Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

gnu.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 259 posts

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#41

Post by DasIch »

mikekchar wrote: post #36
js8 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not familiar with either, but I am curious why does "anti-capitalist message" matter so much? I thought the purpose is to build a messaging network that everybody can use. And even GNU founder can be considered anti-capitalist. I am asking because to me, to decide to join some (not political) community based on your own political opinion, is a good way to live in your own bubble. The real strength of the Interne…

Before the horde descends, I thought I might respond to the suggestion that RMS is anti-capitalist. This comes up frequently and is a bit of a red herring. I won't try to speak for him (he can obviously do that well enough himself), however I think it is worth considering the free software movement in today's reality. Back when they only thing that described free software was the GNU manifesto, we still had the idea…

Have you ever read anything by RMS on what he calls Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS)? I can't think of many large businesses who aren't "guilty" of that.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#42

Post by pekk »

shmerl wrote: post #34
pekk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice if these would interoperate, so that it was not really an either/or choice. Don't they have essentially the same goals?

There were some plans for that it seems: https://git.gnu.io/gnu/gnu-social/issues/18 Diaspora is already interoperable with Red Matrix. For better interoperaibility they need to finalize the API. * https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Diaspora_API_proposal * https://www.loomio.org/d/cedTCbsI/the-api-bounty-deliverable...

Thank you for this informative answer.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#43

Post by cazum »

DasIch wrote: post #37
pekk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "value proposition"? It is free software, not a business opportunity. Not everything is about selling and money. I read about the project just to answer your question, which you could have answered for yourself by reading. You can run your own instance. The source is open, which means it is publicly auditable, you can contribute to it, you can fork it. It is federated. There is not one single glob…

> There is not one single global point of failure, which has other implications regarding things like censorship. In other words it doesn't just ignore abuse and harrassment one of the biggest problems - maybe the biggest problem - twitter has a communications platform, it practically encourages it.

I haven't used gnusocial, but I'd imagine they have a ignore/block-user feature.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#44

Post by dragonwriter »

mikekchar wrote: post #36
js8 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not familiar with either, but I am curious why does "anti-capitalist message" matter so much? I thought the purpose is to build a messaging network that everybody can use. And even GNU founder can be considered anti-capitalist. I am asking because to me, to decide to join some (not political) community based on your own political opinion, is a good way to live in your own bubble. The real strength of the Interne…

Before the horde descends, I thought I might respond to the suggestion that RMS is anti-capitalist. This comes up frequently and is a bit of a red herring. I won't try to speak for him (he can obviously do that well enough himself), however I think it is worth considering the free software movement in today's reality. Back when they only thing that described free software was the GNU manifesto, we still had the idea…

> I have a hard time seeing it from an "anti-capitalist" position.

The FSF position is anti-capitalist in at least one technical sense -- in the domain of software, it morally opposes capitalist model of property rights (and, in practice, uses a hack around the mechanism by which that model is implemented to subvert it.)

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#45

Post by [deleted] »

mikekchar wrote: post #36
js8 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not familiar with either, but I am curious why does "anti-capitalist message" matter so much? I thought the purpose is to build a messaging network that everybody can use. And even GNU founder can be considered anti-capitalist. I am asking because to me, to decide to join some (not political) community based on your own political opinion, is a good way to live in your own bubble. The real strength of the Interne…

Before the horde descends, I thought I might respond to the suggestion that RMS is anti-capitalist. This comes up frequently and is a bit of a red herring. I won't try to speak for him (he can obviously do that well enough himself), however I think it is worth considering the free software movement in today's reality. Back when they only thing that described free software was the GNU manifesto, we still had the idea…

[deleted]

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#46

Post by x1798DE »

dragonwriter wrote: post #44
mikekchar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the horde descends, I thought I might respond to the suggestion that RMS is anti-capitalist. This comes up frequently and is a bit of a red herring. I won't try to speak for him (he can obviously do that well enough himself), however I think it is worth considering the free software movement in today's reality. Back when they only thing that described free software was the GNU manifesto, we still had the idea…

> I have a hard time seeing it from an "anti-capitalist" position. The FSF position is anti-capitalist in at least one technical sense -- in the domain of software, it morally opposes capitalist model of property rights (and, in practice, uses a hack around the mechanism by which that model is implemented to subvert it.)

I always saw intellectual property rights as a hack to try and encourage the production of non-rivalrous goods. The scarcity is in some sense enforced and artificial, and there's a strong argument to be made that they aren't they aren't "natural" property rights in the same sense as you get with rivalrous goods.

I think pro-capitalist (mostly libertarian) thought on this matter is divided.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#47

Post by js8 »

mikekchar wrote: post #36
js8 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not familiar with either, but I am curious why does "anti-capitalist message" matter so much? I thought the purpose is to build a messaging network that everybody can use. And even GNU founder can be considered anti-capitalist. I am asking because to me, to decide to join some (not political) community based on your own political opinion, is a good way to live in your own bubble. The real strength of the Interne…

Before the horde descends, I thought I might respond to the suggestion that RMS is anti-capitalist. This comes up frequently and is a bit of a red herring. I won't try to speak for him (he can obviously do that well enough himself), however I think it is worth considering the free software movement in today's reality. Back when they only thing that described free software was the GNU manifesto, we still had the idea…

I am not talking primarily about Stallman's free software work; have you ever read his political notes? It seems that he is very critical to capitalism (as a description of the existing economic system, contrary to free market, which describes - somewhat different - ideal). In fact he also seems to be critical about free market, in particular in environmental and social issues.

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#48

Post by jeena »

Reading the comments here it seems that people are missing the point by just joining one of those instances.

It is not about just using some alternative to Twitter, the real advantage begins when you host it yourself so that you can own your own content and post whatever you want (not what some company wants you to) and (perhaps) syndicate to other services like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc.

I just gave a small talk about all this last week: https://jeena.net/media/2016/IndieWeb-Jeena.pdf

Re: GNU Social, a FLOSS alternative to Twitter

#50

Post by js8 »

pekk wrote: post #29
js8 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not familiar with either, but I am curious why does "anti-capitalist message" matter so much? I thought the purpose is to build a messaging network that everybody can use. And even GNU founder can be considered anti-capitalist. I am asking because to me, to decide to join some (not political) community based on your own political opinion, is a good way to live in your own bubble. The real strength of the Interne…

It is a federated messaging network. I don't see that it is any more subject to filter bubbles than Twitter is. Everyone chooses who they follow anyway. If you want to subscribe to feeds from people with politics opposite yours, you can do that.

That was my point. The intro site may have "anti-capitalist" in it, but at the end of the day, it's up to users what they do with that network.
Post reply on HN