I would argue that such a product would be by its nature political, because it’s only practical use case was the furtherance of a political goal.

Again, I disagree. Surveillance has a lot of use cases outside of government, and a huge use case is keeping the government in check. Palantir could have sold its services to non-profits like the ACLU as a check on local, state, and law enforcement agencies. They could have sold it to HOAs and neighborhood watch associations as an early warning system for repeat offenders.

The government skirting the 4th amendment (and a few others) doesn’t automatically make its sub-contractor’s products “authoritarian,” it makes its use of those products authoritarian.

So a system that does so (like the ones sold to the govt) is a political software product.

I disagree with that conclusion. The use by the government is authoritarian, but that doesn’t make the product authoritarian.

To me where it gets tricky is when private entities grow to government-sized proportions, and begin to use these same tools for similar purposes

A private entity can do authoritarian things, like spying on its employees or customers. Authoritarianism isn’t strictly tied to governments, but anything that acts like a government. Here’s the first definition I found:

Characterized by or favoring absolute obedience to authority, as against individual freedom.

Software can’t really favor obedience to authority, it can’t really deny you your freedoms, it’s just software. Likewise for a camera system. The only way those things can be authoritarian is if paired with some form of enforcement arm, like corporate security or law enforcement. So that combined system is authoritarian, the cameras or software on their own cannot be authoritarian.

That’s my point.

I’m trying to avoid using the term fascist, because it means something specific but nobody can really agree what that thing is. For the purposes of this discussion, I’d prefer to say “authoritarian”

It’s more that people probably know what it means, but choose to misuse it to smear their political enemies, and then other people who don’t know what it means repeat it.

Here’s a clear definition in case you or anyone else that reads this isn’t clear on it (or pick your favorite dictionary, it’ll be similar):

A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Is a network of cameras with facial recognition fascist according to that definition? No. Is it useful to people pushing for such a government? Yes. Is it useful to other authoritarian systems of government? Yes. Is it useful to non-authoritarian systems of government and non-government entities, including private citizens? Also yes.

I wouldn’t call traffic cameras invasive because they’re only at (some) intersections.

What if they’re at every intersection, stop signs included?

If the only thing that turns something into an authoritarian system is scale, then it’s not the system that’s authoritarian, but the way they’re used that is authoritarian.

I oppose red light cameras not because they’re authoritarian in and of themselves, but because they can be used by authoritarians to screw people. I oppose Ring doorbells not because they’re authoritarian, but because the corporation has control and can hand that data over to authoritarians without consent from the owner (or be compelled by authoritarians).

“Authoritarian” is an adjective that describes people, governments, or policies, not inanimate objects or software systems.

A private citizen recording people in public and the government doing so are fundamentally different

Exactly! The capability to record the public isn’t authoritarian, the government policy of recording the public is authoritarian.

This may sound like a pedantic point, but I think it’s an important one. If cameras are authoritarian, then ban cameras and the problem goes away right? The government will just use radar, track financial transactions, or something else entirely, and you have the same problem.

The real problem isn’t cameras or facial recognition, but that the government tracks people. To solve that problem, we shouldn’t ban the various ways the government can track people, we should ban the government from tracking people. Don’t b regulate the tools, regulate the people using the tools.

I think that privacy invading surveillance systems are primarily useful for furthering authoritarian goals, by intention or not.

And I disagree. I think this all started when we allowed things like traffic light cameras, speed cameras, and toll cameras to automatically bill based on license plate. I don’t think most would consider those to be “primarily useful for furthering authoritarian goals,” they’re merely there for routine law enforcement with specific goals.

Flock cameras are basically that same exact system, but instead of only being used when something tangible is triggered (red light, radar, or toll booth motion sensor), they passively collect information. Flock is a private company that sells its surveillance services to cities (and private orgs) to assist with tracking down license plates or alerting when there’s a gunshot detection. This is allegedly legal because you don’t have any expectation of privacy when you’re in public (hence why Ring doorbells are legal), and private companies don’t have to follow the same rules as law enforcement. I personally don’t think Flock’s founders are fascist, they seem to genuinely want to help reduce crime. I worked for a similar company that mostly did perimeter security (i.e. generally only operated on private property), and the founder was absolutely not fascist, but they did want to help reduce crime.

I personally don’t consider either of those systems fascist by nature, but they can be used to achieve fascist goals. Tracking burglars across neighborhoods doesn’t sound especially fascist to me, but tracking protestors certainly does. These are very dangerous technologies that can easily be used for fascist purposes, so I think we shouldn’t allow them to be used at all, not because they are fascist, but because they can easily be used for fascist ends just by changing conventions around its use.

I don’t think we need to label a system as authoritarian or fascist to oppose them, we just need to point out how easily they can be misused.

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.

I think those are important hairs to split.

Let’s say there’s a camera system built due to a direct public vote and rolled out by a political party all agree defends democracy. The stated goal is catching red light violations and speeders, and it’s a popular system. As part of the functionality it reads license plates, and that is verified by a human every time, and no footage is stored if there’s no violation.

Is that system fascist? Most would say no, and it exists in many states, like California and Washington.

Then the next election, a fascist is elected, and one of the first moves is to repurpose that system to track undesirables, and now it stores a ton of footage.

Is that system now fascist? It’s the same exact system as in the previous example, it’s just being used for fascist ends, such as tracking vehicles with certain plates (e.g. Illegal immigrants, minorities, etc) Nothing has changed in the capabilities or programming of the system, the only change was when to capture footage, what people use it for, and how long to store it.

Yes, it’s theoretically possible to design a fascist system, such as an LLM that only gives fascist answers, but that’s an incredibly narrow definition.

I haven’t used Immich, so no. I might get around to it sometime in the next couple months.

Yeah, ideally something like Immich is just some metadata pointing at existing files. An album should be some combination of synced directories (i.e. new files added outside Immich should be detected and added, if selected) and individual files.

That doesn’t sound that complex. Maybe I’ll look into Immich and see about adding that. I don’t currently use it, but I don’t have an image solution, so I’ll give it a shot.

Their argument was that software can, in itself, be fascist, and that’s what we went around and around on. The example given was facial recognition software that can determine race (and later, country of origin).

Essentially, I said exactly what you’re saying, while they argued the opposite. I wish I quoted them, but I did only directly address their claims, if you’ll take my word for it.

I don’t want the government to have and use facial recognition software (their example) and extensive security camera systems (my example, such as Flock), not because those solutions are fascist in and of themselves, but that they can be used by fascists to accomplish their goals. Even if the current regime uses them purely for good (i.e. completely opt in facial recognition, cameras inaccessible to police until there’s a warrant with no passive collection) the next regime may not.

If anyone is refusing to engage, it’s you. You provided no argument for your position, whereas I’ve explained as best I can in detail, with examples of similar things. Me not agreeing with you isn’t “refusing to engage,” it’s a good faith debate.

If there’s some point you’ve made that I’ve failed to address, I apologize, I tried to be thorough to not waste any time going back and forth.

Again, it’s not the software itself that’s fascist, it’s what it’s being used for that’s fascist. Facial recognition for determining citizenship could absolutely be used for non-fascist purposes, like simplifying border crossings to not require documentation (i.e. completely opt-in). Likewise, surveillance systems can also not be used until there’s an actual warrant (i.e. no passive recording), which can help in catching dangerous criminals.

The technology itself isn’t fascist, it’s how it’s applied that’s fascist. The mass data collection is fascist, the tools used to collect that data isn’t fascist in the same way that guns and tanks aren’t fascist, but they can certainly be used by fascists.

The fault lies with the makers and users of the softeware. Software doesn’t have political opinions, it’s software.

It’s like saying Panzer tanks were fascist because they were built by the Nazis. Tanks cannot be fascist, they’re tanks. So despite being made and used by fascists, they’re not fascist, they’re tanks.

That’s the same exact thing here. Facial recognition software can be used by fascists, but that doesn’t make the software itself fascist.

I haven’t really needed to, I just show them. I open up Jellyfin and explain that I put all the movies I own there so I don’t need to find the discs or pay for a service like Netflix. Or I’ll show them my OCIS setup with LibreOffice online and explain that I don’t need Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365. If they ask where it runs, I point to the server on my desk.

Everyone has their own reasons for doing it, and I think they can draw their own conclusions just by seeing it in action.

No, that’s not fascist. Facial recognition software can be used for a variety of reasons, like unlocking a phone or laptop, gaining access to secure areas, or home automation stuff.

It’s only fascist if used by a government to oppress minorities. The software itself cannot be fascist, but it can be used by fascists.

Software can’t be fascist, it’s just software. The makers or users can be fascist though. If that statement was true, Lemmy would be tankie.

I think there could be more to it. Louis Rossmann had personal issues with the lead dev there a year or two ago due to how they interact in their forum, and I think he had some great reasons to be concerned. Since then the lead dev has stepped away as project lead, but I doubt the bad blood is completely gone.

I think it’s a bit suspicious that they don’t mention what feature(s) FUTO wanted. Given their interaction with other projects, I’m guessing they wanted a “supporter” badge for people who have bought the software (no change in functionality other than the badge). I’m guessing also that due to their interaction with Rossmann, they’re uninterested in clarifying, esp. if it would put FUTO in a better light if they did.

Then again, maybe FUTO is a bunch of scumbags. It just seems the slant against them is so much stronger than the actual negative impact from a handful of repos having source-available licenses instead of FOSS licenses.

My read is that FUTO as a software movement is totally fine, it does what it claims on the tin. The people behind FUTO are a different story, and the main person bankrolling it seems to have friends with odd views (I think they’re blown out of proportion, but they’re still concerning).

You’ll never find a perfect movement. Here’s what FUTO seems to prioritize:

• local first alternatives to big tech
• source availability, but in a way big tech can’t use but home users can
• profitability for devs without coercion or feature gates

That sounds pretty good to me! I’d prefer it to be FOSS, but allowing me to distribute modifications for non-commercial use is probably good enough for most things.

I probably disagree with their founder politically, and I’d run FUTO differently, but I think their software is good and I could maintain it myself if needed, and at the end of the day, that’s what matters to me.

FUTO doesn’t seem interested in getting involved in politics, they’re merely musing philosophically, and their products aren’t profitable, so it doesn’t really matter to me what their political positions are.

When building an application, consider all options. Serverless is great for background tasks that can be broken up into smaller pieces that you would otherwise need to scale up for main instances to handle, or scale up/down additional instances. It’s great for running background reports that you do t want to build a bunch of routes for.

I would never choose serverless for the whole app architecture, but I might choose one host over another of the distinguishing feature was serverless. It’s really nice to have the option.

You can accept them on internal networks, just have a file size limit and don’t extract them locally, but send to some cloud service for handling. You could even have it work with email attachments if you want.

Basically:

1. Put file somewhere
2. Spin up runner
3. Upload and execute code
4. Spin down runner either upon success or after a time limit
5. Send result to the student (if it to took too long, that’s a fail too)

Are you an IT contractor or something?

AWS is the modern IBM.

That’s basically why we use it at work. I hate it, but that’s how things are.