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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
In our increasingly politicized world, it has become popular to chant "all software is political." Software builds the systems that free or constrain us, the thinking goes, and so we should withhold it from bad people. This is the thinking that has led Microsoft employees and others to decry contracts tech companies have with ICE (US Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement), insisting that their software only be sold to people they like.
[...] Over the years we as an open source community have experimented with all sorts of stupid ideas, like efforts to block anyone from using code for commercial purposes unless they pay. Each time, we've realized that as good a goal as it is for developers to get paid, for example, the destruction caused by closing off the code to uses we don't like ends up ruining the foundations upon which open source rests.
This is dramatically more important, however, when it comes to attempts to politicize open source software.
As developer Chris Cordle stated, "Nobody wins" and the "whole idea [undergirding open source] dies" ... "if an author arbitrarily picks and chooses who can and can't use it based on whoever Twittersphere is mad at this week." It doesn't matter if there is tremendous cause for that anger. Open source dies when it becomes politicized.
Source: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-politicizing-open-source-is-a-terrible-idea/
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 12 2018, @07:23PM (6 children)
The SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) seems to think they are [splcenter.org].
I think mocking absolutists is counter-productive. It incites them and makes them stronger. It also lulls everyone into the false belief that such extremism "could never happen here." I've long argued that the way Jews lampooned Nazis and reduced them to cartoon cutouts was dangerous, because it glosses over what the Nazis were about and how they came to power in a modern, industrialized, and supposedly enlightened society. (Jews also demonized the Nazis, with the same effect)
I think the best way to answer extremism is to counter it with critical thinking and reason. Don't give them an inch discursively, but don't give into the temptation to de-platform or censor them; that just hands them an easy victory. And, finally, and most importantly, address the underlying causes for people to be angry in the first place--stop rigging the economy and everything else for the connected few, and maybe everyone else will stop wanting to kill them.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:08PM
Your last sentence implies that the connected few who get all the money are jews. You have been reported to the ADF and will be de-platformed, you anti-semite.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:42PM (3 children)
I disagree with the idea that mocking them makes them stronger unless perhaps they are already in control, in which case, sure, we are back to playing into their hand by making ourselves appear to be the foolish ones.
To that point, I don't know of anybody who has ever built a movement on being lampooned. On the contrary there seem to be an entrenched belief that I shouldn't mock some subjects, which I take as evidence of its (potential) effectiveness.
I do agree that sober discussion of how the nazis came to power is hugely educational, but I don't think that mocking stupid beliefs and teaching history are mutually exclusive, rather I hold that both are vital.
I absolutely agree critical thinking and reason are hugely important, and that censorship is a terrible idea. But I am not talking about rational subjects and rational discussion, I am taking about discouraging irrational beliefs in (assumed) sane individuals. I don't think that the best response to a flat earther is to build further evidence against them, but rather to ask them if they used GPS to find their way here. Flat earthers are an excellent example of a group that seems to be purpose built for lampooning, and where rational discourse is of no value, if they actually had an open mind they would see that there is a huge library of proof at all levels that the earth isn't flat. And in the off chance that they are trolls to the man (which is frankly what I am hoping to be true), I got a chuckle, and didn't give them the outrage they desired.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:46PM (2 children)
Deplatforming and censorship makes them stronger. Mockery diminishes them to the point where they are no longer taken seriously as a threat. Engagement works but you'll be attacked. [nytimes.com] The far-left and the far-right are feeding off one another, you can't tackle one side without tackling them both.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:57PM (1 child)
While we are at it, is there a compelling argument for using the word deplatforming as opposed to just calling a spade a spade and leaving it at censorship?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @11:43PM
Yes because it's a very specific form of censorship. [marcuse.org]
Marcuse knew that falsely attacking conservatives and liberals as "fascists" was what brought actual fascists to power. This scrappy essay was as inexcusable when first written as it remains now, disguising authoritarianism as tolerance and hoping nobody would notice. Marxist in denial [quadrant.org.au] he was not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @07:03AM
Ha! As if they could be stronger! No, instead, we seduce their women. Women are much more pragmatic than white supremacists, which is why so few of them manage to procreate, which is kind of an embarrassment, given their ideology. But their women know that Liberals last longer, Blacks are bigger, and Feminist men are much more attentive to female needs in the coitus. So I say, fuck 'em. Well, not fuck them, but fuck their wives, girlfriends, mothers, and aunties. The weakness of white supremacy is that it is an all male movement. You know what I mean?