lemm.ee

8 points

9 months ago

Lemmy is a FOSS answer to the failings of Capitalist Reddit. Everyone who doesn’t care enough is on Reddit, leaving Lemmy with tons of leftists who do care enough.

There’s also Linux, Privacy, and other FOSS things, but FOSS in general aligns with leftist views.

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4 points

9 months ago

FOSS also aligns with free market capitalist views.

I’m not here because Reddit is capitalist, I’m here because Reddit sucks. I don’t like new Reddit or the Reddit app, and I certainly don’t like the tracking they do. Lemmy seems to be the closest alternative and is good enough, so I’m here.

I consider myself libertarian (not US libertarian party, but ideologically libertarian, like Penn Jillette) and I’ve been a FOSS enthusiast for decades. I contribute to FOSS because I enjoy it and honestly think FOSS projects work better than their alternatives. I don’t do it out if some social obligation or whatever, I do it because it just seems to work better. I disagree politically with the creators of this project, yet I’ve contributed code and enjoy the work they’ve done.

Just an alternative perspective.

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5 points

9 months ago

FOSS does not align with Free Market Capitalist views, because it’s a rejection of individual ownership of property, and a rejection of the profit motive. That’s like saying being kind to your neighbor aligns with Free Market Capitalist views, I’m sure Free Market Capitalists think that’s a good idea but it in no way aligns with their ideology on the basis of Free Market Capitalism, it’s unrelated.

The reasons you described hating Reddit, notably the forced usage of new Reddit and the Reddit App, as well as the tracking they do, is because Reddit is a Capitalist entity. The reason for all of this is so Reddit can make money off of owning the IP.

Believing honestly that FOSS works better than the alternatives is a leftist stance. Leftism isn’t about social obligation, but a belief that individual ownership and thus enforced hierarchy is a bad thing.

You should probably do some introspection.

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3 points

9 months ago

FOSS does not align with Free Market Capitalist views, because it’s a rejection of individual ownership of property

That’s just not true. FOSS is an explicit grant of rights to my property to the public at large. There’s no compulsion to make my work public, and I can even keep my modifications to a FOSS project to myself and not share it. FOSS leaves me, the contributor, in control of what I want to do with my work. If I’m the sole contributor, I can even change the license that my work is in, I just can’t revoke previously released versions of the software.

In many cases, it makes more sense for companies to collaborate on a project than to build everything themselves. Look at Linux, most development comes from for-profit companies because distributing the burden of maintenance happens to be good for business. We see rival orgs like Huawei/Samsung, Intel/AMD, and RedHat/SUSE among the top contributors. They could keep those changes to themselves, but maintaining those changes long-term would cost more than the benefit they’d get from keeping them to themselves.

is because Reddit is a Capitalist entity

That’s just not true. I liked Reddit for years, but they slowly changed their model away from what worked for years. There were two directions they could’ve gone:

privacy oriented - offer low-cost, paid subscriptions to avoid ads - Reddit Gold failed because it was too expensive IMO, not because the model was poor
ad-supported - put ads on content, and harvest data to serve more relevant ads

They picked the latter, so I left because that wasn’t the direction I wanted the platform to go. They can still make money off the IP and I have no problem with that, and if they chose a privacy-oriented approach, I would still be there. But they didn’t.

I’m also totally fine with them charging for API access, I’m not okay with the amount they charged (which was way more than they’d get from ads through their app).

Believing honestly that FOSS works better than the alternatives is a leftist stance

Maybe if taking it to the extreme (i.e. FOSS always works better than the alternatives). But if taken situationally, I think it is totally a free capitalist mindset. For example, video games make a ton of sense being proprietary software, whereas game engines make a lot of sense being free software (or at least source-available, like Unreal Engine). In general, platforms are better as FOSS, whereas products are better as proprietary software. FOSS generally sucks for making products, proprietary software generally sucks for platforms because maintenance costs are so high.

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2 points

9 months ago

You can absolutely take advantage of an explicitly leftist structure and use it for Capitalist gain in Capitalism, but that doesn’t make the structure Capitalist. It’s a rejection of Capitalism.

The enshittification of Reddit is precisely because it’s a Capitalist entity. It wasn’t as profitable to do what worked, so they made it worse and upped their profit margins. Not sure why you struggle to see that.

Thinking FOSS is better in some situations is devoid of being a Free-Market Capitalist stance, and is more leftist. Markets themselves are not Capitalist, by siding with FOSS, even in certain instances, you are saying leftist structures are better than Capitalist structures in certain instances. That’s more of a pro-market stance than a pro-Capitalism stance.

You’re tying Capitalism to a rejection of Capitalism, when that doesn’t make sense. You should just accept that you have some leftist views with regards to how the economy should be structured, rather than contort your worldview to make illogical connections. I’m not asking you to change your views, just accept correct labeling of them.

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2 points

9 months ago

But it’s not leftist. Stallman certainly wanted it to be when he created the GPL, but it has worked incredibly well (and perhaps better) as a capitalist structure. It turns out, things like standards reduce costs overall, so you’ll get a better return on your capital by cooperating with others than keeping everything to yourself.

You can see this across the board. Most products are a derivative of other works, and being able to focus on your unique value proposition dramatically reduces costs and thus increases return on capital.

The whole notion of intellectual property is anti-capitalist, it’s government protectionism. Before IP laws were a thing, people built on each other’s innovations without restraint. Sometimes that lead to copycat works, and sometimes it lead to new works. IP law restricts derivative works, FOSS allows it, but puts limitations on them. I personally believe IP laws are one of the biggest hurdles to innovation and believe we should have much shorter patent and copyright duration to encourage more derivative works. FOSS is but one way to get around the current system.

because it’s a Capitalist entity

No, it’s because the leadership is stupid.

There are other privacy-respecting, “capitalist” companies that do just fine, they just have a different profit model. However, it just so happens that the masses seem to prefer paying with data and ad time over money for services. I don’t, so I avoid ad-supported services, mostly because I think that runs counter to the type of content I want to see. Sometimes that means I use FOSS, and sometimes that means I use privacy-respecting proprietary software.

When I used Reddit, I paid for an ad-free, proprietary mobile app. I’d do the same today if Reddit allowed fair competition with its app. But they have decided that ads, data collection, and mass appeal are the direction they want to go.

leftist structures are better than Capitalist structures in certain instances

I certainly believe that’s true, I just don’t think FOSS is inherently leftist. It’s a tool that works well both for capitalist and socialist interests, it has no economic or political bias.

Here are some areas where I think leftist structures are superior:

education - I’m a fan of charter schools, and I think they should be run as co-ops owned by the teachers
utilities - these are natural monopolies, so they should be run as a service to the community; that said, raw materials used by the utility could be for-profit (depending)
banking - credit unions beat for profit banks in pretty much every area

I absolutely do have some leftist views, in fact I’m probably more left than both major US parties, on net. The left/right spectrum isn’t as interesting to me as the liberty/authoritarian spectrum. I want government to be less involved in my life, and I don’t really care if the solutions that make that happen come from the left or the right. But to me, FOSS isn’t either, it’s just a way for me to decide how I want my work to be used by others.

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2 points

9 months ago

Oh, but it is. Leftism is a rejection of hierarchy and individual ownership of the Means of Production, while FOSS is a rejection of ownertship. Again, you’re incorrectly tying Capitalist entities taking advantage of leftist products as a way to call the leftist products Capitalist. FOSS itself is leftist, regardless of who uses it.

IP is absolutely Capitalist, Capitalism is all about profiting off of ownership of property, as opposed to creating Value. Rent-seeking is built into Capitalism, that’s why it still exists, it consolidates power and influences the state. Believing Capitalism contains within itself the contradictions that work against itself is a leftist belief, after all!

Capitalist companies can certainly choose to make a better product, but that does not mean Reddit’s choice to pursue profit over a better product was not caused by Capitalism.

All in all, I really do think you need to understand that structures themselves can be left and used by right wing entities. FOSS is leftist itself and does not care who uses it, that does not make it Capitalistic if a Capitalist uses it.

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1 point

9 months ago

That’s just not true. FOSS is an explicit grant of rights to my property to the public at large.

How is that NOT rejecting ownership (in this context meaning private property)? Public ownership is by definition leftist.

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2 points

9 months ago

A grant of rights is not ownership. If you own something, you can do whatever you want with it. If you’re granted rights to something, you are limited by the terms of the agreement.

For example, with the GPL, you are not allowed to use any (substantial) portion of the work in a propriety product. However, if you’re the author of that portion, you can.

Common ownership means everyone has the same rights related to the software. And that’s just not true for FOSS, though it can effectively be true for certain projects, provided there are enough authors. Linux is effectively commonly owned because getting every author to reassign ownership is infeasible, whereas that’s exactly not the case with MongoDB, where you sign over all copyright interest, so they completely own the work.

FOSS doesn’t require shared ownership, only shared rights, so it’s not socialist.

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irmoz@reddthat.com

0 points

9 months ago

This all relies on a rather restrictive, and, I suspect, personally tailored definition of “ownership”. Common ownership simply means anyone can freely use something however they want. That is absolutely true of the vast majority of FOSS. And in this sense, shared rights amounts to the same as shared ownership.

Pointing out that it doesn’t allow you to cut off sharing sort of misses the forest for the trees. Of course public ownership demands the continuance of public ownership.

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