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A comment on Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open letter initiative as spam.

Re:Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open lett... by learndeeply on Thursday April 28, 2022 @03:50AM (#31189823)
Why would facebook block an open source initiative, considering that they've contributed a ton of open source software (react, graphql, pytorch, etc)? The more simple explanation is that an automated detector misclassified the link because it shares patterns with spam links.
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Re:Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open lett... by Vinnl on Thursday April 28, 2022 @10:03AM (#31192580)
Another alternative explanation that wouldn't require Facebook's malice, assuming that this initiative does have its opponents, is that Facebook's some reporting tools were weaponised, i.e. lots of false reports caused the automated detector to misclassify it.

(I don't actually expect it to have such staunch opponents, though, so the misclassification is probably due to other reasons.)

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Re:Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open lett... by pmlnr on Thursday April 28, 2022 @07:40AM (#31191314)
open source software from bigco it's only a smoke and mirrors to make it look like they are nice.

https://publiccode.eu/ and the current legislation trends in the EU are not fun, because they are not able to drive the narrative.

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Re:Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open lett... by lolinder on Thursday April 28, 2022 @08:42AM (#31191772)
First, whether you like React or not, it's hard to argue that the most popular JavaScript framework is "just smoke and mirrors". It might be great PR, but there's also a lot of substance to it.

Second, even if publiccode.eu doesn't help Facebook in any way, that's not evidence that they have motive to intentionally block it. You'd have to demonstrate that they have some reason to want the initiative to fail, not just claim they don't care.

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Re:Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open lett... by cuteboy19 on Thursday April 28, 2022 @09:54AM (#31192464)
Does metabook create government related software? I can understand such behaviour from Microsoft, not sure what the motivation would be for FB
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Re:Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open lett... by emilz0r on Friday April 29, 2022 @07:42AM (#31203914)
Workplace from Meta is not targeted specifically for governments, but are used by government orgs I've worked at.
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Re:Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open lett... by e-clinton on Thursday April 28, 2022 @08:44AM (#31191793)
“open source software from bigco it's only a smoke and mirrors to make it look like they are nice.”

So the React ecosystem is smoke and mirrors? GraphQL?

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Re:Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open lett... by smoldesu on Thursday April 28, 2022 @10:13AM (#31192687)
I mean... yes. This is the case with Microsoft, Apple, Google and pretty much anyone else on the Fortune 500 that owns a software stack. I still find it hard to believe Facebook would go out of their way to intentionally flag random political articles for seemingly minimal gain.
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Re:Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open lett... by hobofan on Thursday April 28, 2022 @06:46AM (#31190959)
Could you please explain why you think this is being naive?

Same as GP, I don't see what interest Facebook would have in blocking this initiative. The impact the initiative would have would have very little impact on Facebook's business. Their moat is their userbase and no amount of good "public code" would change that.

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