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BBC:
A Facebook engineer has quit the firm, saying they "can no longer stomach" being part of an organisation "profiting off hate".
Ashok Chandwaney is the latest employee to go public with concerns about how the company deals with hate speech.
The engineer added it was "choosing to be on the wrong side of history".
Facebook responded by saying it had removed millions of hate-related posts. Another of its ex-engineers has also come to its defence.
The thrust of the post by Ashok Chandwaney - who uses "they" and "them" as personal pronouns - is that Facebook moves quickly to solve certain problems, but when it comes to dealing with hate speech, it is more interested in PR than implementing real change.
Can [or should] Facebook successfully purge its platform of speech it considers harmful?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:23AM (21 children)
You've done your best to bring in more negativity, *hudson.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by barbara hudson on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:52AM (20 children)
This site is pretty right-wing. And pretty damn intolerant to anyone who points out that open source has failed the average person, who just wants something that works.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday September 10 2020, @07:06AM (3 children)
Most of the STEM in SoylentNews, these days, is responding to the alt-right white supremacist, misogynist gamer-gate and QAnon crap fomented by the original founders (well, chromas, at least) and the TMB, who is a non-woke Native American, or a delusional Oklahomian, which is easier to expect. We real Soylentils, we want science, applications of science, and stuff normal intellectual people grounded in reality are interested in. Not some Nutherguy right wing spin on shit. Runaway is ignorant of almost all aspects of STEm, and reality, and truth, so all his subs, via IRC, are suspect, and reduce the reputation of SN as a reliable aggregator of news. So, lose the nutherguy, or lose the rest of us. This is the ultimatum. SoylentNews could be dead, Netcraft confirms it [battleswarmblog.com]. And this time, we mean it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 10 2020, @04:51PM (1 child)
We spend a lot of time telling people that Chemistry works, even when those chemicals are part of the atmosphere, too.
That's STEM, right?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @12:10AM
Pedantically speaking, Global Warming and greenhouse gasses deal mainly with the Physics. Still STEM, yes.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Thursday September 10 2020, @11:24PM
I just hope you're not spending much for that STEM, because it's not working.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 11 2020, @02:04AM (15 children)
I disagree. This site is pretty eclectic. There is full representation across the spectrum. For every khallow there is an aristarchus, and vice versa. I personally prefer that to echo chambers, of which there are far, far too many now.
For what it's worth, I would be interested to hear more from you on why you think open source has failed the average person, rather than the rote political and gender talking points you most often promulgate. I am quite interested to hear how people are internalizing technology, or failing or refusing to internalize technology, because I think it's a pretty excellent predictor for the direction society as a whole will take. That is, in fact, why I submitted this story, to hear about how people's views on social media are shifting now that it has become an important platform for discursive formation.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 12 2020, @02:13AM (14 children)
Open source has mostly been co-opted by server-based services. This lowers the company's cost for software licenses for things like web server software, so they can make sufficient profit just from selling your data.
Same with Android. Same with Facebook. Same with YouTube (throw in massive copyright violations). Same with Google searches (throw in massive copyright violations).
Time was you could walk into a store and buy all sorts of software, including web browsers. Now? It's a monopoly. So much for consumer choice. So much for client support, because you are not the client.
When I was buying my developer tools, I got well written manuals, and proper support. Now RTFM is a joke because there are no manuals and what documentation is available is out of date and poorly written. The exception is closed source software - the vendor still makes enough to provide the expected bells and whistles.
The average Android phone is lucky to get 2 years of updates - if you buy it near the end of the cycle you get NO updates. This iPhone 6 came out in September of 2014 and still gets OS updates. And free iMail without Google spying on me.
2-3% of the population is visually handicapped at any one time - some temporarily, some repeatedly, some permanently.
That's a significant market, but there is simply no option for anyone to use open source. Every single Linux distro that claims to have a working screen reader is soon broken because there is no one way to access the screen data between applications and it's not built into the core of the OS. Even Windows screen readers are crap. I want anything on my phone read to me, it's baked into the OS. No need to access a server, no need for the application to include provision for being used by a screen reader. Once you've enabled it, scrolling down with two fingers start is. Nothing could be simpler.
Text to speech on Linux sounds like Dr SBAITSO from the old soundblaster/dos days. Makes sense because festival was abandoned in 1994, and ekiga can't read most of the screen content.
Kind of forces people like me to Apple because open source doesn't have a viable economic model that makes it responsive to end users - just the companies paying a few major developers and throwing bones at a few other projects.
Almost everyone has at least one program that requires closed source software. And this isn't just consumers with video games; it also includes business. Open source doesn't have the financial model to enable it to replace closed source software; however it has collapsed the ability for smaller teams of coders to generate money with small projects and grow to compete with the big boys.
Independent devs can certainly come up with better software than many open source programs; problem is it's hard to compete with something that is ALMOST good enough, So people put up with the aggravation of software that doesn't really meet their needs because it's free, and they'll waste hundreds or even thousands of hours over time trying to make it fit.
I saw one idiot boss waste 8 months of people's time trying to make one open source CMS after another do the job; it took me 2 weeks to code the whole site, including credit card payment processing, from scratch. Open source is too often the most expensive option.
Open source has a funding problem. At least with closed source, if you believe there's a need for your stuff, you can rationalize making the investment to bring it to fruition because you'll be compensated for your work if you're successful, and you can provide better support, more features, and that most important thing - keep a roof over your head.
I walk into the stores that used to sell thousands of different types of software, and there's pretty slim pickings. Because it's hard to compete with free, even if free is pretty crappy.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 12 2020, @02:41PM (13 children)
Open source has always had a funding problem. The recent spate of corporate patronage of certain projects has been an anomaly. But that's at the heart of the philosophical debate surrounding OSS. Maybe you've forgotten, or maybe you were too young to have been there, but there was a very long running debate between RMS and ESR back in the day about the direction and purpose of OSS.
I can see how that could happen, but my professional experience has almost always been the opposite. OSS generally works better and faster, and if you need to modify it to get the job done, you can, while closed source is an expensive boondoggle that draws you into what I call "progressive entrapment," where the thing you are trying to do won't work until you buy this module, but that module won't work properly until you get this add-on from a 3rd party, but oh gee we don't support that so you'll have to interface with them and their licensing regimen. Blah blah blah, it's fucking endless and costs multiples of what the output is supposed to be, and then you get the stupid assholes from the BSA running through your workplace checking workstation licenses. A. Pox. On. All. Closed. Source. With a triple helping of "FUCK YOU" to Microsoft.
Anyway, I appreciate your perspective and your frustration. I would very much prefer having these kinds of discussions on Soylent to the political mosh pit.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:15PM (12 children)
ESR is a whack job gun nut. Most people learned early on to ignore him. It was immediately obvious his Cathedral and Bazaar was unrelated to reality, more akin to mental masturbation and a false dichotomy as it's foundational argument.
It set up the battle as being between large closed source behemoths and the "rebel forces " of small open source developers. Completely ignored the small developers who made money selling closed source code to businesses.
To claim that closed source is unethical is another foundational lie - this one from RMS. Everyone is entitled to the fruits of their work, and to do so in the manner of their choosing. Someone writing code that someone else pays a license for is not unethical - however, branding such actions as unethical is itself unethical and slander. Is it more ethical to earn a living and put a roof over your head by selling licenses to your software that there is a need for, or for that software never to have been created because open source can't find it? Screen readers are an example - the open source ones don't work. Even the free NVDA (Windows only) is an exercise in frustration compared to Apple.
Was Apple behaving unethically in creating their own screen reader and bundling it as part of iOS? It wasn't anticompetitive behaviour, like bundling a free browser, because all the alternatives, including the paid ones as well as the free ones, are shit by comparison.
And that will make me take a serious look at Apple in the future. Because nobody else offers something that meets my needs, and especially not Linux.
Same as any code I write in the future will be like when I started out all those decades ago - closed - you want a license, you pay. Better 10 paying customers than 1,000 non paying customers. Don't want to be like RMS, who spent his working years either crashing in the lab (even after he was no longer a student) or begging online for a room for a few months at a time.
My point remains - to call someone unethical because they want to be paid for their work via a license fee instead of donations is itself unethical. And let's not forget all the hypocrites who decry closed source but use closed source video games on closed source operating systems. Why aren't they producing superior open-source games? Because open source can't produce the money needed to do so and people gotta eat.
What happens when all the old time enthusiasts die? Even more projects abandoned, and eventually this will hit a critical point.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 12 2020, @07:03PM (11 children)
I don't think OSS and "small developers who made money selling closed source code to businesses" are mutually exclusive. If you want to be such, go do such and may you enjoy a long and fruitful career.
As far as your screen reader goes, I'd say that if the open source ones don't work and you don't want to code them to work, then perhaps you should go with Apple or some other business that has something that will work for you. It's a big world, and one size does not fit all. Your frustration is understandable, but the world rarely hands us exactly what we want, when we want, and how we want. And usually when it does do all that, we wind up paying dearly some hidden cost. TANSTAAFL, right?
Meanwhile, I have not touched closed source personally or professionally in 20+ years and have been perfectly happy and extremely productive. Having to do anything with closed source means wasting perfectly good man hours dealing with lawyers, sales people, worthless support people in places like India, and more PHBs than you can shake a stick at. Open source means cracking open the case, slightly adjusting a feature or adding a feature, and continuing merrily on my way. If I need new software, I "apt-get install" and 20 seconds later I'm on my merry way. To me, that's bliss. Let the software be there to serve me as a tool, rather than let me serve as a perpetual serf and profit center for some faceless group of asshole MBAs.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @08:30PM (8 children)
She's only on this shtick because of the personal abuse she has brought down upon herself over the last 30+ years. She really is the apk doppelganger. Ironically, she is a serious conformist. And I don't believe the meds are helping her to keep on an even keel at all. The mood swings are quite the spectacle.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 12 2020, @09:50PM (7 children)
Mood swings? Nope - I saw how shitty OSS became and said "fuck it."
The Cathedral and the Bazaar was a lie. There is no bazaar. Innovation? What passes for the OSS Bazaar is increasingly just shitty clones of other software.
Exhibit one: web browsers. Where's the bazaar. It's all google, all the time. Even Firefox copies Google's shitty features, and is dependent on google for life support . There used to be a lot more browsers. And a myriad of features. Not one browser to rule them all.
Exhibit two: Linux distros. There's too many , which at first glance would seem to contradict my claim that there's no bazaar . But if you look at the actual programs they come with , it's all the same. Nobody is going to spend serious money developing another office suite that does things better if everyone else can just copy it. Nobody is going to develop an innovative web browser for the same reason. You'll go broke. And nobody is going to invest the significant sums necessary for a really good OSS game because everyone else will just copy it and stick ads in it and create their own DLC marketplace and you are out your investment.
Exhibit three: The PinePhone. Gee, how are those sales going?
Also, APK was not even on my radar until his hosts file spamming pissed me off 15 years ago. You're nuts iand should stop making shit up. And you're angry that I was once one of those pushing open source but have woken up and seen that ESR and RMS were full of shit. You say I'm a conformist, but I'm the one refusing to conform to the group think. Show me the bazaar, show me the innovation instead of poor clones, show me distros that don't contain an increasingly tired collection of poorly maintained packages. Not just "twiddling the knobs on the UI" as "innovation." That's the Microsoft Way circa Vista.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2020, @03:28AM (6 children)
Man! You are so full of yourself! You're only mad at free software because you feel personally slighted and take offense at the smallest challenge. It's all in your head. Free software is perfectly fine. You really should just shut your mouth about it. You're just spewing whiny bullshit.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday September 13 2020, @03:42AM (5 children)
Wake me up when there's some AAA free open source games. The biggest consumer software market, bigger than movies, and NOTHING!
Loser. Fortunately , with the collapse of the idea that OSS can meet people's needs, we can hope for a bazaar of closed source software.
Oh wait -it's already happened in app stores selling literally millions of different softwares, both paid and ad-supported, without giving away the source.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2020, @05:11PM (4 children)
I noticed you cannot refute any of my points.
There's nothing to refute! It's all pure nonsensical bullshit. You're not making any "point", you're just ranting and jabbering.
You sound like a freetard. Probably because you are.
You sound like a pretentious moron. Most definitely because you are! What a dumbass prick! This is why people have been reacting so negatively to you over the last 30 years, and you still don't get it. You're just like your apk. That DSM-5 must be full of info about you
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday September 13 2020, @05:32PM (3 children)
The smartphone is the primary computing device for the majority of the population, and it's where the most prolific application development takes place. These are developers making money off closed source software. It's the bazaar, but not open source.
So why aren't we seeing open source applications competing on phones? Simple - developers want to get paid for their work. And people are willing to either pay for it directly or through ads.
That is one fact that you cannot explain - that most people seek out closed source applications on their main computing devices. The battle has been decided for almost a decade, which is remarkable considering that's only a bit longer than the current iteration of the smartphone.
And there's no way that OSS can change that. It has neither the technical chops nor the financial resources to.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @12:12AM (2 children)
:-) Yes! do tell! You made no point to address. They are simple rants, it's you howling at the moon and engaging in name calling. You don't like free software for some personal reason that's totally irrelevant to the world at large. Who the fuck cares?!
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 14 2020, @03:28AM (1 child)
I'm not happy about it, but I was willing to face up to the facts. There is a pitiful open source bazaar with comparatively few software choices. And a closed source bazaar with more than 10 million choices between all the platforms, and a financial model that works for both the producers and consumers, in part because only a fool knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Free software doesn't work for consumers or we would have had a "year of Linux on the desktop." I don't hear anyone saying that today.
Then again, there will never again be any sort of "year of the desktop" - any desktop - ever again. We passed the "year of the smartphone " a while ago, and it's now most people's default device.
And tablets which had their day , will probably have a comeback with improved operating systems to replace laptops.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 14 2020, @05:20PM
I don't like free software because it's getting worse, not better.
Rubbish! You are simply carrying a personal grudge. Everything you say about open source is nothing but garbage. Looks like you have an inferiority complex!
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 12 2020, @09:07PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 12 2020, @09:27PM
It's me going back to what worked in the previous century. The promise of open source didn't pan out. There is no bazaar.
And people who don't want to pay for software are not a viable market. Same reason shareware died. People would rather keep trying the next free thing than actually pay for something.
So innovation died. Except among those who didn't give it up for free. The nice thing was that those who paid for it also expected to pay for improvements and new features. The second sell is always easier. Same as when you go to the store and you really like your adidas or sketchers, you're going to buy another pair.
So what happens when there's nobody willing and able to work for free on OS software who actually knows how the current systems work ? We couldn't clone Larry Wall, so there's not much to expect from Perl7 after the Perl6 fiasco. Same with most utilities - they're feature complete, have been for a decade or two, and when they finally can no longer run on the most recent OS version there won't be anyone familiar enough with them to fix them.
The OSSocalypse is going to be ugly 20 years from now. Because the bazaar, with the promise of innovation, never happened. And there's nothing to do about it because of the GPL.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.