The fact that PewDiePie might have a right-leaning following, that he acquired by himself leaning right, which he now exposes to Freedom, using Libre Software, might actually be a good thing. Since exposing yourself to the philosophy of Free Software eventually leads to human rights and thus to the left, in a way. If PewDiePie course-correcting to the left like this, taking his enormous subscriber-base with him, IMO it is very good.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025
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Idk. There's already plenty of right wingers (libertarians) in FLOSS spaces. I'd hate to see any more.
There's plenty of neo-nazis in the Free Software movement. It's "Free Software", not "Free People"
Nazis are everywhere, not just OSS. Never seen one though
Lunduke?
i feel like you missed the time between 1990 and 2005 when american libertarians caused a schism in the free software movement by popularising open source.
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There is evidence already in that video that suggests that he is starting to lean more left. Like he pointed out the ecological issues with AI. Even though he did say "I don't like to be that guy" before saying that.
It seems like he is already doing some doubts and thinking that are signs of moving the left direction.
I'm trying to be the optimist here. If we want not just PewDiePie, but his subscribe-base to change sides, we need him to be extra careful and extra soft with this sort of change. He seem to know how to form good streams of thoughts and convincing narratives. This would take some serious carefulness on his part. And it seems like he is already taking small steps to do that.
The problem with this is that it leaves left-leaning people using tech companies and slick, highly-produced products as status items. iphones and macbooks are still solid left-leaning status objects.
Also, the right doesn't mind being scrappy and using janky, poorly configured crap if it appears to meet their agenda. Nearly every right-leaning social media platform is either a platform with a Mastadon backend, or some early 2000's style forum.
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What in the UX war crime is this for me to read an article. It’s like the polar opposite of for-profit media trying so hard that it’s just looped around on itself
Oh you even got the iWarning lol
What's this warning thing? (for those of us far outside of the Apple ecosphere)
It’s basically an ad to tell people their phone isn’t private and they should buy a Purism phone
Yes, your user agent detector is certainly working
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So glad that one of the largest youtubers is promoting Linux, FOSS and privacy :D
No.
Anyone with a platform can do that.
(And from the little bits I've seen, mostly over memes & various news bits, the quality is questionable. Just don't follow the whims of influencers, it's not the correct way forward imho, it just inevitability leads to or spreads enshitification.)
I disagree, but I don't know why. Intuitively it doesn't feel like this is a bad thing. The people that "get it" will be introduced to something that they like and will go down the good path. The people that don't get it, won't. Just like they weren't before. Net profit: we turned some people towards the light. 🤷♂️ I see it as a win.
We don't have to use the same method on all people either. This might work for some, but not all, surely.
I don't really understand the enshittification spreading part of your argument. Curious to know more about what you meant by that.
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Wait until he discovers the Fediverse....
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.
It's not just that, the overbearing FOSS mentality, from Stallmans corner of that world, is that you need to take a damn political position on software to be able to interact with other people that use it.
Which in itself is not actually true, but if you approach it like this with non-technical types then they will rightly and instinctively balk at both the software and you.
Bringing people to FOSS should be the same as bringing them to any other software, and if the ideology behind it is so self-evidently true then - by its own standard - it won't need significant petitioning to convince them they should use more of it for ethical reasons as well as to meet their needs. This is software, not Amway. They're trying to write a word document, not to join a cult.
It’s not just that, the overbearing FOSS mentality, from Stallmans corner of that world, is that you need to take a damn political position on software to be able to interact with other people that use it.
FOSS is literally a political and ideological set of positions. The entire thing that makes Free Software and Open Source differentiated from just "normal" software development and distribution are a set of political and organisational positions, which are in limited fashion codified and expressed in software licenses, and also through e.g. structure of organisations around projects and why they're structured that way.
Without that, you just get companies making money from pawning off a portion of their development and infrastructure costs to volunteers and other organisations (non-profits, other companies, governments).
Bringing people to FOSS should be the same as bringing them to any other software,
FOSS isn't about fandom of a particular piece of software.
and if the ideology behind it is so self-evidently true then - by its own standard - it won’t need significant petitioning to convince them they should use more of it for ethical reasons as well as to meet their needs. This is software, not Amway. They’re trying to write a word document, not to join a cult.
This is absurdly politcally and socially naive. Also can we please ban stemlords from ascribing every aspect of politics and political advocacy to always being a cult.
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The challenge is that we're not just selling software, we're selling an idea - the idea that users deserve control over their computing. We're not competing on the proprietary software marketplace, we're offering an alternative to it.
We are already seeing the proprietary software world enshittify. More and more "non-tech" people are looking for a way out. The challenge is to demonstrate that these problems are inherent to the world of proprietary software and not just because "Google is evil."
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Great blog post! The mastodon outrage was a highlight as I see it again and again. Dunking on bridgy-fed, opt-out telemetry and donation pop-ups.
As I have tried to put myself in the shoes of a typical person I can see how they can view FOSS as crazy people in tinfoil hats creating templeOS.
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