I tried finding a FOSS app that I could use to use my phone as a mouse (all options for this seem really shady IMO) and Google’s “AI overview” recommended the app “Bluetooth Keyboard & Mouse”. Seemingly, because it has a (mostly empty) Git repo with typical folders. I tried entering the search term into Copilot on my work computer and got the same result, Copilot also gave a little speech on why the app was FOSS. Only when told there was no source code in the repo did Copilot backtrack and say it wasn’t open source (and later having it listed as not recommended because of an unknown origin [eventhough it’s in the Google Play store…]).
As a user, i.e. not contributor, of FOSS I found this an interesting revelation. Is this an intentional catfishing strategy to get apps promoted by the LLMs – as a semi-illegitimate growth hack for a legitish app or for entirely illegitimate purposes? Or just a serendipitous LLM hallucination?
Yes, I find this credible. At the same time, FOSS and Linux seems to be all the rage now, with big tech’s ties to the Trump regime etc. Even though it’s been nearly two decades ago since I first installed Linux (in the late 00’s I even had an awkward “FOSS as an ethical alternative to piracy” phase), I am not in the tech savy crowd that’s been mainlining this stuff for life – rather I identify more with the growing number of tech illiterate dummies that think “FOSS = good” because Pewdiepie said so or copy/pastes sudo commands that replaces half my boot drive with North Korean crypto malware.