The intention can be fascist, sure, but that doesn’t mean the solution is fascist.
For example, I think it’s pretty clear that Lemmy was designed by tankies to create a safe space for tankies (why would the instances the main devs maintain be overly protective of China and Russia if it weren’t?), but that doesn’t make Lemmy “tankie,” it’s a software project that can be used by fascists, tankies, commies, anarchists, statists, etc, because it’s just a software program.
Likewise, a surveillance system can be used by a fascist government, private company to protect company secrets, government agency like the Pentagon for internal use, or even private individuals to ID who is at the door. It’s only fascist of it’s used to further fascist goals, like identifying minorities or protestors. But then, it’s still not the software that’s fascist, but the whole system, meaning how people use it and the policies in place.
The chance of a given piece of software being “fascist” is incredibly low, since it would need to act in a fascist way and only a fascist way, or only be useful for fascist ends. Like the fascist LLM example I gave, or a training simulator that is hard-coded to only present fascist ideology.
Like the fascist LLM example I gave, or a training simulator that is hard-coded to only present fascist ideology.
Right. That’s what we’re talking about.
But I think the bar is a little lower. I think it’s enough to be primarily useful for (eg) fascist goals. If it happens to have minor non-fascist uses, I don’t think that materially changes anything.
I don’t think that Lemmy is primarily useful for furthering tankie goals.
I think that privacy invading surveillance systems are primarily useful for furthering authoritarian goals, by intention or not. There are some nice alternative uses, but I think that the use case of primary importance is in service to authoritarianism, which makes it authoritarian software.
The intention can be fascist, sure, but that doesn’t mean the solution is fascist.
For example, I think it’s pretty clear that Lemmy was designed by tankies to create a safe space for tankies (why would the instances the main devs maintain be overly protective of China and Russia if it weren’t?), but that doesn’t make Lemmy “tankie,” it’s a software project that can be used by fascists, tankies, commies, anarchists, statists, etc, because it’s just a software program.
Likewise, a surveillance system can be used by a fascist government, private company to protect company secrets, government agency like the Pentagon for internal use, or even private individuals to ID who is at the door. It’s only fascist of it’s used to further fascist goals, like identifying minorities or protestors. But then, it’s still not the software that’s fascist, but the whole system, meaning how people use it and the policies in place.
The chance of a given piece of software being “fascist” is incredibly low, since it would need to act in a fascist way and only a fascist way, or only be useful for fascist ends. Like the fascist LLM example I gave, or a training simulator that is hard-coded to only present fascist ideology.
Right. That’s what we’re talking about.
But I think the bar is a little lower. I think it’s enough to be primarily useful for (eg) fascist goals. If it happens to have minor non-fascist uses, I don’t think that materially changes anything.
I don’t think that Lemmy is primarily useful for furthering tankie goals.
I think that privacy invading surveillance systems are primarily useful for furthering authoritarian goals, by intention or not. There are some nice alternative uses, but I think that the use case of primary importance is in service to authoritarianism, which makes it authoritarian software.