It does? Rich people or companies they own might want to produce things that infringe on patents too; not obvious that this has anything to do with “rich people” one way or the other.

I think you can even do it in Organic Maps itself? In OsmAnd definitely.

OpenStreetMap data is exactly as good as volunteers made it.

I participated in a discussion similar to this recently here on the German-language community: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/28281369/15510510

Topics that were raised there by various people, some by me (read the full discussion if you can read German):

• an “algorithm” is really just a way of manipulating data, it’s meaningless to say you are banning “algorithms” because all software is based on “algorithms”, even reverse-chronological sorting of things you’re subscribed to is an algorithm
• algorithms are mainly intended to keep people on the platform for as long as possible (but I raised the issue that I actually found old web forums more engaging than today’s Facebook)
• how do you define “an algorithm” legally? I suggested a definition based on transparency and objectivity, others raised the issue that this would mean that misinformation could be easily manipulated to be shown at the top, and that if you require “transparency”, the platforms will just disclose how their algorithms work instead of abolishing them

One important aspect that nobody raised in that discussion is that moderation is different from censorship.

yes, gemeinnützig = serving the public benefit (literally approximately: gemein = common, nützig = useful, i.e. useful to the common good)

GmbH is just the (almost literal) translation of LLC.

wat

gGmbH = gemeinnützige Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung = limited liability company serving the public benefit

At least on mine, there’s an “About” link on the bottom left side on the web interface, click that and scroll to the bottom where you’ll get a list of blocked servers, then just uncollapse that and ctrl+f for “threads.net”.

A US Senator is part of the government.

Fortunately in the US I trust that their First Amendment has some teeth. If that were happening in most other countries, I’d be seriously worried that this senator might succeed with his evil plans.

Another author who doesn’t make the important distinction between moderation and censorship.

To a different license that, objectively, is not free and open source.

Poe’s Law

Do you really not see that this is literally just “we are the good guys so it is ok if we do it”?

“Misinformation” is whatever those in power decide to be such, whether it can be found on Signal or X or wherever, and whether the ones deciding it are in power in the UK, the US, India, Germany, Venezuela, or Russia.

another episode of this phenomenon https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/

All of this is only relevant if you use the web client. I don’t. I have email accounts both on gmail and on other providers and normally access all of them with Thunderbird and K-9 Mail.

I frequently use DDG for an initial search. When it doesn’t give me good results, I frequently find better ones on Google.

and then federate with Mastodon?

Yes, I guess so. I have no interest in becoming any kind of celebrity. That sounds stressful and can make you a target for harassment.

I prefer it when I can post my thoughts anonymously without anyone knowing or caring who I am. If a thought is good, it doesn’t matter whose thought it is.

So are they going to release non-AGPL (probably MPL) implementations of fediverse software? That would be real progress.

I have never understood why so many people find the structure of Twitter/Mastodon more appealing than that of Reddit/Lemmy.

I like it when I read other people’s thoughts on a matter, then react to them by adding relevant thoughts of my own and hoping people will react to mine too. Like on a traditional discussion forum (or for even older people, newsgroup or mailing list). That is what Reddit/Lemmy does reasonably well, although not quite as well as those traditional discussion forums.

On Twitter/Mastodon I have to have original thoughts of my own to be able to post anything at all, and even if I do have some, no one will read them if they aren’t already following me.

Richard Stallman has suggested “Ex-Twitter”. Maybe we should say that.

It does, but if someone makes changes that actively degrade the map, they can be reverted and blocked from editing. There are monitoring tools available and in general things like that don’t tend to happen, at least not in areas with an active good faith community.

On OSM all it takes is one person to delete that bridge if it isn’t there anymore. That is what is so great about wikis.

In my teenage years, the Internet was my favorite escape from the horribleness of my offline life. I thought it would always remain so, so decided to start a career in software engineering because that would be an improvement to the world.

Now that I haven’t been a teenager for nearly ten years, often enough the Internet is actively bad for my mental health and I have to get away from it to improve my mood. I have no interest in participating in propaganda wars.