Re: [lp-ca-on] Microblogs for Software Freedom Day

[Sergio Durigan Junior]

On Sunday, August 02 2015, Blaise Alleyne wrote:

>> There is a one-way Twitterbridge -- anything posted to the Fediverse
>> account should show up on the Twitter account, but not from Twitter to
>> Fediverse.
>> 
>> 
>> I know there are some philosophical objections to using a proprietary
>> silo like Twitter for Libreplanet business.  Let's discuss this on
>> this mailing list, and we can decide how to proceed based on consensus.
>> 
>
>
> I'm not outright opposed to using an account on a proprietary network that can
> be managed from a free software client (like Twitter) as a sort of kiosk for
> reaching other people, *if* we can...

I understand the argument of "using a Free Software client is OK" (FSF
uses it too), but I think it is not enough.  For example, it is (in
theory) possible to integrate diaspora* with Facebook, so we could also
use a Free Software "client" to justify having an account on Facebook.
Arguably Facebook has many more users than Twitter, so the impact would
be greater there.  I don't think anybody here would support that, though
;-).

IMHO, the problem with using such unethical social networks is that you
end up encouraging people to *stay* there, instead of making them aware
of the dangers of such services.  They will probably think "Hey, even
LibrePlanet ON has an account here, why would I delete mine?".

The other thing I am afraid is to encourage people to *create* an
account in those services.  "Hmm, this Free Software thing looks neat, I
want to know more about it, let me create a Twitter account here so that
I can subscribe to their feed.  What?  GNU Social?  Yes, I can create on
account there too..."

> (a) avoid scandal (in the Thomistic sense: a word or action that becomes a 
> moral
> cause of another's "sin");
>
> (b) actually find real benefit in reaching people through this medium who
> wouldn't be otherwise reachable through the web, email or GNU Social or other
> methods, or even *personal* Twitter accounts (rather than an official
> LP-CA-ON-run account), etc.

Yeah, reaching people is the only reason for having an account in those
services.  I don't know, man...  That's a tough situation.  I think we
as a group should try to be be as coherent as possible.  I don't have an
opinion about personal accounts; if you want to have it, you're more
than capable to know the pros and cons.  But as a group, I have the
impression that having a Twitter account is, indirectly, kind of
promoting the use of Twitter.

> I'm also not opposed to LibrePlanet adopting a policy against this, if we 
> think
> it would better suit our goals.

And I could certainly live with a decision pro-Twitter, of course :-).
I wouldn't mention it nor login into it, and in order to be coherent I
would have to criticize it whenever I criticized FSF's Twitter account,
but other than that, it's not like the end of the world ;-).

> Regarding avoiding scandal, I think that could depend heavily on the way in
> which Twitter was used, and there might be some things we could do to mitigate
> any falsely implied endorsement... e.g.
>
> - Pin a message at the top of the account like the FSF does: 
> https://twitter.com/fsf

Yeah, that is the least we could do.  Agreed.

> - Include a message on the cover banner, like my attempt on my personal 
> Facebook
> account to encourage people to contact me *elsewhere* (my cover photo just 
> says
> "Find me *off* Facebook // blaise.ca/contact" )

Good idea.

> - Keep our presence minimal, e.g. just using the GNU Social Twitterbridge so
> that copies of messages or posted for Twitter uses to see

Even if we use Twitterbridge, we would have to use Twitter directly in
order to reply to possible questions/comments from users there
(Twitterbridge works only in one direction IIRC, GNU Social -> Twitter).
Or maybe we could say "If you want to ask us a question, create your GNU
Social account at ...".  Heh, maybe that would cause more harm than good
and we'd miss a lot of questions from people who don't want to create
another account in yet another service, I don't know.

> - To be careful not to promote Twitter accounts, or not to give it equal
> promotion (e.g. if we're plugging something at the end of a presentation, 
> "Find
> us on GNU Social at ..." with no equal airtime to Twitter, but if people ask 
> we
> could say "We have a minimal presence on Twitter as well to reach users who
> haven't switched to a libre network service yet")

OK.

> - I don't think the GNU Social Twitterbridge does this, but it could be nice 
> if
> every Twitter post ended with a canonical link back to the GNU Social post,
> POSSE style ( http://indiewebcamp.com/posse )

Cool.  I don't know if Twitterbridge does that, but if it doesn't, it
may be a good time to hack it!  :-P

> [...]
>> I'm also open to moving the SFDToronto Fediverse account to another
>> server.  As sysadmin for jonkman.ca I know how fragile and
>> bandwidth-challenged my servers are.  But they're Free-as-in-Gratis
>> (and FAIF too!), so there's that.
>> 
>
> Thanks for offering your servers, Bob! Makes sense to me, certainly for now, 
> if
> you're okay with it.

+1!

>> I don't believe there are any microblog accounts for LibrePlanet
>> Ontario specifically. Is a @LibrePlanetON account necessary, or a
>> !LibrePlanetON group? (or a LibrePlanetON.ca server!)
>> 
>
> My feeling is an account make sense in the future, though I'm not sure if 
> there
> would be enough to post about right now? *shrugs*
>
> Sergio had discussed hosting a server before, as LibrePlanet BR runs a GNU
> Social instance:
> http://social.libreplanetbr.org/

Yes, hosting a server (VPS, probably) may be a good thing to do when we
have more members.  For now, I don't know if we need this.

Well, I remember I offered to host most of the services in my personal
server for now, and I know I did not do it!  Sorry about that.  If you
guys want, I could try to set up a GNU Social instance there for the
group.  I am also hosting the GDB BuildBot there, which means that I
have part of my storage/processor/memory compromised already :-/.

-- 
Sergio
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