Or maybe we should just support and adopt open source alternatives, so that the rest of the world doesn't get stuck into pointless geopolitical disputes?
>>> Twitter should bring back Vine so we have a US ran equivalent.
>> Or maybe we should just support and adopt open source alternatives...
> People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
You misunderstood. I'm objecting to the either/or framing that implicitly says that something like Vine should not be brought back. If you want to create an open source alternative, go ahead and I hope you're successful. However, the chances of that succeeding are much smaller, therefore it's not a good choice to focus on to solve the particular problem at hand.
You know what mastodon/pixelfed/peertube needs to be "successful"? Users.
Users who are not willing to accept their data being mined. Who are not willing to be sold as eyeballs. Who are willing to pay a few bucks a year just to keep other smaller providers running.
The software exists. Unlike Vine, millions of people use it already.
They can't, but the reason has nothing to do with software license. You can write proprietary software and Google/Facebook/Twitter/Apple/TikTok still can't get your data. And Google/Facebook/Twitter/Apple/TikTok use plenty of FOSS software to run their platforms.
The privacy of your data is more impacted by where it is and who controls it, not the copyright license of the software that moves it around
You seem to be very good at pontificating while completely missing the overall point.
Of course the software license is not related directly with privacy and access control. But there is no way that a private company will be able to offer a global social network while keeping user privacy a priority. The moment that any single company becomes big enough, they will either exploit the data for their own benefit (like Google/Apple/Meta/Microsoft/Amazon) or they will be pushed into it by some government.
Our best alternative is to have not to trust any particular company, but to use federated/distributed services, and the easiest way to have that is by ensuring that we are supporting and adopting open standards and open source systems that can be hosted by many different players.
