Bonum Certa Men Certa

Promoting Free Software and Free Communications on Social Control Media Networks



Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock

Pocock image

Sites like Twitter and Facebook are not fundamentally free platforms, despite the fact they don't ask their users for money. Look at how Facebook's censors confused Denmark's mermaid statue with pornography or how quickly Twitter can make somebody's account disappear, frustrating public scrutiny of their tweets and potentially denying access to vital information in their "direct message" mailbox. Then there is the fact that users don't get access to the source code, users don't have a full copy of their own data and, potentially worst of all, if most people bothered to read the fine print of the privacy policy they would find it is actually a recipe for downright creepiness.



Nonetheless, a significant number of people have accounts in these systems and are to some extent contactable there.



Pocock image

Many marketing campaigns that have been successful today, whether they are crowdfunding, political activism or just finding a lost cat claim to have had great success because of Twitter or Facebook. Is this true? In reality, many users of those platforms follow hundreds of different friends and if they only check-in once a day, filtering algorithms show them only a small subset of what all their friends posted. Against these odds, just posting your great idea on Facebook doesn't mean that more than five people are actually going to see it. Those campaigns that have been successful have usually had something else going in their favour, perhaps it was a friend working in the media who gave their campaign a plug on his radio show or maybe they were lucky enough to be slashdotted. Maybe it was having the funds for a professional video production with models who pass off as something spontaneous. The use of Facebook or Twitter alone did not make such campaigns successful, it was just part of a bigger strategy where everything fell into place.



Should free software projects, especially those revolving around free communications technology, use such platforms to promote themselves?



It is not a simple question. In favour, you could argue that everything we promote through public mailing lists and websites is catalogued by Google anyway, so why not make it easier to access for those who are on Facebook or Twitter? On top of that, many developers don't even want to run their own mail server or web server any more, let alone a self-hosted social-media platform like pump.io. Even running a basic SIP proxy server for the large Debian and Fedora communities involved a lot of discussion about the approach to support it.



The argument against using Facebook and Twitter is that you are shooting yourself in the foot, when you participate in those networks, you give them even more credibility and power (which you could quantify using Metcalfe's law). The Metcalfe value of their network, being quadratic rather than linear, shoots ahead of the Metcalfe value of your own solution, putting your alternative even further out of reach. On top of that, the operators of the closed platform are able to evaluate who is responding to your message and how they feel about it and use that intelligence to further undermine you. In some cases, there may be passive censorship, such as WhatsApp silently losing messages that link to rival Telegram.



How do you feel about this choice? How and when should free software projects and their developers engage with mainstream social media technology? Please come and share your ideas on the Free-RTC mailing list.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft-Sponsored Xenophobia and Nationalism
IBM is very similar in this regard
Tentative Summary of Things to Publish in Project 2030
I'll still be in my forties by then
 
Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
Links for the day
Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025
Gemini Links 20/09/2025: Snowy Photos and utism is a Spectrum
Links for the day
Vintage is Sometimes Better
Why can't we get back to "simple" if (or where) "simple" means better?
Climate Breakdown Means We'll be Publishing More, Not Less
Press freedom will be a common, recurring theme
Our 5-Year Geminispace Anniversary is Coming Up
I still remember when Gemini Protocol was quite new
It's Right to Point Out Violence From the Right
Violence is a recurring theme
Web Browsers That "Do Hey Hi" (AI)
State-of-the-art plagiarism or "autocomplete on steroids" (not coined by us, nevertheless a nice description) don't have much/any prospect
Links 20/09/2025: Hardware Projects in View, Some Independent Publishers About Russia Prosper After Cheeto Cuts Funding
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/09/2025: Options and TV Time Machine
Links for the day
Links 20/09/2025: Retrocomputer, Antique Phone Experience, and More
Links for the day
Links 20/09/2025: Internet Shutdowns, Media Censorship, and Climate Worries
Links for the day
About 700 New Gemini Capsules in 13 Months (or 54 Per Month)
4.8K would represent a 20% increase
Rust People: Drain the Swap, You're Holding It Wrong
Does Rust make sense?
Techrights the Name Turns 15
About 6 weeks from now we turn 19
Microsoft is Running Out of Time and Floating Fake Figures, Fake Projects, Fake Narratives, Fake Excuses
Also, a lot of Microsoft's "revenue" claims are circular financing (i.e. Microsoft buying from itself, which means Ponzi-like fraud)
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, linuxconfig.org, and Plagiarised Phoronix
Many articles out there are nowadays fake
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 19, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, September 19, 2025
Gemini Links 20/09/2025: Navigating the Pressures of Modern Life and SpellBinding Accidentally Wrote Another Gemini Server
Links for the day
Links 19/09/2025: Press Freedom Dying in US, Anti-Austerity Strikes in France, and Alan Rusbridger to Leave 'Prospect'
Links for the day
European Patent Office Illegally Gutting and Outsourcing Its Functions, Acting Like an Above-the-Law Commercial Business (It Won't Stop at Formalities Officers (FOs) and Classification Slop at the EPO)
breaking/violating laws and conventions
Offloading to the Sister Site
In the interest of not overwhelming readers
Links 19/09/2025: Coffee Club and "SpellBinding is Now Absurdly Fast"
Links for the day
Links 19/09/2025: Lobbyist of American GAFAM Becomes Data Protection Commissioner in Europe
Links for the day
Links 19/09/2025: Media Freedom Ceases to Exist in US, "Consider Dropping Twitter/X"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/09/2025: Thinking and Insect Bites
Links for the day
Microsoft E.E.E.: Git Will Now (or Very Soon) Fully Depend on Rust, Which is Controlled by Microsoft
Microsoft now makes Git dependent on Rust, or making Git dependent on GitHub, which is proprietary
The Right to Punch People (Apparently)
At Brett Wilson, Brett's job title is "Head of Crime" and Wilson normalises calls for violence
Slop or Fake Articles Have Turned Linux Journal From a Pioneering/Trailblazing "Linux" Magazine Into a Nuisance
some sites with former reputation - good reputation - turn into cesspools
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 18, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 18, 2025