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Linus Torvalds on Social Media: 'It's a Disease. It Seems To Encourage Bad Behavior.' (linuxjournal.com)
From a wide-ranging interview of Linus Torvalds with Linux Journal on the magazine's 25th anniversary: Linux Journal: If you had to fix one thing about the networked world, what would it be?
Linus: Nothing technical. But, I absolutely detest modern "social media" -- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. It's a disease. It seems to encourage bad behavior. I think part of it is something that email shares too, and that I've said before: "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle". When you're not talking to somebody face to face, and you miss all the normal social cues, it's easy to miss humor and sarcasm, but it's also very easy to overlook the reaction of the recipient, so you get things like flame wars, etc., that might not happen as easily with face-to-face interaction. But email still works. You still have to put in the effort to write it, and there's generally some actual content (technical or otherwise). The whole "liking" and "sharing" model is just garbage. There is no effort and no quality control. In fact, it's all geared to the reverse of quality control, with lowest common denominator targets, and click-bait, and things designed to generate an emotional response, often one of moral outrage.
Add in anonymity, and it's just disgusting. When you don't even put your real name on your garbage (or the garbage you share or like), it really doesn't help. I'm actually one of those people who thinks that anonymity is overrated. Some people confuse privacy and anonymity and think they go hand in hand, and that protecting privacy means that you need to protect anonymity. I think that's wrong. Anonymity is important if you're a whistle-blower, but if you cannot prove your identity, your crazy rant on some social-media platform shouldn't be visible, and you shouldn't be able to share it or like it.
Linux Journal: Is there any advice you'd like to give to young programmers/computer science students?
Linus: I'm actually the worst person to ask. I knew I was interested in math and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand the problems people face when they say "what should I do?" It's not where I came from at all.
Linus: Nothing technical. But, I absolutely detest modern "social media" -- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. It's a disease. It seems to encourage bad behavior. I think part of it is something that email shares too, and that I've said before: "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle". When you're not talking to somebody face to face, and you miss all the normal social cues, it's easy to miss humor and sarcasm, but it's also very easy to overlook the reaction of the recipient, so you get things like flame wars, etc., that might not happen as easily with face-to-face interaction. But email still works. You still have to put in the effort to write it, and there's generally some actual content (technical or otherwise). The whole "liking" and "sharing" model is just garbage. There is no effort and no quality control. In fact, it's all geared to the reverse of quality control, with lowest common denominator targets, and click-bait, and things designed to generate an emotional response, often one of moral outrage.
Add in anonymity, and it's just disgusting. When you don't even put your real name on your garbage (or the garbage you share or like), it really doesn't help. I'm actually one of those people who thinks that anonymity is overrated. Some people confuse privacy and anonymity and think they go hand in hand, and that protecting privacy means that you need to protect anonymity. I think that's wrong. Anonymity is important if you're a whistle-blower, but if you cannot prove your identity, your crazy rant on some social-media platform shouldn't be visible, and you shouldn't be able to share it or like it.
Linux Journal: Is there any advice you'd like to give to young programmers/computer science students?
Linus: I'm actually the worst person to ask. I knew I was interested in math and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand the problems people face when they say "what should I do?" It's not where I came from at all.
Many flavors of social media are not broadcast to the world. Some do.
Not advocating it, but ultimately Facebook allows you to choose who your message reaches.
One of my more favorite social networks is /. And it is one of those that is broadcast to the world.
Caution: Contents under pressure
The founding fathers of the United States wrote many anonymous articles in newspapers, and even printed their own newspapers under pseudonyms. They believed that anonymity is a key feature of a democratic society.
Did Linus say that, or was that Accujack, commenting on Linus's words (on Reddit in 2013)?
Accujack's "brain dead" comment was his reaction to Linus's 2007 response to a troll saying it's "bullshit" that Linux didn't write git in C++. Linus's actual response to the troll explained what the technical problems are with C++ for such an application, and did mention that C++, in it's brokenness, does attract less capable programmers.
I'll skip the technical details and quote the part where Linus wasn't being very nice:
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C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it.
[Technical details of problems with C++]
So I'm sorry, but for something like git, where efficiency was a primary objective, the "advantages" of C++ is just a huge mistake. The fact that we also piss off people who cannot see that is just a big additional advantage.
If you want a VCS that is written in C++, go play with Monotone. Really. They use a "real database". They use "nice object-oriented libraries". They use "nice C++ abstractions".
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Linus wasn't super nice to the person who called his work bullshit, and he did NOT say all C++ programmers are braindead. That was Accujack who said that, six years later.