Your comment convinced me to finally take a look at his profile and see what the fuss is about.

I didn’t see anything that’d make me scream fascism, either.

But there’s definitely stuff that’s off. Things that, in isolation, would be one thing, but when you analyze them all together, it wouldn’t be weird to say there’s a pattern. A picture starts to form, and it’s one that I’ve sadly seen many times before.

So I went back and grabbed a few tweets:

• Andreas’ take on… political leanings of contributors?
  • Spoiler: he thinks the left doesn’t contribute, apparently, and I have no idea how he measured lurkers.
• Andreas is, according to himself, something like a centrist?
  • What does he consider a “purity test” from either side?
• See this measurement of his political leanings. Rest assured, he shared it in jest.
  • Did you know the internet makes fun of these tests because it only takes a few progressive choices to throw you so far left, you’d think only through decidedly unwholesome picks it’d be possible to hit the right side?
• Andreas believes Twitter is full of positive energy.
  • I thought this was funny, because everyone I know—especially Twitter users—claim it’s become a far-right infested cesspit.
• Andreas’ neutral take and isolated opinion on pronouns in the office
  • The most liked reply: “[…] a red flag indicating that it is a woke workplace. […]” Many such followers. This is his bubble. Very positive.
• Andreas’ reaction to someone who didn’t like what they saw in a GH issue.
  • Multiple times now, when this issue was mentioned, I’ve seen people bring up how old it is. The age is irrelevant if he clearly still thinks the same. I stand by Lea’s arguments here, and seeing him double down and fail to understand the problem is worrying.

I barely had to scroll to find these, they’re all recent. There’s much more.

Individually, you could dismiss everything. It’s just humor. He’s neutral. Objective. Wholesome. But then, why does he keep hitting the same keys? You’d assume a wholesome centrist would have a little more variety in their stand-up routine.

You know what he reminds me of, after reading so many of his tweets?

People who dress up in a veneer of positivity, but you ask them what they think is negative, and they’ll say things like raising awareness of LGBT issues. Not in those words, of course, because that’s not positive. When they talk about it, they’ll put on this show about how they don’t take sides, and how they’re simply worried about the technical discussion, the actually important stuff, you know? They simply don’t like unhelpful noise, things like trying to foster an inclusive community.

It’s easy to seem like a positive figure when you never properly acknowledge any criticism. Position yourself as a factual, neutral voice of objectivity, even when that’s literally impossible. Paint those who disagree as non-contributing, unproductive, negative noise-makers. Say you agree with people on topics they care about, but then turn around and tell them they’re all doing it wrong. Cover it all up in emoji and a “Let’s do it together!” attitude, but reject anyone who reaches out with the wrong greeting.

And there you have it, Andreas reads like a man who’s either lying to himself or to others, and I don’t know which is worse.

I went into this thinking, “I have to avoid baselessly criticizing people. There’s surely nuance to this man’s real beliefs, people on the internet are too quick to attack without evidence.” Which is why I’m honestly surprised to say that I came out with a mildly worse opinion of Andreas than when I started. What the hell.

I sincerely hope he can reflect on his behavior and grow out of this strange mindset. Andreas seems to be a great software developer and Ladybird can be an enormous boon for the web, so it hurts to see him acting this way.

Again, I genuinely don’t think he’s on Twitter because he’s a “weird fascist tech bro” who likes a fascist platform (what is even meant by weird?). I find it more probable that he’s comfortable there, realizes that it’s not going anywhere, that it remains the most popular platform, and therefore doesn’t think Mastodon is worth the effort.

Why he’s so comfortable there and doesn’t like Mastodon is worth thinking about, though.

Yeah, and Linus mostly handed off the project to Junio Hamano quite early on (same year, 2005). Seriously, huge kudos to Junio for all his work. Still, it’s fun to say this quirky guy who likes penguins started not one, but two free software projects that took the world by storm. Humbling, even.