There are some good ideas in there (the main one IMO is structured objects as the main form of IPC, instead of text), but the execution is really bad after XP and maybe 7. They stuck to a lot of legacy garbage in the name of “compatibility”, but in the end it’s an inconsistent mess of dozens of frameworks, and yet many old programs run worse than they do in WINE on Linux. Now with the advent of vibecoding the core components, it’s pretty much over unless they literally start over from an old checkout.

In that case consider your accounts on “everything else” to be compromised already. It can be a pretty significant vector for identity theft for example.

Trump is a lapdog to American oligarchs first and foremost. His relationship with putin is strained, otherwise he could easily stop supporting Ukraine, because that is the first and foremost goal for putin at the moment. As always, look at the financial decisions to see through the noise.

Even if putin had kompromat on trump, it matters less and less with each passing day. It has been known for a few years, almost for certain, that trump raped kids, and yet he has been reelected and even won the popular vote as an insult to injury. No amount of kompromat will make his base change their mind as long as there is a steady stream of fascist propaganda reaching their ears, only total economic failure will. This is all made possible by huge donations and support from billionaires, putin is irrelevant here.

It’s you who is falling for the ruling class propaganda. They are making sure you have an external enemy to blame instead of them. Putin can go eat shit and die in a prison cell next to trump, but he’s not the tail wagging this particular dog.

I do see your point and I’ll actually upvote you here. But I do think there’s a meaningful difference.

Software is just an idea written down rigorously. Various societies created various conventions and social contracts to control dissemination and usage of ideas, both in their pure and written down forms. Capitalist societies generally defer to the author of the idea for how they want it handled (at least for the first few decades), so that the author can earn some money from it (of course, even ideas are monetized under capitalism) - this is patent and copyright law.

The free software movement is just a novel application of the copyright law. By sharing ideas freely but with a license that forces everyone using the idea to share their derivative ideas freely as well, it is attempting to destroy the spirit of copyright law by using the letter of copyright law.

With all this in mind, let’s examine what it would mean to add the “don’t be evil” clause to an otherwise FOSS license.

1. In ideal circumstances, a society’s system of laws and social norms should incorporate “don’t be evil” in it already. Hate speech and nazism should be prohibited and punished, so the clause would be superfluous.
2. In “ordinary circumstances” of neoliberal capitalism, there are agencies that will be acting in bad faith but will stand above any laws, be it geneva conventions, hate speech laws or (boring) copyright law. You won’t be able to enforce a “don’t be evil” clause against the CIA or ICE or the Rockefeller. They can just take your software and use it, so the clause would be of little use typically. This is partially applicable to our current situation.
3. In extraordinary circumstances, such as capitalism in advanced decay a.k.a fascism, the law will be ignored by most evil actors anyways. Law is just a social contract and fascism is deliberately breaking all social contracts. Nobody will enforce copyright law in favor of an individual FOSS developer, especially against someone who’s on the side of the regime. So the clause is completely useless. This is also applicable to our situation.

There is some edge-cases in the middle where a “don’t be evil” clause might make a bit of sense. If the contract law (which includes copyright law) is still well-respected, but the social contract itself is falling apart around it, it might be used to prevent some nazis somewhere from using your software for a short while, but that situation is always unstable and does not last. In any case nazis are known for ignoring all social contracts, including court orders, so even this is questionable.

There are also downsides in any “don’t be evil” clause, because it requires you to rigorously define what you mean by “evil”. This is actually really hard to do well without relying on existing laws (which ruins the point), and will usually either leave nazis leeway to get away with using it, or harm legitimate users, or both - especially because legitimate users are less likely to try pushing the boundaries.

This is explicitly different from what Bluesky is doing. They are hosting known nazis. Nothing is stopping them from banning ICE and making it into a point of pride, it is really easy. There is no downside, no legitimate user hurt. It’s as easy of a decision as one can make.

To reiterate,

So the mastodon service supports Nazis.

Mastodon-the-service doesn’t really exist (unless you count mastodon.social). But the fediverse in general is not supporting nazis. Nazis are banned and defederated.

Mastodon-the-software may “support” nazis in the same way as the idea of a printing press (from your other comment) supported nazis.

They’re providing software to Nazis, and I don’t really see how that makes them better than providing a place to post.

Bluesky is categorically worse because it doesn’t have the “don’t be evil” clause in the software licenses either, and it is hosting nazis directly on the platform they run.

I’m quite interested whether Russia will join. On one hand Russia and US are geopolitical rivals, and trump is still helping Ukraine to some degree. On the other hand putin has been trying to suck up to trump at multiple occasions - the last one being that rare earth proposal - and is trying hard to be seen as wanting “peace”.

A cool $1b bribe might warm the relationship significantly, hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the US starts selling weapons to Russia at that point.

I guess it also depends on how much EU countries are willing to bend over, if they go all in on it that can scare putin off for a bit.

I’m not sure it’s targeted at anyone “important” (what a classist term!). It is just analyzing the situation and predicting what happens next, for you and I to be prepared. It also hastens the end of the bubble ever so slightly, which is good - the sooner this poison-laced bandaid is ripped off the world’s economy, the faster we can start to rebuild something more meaningful, but now with new productivity tools by our side.

I don’t think he’s necessarily a genius, but he is a force for good and a great writer. We do need someone to keep stating the truth, keep saying what’s right and what’s wrong, this is literally how we win the information war currently waged against us.

It’s the same with the genocide experts calling out genocide, or the eco-activists calling out climate change. It might be obvious common sense to you, but it might not be to other people, and this is precisely why it needs to be shouted from every rooftop we have available.

Oh, and also, if you actually read his works he clearly does more than just state the obvious and coin new terms (even though both of those are important too). He is deeply and intimately familiar with the technical and social structures of the modern internet, his analysis of various phenomena and trends is usually on-point and has some predictive power (it is more dialectical-materialist than most tech journalism out there). Most importantly he offers solutions to the issues facing us, and practices what he preaches too.

When has he actually approached the Taiwan govt with any respectable offer of long-term cooperation?

Under more reasonable Taiwanese rule there was a lot of goodwill and cooperation going both ways (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Cooperation_Framework_Agreement, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_Service_Trade_Agreement etc).

Under new, even more pro-imperialist government, there doesn’t seem to be much room for cooperation when Taiwan repeatedly rejects attempts at cooperation and beefs up their military with american weapons. I agree that Xi could be more accepting and cooperative, but it’s not primarily his fault.

It didn’t last because the will of bureaucracy was placed before the will of the people, it was a long decline of democratic rights of the working class started under Stalin and continued by all following leaders. It was not due to socialism per se, more due to the specifics of CPSU politics. China seems to have figured out a better way to do democratic dictatorship of proletariat and is successfully combining aspects of capitalism and socialism, to both make the country appealing to capitalist investors and also build up a socialist economy to bring the living standards up. It’s not perfect (and is definitely not “the end of history” by any means), but it is doing fine as an interim solution.

A soviet era russian also had access to free healthcare, free childcare, free higher education, cheap (sometimes free) housing, excellent (for the time) public transit, and a safety net for unemployment or old age. Oh and there was ample opportunities to build community ties so that if something did go horribly wrong and you needed that help. Capitalism in decline will give you none of that.

Please let “AI” be next…

I think it’s almost verbatim what Xi is saying - cooperate, build more and more economic and cultural ties, wait for the decline of capitalism and the people of Taiwan will want to reunite with mainland eventually. They are already really close socially, culturally and ethnically (most Taiwanese are Han), the only thing separating them is politics.

I don’t know of China doing that either, apart from made-up stories from some guys, directly affiliated with the US government, who weren’t even there. Seriously, try to look up a source for your claims that isn’t eventually attributed to “Ethan Gutmann said…”. Uighurs do have their rights systematically abused and face unfair persecution as an overreaction to terrorism. This fucking sucks, but it’s clearly not a genocide and nothing like what you’re describing. Even English Wikipedia, which historically is biased towards US propaganda because it is sourced from western media, has stopped classifying it as a genocide.

Meanwhile Germany is sending weapons and diplomatic support to a literal genocidal apartheid state, which has been bombing civilian infrastructure and shooting children for fun since the founding, with at least 100k dead (at least 27k of them children) just in the last 3 years; France & UK are still empires which hold land overseas and continue doing “soft” - cultural & economic - imperialism in their sphere of influence; and all western quality of life improvements are sustained on exploitation of cheap unregulated labor from many global south countries, enforced by the US invading and/or overthrowing everyone who tries to stop it.

Some of what China is doing domestically sucks. The Uighur thing is bad, LGBT rights are not enshrined into law and instead exist in a legal vacuum, the internet censorship is shit, the wealth inequality is growing, the one-child policy was a bad idea which led to a femicide and creation of “second-class citizens”, there are still regions where the rural population lives in slums (the last two are being slowly addressed though).

But it’s not even close to the current level of suffering caused by western imperialism.

1. China has not used their military offensively for the past like 30 years, I don’t see why start now
2. Xi has said repeatedly that he will not use military force and instead will use the existing economic and cultural ties to push re-integration
3. If they invade Taiwan militarily they risk a nuclear war, definitely will suffer heavy casualties, will destroy the world’s economy (which will hurt them a lot as well), and the only thing they would gain is a pile of burning ash. There is no practical reason to do it and you can call Xi many names but not impractical.

China hasn’t been directly involved in anything even resembling a genocide since the death of chairman mao at least. There are human rights abuses and questionable decisions (such as not sufficiently opposing the ongoing gaza genocide) but nothing compared to the horrors on earth supported by US and some european countries right fucking now.

However, if each of the 75019230 people who voted for Kamala would instead start shitting on the porches of the 25% (~90 million people), y’all will be done in less than two days. Such is the power of organizing!

First concentration camps (“immigration detention centers”), then labor camps (“for-profit prisons”) if you’re lucky, death camps (“CECOT” or similar) otherwise.

First for immigrants because it’s easy to justify, then any non-whites because they’re easy to target, then the dissident whites because nobody else is there to speak out.

They have been testing the waters for this (including sending US citizens to foreign death camps) for a year now.

Basically The Onion writers rn

I’m not defending anyone. I am just looking at a stated claim (Bluesky is as bad as Twitter because they verified ICE) and evaluating if it has merits.

I don’t think that’s the claim, at least that’s not the way I’m reading it.

Here is the quote we are discussing:

Wow. Bluesky has just welcomed and verified ICE.

For anyone still thinking Bsky is a real alternative to Twitter: No, it’s not.

Mastodon is. Bsky is just X at its infancy.

Let me spell it out the way I understand it:

Bluesky is knowingly hosting nazis. The verification here just displays the mens rea: rather than them just not noticing the account, they know about it and still haven’t banned it.

Bluesky is not as bad as Twitter right now. However, this is the quintessential beginning of a Nazi bar, which means it will eventually become as bad as Twitter.

The Fediverse is not knowingly hosting nazis. Instances ban nazi accounts, and those that don’t are considered nazi instances and are quickly defederated by 99% of other instances. This is the minimum that I expect of Bluesky too, since it’s a centralized platform and should be better at moderation.

As long as I am reasonably in control of the information that I can access, I see no point in complaining about it.

I think there is a significant problem in platforming nazis. It gives this vile ideology a voice and a means to spread. Especially given the state of media literacy and critical thinking in the West, a lot of people don’t know how to control which information they see, and makes them susceptible to this manipulation. Fascism is rising through social media misinfo right now, as we discuss this, so it is very important to complain about it as loud as possible.

I wouldn’t call it “endorsing”, but I would call it “platforming”. blahaj.zone is platforming you, lemmy.ml is platforming me, bluesky is platforming nazis.