Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse • Hacker News Board

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#441

Post by echelon » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 5:13 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #437

echelon wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is trans. By turning this into a game of sports and one-upsmanship, you're hurting us. Listen to the left and to the right. Talk with them. Engage them. Humanize them. Do this the Dr. King way, not the Malcom X way. You won't win hearts and minds if you're bearing your teeth all the time. People in the middle don't want deal with that. People that could be convinced are instead turned away. Maybe you grew up…

> Do this the Dr. King way, Martin Luther King had this to say about "the white moderate" [1]: "First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more d…

Understand the difference between respecting your enemy and not doing anything to address problems. These are orthogonal.

Setting up censorship traps is slapping your enemy in their face.

You should read his "Loving Your Enemies" sermon [1]:

> Now let me hasten to say that Jesus was very serious when he gave this command; he wasn’t playing. He realized that it’s hard to love your enemies. He realized that it’s difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you, those persons who say evil things about you. He realized that it was painfully hard, pressingly hard. But he wasn’t playing. And we cannot dismiss this passage as just another example of Oriental hyperbole, just a sort of exaggeration to get over the point. This is a basic philosophy of all that we hear coming from the lips of our Master. Because Jesus wasn’t playing; because he was serious. We have the Christian and moral responsibility to seek to discover the meaning of these words, and to discover how we can live out this command, and why we should live by this command.

[...]

> Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That’s the time you must do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.

[...]

> Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. That’s why Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even though they’re mistreating you. Here’s the person who is a neighbor, and this person is doing something wrong to you and all of that. Just keep being friendly to that person. Keep loving them. Don’t do anything to embarrass them. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with bitterness because they’re mad because you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. “love your enemies.”

[...]

> Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I regularly drive over a bridge with those words printed on it [2]. They're more powerful than hating your enemy.

[1] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/lov...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7608328,-84.3678862,3a,75y,2...

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#442

Post by echelon » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 5:20 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #439

echelon wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is trans. By turning this into a game of sports and one-upsmanship, you're hurting us. Listen to the left and to the right. Talk with them. Engage them. Humanize them. Do this the Dr. King way, not the Malcom X way. You won't win hearts and minds if you're bearing your teeth all the time. People in the middle don't want deal with that. People that could be convinced are instead turned away. Maybe you grew up…

>Do this the Dr. King way, not the Malcom X way. You won't win hearts and minds if you're bearing your teeth all the time. You don't understand MLK if you think he was less radical than Malcom X[0]. He absolutely did not engage with and humanize his oppressors. He didn't patiently and calmly listen to what racists had to say and try to find common ground and a way to tolerate them. Read his "Letter from a Birmingham…

I forgive you for thinking that.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#443

Post by xigoi » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 8:05 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #397

xigoi wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I oppose these things, I think people who agree with them should be allowed to express their opinion. Maybe if we allow them to explain why they support these things, we can better understand how to come to a mutual agreement.

The quote I was responding to in the top: > Many amongst the left obsesses over what the right is doing (and vice versa), which tells me people enjoy rubbernecking rather than tuning out. It's a game of "neener-neener" high school football rivalry. This is a complete failure to understand that politics is real and has real consequences for real people. If your think that "actually none of this matters, why can't we a…

I'm not saying that politics don't have real consequences. But by pointing everyone who even slightly disagrees with you as literally the incarnation of evil, you're only making things worse. Do you think Fundamentalist Christians are less likely to support anti-abortion laws if you keep being toxic to them?

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#444

Post by indigochill » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 10:40 AM UTC

dcow wrote: post #431

indigochill wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also look at the FOSS world. Licenses are actually important because if you license some software under GPL, you have legal grounds to sue if a corporation then uses that software in violation of the license. Most corporations just treat GPL as anathema because it's rarely worth the legal effort. So far we haven't thought of social media content as licensed but it effectively is: the license is usually the…

It's important to note that Stallman considers the GPL a hack on the copyright system (a clever one, sure, but a hack nonetheless). He'd rather it not have to exist, because we shouldn't need to exist in a world where companies can own the recipe to mix bytes around and achieve a certain software flavor. I mean you can't copyright a food recipe. It so obviously would be stupid to have designer meals and chefs who are…

I'm sympathetic to that perspective, but that would entail pushing an ideal upstream to where change isn't going to happen because there's far too much financial interest in copyrighting arrangements of bytes. So if the system's unfixable, then hacking it seems like the right approach.

Besides which, ignoring GPL, Creative Commons seems like a good license because creative works are more than logical arrangements of bytes (there are only so many useful ways of sending bytes down an HDMI cable, but many more ways to write a novel) and is probably the more appropriate license for social media content (at least assuming the author wants to apply that license to their content).

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#445

Post by 542354234235 » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 4:28 PM UTC

dcow wrote: post #263

wpietri wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So short of attaching licenses to every post you make I think you have this backwards. Full copyright protection is the default for all content not licensed otherwise. Publishing does not put content into a "public domain" status. Social media platforms already have strong legal terms around every piece of content. If you violate that license, platforms may choose to fuck you up. E.g.: https://www.malwarebytes.com/…

I understand that generally you retain the copyright to your works implicitly and that you don't have to actively file for copyright in order to gain the protection of copyright law. I'm arguing that it's pretty preposterous for a global decentralized federated social platform to assume some authority (enforced by whom, that'd require a central group of enforcers) over the licensing of posts on the network by invokin…

>Not even legally you don't… Copyright cannot restrict who can view a work you created once you transfer or license that work to somebody else (e.g. by releasing it publicly on the fediverse).

This is literally the opposite of what you are saying now. Saying you legally have no right to restrict then trying to act like you were saying that, in some sort of practical sense, it would not be possible to enforce a legal restriction.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#446

Post by xigoi » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

Vecr wrote: post #427

xigoi wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the American way of solving violence with more violence.

I get feelings about pacifists I have to suppress. You can say that there are people aligned closely enough to you that dying is not actually an existential threat in the same sense as your country or species getting destroyed is, but it's not a good precedent to let them roll you over without a reasonable application of force. I would personally start questioning it if I had to kill over a thousand people to save my…

Ah yes, I believe you're such a badass that you'd definitely be able to kill a thousand people.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#447

Post by Vecr » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

xigoi wrote: post #446

Vecr wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get feelings about pacifists I have to suppress. You can say that there are people aligned closely enough to you that dying is not actually an existential threat in the same sense as your country or species getting destroyed is, but it's not a good precedent to let them roll you over without a reasonable application of force. I would personally start questioning it if I had to kill over a thousand people to save my…

Ah yes, I believe you're such a badass that you'd definitely be able to kill a thousand people.

I never said I would, I would probably be killed by a couple, at least without a lot of support. Look at the Black Hawk Down incident for what killing a thousand people requires. That actually failed because the Americans left, they should have stayed even if it required killing a thousand more.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#448

Post by dcow » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 11:48 PM UTC

giaour wrote: post #256

dcow wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that simple. If I sell you a book, I cannot place a restriction on that sale saying you can't resell that book (first sale doctrine). You're allowed to do that because you own the copy of the book. You can't copy the book and sell it, because you don't own the copyright , but you can sell the original copy, show it to whomever you want, etc. It's not that "copyright is okay with transitive licensing" but mor…

> but you can sell the original copy, show it to whomever you want, etc The license associated with physical media does have restrictions. You can't mount a public display of the work without acquiring a separate license. E.g., you can't buy a DVD of a movie and then screen it for a group (outside of what's permitted under fair use). If you sell tickets to that screening or intersperse ads, thereby infringing copyrig…

There's no license attached to physical media, it's all statutory.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#449

Post by dcow » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 11:49 PM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #438

dcow wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could run iOS on other hardware, you'd get an iPhone for $300. That would be competitive.

Why do you think running iOS on cheap commodity hardware would be any better than Android? Apple designs it’s hardware and software in concert.

I have no idea, but at least we'd be able to try it out and see. Plus the iMessage blue bubble thing would be dead and that's a big part of Apple's social platform lock in today.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#450

Post by dcow » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 11:53 PM UTC

mattigames wrote: post #343

Guvante wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your understanding is flawed. Copyright is 100% okay with transitively controlling production of content. After all how else would you describe someone allowing Netflix to stream your content? You can't restream Netflix and Netflix is restricted on how it can stream to you. Both rooted in the original Copyright protection and the licenses to content given out by intermediaries. Most posting platforms give themselves…

Is Facebook supposed to scan all Twitter everytime you post something to check if it's not violating the copyright of someone there? To know every paragraph of every single book? Or scan the entire internet for that matter? That is not "lazy", that is just a ridiculous expectation, no (legal) social network would survive if that was necessary to operate Not to mention the millions of derivative works where the defini…

That's the point, they're not. Copyright is a dumb concept when applied to social network posts (let alone the internet) and we shouldn't be wanting to emulate it on a decentralized social network.