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

[Blaise Alleyne]

On 03/08/15 01:11 PM, Sergio Durigan Junior wrote:
> On Sunday, August 02 2015, Blaise Alleyne wrote:
>> 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
> ;-).
> 

I think there are so many differences though:

- the Facebook API is very limited -- you can do almost anything in Twitter with
a client through the API, whereas the Facebook API is pretty limited... just
really a way of posting automatically from other services

- there isn't a large open source / free software community on Facebook in the
same way that there is on Twitter or Google+, so I don't think you could
realistically make an argument for reaching a target audience effectively
through Facebook (plus, Facebook holds Page posts hostage to sponsorship money,
so you would only realistically reach "Friends" anyways, which would require
even *more* engagement with the proprietary service)

- Facebook is asking for way more data and setting up private walled garden
spaces, whereas Twitter's public by default is a lot closer to posting to a
forum on a website (in terms of access at least, not in terms of network 
effects)

etc etc...

But it does raise the question of what kind of criteria we'd have to make this
decisions. Why Twitter, but not Facebook? Or Google+? (Google+ is an easy one
though if, as last I remember, there was no write API to begin with.) Or
Instagram or Flickr or Snapchat or anything else...

And... what about WordPress.com? Or Stack Overflow? In some of these places,
it's harder to define what a proprietary network is. (Though with Twitter or
Facebook, it isn't.)


It almost seems like we'd need to make a case-by-case decision. For any
proprietary type service, the answer might be no by default, unless we can come
to a consensus that on why and how to use it.


> 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.  [...] 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..."
> 

So, what about a much more restrictive policy?

- We post to the Twitter account only through a GNU Social bridge, with a
POOSE-style canonical link back to the original GNU Social post on every Twitter
post

- We avoid engaging in the Twitter account directly, e.g. by following any other
accounts, retweeting, uploading photos, etc., so it's mostly if not entirely
read only.

- The only tricky thing would be, as you mention, if someone sends us a message
or asks us a question on Twitter... in which case we should probably be willing
to reply, but maybe encourage them to contact us by email or GNU Social with
further questions? e.g. "@somebody: thanks for the question! The venue will be
announced in a couple weeks. You can send any follow up questions on a libre
service (GNU Social, email, mailing list, etc.) and we'll get back to you
faster" (but 140 characters...)

- We make the profile back very clearly a missionary outpost... the banner has a
clear message to contact us elsewhere, all the posts have canonical GNU Social
links, and the "bio" mentions other places to contact us

- We don't announce or promote or advertise the Twitter account (i.e. to avoid
encouraging people to create Twitter accounts), but it's just there for people
who are already on Twitter (i.e. *never* include those silly Twitter logos as
ads on our material or something like that)

- We could even have the account website URL set to some page onour wiki or
something that explains clearly our stance on the services. "Hello Twitter user,
if you're visiting this page you probably clicked on the link from our Twitter
account bio. We set up that account to spread the message of free software to
more people, but we think it's important to know that Twitter is *not* itself
free software and there are several big problems with proprietary services like
Twitter: [list them ]. For these reasons, our Twitter account is a minimal
outpost, and we're not fully participating in that walled garden community --
we're just bridging our messages over so that they reach more people. So, we
hope that you consider setting up an account on a libre network service and
staying in touch with us that way."  something to that effect


This would just allow a mostly read-only push of our announcements from the
small GNU Social network to the large commercial public square of Twitter for
the vast majority of not-yet-fully-converted users out there, but I don't think
it would give people the impression that we're fans of Twitter at all.


> [...] 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 agree up to the point that having a Twitter account is necessarily a promotion
of the use of Twitter. I think it can be, the way the FSF does it -- they're
criticism of Twitter on Twitter is pretty subtle. I think there's much more than
can be done which wouldn't give the impression to any real Twitter users that
the group was promoting Twitter.


I just can't imagine how a Twitter account with *all* those steps (truncated
canonical URLs, anti-Twitter banner, bio that says to contact us elsewhere, URL
to a page that explains our stance in a more comprehensive way, limited
engagement with the network, no promotion of the account elsewhere at all, etc
etc.) could possibly be viewed by other people as an endorsement of the service,
nevermind a reason for someone who's held out from creating an account for this
long to suddenly go and sign up for the service. *shrugs*

I do very much appreciate the need for us to be consistent and coherent though,
which is why I think this is an important issue to hash out on the mailing list
(not just for SFD,  but for our stance on any similar situations in the future).



>> [...] 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
> 


Just pointing out the "hack" Bob mentioned:
> The sn.jonkman.ca StatusNet server (not yet GNUsocial) imposes no 140
> character limit. If you ensure that the StatusNet message exceeds 140
> characters then the Twitterbridge will truncate the message and append a
> link to the StatusNet message.

So we could easily have StatusNet/GNU Social post a canonical link back on every
post as long as we made sure every post was long enough to trigger that link.

The fact that the messages would be truncated might also encourage people to
click through to read the rest (or just annoy people on Twitter... but I'm okay
with annoying Twitter users by not conforming to the service entirely, if it's
in the service of resisting the proprietary network.)