a violation of Signal's TOS but not F-Droid's.

Hosting projects in their repository causes work for them and they are right to exercise pragmatism in what they choose to host. There's more freedom with F-Droid than Google Play, because F-Droid allows its users to use rival repositories as well as its own.

I wasn’t aware that F-droid banned Gab. That is very disappointing. I am not sure why I need F-droid if they’re going to practice the same censorship and political bias that the walled gardens of big tech offers.

Depends on the rationale. I hope they'd block people who are violating free software licenses

F-Droid allows you to add your own repositories! I think that's the best of both worlds - you're free to add whatever software sources you like, and F-Droid's not obligated to host content they disagree with, and it all works together nicely in one place.

What does that mean exactly? I could install F-Droid and add the Gab repository, and then install gab via that?

Yep, that's the idea! I don't know if Gab ended up making a F-Droid repository though, they said they were going to but the tweet seems to have been removed

One of these days I'll have to look into that, to finally escape from Google :-/

>I am not sure why I need F-droid

i can only speak for myself but i'm always glad to support competition and open platforms and if they throw racists off their platform that's a plus for me

Many economic and software freedom related things wrong with proprietary stores or Google but that they deplatform reactionaries isn't one of them as far as i'm concerned

It seems you’re against people having a freedom to express themselves and exchange ideas. Historically denying this freedom accompanies authoritarian societies where propaganda and echo chambers make it seem like these actions are virtuous when they are actually not. Even the word “reactionary” is pejorative and was used widely in Soviet Russia and in China during the cultural revolution. Isn’t it better to let ideas be heard and debated even if controversial or disagreeable?

I was under the impression that they still used Mastodon and that's why they publish their source: https://code.gab.com/gab/gab-open-source

Is that wrong?

It's pretty hilarious that they publish their source code in a single 21 MB ZIP file checked into a git repository.

You'll find this often – lots of SoHo routers comply with GPL2 by tossing a tarball of the software they run on a crusty FTP site somewhere. Download it and pop it open and you'll often find README.txt and a .tar.bz2 of Linux 2.6 whose SHA matches what you'll find on kernel.org... because they didn't actually modify any GPL2 code.

Compliance doesn't mean they don't have to make it easy for you ;)

And often, a giant .patch near it for the vendor modifications.

What’s hilarious about that? Seems like a pretty simple way to do it. Especially for a file that isn’t going to be downloaded enough to require a real CDN.

It's just funny because they're removing it from a source code repo, packaging it up into a zip, and adding it to another source code repo. If they didn't mind including the change history they could've just published the code as-is as a clone. If they did want to strip the change history they could've published it as a shallow clone or an artifact. But instead they chose to push a ZIP file into a repo with a single branch. I guess at least they'll have a history of their ZIP files.

That assumes they _have_ a source code repo. For all we know maybe it's just random files on some person's hard drive with no source control…

They do have it. They used to publish it. Then someone found a vulnerability in a commit of theirs (6e42e3b1eca73c306db1580719a3a1bfb715f6d8 if you're interested in looking it up in a mirror), exploited it, and took all data Gab ever had.

This current approach is just a deliberate obfuscation in an attempt for it not to repeat. By just providing a zip you can't really look at their changes on top of Mastodon with git log, you have to put in slightly more effort.

You are already using Github. Someone tells you you need to publish exactly the source code that your company's deploying. The repo containing that code is not on Github. The easiest way to get ahold of that code, with any certainty that it's exactly what's actually running, but nothing else, is to grab the archive that's sent to the production servers for deployment.

Here you are with a hammer, and a screw. You just need to get this done so you can go back to doing the dozen other things you'd hoped to get done this week. You could find some file hosting somewhere. You could unzip the file. You could do a lot of things. But here's this hammer, and here's this screw. You already have the hammer. It's free. You don't even need to walk across the room to get it, you're already holding it.

BANG, BANG, BANG. OK, good enough, next task.

I posted this yesterday in the Mastodon discussion, but the thread had long since lost its steam, so I'll put it here in hopes of an answer:

Are there any actively maintained Activitypub/Mastodon clients that don't integrate their own blacklists? Someone recommended Husky to me, but it's been dead for a minute.

I think Fedilab doesn't block any but haven't confirmed yet.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

fork, modify, and recompile. Not sure why this question needs to get asked so much.

I'm definitely not a supporter of Gab, but this is pretty disappointing. Imagine if a web browser blocked certain websites on this level.

Yeah. If people don't have a problem with gab being blocked on fdroid for essentially dressed-up political reasons, then they also shouldn't have a problem with the play store or apple's app store blocking stuff for political reasons.

This doesn't follow unless you allow the sneaking in of the idea that all political positions must be granted the same affordances regardless of their character. I will not allow that sneaking-in because the idea is nonsense. It's quite reasonable to criticize a company for treating gay people poorly and to also nod in approval when they tell fascists to leave and to not let the door hit them on the way out.

It's also not meaningfully inconsistent for one to do the reverse, but it's telling on yourself.

> all political positions must be granted the same affordances regardless of their character

Sneaking in? That's my point, plain and simple. If anything, you're sneaking in the implication that it's a shameful thing to claim, so I have to "sneak it in".

There's this idea that we should respect the opinions of others, and even defend their right to express them, no matter if we disagree ourselves. In my mind, it's a matter of intellectual honesty. It does seem telling that you might disagree.

Platforming fascists is shameful, yes. It does require a sneaking in of a profound false equivalency to let that kind of assertion stand and I refuse to do so. It, like the fascists in question, can get right out of a functioning body politic, because if it doesn't it won't be functioning much longer.

What will bring down a functioning body politic is the prohibition of unapproved speech. That's what you're advocating.

That is a mendacious lie. You can say what you want, even if it pleases you to empower fascists. I can use my freedom of association to have nothing to do with you or your fellow travelers with similar sympathies. That is how a functioning body politic works.

> you or your fellow travelers with similar sympathies

You seem to have this idea that I'm fascist. Could you give some reference where I said anything that supports this?

The privileged position the Play Store and the App Store have WRT their respective platforms (the App Store in particular) make a fairly strong argument in favor of requiring them to behave as 'common carriers' for apps, but even an extreme version of that view has little to say about a 3rd-party store like fdroid, which really is just one publisher among many.

> Yeah. If people don't have a problem with gab being blocked on fdroid for essentially dressed-up political reasons, then they also shouldn't have a problem with the play store or apple's app store blocking stuff for political reasons.

I actually don't. They're private businesses and it's clearly true that they already do whatever the heck they want.

My problem is that they make it hard for people to opt in to alternative marketplaces. That is what should be fixed.

But that's not what happened at all - you can add custom repositories to F-Droid and use them just fine, just like you can use a web browser to visit other websites. It would be more like if Google kicked them off of Blogspot but you could still use Chrome to visit their website.

It's more like: the website is blocked, but you can go to about:config, set some obscure boolean flag, and then you can access the website.

I disagree - I think we've pushed the website metaphor a bit too far anyway. Let's compare it to a more similar application, the apt package manager. It's a reasonable to debate, but I think a legitimate position for Ubuntu or Debian to not include Gab in their main repository, but allow you to add it as a PPA if you want.

If they installed and configured Mastodon they can link Mastodon's repo and let people access the code there.

If they made some changes they have to let people access their code, a git repo or a tarball, anything will do.

> I invented that network source code disclosure provision of the AGPL — the copyleft license later applied to the Mastodon software &mdash:

This is just perfect.

The blog post much like the FSF, is far less interested in an end result that works, and far more interested in threatening / filing lawsuits. In that they have a social platform not many people use but a lot of people are talking about filing a lawsuit about, and a blog post about the issue that doesn't render html character codes properly but also talks a lot about hypothetical lawsuits.

Never change, guys.

I'll give you the html character thing, that's a bit sloppy.

But "far more interested in threatening / filing lawsuits" couldn't be further from the truth. Check out how short the list of past lawsuits is at https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/past-lawsuits.....

If you read up a bit on software freedom conservancy, you'll notice that threatening / filing lawsuits is something they do as a very last resort.

You'll also notice that when they do file a suit, there are no monetary damages requested, only license compliance (cf. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html).

Honestly, is it that hard to make that thing from scratch? I mean Facebook started by just one student… and he didn’t had the technology available today.

Mastodon (https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/) is built on Rails and appears to have taken 10k+ commits over several years to build. Comparable products include Pleroma (https://github.com/Hostdon/pleroma/), which has 12k+ commits, and Friendica (https://github.com/friendica/friendica) is a bit older, and has about 32k+ commits.

Based on those projects, I'd say the evidence suggests it's a fair amount of work.

My point is, if you focus on the core features. Lets say something like twitter, it seems to be not THAT hard on the backend side. Sure then you optimize your GUI for different devices that may need a bit more work. But I would say a minimal simple version can be done in few months. How long did it take Zuckerberg to create facebook with php again…?

If you begin a software project like this, it's wise to consider the existing solutions. In this case, it looks like something off-the-shelf fit the bill. Why not use it? Why not use their expertise that matured over time? Why repeat rookie mistakes with a home-baked solution? These are the things to consider.

Why not use it? Why not use their expertise that matured over time? Not sure, maybe it is a the right way but maybe you would not be able to move fast forward after the launch.

Why repeat rookie mistakes with a home-baked solution? Actually I think in an early stage it would be good for a team to make some mistakes and to learn. If it really has to compete with facebook or twitter I just don't think that using an open source solution is the right way.

Wow, this is a new form of the "If you want to bake an apple pie, you must first invent the universe" philosophy. Strictly speaking most of those 10k commits don't make progress toward the current state of the repo, and yet they are philosophically essential nonetheless.

> Once caught in the act, Trump's Group scrambled and took the site down.

Did they take the site down because of licensing issue or because it was badly configured, so exposed it to bad actors? I think all evidence points to the latter.

It's interesting that the article admits they weren't meant to have access to the instance, that makes them unauthorised users.

Meaning the users would have been in violation of the computer abuse act.

There seems to be no end to this saga and I'm all out of popcorn.

> I and my colleagues at Software Freedom Conservancy are experts at investigating non-compliance with copyleft license and enforcing those licenses once we confirm the violations. We will be following this issue very closely and demanding that Trump's Group give the Corresponding Source to all who use the site.

What standing does the Software Freedom Conservancy have to do pursue this in court themselves? Are they authors of Mastodon?

AFAICT, unless one of the Mastodon authors gets involved, this is not going to amount to much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law)

This article doesn't even establish whether a commercial license to Mastodon (which would render the AGPL moot) had been obtained by Truth Social or not.

> AFAICT, unless one of the Mastodon authors gets involved, this is not going to amount to much.

That's actually irrelevant as I understand the FOSS license issues around GPL and AGPL. You, as an individual, are entitle to the source code of GPL'd and AGPL'd software (under various circumstances). Suppose I sell or otherwise provide you a program that's based on GPL'd code but only in compiled form. You can request the source from me and I'm obligated to provide it, the original programmers never have to get involved.

Not from what I understand. Your copyright (by default) gives you standing. If you hold no copyright, you have no standing to claim copyright infringement.

It seems like you may be right [1]

1. https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/52/what-can-s...

> What standing does the Software Freedom Conservancy have to do pursue this in court themselves? Are they authors of Mastodon?

They are users of software built on AGPL (Mastodon) and therefore have a right to have access to that source code.

Not as I understand it. In this case, you have two parties, the open source project (Mastodon) and the site itself.

If the site is using the project, it should do so under the license. You, as a user of the site, have rights under that license.

However, the fact that the license terms are violated does not give _you_ a cause of action. The site didn't enter into any contract with you. For there to be a standing, you need the authors of the project to say something.

Even then, note that the issue is the use of copyrighted code, not the fact that the users didn't get the code.

If you complied with the license, and the copyright holder came to you and said, give me money, you could point to the license and say that you are in good standing.

But that doesn't work the other way around, but IANAL.

One of the goals of the Affero GPL, in fact, was to close exactly that loophole with respect to hosted software. The rights granted by the license are expressly granted to the users of the software. So in theory SFC can sue for the source code themselves under the AGPLv3. I'm not aware that that has been tested, but it seems reasonable.

I'd be interested in a link to this legal theory and its application under US Law.

Barring that, what sections of the AGPL are you looking at to make that claim?

From the Preamble:

> The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version. [emphasis added]

From Section 13:

> Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph. [emphasis added]

This brings standing to the users as the license requires that the users be granted access to the "Corresponding Source", defined in Section 1 as:

> The "Corresponding Source" for a work in object code form means all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities. However, it does not include the work's System Libraries, or general-purpose tools or generally available free programs which are used unmodified in performing those activities but which are not part of the work. For example, Corresponding Source includes interface definition files associated with source files for the work, and the source code for shared libraries and dynamically linked subprograms that the work is specifically designed to require, such as by intimate data communication or control flow between those subprograms and other parts of the work.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html

I don't see how this creates standing for end-users. AGPL expands the licensees' obligations, but only the copyright holder has standing to sue over violations of the license.

This is analogous to a party that distributes GPL licensed software in binary form while refuses to fulfill their obligations under the license by providing code.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhoHasThePower

The 30 day clause they are invoking can explicitly only be triggered by a copyright holder as I understand the license. So either they are one, are representing one, or (very unlikely) are somehow flat out wrong despite being lawyers.

Assuming it's not the last case, they would also be aware of any commercial licenses.

By the time all this is settled, Trump and Co will learn a lot about software licensing than they thought was necessary. This is not a space where you can bully others, because the playing field is kinda level.

Saw Ian and Tim argue about this on Timcast IRL last night. Hope these license issues can be resolved

There is a potential (perhaps small) for this to backfire spectacularly for the SF Conservancy.

Here is the scenario. Trump doesn’t comply even after the letter. The SF Conservancy files a lawsuit. It goes to court, and Trump loses. It keeps getting appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court (1/3 of whom were appointed by Trump) rules that copyleft licenses are unenforceable.

GPL, AFGPL dead.

Yeah but then hollywood dead, music industry dead, patents dead, industry dead. America dead.

Aint gonna happen.

How would ending copyleft license hurt Hollywood?

I am not talking about copyright, which you are correct would be massively disruptive. I am talking about copyleft such as GPL, etc which as far as I know have never been really tested in a US court of law.

You may not like all the decisions the Supreme Court makes, but those three justices are not Trump's puppets.

And even if they were, then the decision should still be 6-3 against Trump. So I think your scenario is pretty much dead.

This is extremely unlikely. Copyleft intrinsically hinges copyright. More likely, if there was some judge that ruled against this case they'd carve out something in the specific scenario here rather than GPL/copyleft in general - that would open up too many cans of worms.

Trump's thing is running on Mastodon? That's unexpected.

What changes have they made that need to be redistributed?

The site has to offer a mechanism to download the source code of the version of Mastodon that is being run, including any modifications. The claim here is that they did not do that, so they are infringing.

Is that requirement only for sites that have modified the source code? E.g. if I use Mastodon but change nothing at all, do I still have to host a repo somewhere with the source?

Yes. Or make it available for download some other way. The license text is quite clear.

Why not simply download it from the mastodon website?

then you have to link to it. But I think that if somehow Mastodon stops making code available (which would be unlikely), you still have provide source code, as long as you run it.

If you're running with no modification you'd still need to link back to the source code. Likely the mastadon repo in this example.

But you don't need to publish the link unless it is requested.

Hint: it was requested. Noncompliance means they lose license to the code they used.

Free software isn't freedom from obligations. They are modest, but they exist and must be complied with or you're setting yourself up for a lawsuit.

>What changes have they made that need to be redistributed?

It would be really easy to tell if they released their source code.

But considering how they have been trying to hide the fact that they're using Mastodon, they've at least done something.

Interesting that while hackernews, wsb were heavily downvoting DWAC on day 1 of trading, Bloomberg had several articles on it. Matt Levine and the markets are too important to censor thankfully. If Robinhood, tdameritrade, fidelity , nasdaq, and nyse canceled trump, I’d consider to just pack up and move to China. Dang, PG: please exercise some editorial control against these futile attempts to limit discussion on trump (though it only lasted about 2 days on hn)

> Trump's Group has 30 days to remedy the violation, or their rights in the software are permanently terminated

Not to be political, but his administration routinely ignored the rule of law for matters much more serious than a software license.

tl;dr: Software Freedom Conservancy is issuing tfg a thirty-day ultimatum. Remedy the violation, or their rights in the software are permanently terminated

And of course this is really about software freedom and they would take a similarly hard line with anyone using the software

Anyone breaking the terms of the software, sure. Seems fair.

Maybe, maybe not. It doesn't matter; unlike the active protection considerations of trademark, copyright and licensing are in no way obligated to be applied evenly. I trust you're not surprised that it turns out that folks who are considered to be generally bad-faith actors--or, y'know, literal-not-figurative fascists, no matter how ineffectual they are--get less leash than your average person.

>copyright and licensing are in no way obligated to be applied evenly

That's interesting. Is that why Apple is getting a pass for giving some app developers sweetheart deals on their App Store?

No. They get a pass because it is their App Store. Sweetheart deals are also known as doing business.

Also this week, they announced action against Vizio for a GPL violation.

https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28920954

Seems reasonable that someone would enforce their license that prevents use of their software for someone they specifically don't want using their software.

Do you have evidence the FSF has commonly ignored prominent license violations in the past that would make it surprising for them to take action here? If not, please refrain from casting unsubstantiated aspersions.

Feels to me like if this goes to court there's a good chance the AGPL will be thrown out as-is. Otherwise, it means that if an engineer accidentally pushes a configuration error to a firewall for a few minutes, and one individual happens to hit the site while it is exposed, suddenly the company has to disclose all of its IP. This seems relatively insane, so if they're going to push on it so hard to make a political statement it may on net be worse to see it be thrown out. You know damn well this will go to court before Trump's army of lawyers concedes and releases any source code.

And, as usual, it is going to revolting to see tribalism consume everything - I suppose it was a matter of time before supporting the GPL became a "blue or red team" position.

If it's decided that AGPL isn't a valid license, that will mean that Trump's org and most of the rest of us have no license to use Mastadon and thousands of other software projects.

Correct. I'm not sure of your point. This would obviously be immediately rectified with a new version that addresses any judgement.

I had no point. It's just interesting to consider the fallout from that. Some projects could relicense as you say if they have consent from all of their copyright owners, but other projects aren't in a position to do that. They have contributors who can't be contacted or wouldn't be willing to relicense their work.

Ah that's true, fair point that it could leave projects in limbo.

> suddenly the company has to disclose all of its IP

I think you need to explain your scenario a bit better.

> I suppose it was a matter of time before supporting the GPL became a "blue or red team" position

If you have a habitual rule breaker and one team's fundamental rule is that this rule breaker is always right, then yes. Put a legal constraint anywhere in his vicinity and give him enough time to wander and he will violate the constraint. Contracts, tax laws, disclosure laws, the structure of democracy itself. Then the team decides it is the constraint itself that was in error, not their leader, and away we go.

> I think you need to explain your scenario a bit better.

If I'm developing a mastodon fork that I intend to run on a small private network for my company, and I accidentally expose it to the internet for a few minutes in error, and a person hits the site, under the letter of the license I am forced to disclose my source code to that person. My IP is no longer in my control and has been disclosed to a third party. This is not complicated. That scenario may be far fetched, but it becomes less far fetched if we actually get to a court case where a site was up for a little while and then was taken down and the legal system needs to rule on if this can be enforced from such scenarios. The political nature of this being disclosed publicly also seems like a huge error if they expect to be able to force source disclosure in court.

Default copyright law doesn’t allow for copying the source. AGPL provides people with more rights than the default. Assuming it is a registered copyright, if AGPL license is found invalid then copyright owner could file for statutory damages which could be quite high.

> And of course this is really about software freedom and they would take a similarly hard line with anyone using the software

The SFC is a relatively well known software freedom advocacy and watchdog group, one with 15 years of legal action under its belt. Are you implying that this action somehow breaks the mould with their prior work?

You're implying some hypocrisy that I haven't seen. Who is the other person/organization that violated the license of open source code but got off without criticism?

Even huge tech companies obey the licenses of the open source software they use. Every proprietary tool I use has a long list of code used with the required preamble for each even if it's the same one, licenses (mostly MIT and similar), and where to find it.

I'm not quite sure that AGPL can be "permanently terminated".

From the AGPL itself:

> 8. Termination.

> You may not propagate or modify a covered work except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to propagate or modify it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License (including any patent licenses granted under the third paragraph of section 11).

> However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days after the cessation.

> Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice.

> Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of parties who have received copies or rights from you under this License. If your rights have been terminated and not permanently reinstated, you do not qualify to receive new licenses for the same material under section 10.

And where is the "permanent termination" in here? Once a user ceases a violation, his license is reinstated, _permanently_. Thus, the license can't be _permanently terminated_.

Permanent termination means that you will lose the right to use this software forever, without any recourse.

No, it's reinstated permanently if the copyright holder fails to reply within 60 days of the cessation, (and provisionally entirely on the whim of the copyright holder).

The SF Conservancy is openly stating that they don't plan to drop the ball in those ways.

"provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license"

I think finally terminates == final termination == permanently terminated

I actually did dig this a bit, and found this interesting text [1]:

If you have distributed only v3-licensed programs, you may be eligible under v3 § 8 for automatic reinstatement of rights. You are eligible for automatic reinstatement when:

you correct the violation and are not contacted by a copyright holder about the violation within sixty days after the correction, or

you receive, from a copyright holder, your first-ever contact regarding a GPL violation, and you correct that violation within thirty days of receipt of copyright holder’s notice.

In addition to these permanent reinstatements provided under v3, violators who voluntarily correct their violation also receive provisional permission to continue distributing until they receive contact from the copyright holder. If sixty days pass without contact, that reinstatement becomes permanent. Nonetheless, you should be prepared to cease distribution during those initial sixty days should you receive a termination notice from the copyright holder.

So it seems that copyright holders can specifically revoke the rights if they discover a violation. However, it is not yet a fact that the violation has indeed happened, just because someone discovered an instance of AGPL software on an internet server. Modern developers assume that 'make code available to users' equals 'publishing it on the internet'. But there is no such requirement: you may just as well provide the code by request using email, floppy disk or pigeon mail. So if somebody mails Trump Group a request to provide source code, they may very well bide their time to process mail in the orderly manner and send the copy of the code to the person who requested that code.

[1]: https://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide....

From TFA:

  To comply with this important FOSS license, Trump's Group needs to immediately make that Corresponding Source available to all who used the site today while it was live. If they fail to do this within 30 days, their rights and permissions in the software are automatically and permanently terminated. That's how AGPLv3's cure provision works — no exceptions — even if you're a real estate mogul, reality television star, or even a former POTUS.

This language is wrong. Rights can be terminated only if the user does not cease violating the rights. If Trump's group will publish source codes 6 months after this 30 day period, they'll instantly undo this permanent termination.

>If Trump's group will publish source codes 6 months after this 30 day period, they'll instantly undo this permanent termination.

The license reads more like that only happens on your first infraction AND if you rectify your violation within 30 days.

Section 8 of the AGPL spells that out.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html#section8

Read section 8 of the text. It says that once an infringer has been notified, they have 30 days to fix the problem or else their license is terminated.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html

edit: ninja'd.

Sigh. I know AGPL license better than most people: my company develops software licensed under AGPL and I was the one who made the choice of license.

The point is, license can't be "permanently terminated", only until the user ceases license violation.

It will remedied by courts if the license isn’t satisfied and copyright infringement is still happening. Copyright holder can get an permanent injection against the offender against distributing the copyrighted work . This beyond the scope of the license though.

This has happened to multiple companies violating GPL in the past.

https://www.networkworld.com/article/2231532/gpl-has-some-bi...

>However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days after the cessation.

It sounds a lot like that the copyright holder has the power to permanently terminate a license even if the violation ceases.

That isn't true.

The GPL licenses can be fully revoked if the license violator does not comply with the license after 30 days of being informed by the copyright holder of their violation.

There is no "automatic renewal" unless the copyright holder does not respond.

You can be permanently blocked from renewing the license if the copyright holder decides so.

The FSF have used this clause in the past to bribe license violators to release other, non-violating pieces of code under a FOSS license in order to reinstate their license on code that was previously violating.

>The FSF have used this clause in the past to bribe license violators to release other, non-violating pieces of code under a FOSS license in order to reinstate their license on code that was previously violating.

Is there more on this somewhere?

I mistook the details above. The other works they were bribed into releasing code for were still violating licenses, but from different license holders.

> "The SFC will grant a new license, but on one condition - not only must you provide the source code to Busybox, you must provide the source code to all other works on the device that require source distribution."

> "The outcome of this is that we've gained access to large bodies of source code that would otherwise have been kept by companies. The SFC have successfully used Busybox to force the source release of many vendor kernels, ensuring that users have the freedoms that the copyright holders granted to them"

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/10437.html

"bribed" is the wrong word for this. The license terms says that an infringer loses the license, and the copyright holder can ask, in exchange for re-instating it, that the infringer fix all violations (in this case, not just for Busybox but for everything). That saves time, other violated copyright holders don't have to sue one by one, and no money exchanges hands (and even if money does change hands, recovering legal costs as part of a settlement is standard).

That's an excellent question.

Suppose some giant company infringes willfully for months and the license owner gives notice of permanent termination. Ten years later some subsidiary or disparate business unit that has no idea of what happened and has its own legal department uses the software again compliantly. Would a judge issue an injunction if licensor filed suit citing prior notice of permanent termination that was issued subject to past alleged violations?

License owner can't give notice of 'permanent termination', only until the user ceases the violation. Or it would not be a free license at all, violating basic freedom to run the software while not infinging any requirements.

> License owner can't give notice of 'permanent termination', only until the user ceases the violation

This may require litigation to resolve.

The rights are explicitly irrevocable with respect to the unmodified Program [1]. It is ambiguous, however, with respect to modifications. The "unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license" confusingly implies a right to termination, though this comes into conflict with the § 2 irrevocability guarantee.

Is there case law around this?

[1] All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met. This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program.

So this is basically an attempt to silence a politician. It's about as far as can be from the ideal of free software.

If you want to play in someone elses sandbox with their toys, you gotta follow their rules. Like, this is society and contracts 101, I get it that no one likes it when it cuts against the group that happen to like, but its fair, and right there in the terms of the license.

So there's an obligation for developers of free software to provide it to people who don't adhere to the licenses in question? Interesting take. Who else do you obligate to free work?

Just because he's a "politician" doesn't mean he can violate the license.

How does sharing code silence him?

Do you think that just because someone is a politician they should be given a completely and totally unlimited freedom to do and say whatever they want? What if you're a politician literally running a platform based on genocide? On taking away voting rights from women? On bringing back child labour? On making slavery legal? Should every platform be forced to host you and your views? Or is there a line where you'd go "ok, yeah, actually I can agree with this".

Because if there is a line anywhere, then I don't see how you can still hold a view that free software should always support everyone and their beliefs, politicians or not.

Look, I'm no Trump fan, but there's literally no reason to talk politics here, especially that slippery slope stuff. The Trump Group appears to be in violation of the software license they were granted. SFC's mandate is to chase down FOSS license violations. They were made aware of a violation, and they're chasing it down.

If my favorite politician was using my code in violation of my license, I'd get up in their grill about that. Was the violation discovered by somebody who dislikes Trump? Yeah, probably. But it doesn't matter. The Trump Group exposes itself to legal risk by not complying with the license, and compliance is easy: show your users the license, and the code. Comply and the threat of a lawsuit vanishes.

Yeah that is absolutely fair enough. I haven't thought about it from that angle, thanks for writing this.

Okay, now do the Vizio suit.

https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html

Straight up persecution... of people who violate software licenses.

I think I understand the spirit of your complaint, but I'm not sure what concrete changes you would support. Are you arguing that the GPL3 license is a poor reflection of open source ideals? Or that the license should provide exemptions for politicians? Or that violating the license should be protected as free speech?

If the politician wants to silence the spread of free code I think it's about right that the free software movements fights back.

>Early evidence strongly supports that Trump's Group publicly launched a so-called “test site” of their “Truth Social” product, based on the AGPLv3'd Mastodon software platform.

No citation given. It would have made more sense to use a friendlier project, anyway, like Pleroma.

But no evidence is needed to be outraged by something that hasn't happened yet. Sad!

The guy that wrote it is a real douchebag

So, if I understand the license correctly, anything you produce with the product becomes AGPLed and distributable to the users? That’s crazy. That’s like saying every Word doc I produce is now AGPLed. Or do I misunderstand something?

The software. Not the content.

So what was modified? Anything the author could see would be “content”.

> So what was modified? Anything the author could see would be “content”.

Modifications to views, models, stylesheets, &c. would all fall under the AGPL's definition of source code and would be considered sufficient for triggering the distribution clause.

My guess would be CSS, JavaScript, and that sort of thing. It's possible they did some actual engineering work; if it was me, I would be concerned about people trying to bring the site down. I would guess they're also trying to make it a fundraising vehicle, so maybe some changes related to that? I'm not familiar with the Mastodon codebase so it's difficult to speculate but these would be my guesses.

> Or do I misunderstand something?

The AGPL is identical to the GPL, but with one additional clause: if you use the modified software to provide a networked service (like a website), then you must distribute your modifications. That's all.

You can use AGPL'd software to produce content without fear that that content will be encumbered, since you're not providing a networked service through that content. That's why your documents are safe, even in the (unlikely) event that your word processor is AGPL.

Out of interest, what's to stop them publishing some 'version' of the modified code, but actually running a different version on their servers? Would that be easy to detect?

> Out of interest, what's to stop them publishing some 'version' of the modified code, but actually running a different version on their servers? Would that be easy to detect?

That depends on what you mean by "detect" -- there's an large body of Computer Science research dedicated to program attestation, i.e. enabling a user to verify that the program (or results of a program) derives directly from some source. But it's far from a solved problem in the general case.

Less formally, that's what the legal system is for: if the copyright holder suspects that the published source code is different from the source code that's being run by the service, then they're perfectly within their rights to take the service provider to court and attest, under the penalty of law, to their compliance.

>Out of interest, what's to stop them publishing some 'version' of the modified code, but actually running a different version on their servers?

The law

>Would that be easy to detect?

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