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Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

blog.joinmastodon.org

111–120 of 551 posts

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#111
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. The following is my opinion of what happened, not an endorsement. Trump's role in our history was primarily a f-you to the established players in both parties. He won because he made all the right people mad. And the more his enemies drastically over-react the more powerful he becomes.

But for all that superficial posturing, he accomplished very little of his agenda and generally ended up trying to play ball anyway. The anti-establishment game lasted until he entered the white House. His primary accomplishment was building a base of angry people.

Strongly disagree. You have to remember democratic politics is about turning a massive ship in a new direction. Unless you’re willing to start shooting people democracy moves in increments.

I would say the US drastically changed a few ways: 1) the public’s perception of the media [Trump’s antagonism exposed just how partisan it is across the board], 2) the US strategy with regards to China [Biden seems to be quietly adopting many aspects], 3) a significant adjustment of tax strategy and offshoring of profits [it was a major shift in how offshore profits are treated], 4) healthcare regulations [hospital price transparency and drug pricing had some people shitting bricks and it’s just started].

Now you can argue those moves were bad, but to argue nothing changed is short-sighted.

It’s not that dissimilar to a large corporation. I’ve seen leaders (not even CEOs) push in a certain direction and it’s clear years later it made an impact.

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#112
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the primary concern of his voter base was advancing their political agenda. I believe the anger was the whole point, and they got it by the truck loads. There was no reason to believe that they would get what they wanted policy-wise from a Democrat or from a different Republican candidate. The next best thing is to make all of the bad people angry, which they did get.

Did they? One would assume if the "bad people" (the establishment, 'The Swamp') got so angry, there might be change in some way. If any of the criticism had gone beyond the level of "crooked Hillary" then I could buy this theory of Trump as expose. But it never did.

It's not like they would've complained if they'd gotten some of their policies advanced, but that was not the point.

The point was that he said things like "kung flu" and it drove the bad people insane. Or "I can't call Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas any more because she's not an Indian."

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#113
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no service.

People were able to access the service and create accounts. Those people are entitled to the sources. This would immediately go away if they just posted a tarball of the almost certainly unmodified sources. I guess nobody running this understands what's going on?

They win either way. If mastodon pursues the copyright claim, they get a ton of press and probably more money from donations to fight the “woke Marxists”.

It’s a propaganda platform, not social media.

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#115
post #110

We will create many Distributed Permacomputers which will be long lasting, durable, with the right to repair and a right to free speech without being deplatformed. Rusulting Code will be public domain and easy to setup. It was never about the code, it was always about the data. To learn more or help, Please visit: https://www.unturf.com and https://youtu.be/BgBrSLUgLH4 We reject political deplatforming. We favor righ…

And....what exactly does this have to do with this situation? If your permacomputer hosts something that breaks the licence of the software used, I'd also hope it would be shut down, whatever it's hosting.

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#116
post #98
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People were able to access the service and create accounts. Those people are entitled to the sources. This would immediately go away if they just posted a tarball of the almost certainly unmodified sources. I guess nobody running this understands what's going on?

> This would immediately go away... This platform is going to be under continuous attack from all angles. The company has to be ready to be boycotted, licenses revoked, regulation enacted, smear campaigns run, deplatformed by infrastructure providers, etc. Their lawyers are going to be the more combative type, when they signed up it was pretty clear the sort of wild-eyed hate that the Trump brand is going to attract…

I doubt there'll be much boycotting; the people who might boycott won't want to use it in the first place. Certainly no regulation will be enacted. I doubt a smear campaign, either; if it's anything like Twitter, a simple screenshot of the homepage will be enough. So the only things are:

• licenses revoked – except with free software, this can only happen if you violate the license

• deplatformed by infrastructure providers – which is part of the reason we need not to have centralisation in the first place.

As much as I dislike this former president, I expect his social media site might actually have better moderation than his Twitter followers had; for PR reasons, if nothing else. I'd rather it wasn't around, but I don't think it's worth taking it down. (Enforcing the AGPL, however? That's worth something.)

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#117
post #15
post #4

Does a history of enforcement help in cases like this? The article itself says that Truth Social is "antithetical" to Mastodon's values, but that there's nothing they can do about the usage of their software other than license violations. It sounds like they have a bias to enforce their license in this case. If Mastodon has a weak history of enforcing their license to other organizations, does it weaken the case? I'm…

In general, you don't have any obligation to enforce your rights. There is the well-known exception of trademark law, but that's in the nature of the matter. If PepsiCo sells Coca-Cola and the Coca-Cola company doesn't react, then the trade mark obviously doesn't allow customers to identify genuine Coca-Cola.

You don't have an obligation and in theory (and only in theory) it doesn't matter but a history of doing it anyway sure as shit helps in court.

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#118
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I remember all those lectures about over reaction and we ended up with an insurrection and an entire half of our country convinced an election was stolen.

[snark]Almost lost the Republic on Jan 6th to a whole lot of shoving.[/snark] But more seriously it looks like the government is having a hell of a time convicting anyone there of more than mischief and trespassing.

[deleted]

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#119
post #21

One of Trump's biggest advantages is his enemies drastically over-react to things and end up looking stupid. GPL violations are a serious business and Mastodon is well within their rights to ask for the code to be released. But the business hasn't even opened yet and they're already waving permanent revocation around. This sort of aggression in enforcing the GPL may actually be unprecedented.

Yeah I remember all those lectures about over reaction and we ended up with an insurrection and an entire half of our country convinced an election was stolen.

The previous election was also accused to be stolen. If you look at tweets, both parties had complete trust in election integrity when it fitted their narrative and it was a complete fraud when it was convenient. Do you remember the Russian hackers?

Given how crappy USA election practices are (no voter IDs? mail ballot? workers counting ballots without witnesses?) I'm pretty sure there were instances of election fraud in both cases, it's just hard to establish how much it affected the result.

Re: Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

#120
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't a semi-malicious actor be mostly in the clear if they provided the upstream code and a statement declaring they make no modifications to the provided source directly? If so, what would the recourse be? I can't imagine a court backing a demand to reveal 's production systems based on what little external evidence one would have in these circumstances.

> Wouldn't a semi-malicious actor be mostly in the clear if they provided the upstream code and a statement declaring they make no modifications to the provided source directly? Sure, but that seems to be belied on its face by them having actually stripped the present-by-default mentions & links: > neither the terms nor any other part of the website contained any references to Mastodon, nor any links to the source co…

They might be running a forwarding proxy with substitution rules. I don't think AGPL would have a problem with that, even though SSPL would. (Though, let's face it: they totally modified the source code.)
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