Holy crap this article is bad. They took a very important and sensitive subject and just crapped all over it. Had no idea that Luke Smith is that far right, if the info they presented is true. Knew that he was on the right, but they make it look like he’s wayyyy out there. The “technical” parts of the article are just pure wrong. “No one owns these platforms” and “these cannot be tracked” are as far from the truth as one can get. Where did they come up with this info? Nazis and far right dipshits will make use of open source software just like one makes use of a hammer. Open source, fediverse, these are tools.
The person writing the article just shifted attention and blame from the people propagating shit to the software by making false, “outrage porn” claims. This crap reads like satanic panic for open source.
While the parts about far-righters adopting and embracing open source software are true, the article reads like it stirs a moral panic about open source. “How is the government going to protect the children from so-called ‘open source software’???!”
Yeah, far right adopting open source is 100% true. But it’s like writing an article about terrorists using hammers to nail nails in terrorist owned planks. Or spoons to eat terrorist made soups. Wtf.
Now I want someone from The Hard Times or The Onion to make a panic article about terrorists using Tramontina branded spoon to eat soup ngl.
It could be something like: “Antifa members are said to be ingesting food using tramontina spoons, also shown to be used by well known members of hate groups such as the proud boys. Coincidence?”
Unfortunately, Luke removed his wallpaper repo, but there are forks of it.
I downloaded his wallpaper repo back in 2019 and hidden among the hundreds of beautiful wallpapers are wallpaper that contain the Black Sun symbol (nazi occult symbol) and other Thulean occult symbols. It’s ironic that he uses Thulean symbols, since Thulean occultists generally really hate Christianity (because they see it as being “too Jewish”) and he is a very religious Christian (from what I understand, he either already converted to Orthodox Christianity, or is considering it).
It’s really really creepy.
I owe a lot to his LaTeX series, as I learnt a lot from him but his political opinions scare me because he knows how to obscure and obfuscate his true opinions, but sometimes he lets them slip.
I have a love-hate relationship with him. I really like his WM ricing content and other tech content, but I can’t stand his pseudointellectual rants and pseudoscientific opinions. On the other hand, I also have some objections with his tech-content because I think he really fuels the toxic elitism found in lots of GNU/Linux communities. I know that he is usually joking but his comment sections are extremely toxic as a result of his “ironic elitism”. But at the same time, I keep coming back to his content. I have no idea why, but there’s just something about him that makes me want to keep listening to him talk, even though I disagree with like 80% of what he says.
Fuck this article, though. This is not the way to criticize Luke. “ON NOO, he likes the so-called ‘open-source software’. What a horrible monster”.
If you want to criticize Luke, then criticize his actual views, not his promotion of open-source software. What awful lazy journalism.
Yeah, had no idea he’s so far to the right. Seeing other ppl in this thread giving more examples of his views. I saw that his non tech rants lean towards libertarian crap which bores me to tears so I was just watching his tech videos which interest me. And his tech related content is good, although I find his faux tech elitism annoying as well.
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During years, twitter (/facebook) gave a platform for free hate speech talk and didn’t moderate. And twitter became too big to be able to moderate its platform.
That’s true, twitter could have done something, but they didn’t…
My opinion is that the fediverse will make those extremists become unheard again as most instances will ban the few “free hate speech” instances.
I am not that optimistic that hate speech instance will be few and easy to ban, but I am optimistic that the tech will be able to come up with clever ideas to find a mix between white and blacklisting new instances. Maybe a trust system or something like that will help.
i’m genuinely curious of they will manage to keep their websites afloat 🤔
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it is unfortunately
https://videos.lukesmith.xyz/videos/recently-added
This is Luke Smith’s peertube instance where he gets ~1k views per video of his and high comment engagement. That makes sense since he has tech-savy and independence interested fans and pretty well produced content.
But also it’s unfortunate, how much would we wish to see leftist content creators from youtube set up their own peertube instance, that would be awesome. But no, the crypto alt-right dude does it. Sucks tbh
Maybe this topic deserves its own thread?
Same, it is rather unfortunate that most of the free spaces are swarmed by the fash. Although I’ve found good creators on peertube, most of them are about non political topics.
Care to recommend some? All i know are techlore and Sun Knudsen in the privacytoolsio instance
So my largest criticism of the article would be this part:
Megan Squire is a professor of computer science at Elon University who has published research on both the far right and open source software communities. She says that “the dominant open source culture historically has been one of extreme misogyny, unfounded meritocracy, toxicity and abuse of everyone,” and that Smith is one of those resisting efforts to change that culture.
I don’t think that this is a fair introduction to open-source culture, even though it is true.
But otherwise I think the article is pretty good…
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I am finally giving this an upvote because I feel this thread has good discussion on the topic and on luke smith, even if the article wasn’t very good.
The legend himself Luke Smith got mentioned in a Guardian Article
Legend??
Who is luke smith btw
A linux tech tutorial guy from Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA) and Peertube who uses a ton of chan memes, which by itself isn’t a problem but his blog has some interesting content:
Alex Jones, increasingly BASED, now even more banned from everything: https://lukesmith.xyz/blog/alex-jones-increasingly-based-now-even-more-banned-from-everything
In Defense of “Pseudoscience”: https://lukesmith.xyz/blog/in-defense-of-pseudoscience
Afaik there is no proof that he believes in conspiracy theories or is racist or whatever, but many of his video give me the vibe that he isn’t being honest about his politics. And I don’t get that feeling just from him using the typical memes, I have spent my fair share of time on the chans.
Also, and this is kinda unfortunate given my comment above, the couple of videos that I have seen of him explaining linux tech are kinda good, apart from the politics part…
also from this comment
I got turned off from him when I checked his github and his email project has whitelisted domains like “nuke.africa” and “hitler.rocks” https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/mutt-wizard/blob/master/share/domains.csv
if that’s your thing then go right ahead, I think this guy is a low key creep that lures young people into his ideology with meme language and high ideals, and then slowly reveals that he is obsessed with ted kaczinsky
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In 2019, Smith said in a video he wanted to live in a “Unabomber cabin” to escape the surveillance and censorship which he believes is especially aimed at the far right. […]
In various videos and podcasts, Smith rehearses other ideas associated with the far right. He advocates breaking the US up – potentially into racial enclaves “maybe [by] dividing by states, maybe [by] dividing by ethnic groups”. The fantasy of the US splintering along ethnic lines has long been entertained by white nationalists, who have taken to calling themselves the “Balk Right”.
This is not the only place where Smith touches on ideas associated with white nationalism. In a 2018 podcast, he offers an account of human history that relies on arguments made in The 10,000 Year Explosion, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist book. Smith also directed readers to websites like radishmag, where readers are asked to “reconsider” slavery and lynching is painted in a positive light.
Wow, what a “wholesome” dude🤗️
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