[FOSDEM] Disenfranchised by Google

[J. R. Haigh]

Hi Daniel,

At 2021-01-10Sun23:44:45+01, Daniel Pocock sent:
> […]
> I notice that the messages we both sent to the FOSDEM mailing list about Google were held in moderation

Yes, I noticed that too – it was nice to see that when the moderation queue was eventually checked, I was not the only one who had criticised Google and questioned FOSDEM's acceptance of their sponsorship. As I was unaware of your email until last night, it shows that we both raised concern of Google independently, as we've not corresponded with each other since quite a few years prior to this.

> for 2 weeks and only released tonight, 10 January, on a Sunday night.

Don't read too much into the timing; people get busier over Christmas and New Year and the moderation check was prompted by me emailing a FOSDEM staff member after a week and a half from having sent my own email.

> It is likely that date-sorting will hide them from the majority of people.

Thankfully, though, replies bring them back into the picture for those who missed the delayed messages.

> It is an odd coincidence, both of our messages delayed/censored, both of our messages mention a sponsor, Google.

It did cross my mind as to whether FOSDEM might be using Google services somewhere in the pipeline that subjected our alternative/critical messages to the biased algorithms that seem to discriminate against alternative messages. I'm curious to know.
	Of course, Google's algorithms may well be not involved at all. Google's are not the only algorithms that are causing filter bubbles and discrimination problems – I could list several other giants subtly exerting their power with their black-box algorithms – but Google is having a more direct impact on my life than probably all of its competitors combined. Perhaps because of their semifriendly relationship with the Free Software ecosystem that I've been involved in since 2008, I've therefore been more involved with Google's services in the past 13 years.
	My old Gmail address is the last Google service that I still sort of depend on transitionally. However, I can't get away from the high prevalence of Gmail accounts in use by other people, and so I'm still subject to Google's black-box discrimination in emails that I send to other people.

> My own message is now visible[3] in the archive, please check if it is hidden by algorithms in your inbox.

I disabled all spam filtering possible in Runbox settings shortly after switching a few years ago, and I don't have any spam filtering enabled in Claws Mail either. I use subaddressing as an alternative to heuristics. Your message did of course reach me.

> The email I sent is about the safety of women, this is particularly important as multiple women were brave enough to speak up about Google

I didn't know about those issues but it's great that they were brave enough to raise them.

> and FSFE in December 2020.

I don't know what's gone wrong here, but there are many people who work hard for the FSFE who I like very much. I don't want to defend any abuse of women, but I don't think it's right that everyone involved with the FSFE be tarred with the same brush.

(You seemed to focus on my signature, so I'm coming back to it out-of-order down here now, especially seeing as it follows on here…)

At 2021-01-10Sun23:44:45+01, Daniel Pocock sent:
> On [30/12/2020 23:50], J. R. Haigh wrote:
> > With best intentions and regards,
> > James R. Haigh.
> > -- 
> > Wealth doesn't bring happiness, but poverty brings sadness.
> > https://wiki.FSFE.org/Fellows/JRHaigh
> > Sent from Debian with Claws Mail, using email subaddressing as an alternative to error-prone heuristical spam filtering.
> 
> We are not really Fellows any more, FSFE demoted all of us and removed[1] the Fellowship from their constitution.

I know, but the redirect remains and I don't care to lengthen my signature by changing it to https://wiki.FSFE.org/Supporters/JRHaigh , especially seeing as I too liked the FSFE Fellowship.

> This was done to discredit all of us, but especially me, as Fellows had elected me as your representative.

I vaguely remember you telling me years ago. I'm not sure where we go from here, though. We can't change the past. Google is causing us problems right now though, so I think that it's better to focus on Google.

> You mention Debian.  Debian received two payments of $300,000, total $600,000.  One payment was from Handshake Foundation, they refuse to publicly disclose[2] the other payment came from Google.

And I notice that you mentioned in your other email that FSFE receives funding from Google too. I was not explicitly aware of either of those (or had forgotten maybe), but it also doesn't surprise me much as I am vaguely aware that Google has their fingers in a lot of pies in the Free Software community and elsewhere. It's absolutely nothing to Google's billions to splash around a few hundred thousand dollars here and there, yet it gives them a lot of influence over these relatively small organisations, projects, and individuals.
	I think that it's unfair to compare Google and FSFE or Debian as equals. If a nasty problem is to be exported between Google and another organisation, and that organisation is not another giant, then most likely Google is the one exporting the problem to the nongiant. It doesn't justify the problem for the smaller organisation but if you want to tackle it then you surely ought to focus on the giant. Also, I imagine that things like corporate espionage or successful covert smears are virtually impossible going from a tiny organisation to a giant, whereas the reverse seems very likely. So I'm inclined to examine the details of the allegations against the smaller organisation more thoroughly, as the giants have excellent capacity to convincingly master false details.
	Even Mozilla, which is pretty huge but accepts huge amounts of funding from Google and seems to follow Google's regime – I would say that Mozilla is still the much lesser evil as compared to Google.

> At the same time, on the same day, 20 September 2018, Debian also joined FSFE in seeking to viciously discredit the winner of the FSFE Fellowship election, myself.

Curious!! But again, I'm not sure what to do about it now. Meanwhile, Google is continuing to cause me daily problems.
	Most emails that I send (of which a majority are to Gmail addresses) don't get a reply and I don't get immediate feedback, if at all, of whether my message has gone to their spam/junk folders. This is especially a problem during the lockdowns as I'm having much less opportunity to ask people whether they received my emails. The silent exclusion dictated by these black-box algorithms is hard-felt, now.
	Most websites that I visit from search results, some of which I cannot avoid, work against my minimalist browsing patterns, as a direct or indirect result of Google's analytics, advertising, ReCAPTCHA v2 and especially v3, SEO, or Material guidelines for a particularly rigid vision of mobile browsing designed to immerse but which I find stressfully claustrophobic, as if up-close with obfuscated ‘micronavigation’, and especially claustrophobic when floating elements obscure a majority of the screen, which happens quite often now. Desktop mode tends to help me avoid the claustrophobic navigation where available, but even then, this doesn't eliminate floating elements or filters or most of the other issues. Many years ago I had an argument about accessibility with a local Web developer who said that she would override desktop mode if she could. The Big Four browsers allow accessibility to be almost entirely at the mercy of the Web developer, not the user in need of it. That's not software freedom.
	Both Google's influence on email and Google's influence on the Web are daily problems for me, and I suppose that the Android problems are too, seeing as I'm not in a position to fix daily irritations of my OCD, like disappearing scrollbars, or floating action buttons obscuring the text or whatever underneath them. Google has dictated these Material interface features into my life and they simply don't work for me. Not just Material design, the low-power and critical-power notifications waking the screen to tell my pocket so and stays on until either I notice or I lose my last 15% or 5% of battery charge to a warmed pocket, especially quickly if I last used the camera. Background applications that I'm using being killed. The list goes on, and I simply don't have the capacity to fix these problems myself. Even when I've been thoroughly focused on getting into Android development many years ago (2012), Google made me more new problems than the problems that I had managed to solve for myself.
	They are a powerhouse producing a torrent of changes that work in their own profit-driven interests, which are typically contrary to software freedom.

Best regards,
James.
-- 
Wealth doesn't bring happiness, but poverty brings sadness.
https://wiki.FSFE.org/Fellows/JRHaigh
Sent from Debian with Claws Mail, using email subaddressing as an alternative to error-prone heuristical spam filtering.