This seems to be a very unpopular opinion here, but I think its good if Trump opens a Mastodon instance (assuming that it follows the license). Having different instances for different political views is one of the main features of the fediverse for me. And anyone who doesnt like an instance can simply block and ignore it. If that instance works, it would show to many people that an alternative to corporate social media is actually possible.

[–] AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml 20 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

You do have an interesting point on the political aspect, and I respect you for voicing it to the opposition even though I personally really hate Trump as a person and a public figure. As a side note though, Trump is absolutely not following the license. Their TOS says outright that they own all the code, which they don't.

Its terms also say that “all source code” of Truth Social is proprietary. That might run afoul of Mastodon’s own license.

“The main thing is that Mastodon is free software, released under the AGPLv3 license, so anyone can use it—provided they comply with the license. The main part of the license is making the source code and any modifications to it available to the public,” Rochko told Motherboard. With Truth Social saying that its code is proprietary “that would be a problem, as that would indicate a license violation,” Rochko added.

I think this is probably the biggest issue people on the open source community has with this.

[+] nutomic@lemmy.ml -7 points 3 years ago (3 children)

Trump is not a very charming person, but I really prefer him over a slick war criminal like Obama.

And I fully agree about the license, thats why I added the disclaimer. Luckily it should be pretty easy to relaunch the site and publish the code.

[–] AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)

(Political hot take alert for the following!) Personally, I dislike the majority of the US presidents pretty equally. Obama is just liked by the liberals more and did a better job of not gaining mainstream media backlash, but they both committed their fair share of war crimes, Biden too. Trump actually ordered more drone strikes in four years than Obama in eight.

[–] pingveno@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 years ago

Trump also took a lot of the safeguards off drone strikes that were designed to avoid civilian casualties. Not that things were perfect under Obama, but not only did it get worse under Trump but the reporting/accountability measures also went away.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Honestly I dont think the president has that much to decide when it comes to military actions. What he does is announce the decisions of the military (or in other words, he is "following their recommendations"). Biden cant even remember the name of the Australian president after "being in talks" with him for weeks. His whole job seems to be reading from teleprompters (or trying to recite a speech, and stumbling).

[–] AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

Fair point. The warlords and ultra rich run the show. The president is honestly more of a figure head than people realize. Though my point is that Trump is still as big a war criminal than Obama all things considered, as are the rest of the US military leadership.

[–] uthredii@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

There are quiet clear foreign policy differences between Obama and Trump.

Obama approached Iran diplomatically, Trump bombed a general, probably trying to start a war.

Under Obama US military was in Kurdistan, which prevented Turkey from attacking. Trump removed the troops just as Turkey was gearing up to attack.

Edit: Also Obama removed the blockade on Cuba. Trump resumed the blockade on Cuba.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, when Trump was in charge millions of Americans suddenly started paying attention to the actual policy of the administration, then when Biden got elected they promptly went back to sleep. The border camps being an excellent example of this.

[–] AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

Westerners keep thinking that one of their advantages over somewhere like China is that apparently they're free to criticize the government's tyranny as much as they want and however they want in the media.

Yeah, between their "criticisms" mostly being memes and shitposts, the government just ignoring them, and them only doing it when it's convenient for them, it's working real great as a tool for improving their countries isn't it?

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 years ago

I think this is the real genius of the western system. People easily conflate their freedom to scream into the void with having actual power. There's a pretty big difference between being able to criticize the system and being an actual stakeholder.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

Have you heard of KeyWiki? A far-right new-zealander many years ago started a wiki to compile data on anyone to the left of joseph McCarthy. Not only communists, but even mildly social democratic orgs. It has thousands of entries, I know people that have been listed on there.

It has since grown into the largest doxxing website of activists in history, listing every personal detail they can find, from connected orgs, locations, where they went to school, even who they're in a relationship with. Its impossible to know how many people have been targeted or attacked as a result of KeyWiki, but the site has been deemed legally protected by the NZ government.

Its example tells us that if we give the far-right any technology, even something as innocent as a wiki, they'll use it for nefarious purposes. Social media is likely even worse, since they can actively use these platforms to organize attacks, hate crimes, and target groups they hate. An anti-islam group could easily use a self-hosted fediverse service to organize an attack on a mosque for example.

I agree obvi that providing an alternative to corporate-controlled services is probably good in the long run ( since corporate power has more of an interest than anyone at spreading racism ), but its also extremely dangerous to give the far-right any platform to organize in the interim.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 years ago

I havent heard of that, and I dont think its acceptable for anyone to do something like this. But I think the responsibility here is clearly with the New Zealand government. If they protect the site, then its necessary to put pressure on them. The only other way would be for all open source devs to make their software proprietary, but that would have a lot more negative effects than positive ones.

[–] Halce@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Apparently they stripped out the federation somehow too...

[–] seahorse@lemmy.ml -2 points 3 years ago

Good!

[–] mp3@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

I'm also fine with that, and it makes sense to leverage existing platforms to minimize the duplication of effort to achieve a goal. And personally I prefer that they congregate in their own space, where it's easier to keep an eye on what's going on.

But the fact that they knowingly used Mastodon without respecting its license is already not a good first impression.

[–] ChinaNumberOne@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 years ago

no, just no

mastodon should handle this the same way they handled gab, hardcode block them