[GTALUG] Surveillance Capitalism [was another thread]

[Russell Reiter]

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021 at 9:03 PM Dhaval Giani <dhaval.giani at gmail.com> wrote:

> >>
> >> Again, I say this again. RMS as a contributor, yes. RMS as a leader, no.
> >>
> >> I am not going to step into your Godwin's law discussion
> >> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law ). It is irrelevant to
> >> the issue at hand.
> >
> >
> > That wasn't my discussion. I'm talking about Surveillance capitalism,
> which grows
> > more important to me day by day. I just think there is a lot of shooting
> the messenger
> > with RMS.
> >
>
> Then this thread should prove to you exactly why RMS cannot be your
> messenger. You could be 100% factual, but it is what the other side
> receives is of greater importance. Your cause is lost, when your
> messenger causes your message to be lost.
>

I don't see that at all. Firstly I have no cause, except to perhaps help my
peers in marginalized spaces access and use computing to help to elevate
themselves out of poverty.

I do have an interest in current events tho. What I see most recently is
that RMS called out canonical for surveillance capitalism and bashed WSL
for being a ploy to undermine free software.

That's not an easy thing to do or say, if it goes against the corporation.
It looks to me like the wagons were circled, the torches were lit and the
pitchforks were raised a few years after he did that.

Disinformation is misinformation squared repeated and squared again.
Engage, encompass and eradicate aren't pithy statements; they are official
US DOJ protocols, which place America's corporate interests first and the
rights of individual people, warts and all, take a back seat to the
corporate interests which sustain America's economy.

Often these ideals are driven by NGO's who are funded by both corporations,
individuals and government donors. The trouble is they very soon start to
believe their own hyperbole.  Just look at the WE fiasco to see how well
meaning people were sucked into that dark web of NGO malfeasance.

Propaganda is a subtitle craft, it works slowly and insidiously and often
it is the innocents who carry the torch without really knowing why.

I've never met RMS I only know of him from reading about him over the
years. Is his sexual personality any more odious than bill clintons or any
other public prominent person people will talk about and actively try to
dig up the dirt on. Muckraking journalism was profitable for the broadsheet
industry. Twitter and Facebook and the entire interweb are the digital
media replacements for those things, without even the hint of corporate
social responsibility.

I mean vague references to mattresses in RMS's office with shirtless people
on them, hardly seem damning. That's the problem with innuendo, it falls
far short of the truth.

My issues with this thread are the fact that everyone feels free to trim
what I actually say and restate it in their own words, as if that could
change my opinion on the morality of the whole thing.

IMO it's very hard to take the moral high ground on flawed messaging, but
people follow the trend and do it all the time, sometimes just to fit in
with the crowd.
-- 
Russell
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