El Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 07:03:41AM +0000, Evaggelos Balaskas deia: > Social media are now part of our life (I am not debating if they should or > not), > but diminish them to cat videos is a strong opinion.
Ok, careful. I remember a company once making me believe they didn't consider me a human being because I didn't use their products, and you could now end up making me believe you think I'm not alive (enough?) because I don't use social media. That could be a stronger opinion than whether facebook is about cats (which I didn't say as an absolute truth, just as a hint that sometimes people are not interested in some arguments, as in go count how many people in facebook is interested in cats, and how many in free software). Then maybe you don't think part of the message should be not to use centralized proprietary social media. I'm just saying if part of what some organization says amounts to "don't use twitter" then the organization shouldn't use twitter to say it. If the organization is not saying this but something else, I already said my point made no sense. What I mean is maybe we _should_ debate if social media should or not be part of our life (or which social media or whatever). And once there's a position on that it'll be easier to decide whether to use it. > 90% of email is >SPAM, should we stop using email? Lots of people have their email to >a proprietary platform. Should we stop talk to them? Should we only >talk to people who have similar ideas with us? I think we should not do mass email campaigns to random people. It's not that we must not use email because SPAM exists. It's we should not send SPAM ourselves. And the organization shouldn't use proprietary mail software for their own accounts. If the organization mails get sent to the addresses interested people have provided and that gets forwarded to proprietary software, then so be it. It's not very different to posting original content to the organization's web and some person forwarding it to Facebook. I'm not suggesting to set up referer filters to try to stop accesses from there. I'm just sugggesting not having an account there for the group. > I believe that we should be reaching out to people that have > different ideas from us and making arguments, discussions, talks on > how free software and the culture that comes with is the only way > for our society to be a better place for everyone. I don't believe my ideas are so much better than other peoples that I must intrude on them to explain them to them. I may do if the conversation brings up the subject but I think in general I'm wasting my time and theirs if I just pick a random stranger and try to convince him/her of one of my ideas. It's better to talk to people who already share part of the principles and can tell me things I haven't thought or listen to things I have thought. I'm just saying that if the message includes not using X, then going to X to tell people there they shouldn't be there is a bit useless. It's like going to the middle of a square and start shouting nobody should be in this particular square. If you think "don't use X" is not what we should be saying, then it's perfectly fine to use X. But if part of the subjet is saying "don't use X", then we should say it while showing there are alternative ways of life that don't involve using X. The fact that there are lots of people using X just means that it's likely that if what you do has any interest at all someone may forward it to X, without the organization ever helping X. > To make a point -plz bare with me for a moment- when everyone inside > a group is telling each other that free software is awesome and we > have to be a role model, my argument is to whom? To each other? How > can we reach people from outside this utopian group? We can argue Tails yes or Tails not, can't we ? It's still useful to talk between ourselves. And I think: 1.- the organization not using a social media X does not mean the organizations messages can't reach X (if X management does not care to prevent it, in case it is centralized enough). It just means the organization does not spend time or face in X. 2.- there is people outside social media and not yet into free software who can be interested in free software (and this does not even have to be distinct from the audience before, some people live some time in social media and some time outside of it and you can reach them when outside). 3.- It's not about role models. It's just that when people get together and set up groups for some shared ideas, keeping to the ideas is useful to sustain the group. Otherwise it can end up as a group just for the group itself and nothing behind it and lose its interest. It's not about who is purest, it's about the collective action being coherent with shared ideas and let each member live their lifes as they want and can. I remember having set up booths in the street for Software Freedom Day or the like. But even then I wasn't interrupting walkers by and telling them my story, I at least waited for someone to approach the booth and show some curiosity. And after some years the conclusion was the results weren't worth the effort even so. It was too random to be effective. _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
