From my account the birdsite. Reposted here in one toot, and edited slightly for clarity and format.

[Here](https://t.co/LP3q4bjYvO) is a crappy Guardian article from 2021 on extremism and open source software. I'm debunking it here.

Problem 1: Weasel words about proprietary vs. open-source software. This paragraph is sandwiched between one on alt-right money and one on the Unabomber:

> Like Bachelier, Smith eschews so-called proprietary software – like MacOS or Microsoft Word – and communications tools like Facebook or Twitter, built and controlled by Silicon Valley firms. Instead, Smith is an advocate for so-called “open source software” – the kind that makes it possible to use, copy, redistribute and modify software legally. And recently, he has been promoting communications platforms that might help extremists to operate beyond the reach of censorship – and even the law.

There is some talk later about FOSS, but it is mostly about the culture and politics of the movement. I'm going to move onto the other basic factual errors in this article, as I am not well-read on this one issue myself.

Problem 2:

> Smith has lately been pushing users in the direction of decentralized, resilient social media platforms in the so-called “fediverse”, a network of independent social media sites that communicate with one another, and allow people to interact across different sites. This could allow far-right activists to operate in ways that make them very difficult to shut down.

A lot of far-right people who get involved with this seem to think that by simply implementing ActivityPub on their site, they are decentralizing it. This isn't true: the original site can still be taken down just as easily.
Far-right people are dumb, but unfortunately, so is the author of this article.

Problem 3:

> The technical details are perhaps less important than the practical effect: no one has authority over these platforms: no one owns them. While governments and users can place pressure on the big social media companies to ban problematic users or communities, for better or worse, no one can stop anyone creating their own servers or peer-to-peer networks.
> These technologies, then, are effectively uncensorable. According to a report by Emmi Bevensee, the co-founder of research consultancy Rebellious Data and the social media monitoring tool SMAT, extremists have been advocating, and even developing them, for years.

More misunderstandings here. Just as with sites on the Internet, no one person owns Fediverse, but any one instance is owned by someone. If governments want to go after someone for something illegal, they can go after that instance's owner.

Problem 4:

> This opens the way for extremists to propagandize and organize on platforms that are beyond the reach of legal authorities and tech giants alike. After the far right-friendly social media site Gab encountered hosting problems and app store bans, it rebuilt itself on Mastodon’s software, despite determined opposition from the platform’s creators and users.
> Beyond Gab’s ambiguous place in the fediverse...

The author wrote this in March 2021.
Gab defederated from the Fediverse in early 2020, after the majority of the Fediverse, servers and users alike, blocked them.
How on earth did the author miss this? Anyone on the Fediverse knows this, and there was some press as well. Did the author simply not talk to anyone on the Fediverse *and* forget to even search Google?

In conclusion, this is a sloppy article with severe factual errors that could have been avoided if the author had done enough research.
I'm honestly surprised it hasn't been retracted at this point.