Did PewDiePie Just Crack the Code for How to Present Libre Software?
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
On June 26th ( two days ago ) PewDiePie ( who I believe needs no introduction ) released another video in his liberation saga. This time titled I'm DONE with Google. In this video he goes over his process of getting "de-google-efied", or as he clarifies toward the end of the video, his process of getting rid of his reliance on Big Tech. ↩ Reply
A few days ago I presented to you, the readers of this blog a problem: The Complexity of Selling Libre Software and Freedom in General. In which I outlined the strategical mistake of pushing an idea too hard too quickly onto someone. There are defense mechanisms in people preventing foreign ideas from penetrating into their head. And often people might react to foreign ideas with spite, causing an opposite reaction than one that was intended. ↩ Reply
Watching the video that PewDiePie just released, I think I found a good example of how this issue of Norepineuphoria could be avoided, while in the same time functioning similarly to what is needed to further the ideas I outlined in my article. ↩ Reply
Did PewDiePie just crack the code? ↩ Reply
Let's see... ↩ Reply
![[embedded image]](/pictures/user_upload/blenderdumbass/pewds_tinhat.png "PewDiePie in a Tin-foil hat.")
The video in question starts with a very specific image. PewDiePie stands there with a Tin Foil Hat on his head. It might feel like he is mocking the whole Libre Software movement, for being just a bunch of conspiracy theorists, and technically speaking this is a sort of mockery. But what it does, is, it invites those people who think that we are a bunch of conspiracy theorists, in, by sharing their view on the subject in question. ↩ Reply
Some time ago, maybe a few months ago, at work I met a lady who didn't understand why the self-checkout machines in the store I work at, need her to create an account. I explained to her that the store wants her data. And that is one way they found that they can get this data from people. Somehow this turned into a conversation about privacy, which was my intention. But I ended up sensing in her responses that she thinks about the whole privacy issue as if it is one of those conspiracy theories. She equates government and corporate surveillance to flat earth or extra-dimensional aliens. ↩ Reply
PewDiePie, starting the video with the tin-foil hat, acknowledges those people and therefor eases them into the video. Making them not completely reject it immediately. Potentially speaking, if he didn't do that. And went in with complete seriousness, that might have had triggered some alarms in those people. Ruining the message for them. ↩ Reply
Immediately after that PewDiePie acknowledges the obvious hypocrisy in the video with a joke. The fact that the video ( and the entire existence of PewDiePie ) relies heavily on YouTube ( a proprietary platform ) controlled by Google, who, based on the title he is "DONE with". He makes those people that are scared to move over to Libre Software more at ease, with this acknowledgment, because what it communicates is, is that the switch could be done at your own pace, and you are ultimately in control of whether you want to switch in the first place. ↩ Reply
A lot of the times when people hear of Richard Stallman, or other people, who correctly state that all proprietary software is absolutely inexcusable, they feel pressured. Which makes them recoil and distance themselves from those types of ideas. If you need to suddenly re-learn the entire way you are using the computer, and you may have certain habits, or certain things you rely on, or enjoy very much, either games, or software, or in case of PewDiePie, the platform he is on. You will automatically feel like whatever these Stallmans are asking from you is so absurdly hard for you to do, that you don't even consider it. More than that, to protect yourself from that hard work, you come up with a bunch of reasons, to not even engage in that idea. Which creates an opposition. And it is not something that we want. ↩ Reply
Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman learned that the hard way. FSF now has made a campaign called Freedom Ladder to show how you can Free your devices at your own pace, basically. Instead of asking people to install a GNU / Linux-Libre operating system immediately, they now ask people to install Libre-Office, or something, on their Windows machines first. And then take another and another step. At your own comfortable pace. ↩ Reply
Even Richard Stallman himself said that pushing people too hard might not do anything good in the end of the day. On the famous presentation by Stallman at LibrePlanet 2021 ( when he said he returned to the board of directors of the FSF ), on 22 minutes and 32 seconds, talking about Free Software in schools, for remote classrooms ( it was during the height of the Covid pandemic ) he said this: ↩ Reply
The people running the schools, they weren't looking for an excuse to force non-free software on people. They saw a horrible public health problem roaring down on them. They had to do something. So they reached for the solution that was being offered to them. Now I'm sure for some of those companies, this was a great excuse, to shove everybody into getting addicted to and surrendering to their non-free programs. But I wouldn't say that about the teachers and principals and school-boards. Non the less they owe it to students to respect student's freedom for those who demand freedom and are willing to make efforts to do the school work without, although in other ways, and thus avoiding non-free software. You can't go up to them with outrage in your voice and expect them to make an extra effort to help you keep your freedom. You got to realize that you can't assume that the teachers are bad, or that they are against your freedom, but they may feel "Oh boy, I'm so overloaded, what am I going to do", so it's up to you to be really clever and creative looking for ways to make it easier for them.
↩ Reply
PewDiePie, showing that hypocrisy of using and relying on YouTube. And more than that, having the video be on YouTube, communicates a similar willingness to understand people. And how hard it could be for them to move away from bad things in their life. ↩ Reply
Yet he didn't say that YouTube is good. He understands the problem of YouTube. He even did joke about the video probably getting buried by the algorithm, so no one can find it. Still it seems like either the algorithm had glitched, or PewDiePie is big enough, and therefor at the moment of me writing it the video already got 3.5 million views. ↩ Reply
After this groundwork, to make sure people are not tuned out of the video, he proceeds to actually talk about his process of "de-googling". Which included setting up his own email, moving to Firefox from Google Chrome, and doing other things like self-hosting a password manager and NextCloud and stuff like that. ↩ Reply
He talked about using the SteamDeck to self-host, which is an interesting and not so straight-forward thing to do. This by the way I also find brilliant. A lot of people think that they need this device or that piece of software to do what it is designed to do. This mentality causes people to not consider, or not see alternatives even if they present themselves. With his hacking of the SteamDeck ( a gaming device ) to use as a web-server, he shows how this opposite kind of "hacker mentality" works instead. ↩ Reply
I often notice people not understanding me when I say that I can do anything I want to do with Free Software. They clearly think I should be lacking something. Some feature, some gimmick that they aren't lacking by having non-free software... ↩ Reply
It's funny how my train of thought works. While writing this part of the article, which should probably be visible on the "not AI prove" video ( on 3:51 ), I received a notification from my alerts scripts that a new barrage of rockets are incoming. Those were not Iranian, I already found out those were probably from Yemen. Now... I didn't know where those rockets were going into. They ended up being targeted at the area of Ber Sheva. Which is far enough from my location, but still worrying. I realized I had a problem. ↩ Reply
I developed my script for the reason of not relying on a proprietary app. But still, and you can probably can see it on that video, I immediately went into Brave ( a browser I have installed which doesn't have LibreJS ) and loaded 2 proprietary websites ( one even utilizing Google Maps ) to see where the attack is. I needed to know if to be worried or not. ↩ Reply
Almost immediately after that I changed the code of the alert script, so I would not need to go to those websites. All I needed was to figure out how links for Open Street Maps are composed and make it spit out links for me, that show which areas are effected by the alerts. ↩ Reply
What I'm trying to say here is, if you are willing to hack a little bit, everything is possible on GNU / Linux and with Free Software. You may argue that to stay safe inside of Israel I need to use the proprietary app by Pikud HaOref, but I don't. I only need to have access to that one API call. And making an alert system on top of that requires very few lines of code. Yes, it could be nicer if there was a dedicated, graphical user interface, professionally made, Libre replacement to the government app. But you don't need it to be exactly the same in order to have the function. ↩ Reply
PewDiePie showed it very fantastically in the video. You may assume you need to rent a server or have an expensive data-center, or at the very least have a beast of a computer to host a web-service for yourself. But no, this is limiting type of thinking. You can use anything for that. SteamDeck was lying around, so he used that. And it works. So why not? ↩ Reply
He talked about his phone and that he even switched an operating system on it. He had GraphineOS installed which immediately spawned controversy about it on Mastodon because apparently the system is not the best choice when it comes to freedom. Yet remembering the Freedom Ladder concept, this is way better than using the stock, Google infiltrated Android. ↩ Reply
But then I think the best showcase of why I think this video is brilliant comes in the very end of the video. In the beginning he introduced the tin-foil-hat as a joke. In the end of the video he makes a meme out of it. He offers a tin-foil-hat to the viewer and puts one onto the camera. ↩ Reply
This is so good. He directly invited people into Freedom, by addressing the viewers personally and by making the viewer imagine joining the movement. Even if for just the memes sake. And especially because it is just for the memes sake, I think this would work so much better than starting with how serious it is. ↩ Reply
If people are tuned out from an idea because they feel pressure to take it seriously, maybe we should not make it serious. Maybe to make Freedom Sexy we should be playful about it. We should be encouraging playful cleverness instead of boycotts of evil, which in practice causes the same outcome. The difference is the mindset. Maybe we should make it so people are feeling joy from doing the right thing, rather than fear from doing something wrong. ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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Troler
c:0Let's create a sandwich called "Proprietary Food", containing a tasteless goo. Then film giving it to random people on streets asking whether they want to eat "Proprietary food".
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