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Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

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Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#51

Post by stonogo »

4bpp wrote: post #34
jszymborski wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yah that's where I stand on it. The message isn't harmful or hateful, it dares only make a political statement.

It's still selective degradation of functionality, as presumably people who download a snowglobe animation program don't do it to see any sort of statement apart from normative depictions of wintery things. The problem would be the same if it showed Russian flags only to users with Ukrainian locale, or ads for Mountain Dew only when the user's locale is set to French, or even just something as impossible to interpret…

> presumably

So it's "selective degradation of functionality" based entirely on your assumptions regarding the motivations of the users? How is this a useful description?

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#52

Post by JCattheATM »

netsharc wrote: post #48
JCattheATM wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except most Russians support their government and believe its lies...

I can say that about Americans. What proof do you have, or do you "just know it"? https://nestcentre.org/what-russians-think-about-the-war-aga... > For most ordinary Russians, the war is not a central concern. This may sound cynical, but it’s the truth. > When they do think about it, they tend to view it much like the weather: something that one may or may not like, but which lies beyond individual control and to whi…

> I can say that about Americans.

Eh, you'd be wrong. It's a different issue in the US, half the population believe and vote for nonsense, the other half are strongly against it.

> What proof do you have, or do you "just know it"?

Friends with Russians, and try to read useful sources like Meduza. It's absolutely very much the case that most of that population are brainwashed and believe the state propaganda.

> Meanwhile in Russia, protesting will get you arrested and probably be sent to the frontline (as a man) or prison (as a woman).

Yes, so an armed uprising is necessary if voting is not an option. But if there is no will, there will be no effort.

> Meanwhile in America, there's a political party using the Nazi playbook to subvert democracy and succeeding.

America will still have elections, and we won't have to deal with our Putin-wannabe again after their term is up.

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#53

Post by sssilver »

kstrauser wrote: post #45

I could not be less sympathetic on this. If you don't want people protesting your actions, don't, like, invade their country. "But what if it was the US doing the invading?" Yes, even then. If some Iraqi author made an Xsnow that waved little Iraq flags, that's their right. Even if I disagree, it doesn't harm me, and it might inspire me to consider our actions. "But what if it makes someone's boss get mad at them?" I…

Isn't there discrepancy between that and The Debian Linux team removing “offensive” quotes for the “fortune” application[1]?

[1] https://x.com/LundukeJournal/status/1952340426892984580

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#54

Post by netsharc »

JCattheATM wrote: post #52
netsharc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say that about Americans. What proof do you have, or do you "just know it"? https://nestcentre.org/what-russians-think-about-the-war-aga... > For most ordinary Russians, the war is not a central concern. This may sound cynical, but it’s the truth. > When they do think about it, they tend to view it much like the weather: something that one may or may not like, but which lies beyond individual control and to whi…

> I can say that about Americans. Eh, you'd be wrong. It's a different issue in the US, half the population believe and vote for nonsense, the other half are strongly against it. > What proof do you have, or do you "just know it"? Friends with Russians, and try to read useful sources like Meduza. It's absolutely very much the case that most of that population are brainwashed and believe the state propaganda. > Meanwh…

> America will still have elections, and we won't have to deal with our Putin-wannabe again after their term is up.

Heh.. Russia has "elections" too.

So easy to point and jeer and say "they're bad, but over here the circumstances are different!"...

As if armed uprisings are child's play, and those not rising against tyrants are cowards. I bet if you were in Russia, you'd also made excuses why you haven't joined the resistance and learned how to make bombs and kill FSB soldiers. Fact is "the will" only comes with backs against the wall, like when food runs out (Arab uprising) or it's no longer tolerable (Iran). And then what will the revolution bring? Who's in charge in Iran, Libya, Egypt? It's easy to be an armchair revolutionary calling people cowards and brainwashed from 10000 miles away..

Addendum: and if a Russian has sympathy for the Ukranians but is powerless to do anything, wouldn't it be attractive to start believing the lie that it's the Ukranians that are assholes, that they're also doing bad things (just look at the average Israeli's support of the genocide - "it's because they want to annihilate us!"); if you start believing that stuff, you can "forgive" yourself not doing anything against your tyrannical government.

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#55

Post by michaelmrose »

JdeBP wrote: post #37
dgellow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t have to use the software. It’s such a non issue. Xsnow is closer to art than critical software, you can easily ditch it

The naïveté of that position is that the users are not informed ahead of time that there's a random chance of a political protest popping up on their screen, so do not get to make an informed choice before it is perhaps too late. It's not mentioned in the doco. It's obfuscated in the source code as an 'extra tree' in an array of xpmtrees. The commit that added this had the commit message 'willem'.

So 3% of the pop uses Linux. I shouldn't be surprised that 3% of those use Debian. I WOULD be surprised to find that more than 1 in 10k has EVER used xsnow 1 in 1M running it continually. Note this is actually wildly overstated. I have not even touched on the settings which would show flags.

Then we have to imagine they run xsnow all the time and somehow don't notice the dangerous political stuff OR run it for the first time.

If we start with 140M Russians this has certainly never happened and will almost certainly NEVER happen.

It is actually far more likely that someone should actually get caught using it trying to see the flags and have to explain that to their boss.

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#56

Post by tryauuum »

kstrauser wrote: post #45

I could not be less sympathetic on this. If you don't want people protesting your actions, don't, like, invade their country. "But what if it was the US doing the invading?" Yes, even then. If some Iraqi author made an Xsnow that waved little Iraq flags, that's their right. Even if I disagree, it doesn't harm me, and it might inspire me to consider our actions. "But what if it makes someone's boss get mad at them?" I…

> don't, like, invade their country

I did not invade any country

At least this app just displays the flags and not prints such accusations

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#57

Post by [deleted] »

kstrauser wrote: post #45

I could not be less sympathetic on this. If you don't want people protesting your actions, don't, like, invade their country. "But what if it was the US doing the invading?" Yes, even then. If some Iraqi author made an Xsnow that waved little Iraq flags, that's their right. Even if I disagree, it doesn't harm me, and it might inspire me to consider our actions. "But what if it makes someone's boss get mad at them?" I…

[deleted]

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#58

Post by striking »

sssilver wrote: post #53
kstrauser wrote: post #45

I could not be less sympathetic on this. If you don't want people protesting your actions, don't, like, invade their country. "But what if it was the US doing the invading?" Yes, even then. If some Iraqi author made an Xsnow that waved little Iraq flags, that's their right. Even if I disagree, it doesn't harm me, and it might inspire me to consider our actions. "But what if it makes someone's boss get mad at them?" I…

Isn't there discrepancy between that and The Debian Linux team removing “offensive” quotes for the “fortune” application [1]? [1] https://x.com/LundukeJournal/status/1952340426892984580

I think there is in fact a discrepancy between displaying flags and advocating directly for gendered violence:

> Debian contributor "NoisyCoil" said that they had wanted to argue in favor of keeping the packages, but after looking at the content they had decided against it:

> > I went peeking at the package and, unless I'm completely missing something, the second offensive Italian fortune says that women's "no"s should be interpreted as "yes", while the third one explicitly calls for violence on women [1]. Like, it literally says women should be beaten on a regular basis. I'm afraid I can't help you here, sorry.

from https://lwn.net/Articles/1031750/, linked in the fine article

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#59

Post by fer »

netsharc wrote: post #39
krunck wrote: post #14

One comment really nails the problem with this sort of thing: " People in Western countries don't realize how bad the situation on the ground actually is¹; random Ukrainian flags showing up on your work monitor can result in severe problems for you (like losing you job, or worse), especially if you work in the government sector. If they show up on your laptop in a random cafe or an airport, you might very well get a…

When the war started, Europeans were forcing famous Russians living in Europe to denounce their government's evils. For example an opera house demanded a Russian opera singer to say something against the regime or be "blacklisted". As if it's so fucking easy to denounce a dictator who has murderous tendencies and who rules your homeland, as if it's so easy to insult him, and then what, not be able to return home and…

I mean, it's easy to be apolitical and stay in russia. They can always do that and not break the russian social contract.

Молчание - знак согласия

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#60

Post by estebank »

A lot of people talking about how displaying the flag at all could get somebody in Russia in trouble. You could see the increasing of the likelihood as helpful then, because the flag could always appear. By making it come up more often it communicates to the user that it can appear it gives a chance to the user to notice it in a "safe" situation and not use xsnow if they are in a situation where it could cause trouble for them. The existence of the flag is not quite mentioned at https://www.ratrabbit.nl/ratrabbit/xsnow/, and the site is loading too slow to see if it is shown in https://www.ratrabbit.nl/ratrabbit/xsnow/visuals/index.html.
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