Tech companies are finding out everything is political
Framework, which makes and sells modular, repairable computers, is facing a small uprising on its official forum after announcing sponsorships of the Hyprland and Omarchy projects — a Linux window manager and a pseudo‑distro based on Arch, respectively.
Both projects are led by extremist figures, critics say: Vaxry and David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), who is also involved in the split in the Ruby programming‑language community. Here’s a summary of the controversies DHH has been involved in.
Nirav Patel, Framework’s founder, defended the sponsorships, saying the company “deliberately create a big tent, because we want open source software to win,” and that “we don’t partner based on individuals’ or organizations’ beliefs, values, or political stances outside of their alignment with us on increasing the adoption of open source software.”
Another startup under heavy fire is Bluesky. There the controversy began with co‑founder and CEO Jay Graber’s response to some users’ demand that Jesse Singal, a U.S. journalist accused of a history of transphobia, be banned.
Jay gave a few prickly replies when questioned, saying the unhappy users weren’t her customers because they weren’t paying, suggesting a “user strike”, and posting WAFFLES. Bluesky employees also joined the debate.
On the other internet dumpster fire, X, Singal is enjoying Bluesky’s implosion.
Both Framework and Bluesky appeal to audiences sensitive to subjective attributes that go beyond the product or service offered. Framework appeals to sustainability and the right to repair; Bluesky appeals to marginalized communities (including trans people) who saw it as a refuge from platforms that had proven openly hostile, especially X.
Bluesky’s case is particularly interesting because the “product” there is speech itself. The current crisis exposes the limits of the traditional approach to interaction platforms (social networks): even if Singal hasn’t violated the platform’s terms of service (I don’t know whether he has), he is perceived as a threat by some users. Banning him would calm the platform, but if he hasn’t actually broken the rules it would set a dangerous precedent and, in any case, would reinforce Bluesky’s reputation as a sectarian space — for many, a “lefty Twitter.”
It’s in this context that the fediverse/ActivityPub, an alternative decentralized protocol used by apps like Mastodon, reveals itself as a more “ready” solution for dealing with these kinds of dilemmas.
The decentralization already present in the fediverse lets each community make its own decisions, banning unwelcome personas or even entire communities (as many did with Meta’s Threads), without that affecting the whole ecosystem. And those dissatisfied can move between communities/servers fairly easily, which you can’t really say about Bluesky.
The AT protocol that powers Bluesky is still in its infancy when it comes to decentralization. PDSes (personal data servers) are harder to set up and still depend on permissions and part of Bluesky’s infrastructure. Put plainly, there’s nowhere to run.
Not to say the problem only affects startups: Apple, one of the world’s largest companies, yielded to pressure from the Trump administration in the United States and removed two apps from its App Store related to abuses by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): ICEBlock, which reported ICE agent locations, and Eyes Up, which aggregated evidence of ICE abuses for use in legal cases.
Beyond the political and moral implications, the removals weaken app distribution that relies solely on the App Store — after all, these apps did not violate Apple’s rules.