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Screenshot of a Mastodon toot by @ebassi@mastodon.social:

The whole open source community loves Milkshake Laptops, a lovely laptop company that has ethical values! 5 seconds later We regret to inform you the laptop company stans fascists

  • TwiddleTwaddle@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    27·
    4 months ago

    Here’s hoping for a new official response that takes these concerns much more seriously and commits to a structure that doesnt allow for these types of issues to come up again. I had just finally decided on framework for my next laptop, but I’ll happily spend my money elsewhere if this isnt resolved very differently from how they first hoped to sweep it away.

  • poke@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    619·
    4 months ago

    If the community reacts super strongly to this before framework even has the chance to properly investigate, respond, and react to this kind of issue, why would they ever want to risk investing in open source projects in the future? Come on, people. Give them time and if you have to hate on a company hate on the bigger ones that do these sorts of things on purpose and get away with it. I understand informing Framework and putting pressure on them to fix things, but there’s such a thing as going too far.

    • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.worldEnglish
      222·
      4 months ago

      If it weren’t for the out of touch, deeply offensive responses they already made, this likely would not have blown up. The fact that they responded in such a dismissive, disgusting way is the reason this is news.

      • nagaram@startrek.websiteEnglish
        9·
        4 months ago

        I would have been happy with a corpo

        “We will be reviewing our philanthropic practices going forward.”

        With pure neutral tone and no mention of the politics.

        That’s the corpo correct answer. And its concerning they didn’t give that.

    • TwiddleTwaddle@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      381·
      4 months ago

      They already made one (very poor) response and that’s what’s got most people doubling down to keep the pressure on them to change their stance. I really dont see how a bunch of forum posts could possibly be “too far”.

      • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1411·
        4 months ago

        Impossible to tell. Not a good person for sure, but fascist, probably not. The precipitating event happened on the Hyprland discord, which was unmoderated at the time. Someone made transphobic remarks. Drew DeVault (a big-mouthed idealist with extreme opinions and thin skin) kicked Hyprland out of the Freedesktop project for this, and wrote a wordy blog post criticising the community. Then, because media literacy is fucking dead, people who already agreed with DeVault’s views took it at face value and ran with it to chase the Woozle.

        The truth is somewhere between the extremes, and if that one article that indirectly refers to the incident is enough for you to make such a conclusion… you and DeVault would get along just fine.

        (edit) I haven’t used Hyprland for over a year and have been out of the loop, this info might be outdated.

        • redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.comBannedEnglish
          6·
          4 months ago

          This guy is full of shit. He’s a Lemmy.world mod and had to lock the meme about this because it wasn’t lining up with his world view and he’s being down voted.

          He’s not arguing in good faith. Just desperate. 🤡

        • they_herd_owl_now@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          241·
          4 months ago

          this comment undermines what happened as “someone made transphobic remarks” when there was more than “someone” and more than “transphobia” (not that just one person saying transphobic bs makes it not bad, but saying its a single incident and not a repeated common thread in that community is undermines at the very least).

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8SiRr7qWUc This video covers is like how an outsider would so imo its good enough info on this

      • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
        692·
        4 months ago

        from what i’ve seen, hyprland’s community is highly toxic and rife with fascists. is the maintainer a fascist? idk, but you know what they say about nazi bars

        the other project framework is under fire for supporting, omarchy, is proudly made by DHH, who is a known far-right racist. this one is not up for debate

        • Cossty@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          4 months ago

          I don’t know who the creator is, but when I saw that in promotional materials for the distro, he uses Grok’s website and there is even dedicated Grok’s shortcut in the distro. I was like, I’m 89% sure this guy is maga nutjob.

          That’s why I’m concerned about the ladybird browser, because in the monthly updates, the guy almost always goes to the Grog’s website.

        • vapeloki@lemmy.worldEnglish
          125·
          4 months ago

          I never had contact with this part of the hyprland community. I had quiet son in dep discussions with maintainers and a currently 5k lines deep in, in removing technical depts from the codebase.

          I never had anything but pleasent communications.

          I would love to see some examples (and if someone uses the terms highly toxic and rife with fascist I expect a lot examples) of this.

          Be aware, as a German, I am highly sensitive on the missuse of the term fascist. For example many use the term fascist to describe Trump. That is not true. Trump is straight out a fucking Neo Nazi

          • Hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            16·
            4 months ago

            many use the term fascist to describe Trump. That is not true. Trump is straight out a fucking Neo Nazi

            can you explain that distinction? I was under the impression that neo nazis were fascists.

            • vapeloki@lemmy.worldEnglish
              8·
              4 months ago

              Yes they are. It is just more precise. Fascism itself is not inherently racist or has some kind of master race. Neo Nazis do.

              And of course calling him a fascist is not inherently false. But just leaves out 80% of it

              • neatchee@lemmy.worldEnglish
                12·
                4 months ago

                Eh I would point out that fascism doesn’t need to be racist to be evil, AND that there’s a reason why fascism is the preferred form of government for racists.

                So, like, you’re not technically wrong but I think the point you’re making is bordering on moot.

                Fascism is bad. Racism is bad. Most racists are fascists. Many fascists are racists.

                The venn diagram of fascists and bigots of one type or another is damn close to a perfect circle

                • vapeloki@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  41·
                  4 months ago

                  It was ja joke. Someone who is very particular about the meaning of words is sometimes called a “word Nazi” but it should be “word fascist”. Tried to play on it and forgotten that nobody outside Germany has any association with this m)

              • guy@piefed.socialEnglish
                1·
                4 months ago

                What, fascism is definitely inherently racist. Everything boils down to people with certain qualities are more fit to rule and should be the ones filling the community.

                • vapeloki@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  4 months ago

                  Nope, sry to be a little bit picky here but the definition of a Nazi is more or less “rassist fascist”. But bot vice versa. Have for example a look atBrazilians integralism. Or Salazar’s regime in Portugal .

                  If you weaken those definitions you will trivialize what Nazis did. It is so so so much worse then “simple facism”, pleas excuse this awful term in lack of any better

            • neoinvin@lemmy.zipEnglish
              87·
              4 months ago

              they’re only fascist if they come from the fasces region of italy, otherwise its neo nazi.

        • ikon106@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          4·
          4 months ago

          Damn it. I was really excited to use Omarchy for my next laptop. Glad I saw this before I made the switch :/

      • enkille@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        4 months ago

        this is the first i’m hearing about it and i’m a year or more into using hyprland, which is frustrating. i tend to avoid discord communities in favor of just reading documentation though.

  • katy ✨@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    561·
    4 months ago

    if system76 turns out to be shitheads imma blow up the earth with a illudium q-36 explosive space modulator

    • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zoneMEnglish
      25·
      4 months ago

      I doubt system76 would make the mistake, primarily because they have no reason whatsoever to fund any other distro and DE other than Pop_OS and Cosmic.

    • Arsecroft@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      42·
      4 months ago

      they personally fucked me over years ago on a screen replacement i was willing to pay for.

      they wanted to charge me 600 usd just for the panel that was available on aliexpress for 80

      ended up doing it myself, and then spending 80k usd on a different company’s hardware for the company i worked for that used linux desktops

    • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      16·
      4 months ago

      if only being trans and being a fascist were mutually exclusive 🥴

      but yea, that kind of stuff is why we’re disappointed. framework pitched itself as a progressive and cool company, seeing them support fascists now is very upsetting.

      • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        4 months ago

        if only being trans and being a fascist were mutually exclusive 🥴

        Cough, cough, Blaire White, cough, cough…

        (I think Brianna Wu is just a naive idiot, especially considering her past, Contrapoints just has bad takes on some topics one of which included the current Palestine-Israel war.)

  • megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1411·
    4 months ago

    From what I read, it sounds like they were supporting a bunch of different projects based on “oh hey this is kind of neat and could be useful” and didn’t really look in to the background of the relevant devs.

    The thread on their forum reads like them wandering in to something, reading the objection as some obscure beef and running the standard PR approach without really realizing what a mess they just stuck their foot into.

    Hopefully their cage will be rattled enough to look in to it and pull back.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1071·
      4 months ago

      Yeah the user who responds by saying:

      This is not a “I do not like this distribution” kind of argument.

      This is a “the people you are sending my money to want me and my friends dead or deported” kind of argument.

      The “big tent” argument works fine if everyone plays by some basic civil rules of understanding. Stuff like code of conducts, moderation, anti-racism, surely those things we agree on? A big tent won’t work if you let in people that want to exterminate the others.

      Kind of nails it I think. For what it’s worth I don’t think there’s any malicious intent on Framework’s part necessarily, I think maybe they’ve just naively stepped on a bit of a landmine? But still, not ideal.

      • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
        731·
        4 months ago

        Someone else struck an important chord:

        Additional edit: I think it’s quite telling that a community response of “I’m not happy with this development, please consider changing your mind or I’m going to spend my money elsewhere” is now being met in this thread with responses including inflammatory fascist and racist talking points, transphobia, etc, while Framework says and does nothing about it. It shows exactly the sorts of things Framework is permitting in their “big tent” by rewarding right-wing extremists with money and sponsorship. What a way to tank a community that – a few years ago at least – seemed pretty welcoming and inclusive.

        The community defense is riddled with typical far-right talking points. “What do you mean you don’t want to include literal nazis in your community? What ever happened to tolerance?”

  • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.worldEnglish
    271·
    4 months ago

    As another example of this sort of thing, shopify, cloudflare, futo, jetbrains are sponsoring ladybird, while Kling apparently shares DHH’s views. It’s definitely generally bad to support a project led by this sort of person, and now that they know about it I think they should stop, but idk if i’d condemn the whole company over it. Especially as it often requires quite a bit of research to find out about that sort of stuff unless you were there when the social media drama happened.

      • magz :3@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        281·
        4 months ago

        kling is the creator/head of the ladybird browser. dhh is the creator of ruby on rails, but he’s now working on omarchy, which is basically just a collection of dotfiles for arch but people love for some reaso (personal rant).

        the reason that their views are important is because a lot of tech companies, even ones that were previously reputable like framework, have been pouring a lot of money into these. this is especially relevant for omarchy, since afaik dhh is the only person working on it, making donations to omarchy basically be direct donations to dhh himself.

        while kling has done some questionable things, dhh is basically just a straight up fascist, which really puts the principles of the companies giving money and promotion to him (like framework) into question

    • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      39·
      4 months ago

      i don’t think unknowingly supporting shitty people is that bad. mistakes happen, after all.

      knowingly supporting shitty people, and then saying it’s fine because you’re wanting to create a big tent that includes everyone, even fascists, is bad! very bad!

      • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        4·
        4 months ago

        Also, if you have semi-plausible deniability that you didn’t know, but you had an inkling and you didn’t want to find out… That’s not great either.

        Not knowing isn’t a full excuse if you actively try to not find out.

  • Qwel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    205·
    4 months ago

    Please don’t keep this title if the post reaches the frontpages

    It has only been 12h, and they only put up one (awful) placeholder response. Give them a bit of time to look into things before telling the headline-readers to never buy their stuff

    • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      213·
      4 months ago

      i haven’t told anyone to do anything; but even then, shouldn’t it be goal to put pressure on them so they change course?

      • poke@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        63·
        4 months ago

        Sure, but there are too many people here who will see this post and internalize “Framework evil” for the rest of their lives, when a large company like that just needs more time to properly investigate, respond, and react to issues.

        I’m looking at those people who internalized “Proton evil” way too quickly, for example.

        I don’t think you should have to adjust this post at all, but unfortunately this is how things are.

        • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          8·
          4 months ago

          Most of what you said is good, but the “proton evil” saga was not a quick one at all. The CEO keeps following up and doubling down, over and over, to this day. It isn’t an “I misspoke, my bad it won’t happen again” situation.

        • rumschlumpel@feddit.orgEnglish
          6·
          4 months ago

          people who internalized “Proton evil” way too quickly, for example.

          Is there a reason not to take it seriously that their CEO praised Trump?

          • poke@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            31·
            4 months ago

            Take it seriously, but with the right amount. Yes, the statement was concerning, no it was not a statement (in my opinion, because yes this is subjective) strong enough to warrant cancelling the whole company when it was a single board member being dumb, while the rest of the company continues to act in good faith. Words can be loud, but actions are louder, and I truly believe the response has been blown out of proportion.

      • Qwel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        154·
        4 months ago

        Maybe I’m being a bit too nervous, but companies like Fairphone or Framework rely on goodwill from technical people who are ready to pay more for less stuff to encourage their politics. If poeple categorize them as non-rule, they are not going to pay the premium. I think, for a lemmy user, that would set the odds of buying at near-0. again, maybe i’m being too dramatic

        I agree that putting pressure this way is a good thing, but the pressure needs to be conditional. If you just mark them as dead before giving them a chance to correct course, they are better off reaching all the way for the customer base of “apolitical” users. The ebassi screen has a parodic tone that reduces the certainty and definitiveness (people will just put FW into question rather than fully discard it. i think), and avoids citing the name directly, limiting the damage to people who already have some understanding of the situation

        anyways at this point I think there is enough threat to elicit a reaction on their part, and that we should wait for them before burning everything down. and I hope they can just have a quick fact check and everything will be fine and they will actually have money to donate because they won’t if they keep up the vibe of the first response

        I’m being way overinvested ok byeee

        • vzqq@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          51·
          4 months ago

          companies like Fairphone or Framework rely on goodwill from technical people who are ready to pay more for less stuff to encourage their politics. If poeple categorize them as non-rule, they are not going to pay the premium.

          Then they REALLY should have thought of that before they fucked the goat.

        • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@reddthat.comEnglish
          3·
          4 months ago

          If poeple categorize them as non-rule, they are not going to pay the premium. I think, for a lemmy user, that would set the odds of buying at near-0. again, maybe i’m being too dramatic

          Correct, I will not be spending extra money for organizations that go around talking about how they want to give their money to people who’d rather I not exist solely based on my demographics.

  • RiceBowl@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    8·
    4 months ago

    I cannot understand why Nirav, the head of the company, would weigh in here instead of having the PR/Marketing team of or someone come up with an answer for this. Made it so much worse and I have such a bad feeling about them now.

    Maybe some Ben Franklin will help them “It takes many good deeds to build a reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” “Never ruin an apology with an excuse.”