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One of the best pieces of self-hosted software ever to exist.
Edit: This is Immich! for the folks who don't know.
I mean sure but... did you read the piece linked? It backs up it's claims. Not gonna sit here and act like I verified every single thing linked in the piece but I checked a good handful and it seems pretty straightforward. FUTO is pretty sketchy at the very least, and there's good reason to consider them a fascist org
Yes I read it when it first came out, and again after a recent update. It's very opinionated and I remain unconvinced the criticisms amounts to very much. At the least, certainly not to the point where words like nazi and fascist should be thrown around!
For example, I dislike Yarin's and Lunduke's politics but I did at least watched Yarin's interview. (Did you? It was boring, and entirely tech-oriented, nothing controversial at all.) But... trial by association I guess. And anyway, it's not the article itself I have a problem with - it's the borrowing of second-hand opinions as if they should be your own. Sometimes, it's prudent to reserve judgement (until 'verifying every single thing'), or criticise specific ideas, without leaping to ad hominem per consortium.
As far as I can tell the worst thing they did was call their source available license open source, which isn't even that bad.
My read is that FUTO as a software movement is totally fine, it does what it claims on the tin. The people behind FUTO are a different story, and the main person bankrolling it seems to have friends with odd views (I think they're blown out of proportion, but they're still concerning).
You'll never find a perfect movement. Here's what FUTO seems to prioritize:
That sounds pretty good to me! I'd prefer it to be FOSS, but allowing me to distribute modifications for non-commercial use is probably good enough for most things.
I probably disagree with their founder politically, and I'd run FUTO differently, but I think their software is good and I could maintain it myself if needed, and at the end of the day, that's what matters to me.
FUTO doesn't seem interested in getting involved in politics, they're merely musing philosophically, and their products aren't profitable, so it doesn't really matter to me what their political positions are.
Software can't be fascist, it's just software. The makers or users can be fascist though. If that statement was true, Lemmy would be tankie.
No, that's not fascist. Facial recognition software can be used for a variety of reasons, like unlocking a phone or laptop, gaining access to secure areas, or home automation stuff.
It's only fascist if used by a government to oppress minorities. The software itself cannot be fascist, but it can be used by fascists.
The fault lies with the makers and users of the softeware. Software doesn't have political opinions, it's software.
It's like saying Panzer tanks were fascist because they were built by the Nazis. Tanks cannot be fascist, they're tanks. So despite being made and used by fascists, they're not fascist, they're tanks.
That's the same exact thing here. Facial recognition software can be used by fascists, but that doesn't make the software itself fascist.
The other person deleted their comment so I can't really know what the argument was, but I would like to make a distinction:
While tools cannot be political themselves, tools can lend themselves to specific political purposes.
A tank cannot itself be fascist, but it can make fascism more viable. Surveillance software cannot be political, but it is easily abused by fascists to destroy political opposition.
What matters is the harm and benefits. Is the harm caused by the tool justified by it's benefits? Or are the primary use cases for the tool to prop up fascism?
(I suspect that "authoritarianism" would be a better term to use here, but I'm continuing the theme of the thread)
Their argument was that software can, in itself, be fascist, and that's what we went around and around on. The example given was facial recognition software that can determine race (and later, country of origin).
Essentially, I said exactly what you're saying, while they argued the opposite. I wish I quoted them, but I did only directly address their claims, if you'll take my word for it.
I don't want the government to have and use facial recognition software (their example) and extensive security camera systems (my example, such as Flock), not because those solutions are fascist in and of themselves, but that they can be used by fascists to accomplish their goals. Even if the current regime uses them purely for good (i.e. completely opt in facial recognition, cameras inaccessible to police until there's a warrant with no passive collection) the next regime may not.
The extension of the argument I'm making (and maybe them kinda?) is that it's functionally the same as if the software were political.
You can make software that nearly exclusively benefits a particular political belief for family of beliefs.
So even if it's not actually technically political, it can be functionally political, at which point the argument is splitting hairs.
I think those are important hairs to split.
Let's say there's a camera system built due to a direct public vote and rolled out by a political party all agree defends democracy. The stated goal is catching red light violations and speeders, and it's a popular system. As part of the functionality it reads license plates, and that is verified by a human every time, and no footage is stored if there's no violation.
Is that system fascist? Most would say no, and it exists in many states, like California and Washington.
Then the next election, a fascist is elected, and one of the first moves is to repurpose that system to track undesirables, and now it stores a ton of footage.
Is that system now fascist? It's the same exact system as in the previous example, it's just being used for fascist ends, such as tracking vehicles with certain plates (e.g. Illegal immigrants, minorities, etc) Nothing has changed in the capabilities or programming of the system, the only change was when to capture footage, what people use it for, and how long to store it.
Yes, it's theoretically possible to design a fascist system, such as an LLM that only gives fascist answers, but that's an incredibly narrow definition.
Just because a product has a plausibly deniable use case doesn't really mean that it's not functionally political.
If someone creates a super invasive surveillance system and initially uses it for a seemingly benign purpose, that doesn't mean the intention all along wasn't more nefarious, especially if the system was practically irresistible for power structures and it's use directly lead to authoritarianism. Like giving someone their first hit for free.
In a case like that, I would discount the benign use as a red herring, and say that the software is functionally political.
Again, it's not the software itself that's fascist, it's what it's being used for that's fascist. Facial recognition for determining citizenship could absolutely be used for non-fascist purposes, like simplifying border crossings to not require documentation (i.e. completely opt-in). Likewise, surveillance systems can also not be used until there's an actual warrant (i.e. no passive recording), which can help in catching dangerous criminals.
The technology itself isn't fascist, it's how it's applied that's fascist. The mass data collection is fascist, the tools used to collect that data isn't fascist in the same way that guns and tanks aren't fascist, but they can certainly be used by fascists.
If anyone is refusing to engage, it's you. You provided no argument for your position, whereas I've explained as best I can in detail, with examples of similar things. Me not agreeing with you isn't "refusing to engage," it's a good faith debate.
If there's some point you've made that I've failed to address, I apologize, I tried to be thorough to not waste any time going back and forth.
Hahah you mean like Lemmy itself?
I'm not sure what "piece linked" you're talking about, since none of the parent comments of this comment actually have a link in them.
This is the first time I've ever heard of FUTO, but I did read their statement about open source and it sounds pretty good to me. I actually think they're capitulating a little bit too much by deciding not to call it open source anymore. As far as I'm concerned, if the source is available and anyone can contribute, that's open source. I don't particularly care whether or not it's free for Google to incorporate it into their increasingly-enshitified products or not.
Creative Commons (an org to which FUTO says they have donated) doesn't like their licences being used for software, presumably for finicky technical legal reasons. But if you imagine the broad spirit of their licences applying to software, all the main CC licences would be open source in my opinion. All combinations of Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike, and No Derivatives, as well as CC0 respect the important elements of open source.