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Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code

blog.joinmastodon.org

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

#221

Post by smhenderson »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #148
krapp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how everyone always says "sitting President of the united states" when they mention Trump's deplatforming, as if to imply that being a sitting President gives Trump greater legal right to a social media account, or that deplatforming Trump was in some way an coup or overthrow of Trump's position as President, thus reinforcing the narrative of social media being an organized supranational conspiracy that poses…

As much as I dislike Trump, deplatforming is much more notable while he was in office than if it had happened afterwards. I agree, though, that it does sometimes sound like it's being hinted that something more nefarious was happening when people talk about it like this.

But he did violate their terms of service over and over while in office. You could argue that they should have booted him sooner, after a few warnings and repeated violations. And they can argue that they gave him, and other political figures, extra leeway due to their public positions and their newsworthiness. But at the end of the day he was repeatedly given special treatment that most of us would never get on any of the platforms he was banned from.

If there was anything nefarious going on it was Twitter, FB, etc. looking the other way because they knew that his violations of their terms was attracting attention and therefore making them money.

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

#222

Post by david_allison »

haunter wrote: post #183

Kinda off and I have no horses in the race but how come Mastodon has so many gambling sites and casinos as sponsors? Never knew that, feels a bit odd. Also personally not a big fan of this... https://joinmastodon.org/sponsors

There's a large number of e-gaming companies sponsoring OSS as a means of CSR and advertising. For smaller OSS, it is the majority of corporate donations as other types of companies don't bother. It's not likely that Mastodon encouraged those donations, but other companies aren't likely to reach out.

Doing further research, Mastodon's sold out on those tiers of sponsors[0], so they're likely in the lucky position that they could pick and choose.

[0] https://sponsor.joinmastodon.org/

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

#223

Post by ncallaway »

zdkl wrote: post #64
KingOfCoders wrote: post #35

"On Oct 26, we sent a formal letter to Truth Social’s chief legal officer, requesting the source code to be made publicly available in compliance with the license. According to AGPLv3, after being notified by the copyright holder, Truth Social has 30 days to comply or the license may be permanently revoked."

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.

> 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.

That’s not really how courts work. You don’t how to have all the evidence to support your claims when you file the lawsuit.

Rather, you can go to court saying “I have reason to believe Doe is doing thing X, it’s causing me harms Y, and we could prove it with Z”.

If the case is not dismissed at an early stage, then the discovery process is started. This gives subpoena power to both sides to discover relevant facts about the case, hold depositions under oath with relevant parties, and other means of gathering information that wouldn’t be available outside of the court process.

It’s very likely that the Truth Social source code would have to be turned over to the plaintiffs during the discovery process. Additionally, the plaintiffs lawyers would probably ask the Truth Social developers questions under oath about how the platform was developed.

The evidence gathered during discovery is what the judge would use to decide whether a license violation occurred, and to issue an order.

So, the public evidence available at the start of a civil court case doesn’t need to support the requests for relief.

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

#224

Post by 300bps »

haunter wrote: post #183

Kinda off and I have no horses in the race but how come Mastodon has so many gambling sites and casinos as sponsors? Never knew that, feels a bit odd. Also personally not a big fan of this... https://joinmastodon.org/sponsors

ESG Investing is one of the hottest trends in investment management that aims to eliminate investments in companies that don't adhere to Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance standards. Most investment management firms are scrambling to come up with product offerings to meet the substantial demand.

So you're not alone in your feelings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social_and_corp...

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

#225

Post by serial_dev »

jrootabega wrote: post #30

> As far as personal feelings are concerned, of course we would prefer if people so antithetical to our values did not use and benefit from our labour And sensible people would prefer that license violations would be published and pursued fairly, and personal feelings kept personal, rather than creating a soft list of people and perspectives whose online/computing freedom is less important than others.

But isn't it exactly what they say? Like "hey, I wish they didn't use Mastodon, but there's a license and they can use our software if they want to and they comply with the license"? Or did I misunderstand this?

Their only issue in the article is that they don't comply with the license. I believe the "personal feelings" paragraph was added so that they explain to some people that they don't want to/cannot prevent them from using Mastodon. I'm sure they had received emails like "how can you allow Trump to use your open source software", "stop him, he is evil, and if you allow him to use Mastodon, you are evil too".

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

#226

Post by Jotra7 »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #208
h2odragon wrote: post #14

This (possible but technically not yet a) license violation has gotten more press for OSS licenses and enforcement than anything before, I think. Certainly more press than the Vizio thing, which will actually impact a lot more people if anything comes of it.

Amazon violating open source agreements to host their own version of the product and squeeze the life out of the original company? Not a peep. People whose political opinions differ from my own use the software? This must be stopped at once .

[dead]

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

#227

Post by mijoharas »

usui wrote: post #46
jrootabega wrote: post #30

> As far as personal feelings are concerned, of course we would prefer if people so antithetical to our values did not use and benefit from our labour And sensible people would prefer that license violations would be published and pursued fairly, and personal feelings kept personal, rather than creating a soft list of people and perspectives whose online/computing freedom is less important than others.

Is there an example of a software with a license with more overt political views being directly stated in the agreement ? I'm NOT saying that it's wrong to have personal views, or to make a statement about what Mastodon feels about Trump's Truth Social, but I am curious if there is software in wide-use with something like "No anti-vaxxers". So far the most ideology-enforcing licenses I know are mainly about the battl…

There are also a few that disallow the software to be used in nuclear facilities[0]

I think there is a fairly long tail of variations and similar [1]. As others have mentioned I think the additional restrictions aren't particularly popular.

[0] https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause-No-Nuclear-License-20...

[1] https://blueoakcouncil.org/list

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

#228

Post by Semaphor »

ToddWBurgess wrote: post #202
veltas wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just Stallman, it's incompatible with the OSI definition of open source.

Depends where you live. In Canada and a lot of other parts of the world intellectual property also has something called moral rights. What is being done here is well within the copyright holder's moral rights in many parts of the world. If your name is associated with a project you have the right to assert how your project is used because it could reflect on the copyright holder's name and reputation. Like all things…

I think you replied to the wrong comment? This is about OSI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Initiative

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

#229

Post by simondotau »

dmos62 wrote: post #203
jlangenauer wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The creators created the software, they can put any conditions they please on how others might use it. They're under no moral or legal obligation to allow people to use the fruits of their labors, except as they permit.

The creators are themselves fruit of the society. It's short-sighted to grant them the privilege to withhold their fruit.

And yet society grants this privilege; rather pervasively in fact.

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

#230

Post by luke2m »

haunter wrote: post #183

Kinda off and I have no horses in the race but how come Mastodon has so many gambling sites and casinos as sponsors? Never knew that, feels a bit odd. Also personally not a big fan of this... https://joinmastodon.org/sponsors

Seems like they just want the back link from an important site. A lot of popular projects have some pretty sketchy sponsors, [0]

[0] https://www.android-x86.org/ [1] https://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html

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