I love Louis and I’ve been following his videos for a long time. What he does is supremely important to our messed up society.

But here’s the thing: for the past few months, I’ve had the distinct feeling than each of Louis’ videos is slightly more unhinged than the previous one.

I mean I’m fully aware Louis’ videos are not mainstream, and until recently, I’ve always felt there was a clear method to the randomness. But lately, it¨s been more randomness than method for me, and it’s reached a point where I feel it’s doing a disservice to the causes of right to repair and sovereign ownership.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

I really hate to come out saying this, but I really think there’s something going on with Louis, and beyond the causes he fights for on our behalf - and goodness knows I’m eternally grateful for what he’s achieved - I’m honestly a bit worried for him.

  • @TootSweetEnglish
    1•2 months ago

    I really haven’t followed Rossmann at all, to speak of. I remember watching maybe one of his videos about the tractor right-to-repair court case in the U.S. a while back and thought “I should really watch this guy more.” I think I’ve seen maybe one other video about repairing Apple devices since then.

    But very shortly thereafter, Grayjay came on my radar. (Grayjay is a Youtube/other-streaming-service client app for Android made by a company called “Futo” that Rossmann got involved with/employed by pretty recently.) And that got me looking into Futo.

    Futo says all kinds of good things about user sovereignty and stuff out of one side of its mouth. It really bills itself as champions of consumer rights in tech or whatever. But out of the other side of its mouth, Futo has really kindof gone out of its way to sabotage all things Open Source. They’ve released a lot of app(lication)s under licenses that don’t meet the Open Source definition while calling them “Open Source”. They’ve talked a ton of smack about Open Source. And when they got blowback and finally decided to walk back and apologize for being assholes about Open Source, their apology was a non-apology in which they still derided Open Source.

    And at this point I’m convinced their only connection to “Open Source” and to user sovereinty over their devices/software is a cosmetic PR patina that they’re leveraging to dupe people into giving their fully-for-profit enterprise more money.

    And Rossmann having anything remotely to do with that has really soured me on him specifically.