Re: Minds.com

[Leland Best <lcbpublic@gmail.com>]

Hmmm,

On Thu, 2023-09-21 at 10:40 -0400, Michael McMahon wrote:
> Minds could be categorized as a "free speech zone" social network which 
> are typically popular with fascists so count me out.

Poor choice of words perhaps?  Freedom of speech is _supposed_ to be one of the
founding principles here in the US.  From
https://www.azquotes.com/author/5123-Benjamin_Franklin/tag/freedom-of-speech

   Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such
   thing as public liberty without freedom of speech; which is the right of every
   man as far as by it he does not hurt or control the right of another; and this
   is the only check it ought to suffer and the only bounds it ought to know....
   Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the
   freedom of speech, a thing terrible to traitors.
   
   Benjamin Franklin 
   
But then, we're also _supposed_ to be educated enough to think
critically/skeptically about what we hear, see, and read.  From
https://www.azquotes.com/author/7392-Thomas_Jefferson/tag/education

   Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
   
   Thomas Jefferson
   
My only point/question being: That something is a "free speech zone" doesn't
seem like a very good reason, in and of itself, for disparaging it.  So, if this
is strictly your personal opinion, if you personally don't want to read what
they have to say, then I have no objection.  Obviously, you and everybody else
are free to think, say, read, write, etc. whatever you like.  But if you are
speaking on behalf of the FSF, which one might assume from your "signature",:

[...]
> Michael McMahon | Web Developer, Free Software Foundation
> GPG Key: 4337 2794 C8AD D5CA 8FCF  FA6C D037 59DA B600 E3C0
> https://fsf.org
[...]

then I'll have to think hard about my FSF membership.

[... no comment on the rest of the post, (copied below) ...]

Cheers
Leland
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leland C. Best      | Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is
lcbpublic@gmail.com | something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
                    | -- Isaac Asimov
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


[...]
> 
> The licensing of the minds project is also questionable. It is built on 
> elgg which is GPL-2.0-only [1] so it should probably match. I'm not 
> following through with making issues though.
> 
> [1] https://github.com/Elgg/Elgg/issues/11610#issuecomment-358733982
> 
> Best,
> Michael McMahon | Web Developer, Free Software Foundation
> GPG Key: 4337 2794 C8AD D5CA 8FCF  FA6C D037 59DA B600 E3C0
> https://fsf.org
> 
> On 9/20/23 19:27, Valentino Giudice wrote:
> > Thank you a lot, Michael, this is quite interesting and something that I 
> > should investigate further.
> > Indeed the "friendly-challenge" package uses "friendly-pow", which is no 
> > good: https://github.com/FriendlyCaptcha/friendly-challenge/issues/159 
> > <https://github.com/FriendlyCaptcha/friendly-challenge/issues/159>
> > 
> > I still think that Minds can be of significant interest for the FSF and 
> > the free software community at large.
> > 
> >  > Never heard of minds
> > 
> > First, I should mention that I have absolutely no affiliation with them 
> > beyond merely having an account on their website.
> > 
> > Minds is a social media platform based in the United States which has 
> > rather liberal policies compared to mainstream platforms such as 
> > Facebook or X.
> > 
> > As I mentioned above, it's free software (although, now we know, 
> > encumbered by the FriendlyCaptcha proprietary component). It uses the 
> > AGPL license.
> > 
> > It attempts at decentralizing, but its attempts are IMHO mostly 
> > unsuccessful.
> > 
> > However, as a centralized platform, I think it aligns with the 
> > principles of the free software community (including freedom of speech 
> > and transparency, beyond just software freedom) more so than other 
> > platforms, including also X, which the FSF currently uses.
> > 
> > I still think that Minds has some significant shortcomings, which we can 
> > help it overcome.
> > This includes the CAPTCHA test, which can be replaced with a similar 
> > fully-free one, the fact that it doesn't currently comply with the text 
> > of the GDPR (which doesn't mean it's bad for privacy, but does mean it's 
> > a problem in the EU).
> > In some ways it's better than the Mastodon ecosystem because most 
> > Mastodon instances are small and unreliable and have rules that are 
> > restrictive beyond necessary.
> > 
> > Il giorno mer 20 set 2023 alle ore 22:34 Michael McMahon 
> > <michael@fsf.org <mailto:michael@fsf.org>> ha scritto:
> > 
> >     Never heard of minds, but Friendly Captcha is deceivingly source
> >     available [1]. This is not apparent when you look at their main
> >     repository.
> > 
> >     [1] https://github.com/FriendlyCaptcha/friendly-pow/issues/13
> >     <https://github.com/FriendlyCaptcha/friendly-pow/issues/13>
> > 
> >     A previous commit [2] is free and it might still work.
> > 
> >     [2]
> >    
> > https://github.com/FriendlyCaptcha/friendly-pow/tree/01a1c9c4aa858d3517881347c3328b67575029a7
> >  <
> > https://github.com/FriendlyCaptcha/friendly-pow/tree/01a1c9c4aa858d3517881347c3328b67575029a7
> > >
> > 
> >     When I brought up this point, they deleted my comments.
> > 
> >     Best,
> >     Michael McMahon | Web Developer, Free Software Foundation
> >     GPG Key: 4337 2794 C8AD D5CA 8FCF  FA6C D037 59DA B600 E3C0
> >     https://fsf.org <https://fsf.org>
> > 
> >     On 9/19/23 23:43, Valentino Giudice wrote:
> >      >     Given the recent conversation about Truth Social, as well as
> >     the fact
> >      >     that social media are a topic of interest for the FLOSS
> >     community, does
> >      >     anyone here use Minds?
> >      >     The platform is free software, including server-side.
> >      >     For a CAPTCHA, they use Friendly Captcha, which seems free
> >     client-side.
> >      >
> >      >
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