Post 2634462 by bob@soc.freedombone.net
(DIR) More posts by bob@soc.freedombone.net
(DIR) Post #2574852 by bjoern@mastodon.social
2019-01-03T08:15:28Z
1 likes, 3 repeats
"we should be working not just to pay the bills, but to make sure we don’t create software that we will one day regret", I like the term #ethicalDebt, software engineers think a lot about technical debt when building software but we should not forget the ethical debt of what we build. https://thenewstack.io/tech-ethics-new-years-resolution-dont-build-software-you-will-regret/ #software #engineering #ethics
(DIR) Post #2576768 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2019-01-03T09:27:58Z
1 likes, 4 repeats
@bjoern “when Mark Zuckerberg was making Facebook in his dorm room bedroom, he probably wasn’t trying to make this dopamine-inducing tool”Yes he was. He called his users “dumb fucks”. Can we please stop perpetuating this myth and giving the people who knowingly created this mess a pass with this “oops, they just wanted to make things better but ended up making things worse and accidentally becoming billionaires” narrative.VC/startups/the Silicon Valley model is unethical.
(DIR) Post #2576963 by maxmustermann@shitposter.club
2019-01-03T09:39:46.876350Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@aral @bjoern >Ethical software >on platform from the espionage world>that is get spawn money from the said secret servicesGood luck with that. The latest big thing are smart cities that are supposed to pave the way for the Technocracy that was planned decades before the first electronic computer was modelled on paper.
(DIR) Post #2578214 by bob@soc.freedombone.net
2019-01-03T09:32:14.538268Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
@aral @bjoern As far as I remember Facebook was originally created so that Zuck could stalk his college contemporaries in a voyeuristic manner. So it originates from a place of creepyness.
(DIR) Post #2578215 by dick_turpin@mastodon.org.uk
2019-01-03T09:47:59Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@bob @aral @bjoern Yep. He freely admitted he created FB so that he could meet girls which is probably a cover story for "Letching over unattainable females" (At the time) if you think about it, Facebook was actually the very first Tinder. 😍
(DIR) Post #2579140 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2019-01-03T09:45:39Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@bob @bjoern He literally called the people who trust him “dumb fucks”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-facebook
(DIR) Post #2609056 by krozruch@eupublic.social
2019-01-03T10:19:49Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@aralFacebook's arc was so predictable from the off. It was all there to see. That is why I tire of the decade-too-late centrist takes on the dangers of Facebook from embedded journals that have been riding the FB convoy for years and still now feel compelled to warn their readers against the extremism of looking for alternatives or smear FOSS types & decentralists, often barely making a living, as Mr Robot style weirdos.@bob @bjoern
(DIR) Post #2634459 by kcnightfang@kitty.town
2019-01-03T17:29:25Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@krozruch @aral @bob @bjoern That othering means that free software proponents have to cut themselves off from reaching people to use safe platforms, which only feeds the loop. There's also a lack of concern from users. I can tell all the horror stories I want, but they still think it's just how things are. Especially because the platforms are free. No one pays for "unnecessary" services.
(DIR) Post #2634462 by bob@soc.freedombone.net
2019-01-04T09:50:40.159090Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@FerdiZ @bjoern @aral @krozruch @kcnightfang The problem is not so much apathy as network effect. Real People (TM) have said things to me in the past like:"Why would I move to a social network where none of my friends are?"It's not that they don't care about privacy. If you ask them to give you their credit card number or to remove their curtains they'll say "no". It's more a case that if you want to be with your friends then you have to accept what the social networks are.
(DIR) Post #2634463 by bjoern@mastodon.social
2019-01-04T10:52:42Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@bobI hear this comparisons often and also used it in the past. Meanwhile I come to the conclusion that it is something you can't compare. Whether it is rational or not, people have a strong privacy feeling if it is about their friends, neighbors, etc who could know something private about them but not if something as anonymous as algorithm analysis it...@FerdiZ @aral @krozruch @kcnightfang
(DIR) Post #2634464 by bjoern@mastodon.social
2019-01-04T11:00:51Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@bob @FerdiZ @aral @krozruch @kcnightfangThat's why I no longer use such comparisons, in my experience they don't really help. In my view you need some "real world feature" no one else has to win the majority. Just copying what's already out there in a more privacy friendly way will not win on large scale - 1/3
(DIR) Post #2634465 by bjoern@mastodon.social
2019-01-04T11:00:52Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@bob @FerdiZ @aral @krozruch @kcnightfang That's why believe that the messenger war is over, XMPP had a opportunity 10 years ago which we missed, unfortunately. Next opportunity will come when something better/different from what we have now appears. Same with social networks - 2/3
(DIR) Post #2634466 by bob@soc.freedombone.net
2019-01-04T14:44:47.155362Z
0 likes, 2 repeats
@bjoern @kcnightfang @krozruch @aral @FerdiZ WhatsApp is really just a version of XMPP. They even run ejabberd on the server.They just took something open and made a proprietary client, with the telephone number as username.So, the popularity of chat apps has little to do with features or protocols. A lot of it is down to factors which we don't have much influence upon, like marketing.
(DIR) Post #2637061 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2019-01-04T11:01:53Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@bjoern @bob @FerdiZ @krozruch @kcnightfang Maybe that would change if more people knew that the Auschwitz tattoos originated from the tracking numbers used by IBM mainframes. https://www.villagevoice.com/2002/10/08/the-ibm-link-to-auschwitz/
(DIR) Post #2637062 by krozruch@eupublic.social
2019-01-04T15:34:13Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@aral @bjoern @bob @FerdiZ @kcnightfang The more I think about these issues the more I see that marketing works well to make invisible what those who have the money and networks wish to keep invisible, and manipulate the image both of a given product and those who would offer up valid criticisms of it. I feel the impact of some of this regularly because, being autistic, some of the clever smears of FOSS types and "edgy" SM by proprietary firms of all kinds works very effectively against me..
(DIR) Post #2637632 by DJWalnut@vulpine.club
2019-01-04T16:23:22Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@bjoern @bob @FerdiZ @aral @krozruch @kcnightfang part of the problem is that it's invisable. It's easy to adsime something's not happening if you can't see it for yourself, eslically for non-technical people. If facebook were required to send you a letter in the mail telling you what tbey kniw aboit you, people would care
(DIR) Post #2639872 by adambredenberg@sunbeam.city
2019-01-04T14:53:40Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@bob marketing and somehow giving you less freedom instead of more... cause that makes the feds happy
(DIR) Post #2639873 by bob@soc.freedombone.net
2019-01-04T15:01:47.666994Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@adambredenberg Taking WhatsApp as an example, the centralized architecture then allows for exclusivity and brand control. The lesson of the fediverse in the last couple of years is that celebrities have a really hard time within federated systems because they don't have exclusive control of their brand and aren't sheltered from criticism or parody accounts. Feds also love centralized architecture because it allows them to control lots of people via official decrees. Companies will usually comply with censorship demands, etc.
(DIR) Post #2639931 by krozruch@eupublic.social
2019-01-04T15:37:48Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@aral @bjoern @bob @FerdiZ @kcnightfang I sometimes suspect that in the Czech Republic and other post-communist countries, the privacy arguments Bob comes across have not made so much headway and I absolutely accept that among those communities (typically the ex-pats I work with), the network effect is the main barrier, but I think there is as much PR power going into this area at every level as there ever was with tobacco and oil, and it is working at all of the above levels to various effect.
(DIR) Post #2639932 by krozruch@eupublic.social
2019-01-04T15:41:12Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@aral @bjoern @bob @FerdiZ @kcnightfang For the federation perhaps the best kind of approach could be one of federated constructive dissent whereby we each take our own experience and knowledge and work on whichever part of the problem we are best placed to take on whether it is on the level of tooling or outreach. Each of us will have a slightly different reading but that would be a problem only if we had to agree on a single putative monolithic solution to what we are each of us confronting.
(DIR) Post #2659469 by max@smeap.com
2019-01-04T21:15:28Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@aral @bjoern We should never forget that Facebook's core business at launch had multiple competitors, and was replicable easily and quickly by multiple groups. Facebook didn't win because it was the best, it won because it was the tricksiest. Facebook was a cool "exclusive" invite only club, right up until network effects and FOMO were strong enough it didn't need to be cool or exclusive any more. That was never scale hacking (see: Competitors scaled faster), that was calculated people hacking.
(DIR) Post #2672134 by aemon@social.targaryen.house
2019-01-05T10:39:15Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@aral @bjoern @bob Plus:
(DIR) Post #2673052 by clacke@libranet.de
2019-01-05T15:06:47Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I did not know this! Thanks.I searched around a bit and many of the articles out there seem to be confused about the difference between the Vision Fund and SoftBank itself.