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@NGIZero Are you serious right now? You do know what Google is, right? You do understand what their business model is? I thought NGI/NLnet was purportedly about finding and supporting *alternatives* to surveillance capitalists like Google, Meta, etc., not trying to improve their PR by perpetuating the myth that they’re generally a force for good who sometimes (often) make silly mistakes.

Do better.

@aral Would it or would it not be good to open source a complete platform, and allow its users to determine its course by giving them copyright? Would that not offer people an alternative to Sony and Microsofts dominant gaming platforms?

I think you must have used Etherpad at some point? What is different here? Do you still see that as a Google product? Of course, #Cryptpad is warmly recommended.

@NGIZero “Open Source” for a surveillance capitalist like Google is one or several of four main things:

- The potential to use free labour
- The potential for positive public relations (which, when amplified, will hopefully get people thinking about them as a benevolent philosopher kings instead of the robber barons and people farmers that they are)
- The potential to influence the stack (with tools that function in line with their success criteria)
- The potential to find new talent

…

@NGIZero … nowhere in the purview of a trillion-dollar multinational corporation, much less a surveillance capitalist, is there the goal of furthering the commons and contributing to the public good.

The sooner we stop pretending they ever had this goal and the sooner institutions that have some level of legitimacy (or at least a claim) in representing “the alternative” stop laundering their legitimacy by perpetuating these myths, the better.

…

@NGIZero … Just as with Big Tobacco, we will start turning the tide against Big Tech when we manage to make them socially unacceptable.

With Big Tobacco this came with the Surgeon General’s report unequivocally stating that smoking harms your health.

We need the equivalent in tech.

Institutions like yours shouldn’t be pleading with Google to “do the right thing” any more than an animal rights group would plead with factory farms to “please, be kind.”

The goal is to not have factory farms.

@aral It appears we don't share the same strategic insights. Thank you for your advice though, I know it comes from a good heart - but don't let your judgement be clouded by anger and assumption. Big Tobacco is not the right metaphore here, really.

Look at the matter at hand, and focus on what you want to achieve - and what could be helpful. Google is about to kill a service that failed to successfully compete with two dominant big tech players. Ignoring this opportunity exists makes no sense.

@NGIZero With all due respect, I’ve been making things with computers for the last four decades, working professionally in the field for over two decades, I’ve contributed to books and given countless talks at international conferences on the subject, and I’ve been an invited expert at the European Parliament twice. Writing off what I’ve said as “anger and assumption” is what I’d expect from a Silicon Valley lobbyist, not an EU institution purporting to support alternatives to it.

@NGIZero Given that we’ve applied for funding with you and in light of this current conversation, I have one very important question for you:

Do you (NLnet/ngi) see anything fundamentally wrong with Google and it’s business model or do you think they are generally a force for good in the world (but they sometimes make mistakes and could improve how they do certain things).

I’d like to know this as we are very careful about who we associate with and, especially, who we accept money from.

@aral Please find me a technology big tech is involved with that we are not funding actual alternatives to. Any form of proprietary lock-in is something we target to remove, anything that invades privacy needs to be stopped/mitigated (think #NoScript, #JShelter, #Offen.dev, #Goatcounter, #TrackingTheTrackers, #Searx, #Qubes, #SpectrumOS, etc). That is our contribution. Obviously, the trillion dollar surveillance economy needs to be curbed by harsh regulation, but this is not within our remit...