purism/techbros
Look, the reason why #Purism has taken the stance they have (about not taking a stance against bigotry on Librem One's fed instance) is because ultimately Purism is a corporation with executives and non-stakeholder workers. This makes them part of the capital class. The capital class in tech appeals to the largely white male demographic of tech workers and enthusiasts.
Why is tech primarily white and male? Tech ultimately requires education, experience, and opportunity—things not commonly afforded to the marginalized. I'm not here to question Purism's FOSS values but to show that ultimately their values are for capital and they will make decisions that best serve capital. Any capital class in tech understands how they must appeal to the white man. White dudes are always droning on about free speech (see: hate speech / bigotry / trolling), so pissing them off by taking a hard stance against this would hurt capital, which again would be against their self-interest.
Now you see why a FOSS advocate (and many others if you look) can be so myopic about the effects of bigoted speech.
PR strategy re: purism/techbros
@alice That'd explain why the stance was communicated so deceptively and vacuously - it's an approach to PR founded on the idea of /not/ saying anything that might draw a negative reaction from the people you are trying to get money from.
The stance is not "we support hate speech", the stance is "we don't want to alienate any bigot by taking action outside the legal minimum, because bigots are in our potential market". And the stance is not "we hide our support for hate speech", the stance is "we don't want to alienate any marginalized person who thinks bigotry needs to be fought and not ignored, because marginalized people are in our potential market".
It's the art of saying nothing, and as usual, saying nothing when pressed on an important moral issue says quite a lot ... but only to people who are paying attention and people who listen to them. So many capitalists, including them, gamble on that not being very many people.
PR strategy re: purism/techbros
@packbat @alice I thought it was so people could choose for themselves what is hateful and what isn't instead of having a corporation pick for them.
Even if hateful people take advantage of this kind of stance does not mean that hate is the ONLY reason to support an pro-speech stance, what if white people ban terms like "cracker" for being whitephobic and enforce pro Catholic ideas?
You wouldn't be hateful, so duct tape your mouth and prey.
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