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The Free Software Foundation Warns Against Using Twitter

Video download link



Summary: Richard Stallman said Twitter was OK because it was possible to use it without proprietary software; that's no longer the case, so the Free Software Foundation (FSF) speaks out against it. It speaks about it more than 3 months after the problem became a known one and also an irreversible one (maybe Twitter would have reversed the decision if the media or the FSF actually spoke about it early enough).

I

LAST spoke to Dr. Stallman about Twitter (on the record) when he visited the UK. "I don't think Twitter is wrong," he told me about 7 years ago in Lincoln (more here). The subject came up a number of times over the years and yesterday Greg Farough of the FSF (founded by Stallman) finally noted that "on December 15th, Twitter removed its "legacy" Web interface. As opposed to its much larger and more complex default Web client, the legacy interface did not use proprietary JavaScript (or any JavaScript)."



"I already mentioned it to them way ahead of December 15th..."It took them a while to notice or to bring up this issue. I already mentioned it to them way ahead of December 15th (it was mentioned here even more than once), half a year after I had semi-left Twitter (going 'write-only').

As the old saying goes, better late than never. Finally the FSF speaks out against Twitter. In the video above I discuss some background information (based purely on facts, not conjecture) and the latest take from the FSF.

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