What in the UX war crime is this for me to read an article. It’s like the polar opposite of for-profit media trying so hard that it’s just looped around on itself
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025
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Oh you even got the iWarning lol
Yes, your user agent detector is certainly working
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So glad that one of the largest youtubers is promoting Linux, FOSS and privacy :D
The fact that PewDiePie might have a right-leaning following, that he acquired by himself leaning right, which he now exposes to Freedom, using Libre Software, might actually be a good thing. Since exposing yourself to the philosophy of Free Software eventually leads to human rights and thus to the left, in a way. If PewDiePie course-correcting to the left like this, taking his enormous subscriber-base with him, IMO it is very good.
There's plenty of neo-nazis in the Free Software movement. It's "Free Software", not "Free People"
sometimes it feels that there are more cryptofascists in the movement than other ideologies. luke smith is a prime example.
i feel like you missed the time between 1990 and 2005 when american libertarians caused a schism in the free software movement by popularising open source.
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"right leaning" is one hell of a way to describe a fucking outright neo nazi...
I see a few people keep saying that, but how so? What has he done that's neo Nazis like? Not that I follow the guy or what he does so I may be missing things but the only controversy I can remember that could be considered Nazis like was when he paid some fiver people to make a video saying death to all Jews.
Now I get how that could be considered Nazi like but he said it was a joke and to show that people will do anything for money, and I believe him and thought the joke was funny. So I guess I'm a neo nazi too if that's it. Obviously it's a "bad" joke but but it was shocking in a funny way, atleast to me at the time. Given you're from hexbear I figured you'd find it funny too
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There is evidence already in that video that suggests that he is starting to lean more left. Like he pointed out the ecological issues with AI. Even though he did say "I don't like to be that guy" before saying that.
It seems like he is already doing some doubts and thinking that are signs of moving the left direction.
I'm trying to be the optimist here. If we want not just PewDiePie, but his subscribe-base to change sides, we need him to be extra careful and extra soft with this sort of change. He seem to know how to form good streams of thoughts and convincing narratives. This would take some serious carefulness on his part. And it seems like he is already taking small steps to do that.
I'm sorry no. He is not leaning more left he's just an opportunistic crypto fascist.
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Idk. There's already plenty of right wingers (libertarians) in FLOSS spaces. I'd hate to see any more.
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I think Microsoft's Windows 11 has done that far more effectively than any influencer
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I see that this is your own article, so I don't mean to disrespect your effort or intentions, but to hell with PewDiePie
No.
Anyone with a platform can do that.
(And from the little bits I've seen, mostly over memes & various news bits, the quality is questionable. Just don't follow the whims of influencers, it's not the correct way forward imho, it just inevitability leads to or spreads enshitification.)
I disagree, but I don't know why. Intuitively it doesn't feel like this is a bad thing. The people that "get it" will be introduced to something that they like and will go down the good path. The people that don't get it, won't. Just like they weren't before. Net profit: we turned some people towards the light. 🤷♂️ I see it as a win.
We don't have to use the same method on all people either. This might work for some, but not all, surely.
I don't really understand the enshittification spreading part of your argument. Curious to know more about what you meant by that.
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Wait until he discovers the Fediverse....
I have asked a few times why PDP deserves all the hate. The best answer I got is "look it up yourself". I did, and the only things I found were many years old, and in each instance (of which there aren't that many) he apologized publicly and acknowledged that things got out of hand. To me, his apologies seem sincere and genuine - none of that "I'm sorry I got caught" bullshit that actual scumbags are known for.
I don't watch PewDiePie but he's alright best I can tell. If I've missed something, please let me know what that is, and be specific because I genuinely can't find it.
I used to watch him years ago. He has a very young and impressionable audience which he constantly feeds memes with right-wing rethoric.
To list a few of the stuff I remember:
- He said the N word hard R;
- He paid people on Fiverr to show a sign saying "Death to all Jews" or something like that, where he laughed at the reveal. He said it was to prove a point that you could do harmful shit with that type of online service, but all it ended up doing was getting the guys banned from the platform and served to signal to Nazis that he would host such content;
- He allowed right-wingers to fester in his community, 4chan specially really liked the guy;
- He hosted both Ben Shapiro and Elon Musk in his channel for a "meme review";
- He has stated multiple times that his favorite author is Mishima, a Japanese fascist, not only in the past, but also in the last year at least;
- He used to stream on some crypto bullshit site, which I don't remember the name;
- His whole campaign against the Indian conglomerate T-Series lead not only to racist comments but also to a very racist music video he did;
- The Christchurch shooter mentioned him in a video. And while being mentioned by a shooter doesn't necessarily mean he's an issue, in this case it's extremely relevant since it's pretty clear that is a byproduct of his politics and the community he has.
There's probably much more that I either don't remember or don't know about, but this is more than enough to understand where he stands politically and the harm he causes.
I also recommend the video: The PewDiePipeline.
- He used to follow (probably still does) open white supremacists and Nazis of the Richard Spencer/Lauren Southern type and got called out for it and privated his follows on twitter. That was many years ago but given he's never done a u-turn and say started attacking gamergate and other reactionary gamer politics or loudly supporting broad coalition progressive politics I think we can assume he still holds those politics and more importantly he dog whistles and is part of a pipeline of radicalizing young men, specifically gamers into hate.
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If you want specific, I found this: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1354856520938602
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A lot of the times when people hear of Richard Stallman, or other people, who correctly state that all proprietary software is absolutely inexcusable, they feel pressured. Which makes them recoil and distance themselves from those types of ideas. If you need to suddenly re-learn the entire way you are using the computer, and you may have certain habits, or certain things you rely on, or enjoy very much, either games, or software, or in case of PewDiePie, the platform he is on. You will automatically feel like whatever these Stallmans are asking from you is so absurdly hard for you to do, that you don't even consider it. More than that, to protect yourself from that hard work, you come up with a bunch of reasons, to not even engage in that idea. Which creates an opposition. And it is not something that we want.
It's not just that, the overbearing FOSS mentality, from Stallmans corner of that world, is that you need to take a damn political position on software to be able to interact with other people that use it.
Which in itself is not actually true, but if you approach it like this with non-technical types then they will rightly and instinctively balk at both the software and you.
Bringing people to FOSS should be the same as bringing them to any other software, and if the ideology behind it is so self-evidently true then - by its own standard - it won't need significant petitioning to convince them they should use more of it for ethical reasons as well as to meet their needs. This is software, not Amway. They're trying to write a word document, not to join a cult.
It’s not just that, the overbearing FOSS mentality, from Stallmans corner of that world, is that you need to take a damn political position on software to be able to interact with other people that use it.
FOSS is literally a political and ideological set of positions. The entire thing that makes Free Software and Open Source differentiated from just "normal" software development and distribution are a set of political and organisational positions, which are in limited fashion codified and expressed in software licenses, and also through e.g. structure of organisations around projects and why they're structured that way.
Without that, you just get companies making money from pawning off a portion of their development and infrastructure costs to volunteers and other organisations (non-profits, other companies, governments).
Bringing people to FOSS should be the same as bringing them to any other software,
FOSS isn't about fandom of a particular piece of software.
and if the ideology behind it is so self-evidently true then - by its own standard - it won’t need significant petitioning to convince them they should use more of it for ethical reasons as well as to meet their needs. This is software, not Amway. They’re trying to write a word document, not to join a cult.
This is absurdly politcally and socially naive. Also can we please ban stemlords from ascribing every aspect of politics and political advocacy to always being a cult.
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The challenge is that we're not just selling software, we're selling an idea - the idea that users deserve control over their computing. We're not competing on the proprietary software marketplace, we're offering an alternative to it.
We are already seeing the proprietary software world enshittify. More and more "non-tech" people are looking for a way out. The challenge is to demonstrate that these problems are inherent to the world of proprietary software and not just because "Google is evil."
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Great blog post! The mastodon outrage was a highlight as I see it again and again. Dunking on bridgy-fed, opt-out telemetry and donation pop-ups.
As I have tried to put myself in the shoes of a typical person I can see how they can view FOSS as crazy people in tinfoil hats creating templeOS.
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