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

[Sergio Durigan Junior]

On Monday, August 03 2015, Blaise Alleyne wrote:

> 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

I didn't know about that.

> - 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)

But "reaching a target argument" means, in many cases, reaching people
who never heard about Free Software.  In this case, not having a large
Free Software community on Facebook doesn't really impose a problem.

I know about Facebook's policies on holding posts, and that only
makes me feel more angry with them.

> - 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)

The amount of data Twitter asks may be considerably less, but it is
data, and it is a proprietary software running on the background, and it
is personal stuff being posted there (through Direct Messages), so for
me there is no "lesser evil", although I agree Facebook excels in this
aspect.

> 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...

Exactly :-).

> 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.)

I have always considered WordPress.com and Stack Overflow proprietary
stuff.  But I can understand your rationale here.

>> 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.

I have used Twitter before, but I confess I have no idea how social
networks work.  For example, I had the impression that in order to gain
more follower one needed to also follow people (a la "network effect").
If we have an account there but don't follow anyone, how is it going to
effectively help us?  This is not an ironic question: I really don't
know.

> - 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...)

Cool, works for me.

> - 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)

Heh, it's almost like we have a Twitter account but don't want to have
one :-P.  But I completely understand this feeling.

> - 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

Works for me too :-).

>> [...] 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.

Yeah, my criticism about FSF's Twitter account is well-known.  It sounds
not very coherent to me when they use Twitter like they do, but also try
to support GNU Social.

> 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 am just honestly wondering how effective this Twitter account would be
with all those counter-measurements in place.

> 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).

+1.

>>> [...] 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.)

Hah, I like how you come up with nice ideas to "use the system against
itself" ;-).  And I agree that posting truncated messages that contain
links to a GNU Social page with the full text is a good idea indeed.

-- 
Sergio
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