Re: “should have had a warning / apology”

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

Aaron Wolf <wolftune@riseup.net> wrote:
> On 2019-10-12 10:13 a.m., Dmitry Alexandrov wrote:
>> Aaron Wolf <wolftune@riseup.net> wrote:
>>> On 2019-10-12 3:20 a.m., Dmitry Alexandrov wrote:
>>>> Aaron Wolf <wolftune@riseup.net> wrote:
>>>>> MBR posted a Facebook link (which should have had a warning/apology 
>>>>> perhaps)
>>>>
>>>> I beg my pardon?  Warning of / apology for what?
>>>
>>> Just like "sorry for Facebook link" or something (because Facebook is a 
>>> company that works against most of the values we care about here).
>> 
>> Well, a good half of the Internet work against or at least contributes 
>> something against freedom of computing.  I do not think that _we_ have to 
>> apologize for them.
>> 
>>> I checked just now that this particular link is visible publicly without 
>>> JavaScript though, so I guess it's not too bad, relatively speaking.
>> 
>> Basically, it is not bad at all. :-)
>> 
>> But do you mean, that Facebook have other pages that are not readable 
>> without running nonfree scripts?
>
> Unlike Twitter, it can be common to have Facebook links that people assume 
> are basically public and visible but get blocked by requirement to sign-in.

Aha, thanks.

> I'm not sure about the Javascript issues per se.
>
> And I generally do apologies (and promote such habits) when I use or prompt 
> others to engage with entities I feel are harmful overall. To be specific to 
> software freedom, instead of an absolute of never suggesting or using any 
> proprietary software ever, I make compromises to be practical but I 
> *acknowledge* and *apologize* for them. They aren't my fault, but I'm 
> promoting *awareness* of the problem and refusing to spread the idea that 
> using non-free software is just fine and normal.

I don’t believe, that saying ‘sorry for Facebook link’ would raise awareness of 
computing freedom.  If a person is not aware of free software, he’d rather 
accredit it to something else or just ignore it than wonder or ask you about 
true reasons.  (Few years ago it was common in Runet to apologize for links to 
livejournal.com for the reasons not quite apparent even to those who did it, it 
was just a tradition).

It is felt, that it’d be much better to actually suggest a solution, if any 
exists.  For instance, speaking of twitter.com, which is normally unusable 
without nonfree software¹, use mobile.twitter.com links instead.  Link to some 
js-full page through web.archive.org or archive.is, which often helps (though 
it’s basically using them as a scapegoat).  Suggest to use mpv+youtube-dl / 
weboob / minitube / NewPipe for viewing a youtube.com link.  Suggest to set 
‘User-Agent’ to that of Googlebot to avoid consentwall like on yahoo.com²; etc.


¹ twitter.com actually has that silly type of interface that is loaded almost 
fully readable without any scripts but shadowed — and might be revealed with an 
adblocker.

² If you do not see any consentwall there, you are fortunate enough to be in 
GDPR-free country.

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