Yesterday I was reading the post about the FUTO keyboard where there were a lot of messages deleted by moderators.
I’ve commented there
What the heck happened with all the messages deleted by moderator?
And it got deleted. Right now you can only see 4, but I’ve counted 19 messages moderated and the post has been locked. Why?
I’ve had a look ad the modlog and the messages don’t seems to violate any policy (now they’ve removed them in the modlog too).
I’m pinging here lemmy.ml admin and the mods of the open source community where the post was posted so they can have their say about it and clarify the situation to me.
@kevincox@lemmy.ml @CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml @Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml
@Cloak@lemmy.ml @davel@lemmy.ml @dessalines@lemmy.ml @nutomic@lemmy.ml @JoeBidet@lemmy.ml @cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
If I’m getting something wrong, please let me know, I’m here to discus and understand if I’m getting something wrong or if something went wrong in the moderation. Thanks!
Down here you can see the deleted comments.
P.s. I’m writing here because I think that this post on lemmy.ml wouldn’t last long.
Rare ml w
That was me. I’m tired of FUTO fans derailing discussions about FLOSS with advocacy for their obviously-not-open-source software and insisting that it is open source.
Every time Futo comes up, someone will insist it is open source, others will correct them, and soon more than 50% of a thread that is supposed to be about open source is people arguing about them.
I’m pretty sure that Futo’s (now recanted) position that they were open source (despite the term having a clear definition which is very internationally recognized and which Futo’s license obviously does not meet) was an intentional marketing gimmick - “there is no such thing as bad publicity” and every time a bunch of people are arguing about them there is a chance they’ll get more customers (some of whom might even believe it is open source).
I’ve counted 19 messages moderated
Probably more than that even; more than I want to count. The modlog is public.
and the post has been locked.
The What’s the best open source keyboard for android? post where you commented has not been locked, but most of the futo-related comments in it are deleted. Note that while your comment was not advocating for futo per se, it was (successfully) encouraging others to continue the offtopic discussion. You could have answered your question by reading the modlog.
I did lock another post in the same community (the topic of which is, again, Open Source), which was What are your thoughts on FUTO? (and I left a comment there explaining why).
I generally try to assume good faith but I’m pretty sure some Futo proponents are actually just trolling at this point.
I hope this answers your questions.
I think this would make sense in a Lemmy community that was OpenSourceInitiative who has a very specific set definition. But Open Source as a general idea is fairly open to interpretation. Some people think source-available is open source. I disagree, but that’s just my personal opinion. Now if something was closed source, that’s a very clear distinction.
I’ve seen communities die out over mods enforcing their personal definitions. The Linux subreddit and Lemmy Linux community had issues with this a few years ago where the mod was deleting comments of people talking about what fell outside of their idea that Linux discussion should be FLOSS-only (people discussing closed source apps that ran on Linux, etc).
I think deleting does more harm than good. It’s better for people to discuss when things are a problem so they can understand them better. The Free Software Foundation is way more strict as to their licensing ideas, but even they still discuss and have a page full of alternative licenses where they discuss some are better than others (and even a bad open source license is better than a non-open source license). They don’t ban the mention of conflicting ideas.
Deleting just leaves people confused (and in my case I would have appreciated knowing the issue instead of just seeing a thread full of deleted comments and remaining ignorant). And it does a greater harm because people casually searching on search engines or whatever won’t find any sort of discussion or push back.
Thank you for standing up for the free software definition. As someone who has been heavily critical of fauxpen source licenses including FUTO it’s refreshing to see moderators taking a stance against it.
The main concern I have with this attempt (by FUTO and other organizations trying to “fix” open source) is that watering down the open source and free software definitions causes damage to the community/movement. Whether the FUTO EULA or any other proprietary license is “good enough” for an individual user is not the question (and I have even seen people argue in favor of fully-proprietary blob software on the basis of being “privacy friendly”); real free software disadvantages rightsholders in favor of users and communities, which is important in case those rightsholders go defunct or rogue.
I try to assume good faith as well but I am seriously considering the idea that FUTO is astroturfing free software spaces to promote its version of open source. Despite publicly backing down on their openwashing attempt Eron Wolf-in-sheeps-clothing seems very determined that open source is broken and needs fixing.
what nice bootlickers you have here lol no matter how many they are, it is still not enough to deny the truth
Thanks for the level-heades and reasonable explination. These actions make complete sense
Yeah, Rossman getting in bed with people that are deliberately trying to dilute the meaning of open source really killed my opinion of him.
Who are some of those people? I’m still trying to get my bearings about this entire thing, I never heard of it before yesterday.
Louis Rossmann is a prominent right to repair advocate on youtube, I don’t like his videos personally, but he’s usually on the right side of things.
FUTO is a company owned by Billionaire Eron Wolf, they release several pieces of software under their own proprietary licence, that they originally tried to claim was “open source”. When they got called out on it not being open source they literally tried to redefine open source. Although they’ve since backtracked, and decided to use the term “source first” instead, it makes the whole organisation seem incredibly sketchy to me.
Rossman explained the dealio… daddy owner wanted this, it is his money.
Not ideal and there was some shoddy marketing. We still got a free app out of it.
But yes, this app is not OS and people should stop fucking arguing that it is.
If you don’t like it, don’t use it.
With that being said, i don’t see an issue with mentioning it as a viable alternative to OS but saying it is OS is bad faith behavior.
saying it is OS is bad faith behavior.
As far as I can tell, no one in the second comments thread who was deleted was doing this. They were talking positively about FUTO in ways that still acknowledged that it wasn’t open source.
I’ve reached the limit of my caring about this issue, but you can search the modlog for particular users whose comments in the second thread were deleted, if you want to check what they were saying about it.
my comment was removed just for saying FUTO has strong voice to text and that’s why people like it.
Rossmann’s billionaire patron is Eron Jokipii (aka Eron Wolf). As you can see here he comes off as a bit of a bumbling rube; it’s possible that he sincerely doesn’t understand the harm in what he is doing since he’s one of those people who became unfathomably rich by selling a company to Yahoo in the late 90s and has probably been surrounded ever since by yes men who can’t afford to contradict him.
Holy shit. A .ml mod being reasonable and making mod decisions based on what’d best for the community instead of pure personal bias. Congratulations perhaps their is still hope for .ml to be redeemed and forgiven.
What did we do
Unrelated but you should post one more comment
nice.
(although that is just the subset of my posts and comments which are visible on your instance; on mine i have more than twice as many…)
You’ve been censored by authoritarian mods! 😂
obviously-not-open-source
Yes: futo keyboard license. And also a contradictory license with that definition of ‘use’.
I would submit that even if it is misinformation and people are climbing all over the comments claiming that FUTO is definitely open source, removing the comments to leave only the remnant of it that is “truth” is often not the best way to handle it. The majority of the removed comments didn’t seem like they were saying that, some even specifically said that FUTO isn’t open source but blah blah blah, but even if so, here’s my feeling:
The way the conversation looks right now is just confusing. There are people who have no idea about FUTO who have the feeling that they’re just not allowed to talk about it, or to say true statements (for example, whatever you think of their license, they fund real open-source projects.) Because FUTO is officially “bad” and they might get banned or something for wanting to talk about it or ask questions. It actually doesn’t look to me like people are coming in primarily to evangelize. But regardless of that, my personal feeling is, you have to let people talk.
I feel like if there was a sticky comment from a mod / admin at the top of the comments, something like PSA: FUTO is not open source. The people that are claiming it is, are wrong, with respect to long-established definitions. (link) (link), then that would be fine. People can see the arguments, and presumably there’s enough respect in place for the “leaders” of the community that they’ll give a lot of weight to the sticky comment. But they still have the sense that they’re allowed to talk about it and think about it on their own instead of being ordered to receive the correct interpretations from above, when they don’t even have their bearings as far as what’s even being talked about.
I’m not secretive about my strong disagreements with a lot of lemmy.ml moderation philosophy. I’m just making an effort, here, to explain why I have such a strong disagreement in a productive fashion, instead of just hectoring or being combative about it.
removing the comments to leave only the remnant of it that is “truth” is often not the best way to handle it
i totally agree that it is often preferable to allow misinformed comments to remain so that they can be refuted.
in the case of futo, though, i feel like there are often actually some bad-faith actors who just want to keep the discussion going, and will continue to repeat their misinformed arguments in the face of any and all evidence.
and, in this particular case, it is even a thread in the Open Source community so any discussion of Futo is inherently offtopic. (and all of which is also effectively promotion for them; again see succès de scandale.)
The way the conversation looks right now is just confusing
the thread as it is now has lots of comments about open source keyboards, and a link to this thread for anyone who wants more information about all the deleted comments than they can find in the modlog. if you think it would be better if that thread was still mostly people arguing about Futo… well… i’m glad you’re not a mod there.
Oh, no, I was talking purely about the second post, about FUTO itself. I agree about protecting the first post, about open source keyboards, against being overshadowed by a big argument about FUTO which isn’t an open source keyboard.
Oh, no, I was talking purely about the second post, about FUTO itself
Oh. Well, that post I sort of figured I should just delete altogether (because it is also offtopic there, and bad publicity is still benefiting futo) but I left it locked in hopes that it would discourage more of the same.
Did you check the Modlogs?
Futo is not open source but it is good and free option for people
I generally don’t support comment removal but people arguing that it is open source is bad faith behavior so I won’t shit on ML mods action here.
Apropos of nothing, I take issue with calling stuff that isn’t open source “free” (even little-f “free,” let alone “Free Software”). Even if it costs $0 it isn’t “free” if it costs you your freedom or privacy.
Futo is 100% off line
seems bizarre to me. I’ve had no issue on .ml. Is this an instance issue or a com issue?
Personally, I have never had any issues either, although I have seen many people who have. People looking for an international decentralized community will have no problem with .ml, as with all other existing instances. Those looking for a reddit clone will have their own good reasons to detest .ml.
I’ve had no issue on .ml
Wat
Lemmy.ml is explicitly affirming of the idea that the moderators determine what is the “right” opinion and remove all the wrong opinions. Ask them about Tienanmen Square or the Uyghurs. It’s a little unusual that it goes outside of the realm of geopolitics and into the realm of software projects, but it’s completely in keeping with their overall philosophy about what the right way is to run an instance.
The person who is removing posts is, I believe, not a moderator of that community, they’re an admin. So complaining to the admins is unlikely to get you anywhere.
“Don’t go to lemmy.ml” is my advice. There are replacement communities for almost everything that’s available there, for exactly this specific reason.
Holy shit don’t you have anything better to post about? You people are like broken records.
Sure would be nice if you could just delete my comment, wouldn’t it? Alas.
It’s about one-third just my own sour grapes, and about two-thirds that I for real want to warn people who are not aware that lemmy.ml operates this way. I definitely remember being shocked and surprised myself that it worked that way, when I first encountered it and my stuff got deleted, and I would have appreciated someone coming in and saying “No, you’re not crazy, that’s just how their moderation operates there, but yes it is weird.” So I try to turn around and do that for others. But I won’t deny that the first one-third of it is there, also. Hope that’s okay with you.
You mean you want people to know the moderators are active and have a very firm stance on what is acceptable in their comms?
Thanks!
What a strange comment.
I don’t know, it’s the first time that I see such a behavior.
You’ve never had an ML issue? I… don’t believe you. Even when you’re not talking politics, their constant attempt to ruin your mood is pretty annoying.
Are any of them able to have a full conversation without making unfounded personal attacks? I’ve never had that experience.
I’d probably be all-in for communism if it weren’t for them.
@kevincox@lemmy.ml @CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml @Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml @Cloak@lemmy.ml @davel@lemmy.ml @dessalines@lemmy.ml @nutomic@lemmy.ml @JoeBidet@lemmy.ml @cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
Yes, you are the most important person in the Lemmyverse and the removal of misposting of non-open source content to an open source community is the most important thing happening in the Lemmyvarse. So pinging all the admins and mods is perfectly reasonable behavior. Everyone should stop whatever they’re doing and pay attention to you.
To be accurate, mentioning accounts in the body doesn’t ping people
Don’t mentions go to people’s inboxes?
Only from comments
Oh, thanks. That’s surprising & unexpected behavior.
Meh, it’s no different than creating a report. I get an email for every report made on programming.dev, someone pinging the admins isn’t/shouldn’t be a big deal.
When you make a report, the first mod who comes across it deals with it and clears it, and none of the other mods’ time is wasted on it.
When you @ all the mods, all the mods are alerted and everyone’s time is wasted, because you think you’re the main character.
I don’t know how lemmy.ml has it configured, but at programming.dev every admin is notified by email when a report is made 1. By our users, 2. About our users and 3. On our communities. Pinging is less “intrusive” in that sense.
I’ve commented there
What the heck happened with all the messages deleted by moderator?
And it got deleted.
Setting aside the .ml agenda-based moderation, I don’t have a problem with your specified comment being removed. “Talking about moderation choices” in the post where comments were moderated is not relevant to the post (in this case, about Android keyboards), and can very easily be considered counterproductive.
I agree with this. Discussion of moderation on a topic-based community (as opposed to a meta-community) is fully fine and fair to be removed as “off-topic” imo.
Mod locked the thread because FUTO isn’t an open source org. They even pinned their comment stating as much. Fuck off
Actually, that’s not true, or not complete.
The mod deleted a bunch of comments in a post about open source keyboards, because discussion of FUTO was offtopic, because it’s not open source. So then there was a separate post about FUTO specifically, and a little bit of lively discussion about whether FUTO was the good guys or the bad guys, with the mod deleting comments drawn from a specific 50% of that division, and finally they said:
I am locking this thread to avoid needing to remove misinformation and advocacy from Futo fans who think they should be allowed to redefine a term which there has been consensus about the definition of since before they were born.
So, they were okay with discussion of FUTO, just not with people saying things they didn’t agree with, and they considered it tedious to have to remove so many of the comments under the post leaving only the comments they (edit:
disagreed) agreed with. So they locked the post.Its their comm they can do what they want just as you can on yours. Why not just start another discussion on one of the many comms you moderate?
You just like it when that happens so you can start flame war bullshit
Why not just start another discussion
We did, and you came in yelling at us that we needed to stop.
You posted an entire thread to yell at us
- D: “Mod locked the thread because FUTO isn’t an open source org. They even pinned their comment stating as much.”
- A: “Fuck off” “flame war bullshit” “Holy shit don’t you have anything better to post about”
- RVO: Please stop posting about our behavior, it’s ever so rude, you’re yelling at me, just say nothing, I prefer it that way
I’m not OP and I didn’t yell at anybody. I shared my opinion about moderation, the reasons why lemmy.ml’s is wrong, and why it matters. In a community which is devoted to that type of discussion. The moderator also shared their opinion and was widely upvoted. We all got some clarity.
Not everything that upsets you personally is a “flamewar” or needs to stop right now because you decree it.
OP started this thread to try and discredit our mod. That is an attack. Me posting how said OP is in the wrong is not attacking, it is responding to an attack.
They did not start a new thread to continue the FUTO discussion elsewhere. If they truly wanted to discuss that topic, they would have done so. Instead they made this thread.
Not to mention they just had to inject their tInYmAn sQuArE bullshit into it.
OP started this thread to try and discredit our mod. That is an attack.
OP said, “If I’m getting something wrong, please let me know, I’m here to discus and understand if I’m getting something wrong or if something went wrong in the moderation. Thanks!”
They did not start a new thread to continue the FUTO discussion elsewhere.
Yes they did. Their original conversation was arguably offtopic in the open source keyboard discussion. So, when it was deleted there, they started a new post, but unfortunately not realizing that FUTO was on the list of official enemies, and so people aren’t allowed to have a conversation about it. To me, and OP, that’s weird. We’re allowed to say that, and be critical of the moderation policy, without it being an “attack.” So, in keeping, they started a whole separate discussion about the moderation. But their whole point originally was to discuss this keyboard thing and maybe learn some things about it.
In my opinion, once you take control of someone else’s environment, you’re opening yourself up for your decisions to be criticized, whether or not the criticism is “fair” or whether or not you agree with it. That’s how it works. Claiming that anyone who doesn’t like how you’re wielding your power, and talks about it, is “attacking” you and so you need to respond to the attack is… well, on brand for pro-authoritarian spaces, I guess. That’s just not my culture.
They even pinned their comment stating as much. Fuck off
flame war bullshit
Holy shit don’t you have anything better to post about
who shat in your cereal, lmao
