I hate Facebook and that they will ban people, without notice, unless they record a video selfie from multiple angles, and then still sometimes permanently ban people even then, without a way to pay to prove the person is real or talk to someone or even get a reason for the ban. I also think Facebook is an arm of the government and is not really a company (quasi-governmental) and is basically a corporate rebranding of LifeLog and Zuckerberg probably got a 1600 on his SATs and was recruited to join the government while in high school.

So that all being said, despite my hatred of Facebook, what he is saying isn’t that illogical.

Let’s say Zuckerberg personally supports trans rights and thinks Trump is an idiot. He can’t say that in a meeting that will obviously have leaks. It would be “value-destroying.” Say what you want about Zuckerberg, but most people with enough intelligence don’t hate trans people because they understand science and how prenatal hormone conditions and epigenetic conditions means that sometimes internal senses of gender don’t match biological at birth sex. (Musk is the rare exception to this and it seems like his reaction comes from ego and anger about being estranged from his daughter and autism/lack of empathy, and so he’s a weird data point that doesn’t neatly fit if we take his reaction at face value.)

So let’s say Zuckerberg wants to say “We support trans and gay people, we have to do this so Trump doesn’t go after us to remain profitable and not end up needing to decrease our head count, I hate Trump.” If he said that, someone would immediately leak it, Trump would go Ape Shit, and the company would lose value.

It’s hard to know for certain if this is what he’s talking about, but if he is, this isn’t really something to fault him on.

Facebook labeling linux as somehow evil, on the other hand, is a bizarre and shitty thing to do, so fuck Facebook and fuck this asshole who is letting linux be labeled as a cybersecurity threat. I also think Facebook doing this is because government, which has backdoor is Microsoft and Apple, doesn’t like linux and sees it growing in popularity and so I believe the government requested Facebook do this. I can’t fathom a social media company would do this for no reason on their own, it makes no sense, but if Facebook is Lifelog and always has been Lifelog and Zuckerberg gets his orders from someone else, then it would make sense that they implement policies regarding labeling linux as bad to try to keep their backdoors in as many user’s OSes as possible.

I hate Facebook and that they will ban people, without notice, unless they record a video selfie from multiple angles, and then still sometimes permanently ban people even then, without a way to pay to prove the person is real or talk to someone or even get a reason for the ban. I also think Facebook is an arm of the government and is not really a company (quasi-governmental) and is basically a corporate rebranding of LifeLog and Zuckerberg probably got a 1600 on his SATs and was recruited to join the government while in high school.

So that all being said, despite my hatred of Facebook, what he is saying isn’t that illogical.

Let’s say Zuckerberg personally supports trans rights and thinks Trump is an idiot. He can’t say that in a meeting that will obviously have leaks. It would be “value-destroying.” Say what you want about Zuckerberg, but most people with enough intelligence don’t hate trans people because they understand science and how prenatal hormone conditions and epigenetic conditions means that sometimes internal senses of gender don’t match biological at birth sex. (Musk is the rare exception to this and it seems like his reaction comes from ego and anger about being estranged from his daughter and autism/lack of empathy, and so he’s a weird data point that doesn’t neatly fit if we take his reaction at face value.)

So let’s say Zuckerberg wants to say “We support trans and gay people, we have to do this so Trump doesn’t go after us to remain profitable and not end up needing to decrease our head count, I hate Trump.” If he said that, someone would immediately leak it, Trump would go Ape Shit, and the company would lose value.

It’s hard to know for certain if this is what he’s talking about, but if he is, this isn’t really something to fault him on.

Facebook labeling linux as somehow evil, on the other hand, is a bizarre and shitty thing to do, so fuck Facebook and fuck this asshole who is letting linux be labeled as a cybersecurity threat. I also think Facebook doing this is because government, which has backdoor is Microsoft and Apple, doesn’t like linux and sees it growing in popularity and so I believe the government requested Facebook do this. I can’t fathom a social media company would do this for no reason on their own, it makes no sense, but if Facebook is Lifelog and always has been Lifelog and Zuckerberg gets his orders from someone else, then it would make sense that they implement policies regarding labeling linux as bad to try to keep their backdoors in as many user’s OSes as possible.

Are you allowed to respond honestly?

If you made a response like:

"Dear reviewer,

When I wrote the code for this app, which displays content from reddit that I have no control over, I never envisioned some fuckwit moron would be so stupid that he or she would get mad at the App for just displaying what’s on reddit.

In the future, I’ll add a disclaimer that goes “Are you some anti-DEI piece of shit who thinks everything is Woke? Press the large red button icon below to only see the “based” subreddit.” I hope this will help you understand how to use this App, you fucking idiot.

Sincerely, Developer"

would that get your kicked off the store?

It’s probably still a good option for an all-in-one solution for anyone with a very low threat model who wants to get rid of clutter and protect their inbox.

i’m so tired of lazy greedy developers implying i’m a moron with their radical leftist “code”

I didn’t see in the “about” what jurisdiction (if any) you are incorporated in. I also don’t see if there’s any encryption at rest.

This is important to me because in the US, the government can go to court, get an order demanding a US email provider to put in a backdoor, and then get a gag order so the US company can’t disclose it to users.

And with open-source code, I end up trusting to some extent that the server code matches what is on github, so making it open-source doesn’t stop forced backdoors and gag orders if it’s based in the US.

For someone whose threat model doesn’t include the government (someone not LGBT+, not Latino, not trans, a political moderate with average viewpoints who won’t be impacted regardless of who is in power), it’s not the sort of thing that matters. But for others, it would help to include that information.

If a car company in Germany complemented Hitler on his paintings, would it be still fine to buy their cars? And what if they were a really great car company and only mentioned how cool Hitler’s paintings were and nothing else?

I sort of feel like if I am cool with Proton’s statement, then I also am cool with trans people and Latino people and Gazan people being treated poorly, and I’m not actually cool with that.

It’s unfortunate, because despite Proton not accepting XMR and logging IPs when they promised they wouldn’t and doing other questionable practices, they have a lot of great services. But now, it’s like if I’m using their services, I’m sort of spitting on the grave of every trans person who ended their life out of shame, spitting on the grave of every dead Gazan who simply didn’t want to die, and being disrespectful to all the cool Latinos out there who have been degraded simply out of racism.

:-(

I secretly love your post.

This isn’t about them being kicked out, this is about the fact we don’t know the process that resulted in this. Was this a decision Linus made after a night coding and thinking about the world? Was the foundation ordered to do it?

It lacks transparency into the process even if the outcome is fine and the way it was done doesn’t feel transparent, even if it makes sense not to include Russian coders in the project.

These projects are so big and complex that even with open-code a malicious actor is sometimes able to insert damaging code. Who suddenly made this decision? Did the US government order them to do this? If the US government can order them to do this, can they order the elevated coding status of a “benevolent” contributor on the US government payroll who is then ordered to put in a very hard to detect exploit? Open code doesn’t mean exploit free, it means exploits are more likely to be patched.

You don’t get it. It’s the lack of transparency about kicking these people out, not the kicking these people out, that is the problem. Who made the decision?

It makes sense to sanction Russia for being an ass but the way this was done doesn’t feel open, and many people sense it.

It would be much better if the company were not in a place in which gag orders can be issued, leaving questions as to transparency.

As it stands now, it isn’t clear if Linus is just “grouchy” about this with a unique personality or if the foundation got a NSL and can’t say anything. And that leads to questions about whether there were other NSLs other than this one and if it’s had an impact on the code.

Exploits are so hard to detect sometimes if done well and often although they get patched… eventually… the damage is done prior to the patch. The US government, despite doing lots of good things, engages in torture. And even if the US government is the “good guy,” this leads to less trust in the open-source ecosystem, no matter what the justification.

But seriously, Linus’s comment regarding this was… just… I have no words… he basically put every Russian in the same basket, called them trolls

There are a huge number of online Russian trolls. That part of his response was not hyperbolic. They do have troll factories there to influence public opinion.

The problem is this still leads to questions about transparency about the project in general and how this decision was made and whether it was made by those involved in the project or was an order from the US government.

Yes, this is exactly my same thoughts.

This is terrifying.

I don’t like what the Russian government is doing and Putin is cruel and evil, albeit intelligent (which makes him even more terrible).

That being said, in the US, government agencies can order a company to do certain things, put in certain code, or whatever and then issue a gag order as part of that preventing disclosure. And although there’s a limit to how much that can screw over open-source software users, we do not know what exploits nation-states have, we don’t know what backdoors are in different chipsets or closed-source firmware.

If a developer writing open source code can be blacklisted so easily without transparency into the process, it suggests the company is being ordered to do certain things and not disclose them by the US government, which is a government that still engages in torture.

Notice how they are not coming out and saying “We were not ordered to do this by any government agency.”

Could the foundation be forced to elevate a developer with government ties who then is able to “accidentally” put in an extremely hard to detect exploit into linux that won’t be detected at first and only patched later?

I really wish companies associated with linux were not in a country that lacked transparency with government regulations and in which gag orders were not possible.

Most male computer uses watch porn and would not want an AI to log that. Many women find porn sickening and don’t understand it and will never understand male urges that result in watching it. The fact that this got into a finished product tells you a lot about Microsoft’s corporate culture.

No one working there really cares about the company enough to bring up uncomfortable issues, they are all there just to get their paycheck and actual outcomes be damned. The culture their must be toxic for this product to have been put into a product enabled by default.

If this was a top-down decision and there was no input by others into it, it leads to questions over whether this feature was forced to be included by the government, which can easily require corporations to do anything and then issue gag orders and whether it was some sort of test to see how much intrusive spying bullshit that regular consumers will tolerate now. If this was a feature that was forced into the product, the plan may have been to turn it off by default after negative feedback, but then just keep it in the program for when governments want to turn it on. Governments may have realized it in any capacity such a terrible feature would result in outrage and may have thought this was the path of least resistance, like saying “Would you like to eat a bowl of shit? No, okay, we’ll just give you these brussel sprouts”