[LoganDark]

I don't care for the current status quo at all. The current administration has wrecked this country and completely compromised its position in the global economy potentially forever. But there is a time and a place for those arguments and activism, as well as the same for other parts of the world suffering from similar or worse issues. Like, I wouldn't be receptive to hearing about Ukraine every time I go to the grocery store. When I want to hear about it I go to the YouTube channels documenting it! They're very interesting, but I need to be in a space to receive it. Similarly there are places where I'm not specifically looking for it but where I'd be receptive because it's not immediately irrelevant to something I'm doing. Otherwise it is just noise. This is absolutely no statement about the status quo, but just how my brain works. It's also not a statement against activism in general, just about my personal opinion of it in certain places.

[eloisius]

It’s all well and good for you if you want to be a consumer of political content when it suits you, but for a creator, the creation’s whole purpose may be a delivery mechanism for their message which may otherwise go unheard. Not saying this is necessarily what Don Ho (Notepad++) is doing, but it’s possible. Create something so good that people can’t help but use it (preferably the demographic you most want to reach, for example a country with a huge base of Windows users) and then use it as your message delivery mechanism.

[lelanthran]

Both the points:

1. I don't want to see political messages in unrelated delivery mechanisms

and

2. I created $PRODUCT as a delivery mechanism for a political message

are equally valid.

I feel that the problem that comes about is when a $PRODUCT was not created as a delivery mechanism but is being co-opted into being one at some later stage; the audience feels deceived and the creator feels that the audience is ungrateful.

I'm not very familiar with Notepad++ (having never used it, nor experienced any desire to try it), but I'm fairly certain that the creator has been political long enough now that the audience cannot complain about the message being delivered with the product.

It's like complaining about Vim having a message for the plight of Ugandans - it's been there for decades; too late to complain now about it.

I'm more sympathetic to complaints over projects which never had a specific political message suddenly acquiring one when they realised what a large audience they had, or when new people join a decades-old project and introduce a political message that was never there before. I can sorta understand outrage then.

[direwolf20]

> There is a time and place for activism

Conveniently, it's never here, and it's never now. I think MLK Junior wrote a speech about this? Letter from a Birmingham Jail: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....

[viraptor]

You may not be in the right state, but the point of that part of the website is that it's a donation link. It will drive some people to help. If it's at the cost of some others getting grumpy about too much messaging... that's probably still worth it.

[davorak]

> Otherwise it is just noise. This is absolutely no statement about the status quo, but just how my brain works. It's also not a statement against activism in general, just about my personal opinion of it in certain places.

I considered the majority of the population to be affected by repeated messaging, messages in the background, or in other words availability bias. So the messaging be having the desired effect on society in general but not on some subset who filter it out completely.

[LoganDark]

It has an effect on me too: it makes me begin to extra-quickly ignore any messaging of that sort. I become so tired of it that it starts actively frustrating me to see. And I bother people to take it elsewhere. This is a behavioral issue on my part, but I'm still struggling to justify to myself that they couldn't be getting more out of it by putting it somewhere more appropriate.

[davorak]

> I become so tired of it that it starts actively frustrating me to see.

Something similar, significantly different though, happen to a friend. They started distrusting the incogni.com after seeing their advertisements over and over again. To them they saw/felt/reasoned that only an untrustworthy actor would be pushing the messaging so much and a trustworthy actor would rely more on word of mouth via their good product inspiring people to speak up about them. I had to point out that they probably saw much more of incogni's advertising due to their rate and type of media consumption and most people probably do not get that level of exposure. If incogni lowered their advertisements to hit them correctly it would not be nearly enough advertising to reach the average consumer.

I see the frustration at the repeated messaging to likely be a natural protective mechanism. Instinctively reject repeated messages is not necessarily a bad instinct since manipulative people will use repeated messaging to manipulate, but repeated message exposure does not only happen due to an attempt to manipulate.

[suprstarrd]

I want to start by saying it's good that you are at least taking the time to look for this information! Stay healthily informed.

I see this as a bad analogy though: you wouldn't hear about it every time you go to the grocery store. Or, at the very least, you wouldn't stop and listen for the fifth time. You already know, and that's the point: the intention of most activism in technology (at least that I see) is to make you initially aware of it so you start to seek the information out and learn more elsewhere. (...And to give themselves good PR. We love rainbow capitalism /s)

Instagram and Twitter both get your attention during election season because they want you to be informed about how to vote. To me, that's a similar thing.

[Der_Einzige]

The whole reason why Notepad ++, vim, etc have to do this is because no one wants to take one for the team and protest/put their neck on the line.

I don't want to either, and indeed I really want others to do it for me. As such, I really want to see even MORE political stuff like this to hopefully create folks who will actually protest and put their neck on the line.

Similar reason why US military propaganda is good. I never EVER want to be drafted and indeed if you put a gun in my hand and military fatigues on me, I will die with a shot in the ass (because I am running away). Thankfully, we have a bunch of hardened 20-somethings "manipulated" into joining the military and protecting us so that I can be lazy.

So please ratchet up the politics and get others out so I don't have to. It's not that hard to ignore yet another plea for help. We do it every hour of every day.