A former Facebook engineer masterminded a banned web browser for a far right social network which has become a safe haven for users who were banished from his employer’s platform.
Fosco Marotto, who worked at Facebook for seven years, built the browser to help users of Gab to scrawl right-wing virtual graffiti on any webpage, bypassing the moderated comments section. The browser also allowed people to “block big tech ads”, according to its website.
Mr Marotto left Facebook in October and announced last week that he would take over as Gab’s chief technology officer. Facebook did not comment on why he left or whether his work with Gab violated its policies.
Mr Marotto said he worked on the browser in his spare time. The browser, named Dissenter, was built to circumvent the banning of Gab’s software by Google and Mozilla.
That Gab had been banned. Not picked up, not indexed and all that, yes. But actually banned?
Anybody noticed that all competitors to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are either Neo Nazi orc pits or nefarious Chinese spyware?
Ban This Sick Filth Now.
…and it allows Gab uses to deface websites when viewed with Gab, and prevent yourself viewing certain websites when using Gab. So, painting over your own spectacles. Why care?
Does it have to be right wing graffiti ? Is there a clever algorithm that detects centrist or even soft left writing and disables it ?
“Banned” as in “not allowed on any app store”, so as to keep people from wandering off the goodthink reservation.
The Left: ” You got banned from Twitter and Facebook huh? Sucks to be a Nazi huh? It’s the free market man, it’s only censorship if the Government does it; if you don’t like it go and build your own social media man!”
Rightie: Builds own social media.
The Left: ” Nazis shouldn’t be allowed to build their own social media! Why won’t the Government stop them man?”
The far right these days begins at the place I can remember being called classical liberal.
So what point is the telegraph article trying to make. Has this man done something illegal?
The original version of Dissenter was a plug-in for Firefox and Chrome, but Mozilla and Google determine what plug-ins are allowed into their browsers and they blocked it. Private companies, up to them what policy to have, certainly wouldn’t want government intervention on what the policy is (might not be a bad idea to have a law to require them to clearly state what the policy is and to ensure that it is enforced as stated, and to put some limits on how much notice they have to give on changing it).
However, Firefox and Chrome are open-source, so you can take a copy of the code, change the branding and add whatever you like. Brave did this to Chrome (technically to “Chromium”) and then Dissenter have taken Brave, rebranded it and incorporated their plugin – this means that they don’t have to run a plugin store, but can just put the plugin directly into the browser and then point users at the regular Chrome store for any other plugins (e.g. adblockers) that they might want, which is much more convenient for the users than using Brave and configuring it to use two stores (one from Gab for Dissenter and the Chrome store for everything else – this is fine once it’s set up, but it’s a fiddly technical process to add multiple stores).
he browser also allowed people to “block big tech ads”
Faints
Think Gab got their shot in first on this piece of ‘journalism’: https://news.gab.com/2020/11/22/exposing-the-telegraphs-journalism/
Why can’t government provide platforms? As a public utility.
K, there is that problem that they’d spy on everyone. And keep records on everyone forever. We’d see a giant new building in Lehi, UT, with no explanation of what it was for.
Some argue that you can’t force private companies to do what you want. Though I would argue that these private companies are a public accommodation, hence they can’t deny service because they disagree with what’s said.
Imagine the phone company breaking into your conversation, and telling the other party what you said hasn’t been verified.
I’m sure this isn’t a surprise to you, but if you live in a wealthy enough country the Government is almost certainly listening to your phone calls through electronic means of surveillance and has been for decades.
ECHELON (Wiki Link)
What they are trying to do is put internet surveillance into the same framework as they do for telephones and as Edward Snowdon illustrated with his leaks, they’ve by and large succeeded. Where they haven’t is with non-cooperative companies who implement decent end-to-end encryption. Can’t see that position holding out for much longer, even if the general public aren’t told about it.
Remember EncroChat which was brought down by “someone on the inside?”. Call me cynical but that sort of thing sounds more like a honey trap and a useful justification for increased surveillance and back-doors than anything else.
I have found some weebbsites won’t load in some browwserss – neveerr occured it waas built in ban – Parler being one site
FYI
Escape YouTube Censorship
“Please share
– “An executive from odysee.com got in touch to say there is an alternative to the petty censors at Google.
With the Anna Brees situation I figured I´d check-in. All anyone needs to do is sign up at odysee.com and we can copy an entire YouTube channel over, on an ongoing basis. It takes just a minute.
What´s going on is absolutely awful and we´re extremely committed to keeping this content safe and available.
Anything you can do to spread the word would be greatly appreciated.”
https://odysee.com/
Also heard of:
Ustream , Probe , Lmao