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.

  • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
    11·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
      1·
      4 months ago

      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.

    • peregus@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      4 months ago

      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.

      In the removed posts that you can see in the screenshots I don’t see anything you say.

      Probably more than that even; more than I want to count. The modlog is public.

      When I wrote the post, there were no trace of those messages in the modlog (or I’ve missed them, I’m not that into Lemmy, I admit that)

      The What’s the best open source keyboard for android? post where you commented has not been locked

      My bad, I must have confused them, sorry.

      I generally try to assume good faith but I’m pretty sure some Futo proponents are actually just trolling at this point.

      As stated above, I don’t see any trolling in the comments scrreenshotted (and deleted). But over that, I think that deleting those messages is censorship. I still believe in free speech and I can’t see any hate or misinformation in those messages.

      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.

      It was a chit chat, what’s wrong with that? It feels like school were you had to just pay attention to what the professor was saying and woe betide anyone who turns their head.

      • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
        0·
        4 months ago

        But over that, I think that deleting those messages is censorship. I still believe in free speech and I can’t see any hate or misinformation in those messages.

        I believe in free speech too, and I think moderated spaces for discussion help enable it. (Think about this…)

        Nobody claimed there was hate in any of messages in that thread; you observing that there wasn’t is knocking down a straw man, and using the word censorship here is just hyperbole.

        There are however unambiguously factually incorrect assertions in some of the offtopic messages I removed from that thread.

        • peregus@lemmy.worldOP
          0·
          4 months ago

          I believe in free speech too, and I think moderated spaces for discussion help enable it. (Think about this…)

          I don’t see any misinformation on the deleted messages, if you can see in the ones that I’ve screenshotted, please tell me which one.

          There are however unambiguously factually incorrect assertions in some of the offtopic messages I removed from that thread.

          Again, please tell me what is offtopic. Is offtopic asking why FUTO is bad in a post where someone suggested a FUTO keyboard? If so, then a message like this one

          you generally don’t need an AV on android, unless you do really shady downloads. only download from fdroid, google play, github, apkmirror, and maybe some mod apk websites, the more known ones

          should be remove, and so this one:

          Yeah jail everyone doing piracy too (they also might do that lmao) im reporting every republican I know using an illegal firestick,ill make california blue

          But the world is not only black and white (every single message MUST have an open source software in it), but its a shades of all colors!

          IMHO free speach speech is let people write what they think, moderate misinformation only when there already is no clarification from others so that it’s clear to everyone that a message is misinformation.

          But Arthur, you’re a moderator of your server where you make the rules. I now understand what others were saying about your instance and I’ll just leave it. All the best!

          Edit: typo

          • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
            0·
            4 months ago

            IMHO free speach is let people write what they think, moderate misinformation only when there already is no clarification from others so that it’s clear to everyone that a message is misinformation.

            imho “free speach” is a typo, and one often made by people with the funny idea that free speech means any form of content moderation is a violation of their rights 😏

            I don’t see any misinformation on the deleted messages, if you can see in the ones that I’ve screenshotted, please tell me which one.

            look again; two of the comments in your screenshots (and many more that i deleted) are explicitly claiming that futo makes open source software:

            click to expand for screenshots of your screenshots

            and, the rest of them are discussing and/or promoting futo, which, again, is a commercial product which many people incorrectly believe to be open source due to its maker’s now-recanted false statements to that effect, and therefore offtopic (“spam” would also be a fair label for some of it) in a community about open source.

            also, note that i did not even delete 100% of the comments about futo in that thread! i left enough that any good-faith reader should be able to see why further discussion of futo is offtopic there, and, i even linked to this thread you started, to give anyone who wanted to discuss it further a place to do so.

            if you still believe that deletion of (most, and not even all in the thread) offtopic/spam comments is a free speech issue… ok, i don’t know what else to tell you. all the best to you too.

            • peregus@lemmy.worldOP
              01·
              4 months ago

              imho “free speach” is a typo, and one often made by people with the funny idea that free speech means any form of content moderation is a violation of their rights 😏

              This says it all! Bye

    • newhoa@lemmy.ml
      0·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
        1·
        4 months ago

        Open source has a definition that has been agreed for nearly two decades, some billionaire doesn’t get to redefine it because of his personal feelings.

        The FSF has a list of licenses, but they specifically label the non-free ones and state they shouldn’t be called free software.