Bonum Certa Men Certa

Insulting Free Software Users in Social Control Media (Proprietary, Bloated With Opaque JavaScript) is Like Insulting Amish on TV

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 23, 2024

Amish Shoo Fly Pie.

Why bother? Don't take the bait.

THERE is this old (but alas "viral") misconception that for Free software to be further popularised its proponents need to outsource and make "presence" in Social Control Media or Social Control Networks. That's nonsense! If anything, it sends contradictory messages. It also puts those proponents inside the lion's mouth. It's never imperative to hop onboard some transient bandwagon like Twitter (a train wreck).

Similarly, taking on transparency-centric journalism rather than software, it seems quite wrong or at least misguided that Wikileaks is not updating its own site (that it controls) and instead playing games in Twitter (X). It's not just Wikileaks but also the Assange family. They frequently use Google (YouTube) instead of self-hosting their videos, which are controversial enough (some violence and sometimes death contained in them) to merit Orwellian censorship, dictated or demanded from a prolific Pentagon contractor, Alphabet. That's the equivalent of using GitHub, controlled by Microsoft and the NSA, to build Free software. It's a terrible idea, a short-sighted reflex.

It's moreover a bit disappointing to see that Stella Assange uses social control media ("X") to do "Where's Waldo?" with Julian. She'd be better off starting her own site rather than offloading to Alphabet (YouTube), Musk/KSA etc. She and Julian should know better ("Google Is Not What It Seems"), based on Wikileaks' direct experiences with Google over the years.

Wikileaks remains far too dependent on or reliant on the very same companies it need to be fighting, exposing etc. You cannot beat company X (not "X" the company) by leveraging the "services" of company X. If you become EFFECTIVE, as you might do at one point, they WILL shut you down. It already happened to Wikileaks several times in the past. Misuse of power when some threshold is reached is the norm. Live and learn, do not repeat the mistakes others made and hope you'll be the "lucky" one, the exception. Some Wikileaks staff used GMail. It didn't work out too well at the end. The only thing Google did for them was, it informed them they they had been sold out to the US Government (in court).

Too late.

Loud Argument

The bottom line is, if Social Control Media lacks "presence" of Free software advocates, then so be it. It's a waste of time to wrestle with pigs.

The very concept - or the underlying idea - of Social Control Media is deeply flawed. It'll never be media or become social, as it tends to make journalists more lazy (i.e. less accuracy pursued) and it divides an otherwise cohesive society united around common themes. Society needs information instead of hate/conflict that drives up "engagement".

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