Yeah, it is on YouTube or LinkedIn and has cookies

So as a bit of a followup to my earlier post “What we in the open world are messing up in trying to compete with big tech ”: please (mostly) stop harassing people doing the right thing from the wrong platforms.

We often see journalists, politicians, writers, NGOs and even software developers writing good things on independence from (US) big tech proprietary platforms. But also quite often, their work is hosted or syndicated on the very platforms they decry. Frequently their sites have cookies and trackers too!

And this grates. A lot.

And then there are always people who will pound on that. “Yeah but you posted this on LinkedIn/YouTube”, or “but your OWN site has cookies and trackers”.

But know that this is effectively purity testing. “I’m not going to listen to your words until you’ve solved the problem you are talking about”. It is a way to refuse to engage with the story. It is lazy.

Now, I know places that have finally managed to rid themselves of proprietary platforms, but it did take them a few years. But I’m happy that in the meantime I already listened to what they had to say, and attended their events.

The world is inundated by tracking and cookies and AI and proprietary platforms. Escaping that is exceptionally hard work. As an example, the Dutch Privacy Authority recently themselves found out their own services included trackers. Twice. And not because they don’t care. It is a real struggle.

Folks writing the good words and saying the right things are often not in a position to get their employers to change to more karmic platforms. And although this sucks, that does not mean their work should be disregarded. We should not shut them down with “yeah but your organization also participates in this mess”. It is extremely demotivating for an author when this happens, especially when they are actively trying to make things better.

And a related pet peeve, before getting angry about a “paywall”, ponder that apparently it is never good - we don’t want people to fund themselves with advertising, but also don’t you dare make me pay for your work!

Do judge the work also on its merits. The author, writing about dependency on privacy-invading big tech, is most certainly already aware their works are being distributed using that same nasty big tech. Lambasting them for it is not going to change that one bit. But it will hurt. If you want to complain, complain to the organization, not to the individual doing the work.

Now, at the beginning of this article I said the complaining should “mostly” stop. The exception are people that really ARE in a position to do better. If you start your new open source / open tech thing, start it right. There’s no need to launch your site full of trackers. You can find a decent place to host your mailing list. There are fine alternatives to Google Forms. You don’t need to put stuff on a VM from Azure, there are better places available that are cheaper too.

(Also, there is no excuse ever to be on X)

But in general, before you post that message “yeah but your video is on YouTube”, ponder that they already know this. And that you are making someone who also can’t change things feel bad needlessly. There probably are better ways to further the cause!

Thanks.