The problem is that people are shooting the messenger and focus on a guy living by his words which is quite unusual.
The same happened here where most comments discuss stallman and not the actual matter of the post.
This is a nice list of sourced documentation about facebook dangers, I happen to maintain one myself for future reference and it is quite useful to have.
to actually focus on the linked article however - this isn't just an opinion but an actual reason why Facebook has lost its huge earlier momentum of use and user signups. though there's quite a big social network inertia, over time its going to be hard to justify the high-profit 'all your personal information is ours to sell and market' model.
That doesn't save time, it works directly against this by reducing it to a bunch of superficial funny bullets, it's an attack on preserving privacy, as usual. Let's talk about the article at least a little bit if we're going to talk.
Just wanting something that works is the same as having nothing to hide is the same as not understanding or caring about privacy.
He's pretty nuts. I met him when he spoke at my university a few years ago, the CS department invited him and had a reception with RMS for CS faculty and students only. At one point, a retired faculty member asked if he had any suggestions for convincing his bank to make their website Firefox-friendly since his wife didn't want to switch.
His suggestion was to lie to his wife and switch anyways...
Half the students at the speech got up and left (not kidding) when he put on a halo, proclaimed himself the Jesus Christ of Software and started auctioning off a stuffed gnu.
Add in his tirade about how evil the university IT department was for requiring authentication to access the network and you had a very pissed off administration the next day.
"Half the students at the speech got up and left (not kidding) when he put on a halo, proclaimed himself the Jesus Christ of Software and started auctioning off a stuffed gnu."
Wait, what?! I can only imagine that's like a car crash where you don't want to look, but you just can't tear yourself away from it.
It was bad. Literally no one responded to his auction, the room was dead silent. After a minute one guy offered ten bucks out of pity and that was the end of the auction.
I've seen a real nerd (the guy that got the big companies to do tcp/ip in Sweden, I'm not going to write Googleable names) do an ass of himself in a similar way.
I happen to know that he considered that "funny". I'm willing to suffer his sense of humour; he is a national treasure, imnsho. The same goes for rms, I guess.
Everyone everywhere buys stuff based on how it has been sold to them. Not the individual or company selling the thing, but more the way the story of the thing has been told. Call them "foolish buyers" if you want, but this is how the majority of people make decisions. I suspect Stallman protests it by increasing his extremism as a response to it. That causes many people to dismiss him. The end result is that it is a disservice to his causes.
Many people do lots of foolish things, but that doesn't justify doing foolish things. Making snap judgements about people based on irrelevant criteria has been a failing point of humanity since well before you and I were born; thankfully, we've come a long way in civil liberties and in making progress on abolishing slavery, women's suffrage, gay rights, etc. The problem there was clearly more widespread than here, but the symptom is the same -- humans aren't very good at being open minded.
Yes, I understand that it's a fault in humanity, that people's decision-making skills are compromised by completely irrelevant factors. I'm sure I'm just as guilty of it as anybody else.
The point, for what it's worth, wasn't to call the parent foolish, but to point out that disregarding a good idea because the messenger isn't your favorite is, plainly put, silly. As individuals, we should be mindful of the needlessly silly things that we do, and try to be better than that.
I get the feeling that you might be talking about Stallman's appearance, whereas I am talking about his behaviour. I think more people can see past appearance than can see past unsociable/rude behaviour. Pedantically insisting that people call Linux "GNU/Linux" for example. If you were running a business, you wouldn't do that to your customers, right?
add to the above quote that the guy literally sneezes and he is front-page on HN and some hundred thousand linux/OS related forums... Which means that he is the exact opposite of a nobody in the tech community and you have a good bargain reading what he says.
I don't mind Stallman, but to decry all boycotts and competition-of-personal-values is itself foolish. We should care about who gets our money and our attention.
I can see your point about vendor discretion, but that's not really the same thing. I try to avoid companies whose values do not align with my own wherever possible. In many cases, I even consider my opinions to be well founded, or even informed.
That said, I still understand them to be value judgements, and while I'm happy to discuss those values to whomever, it isn't my place to push my values onto another, and it would be silly of me to ignore the good aspects of somebody because they also possess aspects I consider to be negative.
Moreover though, it is foolish to discount good advice because you don't like the source. It is, I believe, the height of pettiness, and should be avoided at all costs by pragmatists.
I don't mean the projects. I mean the ideas he is trying to convince people of. Take for example his stance on DRM. What does success look like, or rather, what does it not look like? You might be able to argue moderate success in music (iTunes switching to DRM-free, but Spotify having DRM), yet in books the wide acceptance and love of Amazon's Kindle indicates a lost battle.
But you might also say the same about convenience. It doesn't make sense to completely ignore either of convenience or freedom in pursuit of the other. Most people are pragmatic about it. They compromise some freedom for convenience, and compromise some convenience for greater freedom.
Most reasonably informed people should agree that the [software] world is a better place because rms is in it. And not only for gcc, emacs, etc.
The rest is just a question of how many years before today he is, this time. (And yes, sometimes the world he is years before isn't our planet. But his hit statistics isn't bad.)
It is. His contributions have been immeasurable. He is a classic representation of how one's presentation doesn't equate to one's contribution. Something we all battle with at one time or another in the software industry. As rough around the edges as he can be his underlying message should be undoubtedly considered.
His views may be extreme, but they are extremely well thought out, well justified, and well argued (as long as you don't count user-friendly presentation and being nice to people as necessary requirements for arguing well). He's not wrong about what he says and believes, and he's extremely consistent about that, but his priorities are a lot different than most people's. And the world's a better place because of his influence on many less extreme people with different priorities. Plus he has a great sense of humor, if you don't let him get under your skin: http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html
How precisely are his views extreme? The criticism of Stallmans opinions (as opposed to his behaviour which is another issue) I have seen unfortunately boil down to the fact that people can not even imagine sacrificing the smallest of their conveniences for any kind of moral reasons, and consider any suggestions of resigning from them "extreme". It's like the Louis CK sketch about the favourite thing, but with Facebook or whatever:
I no more have to subscribe to your morality as your ideology.
I'm not a bug Facebook user, but it has nothing to do with privacy. I've always known some random engineer at Facebook could read my posts, and assumed it was not a stretch for the government.
You prefer to give up conveniences because of fear of govt. I'm still much more afraid of the random engineer, but think the convenience is worth it (maybe).
Come to think of it, this is true of many causes. I recall the LGBT and atheism movements: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YxdM1WChHc (She says at some point that despite the infightings, radicals and moderates actually complement each other.)
There's something off about that cosy consensus view, quite apart from the fact that it is so open to manipulation. It's basically highly conservative and only accepts the status quo.
The reality is that what may have seemed a completely out there view can become the new normal within a surprisingly short time when the environment or culture changes. Apart from politics, you see this in everything from fashion to music, business etc. (e.g. predicting the death of print or record shops, or 'did I really think I looked good in that - what the hell was I thinking?')
I feel like he could reduce the crazy vibe by hiring a web designer to overhaul this page. Well-designed crazy usually looks a little more sane than poorly designed crazy.
In my opinion his page is quite well designed. It's easy to navigate, it's obvious whats navigation and whats content. The page is very readable, you see links easily. The page loads fast and is responsible in the sense that it usable on all devices and clients i tried (including my phone and w3m in a terminal).
I guess what you mean by "well-designed" is more colors and and images, but i prefer his page over those ajaxy blogspot-themes, which get completely unusable if you are on a phone-line-connection in a remote area, and a few other pages. And that even though i have nothing against good modern css in general :)
Needs more parallax. I feel like I'm reading or something: I get the annoying sensation of thinking. I want to feel like the internet is washing over me and flowing through me. That I am one with magic electrons and the thought-beams of narcissists and sycophants.
I don't know. Most of the stuff on the page is factually correct, although a number of entries are sensationalized. If it's crazy, I'd argue it's 2nd-amendment-advocate-crazy, not timecube-crazy.
It's a site designed on behalf of a man who, as I understand it, would rather use some complicated web scraping/emailing scheme to view websites than even touch a web browser.
It is probably exactly what he intends the web to be. Or at least his little corner of it.
There is a reason Linus is the figurehead of the Kernel project - he has a track record of choosing directions that later turn out to be fruitful.
There is a reason GvR is the figurehead of the Python Language - he has a track record of choosing directions that later turn out to be fruitful.
There is a reason Stallman ...
Look the guy spotted the trends waaaaay earlier than anyone else and be put his money where his mouth is. The original GPL is no less crazy than this. Hell most of us agree with this one.
Wow, that is a long (if sometimes repetitive) list! Hopefully Richard had help putting that list together. I have two general comments:
1. I am surprised how many non tech Saavy people I talk with are starting to understand privacy issues.
2. I had dinner last night with some Silicon Valley residents who were talking about what a horrible investment Facebook would be long term. New things will replace Facebook, and they will eventually have fewer active users.
A bit off topic, but advice I like to give people is to use one specific web browser for social media connected sites like Facebook, GMail + Google+, Twitter, etc. and another web browser with locked down security for all other browsing. This is easy to do, lets people enjoy the social media stuff if they like, and still maintain some degree of privacy.
https://disconnect.me/ is designed to allow people to protect themselves from being spied on across the internet by Facebook, Google, et al without the inconvenience of using a separate browser or similar methods.
Anecdotally, I've also experienced a growth in non-techie interest in online privacy - in the pre Snowden era, I would have to explain myself and justify what I do every time I was asked where I worked. Nowadays, I get asked for a download link.
I started using your service in place of ghostery. I like both of them and I truly appreciate what you guys are doing here.
The only short-coming is that my browser sometimes freezes when it is blocking certain flash objects. I consider it a minor inconvenience and a worthwhile trade-off. In general, sites load way faster. I am often appalled when I see the amount of trackers being blocked on some of these pages. It shows why the web, despite running on faster servers and delivering content across faster networks to faster computers, appears to be slowing down year after year.
It also reminds me that I have a responsibility to the users who visit my sites. I will never use any ad-tracking or social-media tracking software on my sites. I will host my own ads on my site and not depend on third-party companies to insert and regulate my ad presence. I will use minor tracking tools, but solely with the aim of improving user experience.
In all, I am very glad that you guys are doing what you are doing. In some meta respects, I think you are improving not only the state of the uses who use your product, but also the general well-being of the entire internet. Once we can extinguish the abusive trackers out there, we all can learn how to monetize our sites in a respectful and appropriate fashion.
I also don't track users at my sites except for anonymous cookies on my cooking web site. The cookie lets me identify them anonymously so I can keep track of food they have on hand for suggesting recipes.
I put a lot of work into my sites and the really large payoff is meeting people with similar interests and also people who might want to use my consulting services. It would make me sad to have to abuse people's privacy in order to make a living. (I am contracting at Google for a while, but I generally think that mostly Google falls into the good guys camp, as opposed to Facebook - just my personal opinion.)
Not hard to do in Chrome, just point to a different user-data-dir for each category of browsing you need. I have three, one for general browsing, and two others for gmail accounts. That way I can use google without being logged in to the 'general' browser; and use the other two just for gmail. This way I never have to log out or clear the cache after checking email. I can be logged into two gmail accounts at once without my web history being directly tracked.
I just uploaded a scan of the Copyleft (L) sticker that I mailed to RMS, which inspired him to use the term for free software. And I wrote up the story behind it: http://www.donhopkins.com/home/copyleft/
My only issue with Richard's rant here is -- why stop at Facebook? The social network/media economy is responsible for lots of business plans, with lots of people vested in their success.
Agree , but I think drastic drop in number of active users will make them realize , people are actually concerned about their privacy and there was something wrong .
While Google is a larger issue regading privacy, facebook is a larger issue regarding lock-in. Anyone who do not have an facebook account know how often information is locked into facebook, never reaching anyone who chooses not to participating in giving facebook more information.
I concur - Facebook's plugins to every damn website means that they can tell where your IP address is visiting and correlate a "profile" over time based on the sites you visit. So while they may not know your name, they can tell (as long as it's a property they have a partnership with) where you've been. Site owners that care about privacy should reject all the social plugins that also do this. So if there's a Facebook Like button, or a Facebook comment system on the page, whether you utilize them or not, their plugin was called in order to load it and in turn, you've been tracked.
No disagreement with RMS actually, but just out of curiosity:
Back when land-line telephone subscription was more popular, did folks used to complain about the phone company putting their name and address (by default) in a large directly shared with the entire public?
I know you could pay a fee to be unlisted, but didn't it strike anyone as a gigantic privacy issue in general?
Tools to automatically search and utilize that data were somewhat limited. There were classes of people who could suppress their listing. And you could (generally) hide behind an initial and no-address listing as well (phone books listed _both_ phone number _and_ street address by default).
It was a very, very different age in many ways.
What ubiquitous cheap computing and fast connectivity creates is the possibility for thousands to millions of systems to attack a given person simultaneously (DDoS, distributed brute force attacks), or for a very small number of actors (as few as one) to attack from one to billions of people simultaneously.
The phone book vector was, by contrast, limited in that:
⚫ It only listed your name, phone number, and street address. Not reams of additional information.
⚫ Utilizing it required a phone call (toll calls, remember those), postage, or a street visit. Attacks, in other words, cost real money (at least for most players).
⚫ There was limited additional data readily linked by those data. Again, not the mebabytes to gigabytes of information in a typical social networking profile.
Yes, some players had access to more powerful tools -- but even marketing databases and the like were vastly more primitive than they are now, and hugely less available. Depending on when exactly you're talking about (1930s to 1980s), there might have been some computer capacity, but you'd likely have had to have spent several hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, even as late as the 1980s, to effectively utilize the data in an automated fashion.
And yes, there were people who complained and concealed their listings, but the risks were very, very different in magnitude then.
Eh, there are plenty of public records - births, deaths, real estate transactions, tax records, lawsuits, etc.
It's hard to take a phone book listing and figure out who my friends and family are, who employs me, what I'm doing all the time, etc. as it is fairly trivial to do with Facebook et al.
It's not about what data is on Facebook or a public web site. It's about the so-called "social graph" sites like Facebook create. That is, the relationships between people indicated directly between people (friends) and the inferred relationships worked out by mining data.
The point is on his website, he chooses what photograph of himself is put there. On Facebook, you have no control when others are sharing photographs with you in them. On your own website you would presumably not post photographs of yourself that compromises your privacy, but when others do so on social networks, there is no guarantee like that (unless every single one of your friends on Facebook explicitly gets permission from you for every photo they post to Facebook that contains you before sharing, which never happens).
> On a public web site you could simply copy a photo and put it on another web site.
On your own public website you can choose what photos you want to put there. If you put a photo on a public website, clearly you have no issue with the photo being seen by other people. This is not true for photos that others share with you in them. Your real life friends take photographs of you and publishes them on Facebook without your consent, some of which you may not want to be public.
> Differing how from if they just posted it on a public web site other than Facebook?
Most public websites do not index user photographs by time/event and are easily searchable by name. But yes, it is not that different in general fundamentally. Facebook just allows the information to be much more easily aggregated and browsed
Yes it is true for the Internet in general. But Facebook is a bit special in that you can easily search for a person by name and have all photographs of him/her in one big organized pile, which is not possible on the Internet in general.
Only the people of Facebook, or external entities who are explicitly granted permission, can perform that search though. It's not like I can just hop on Facebook and find all the picture of you, unless you have already permitted me to.
If you are an entity like the aforementioned NSA, searching the entire Internet for your photo isn't really any more challenging than using Facebook. The computing resources necessary are considerably larger, but that is a relatively small barrier.
I see at least two ways that having data in Facebook has the potential to help governments learn more about people: things (relationships, events, biographical data) are pre-structured in a single clear ontology, and Facebook has direct access to all of the facts in the system.
If we imagine a more decentralized system, people might well still adopt a single ontology for events and relationships, but much "private" information might actually never be revealed to third parties, as opposed to disclosing all of it to Facebook and asking Facebook to limit whom they show it to.
Well, there is the case of that douchebag who was running isanyoneup - this was on HN recently - that is a counter example. I could take pictures of you and associate them with your name so google would link to them when someone looks for you.
I agree that it's much easier through facebook, though.
It is in a way. However it is much harder to aggregate all these pictures and data when you need to scrape everybody's personal blogs. Facebook makes it very easy to gather and use this data (they even make you organize it for them by putting photos into different collections). Fundamentally though there is no difference between posting it on your blog vs Facebook.
I can see how the searching can be an issue, but if someone is motivated enough, they can just use Google right?
I dunno, I have issues with facebook but I actually like how photos and tagging automatically fill my timeline so I don't have to actually write to my family.
Besides, most of the things you (if you were the NSA) could find through Facebook could almost trivially be found through looking through the guy's e-mail, or other sources. Nobody thinks Facebook to be private anyways, since its main purpose is for stuff to be published (to friends, but considering I have 300 on FB, it might as well be public)
It's always a balance between the value you get out of FB vs your privacy concerns. For most people, they value the features of FB (e.g. photo tagging) more than they value their own privacy, so they continue to share and use FB. For Stallman obviously the opposite is true.
Agreed. In fact, I have no control over photos of me that anyone can post anywhere on the web, where Google indexes them and makes them searchable. At least with Facebook I can untag them and in some cases get them removed....
I wonder why he doesn't suggest actively building a fake Facebook profile to dilute the accuracy of the information being mined? What's the worst that can happen, the account is blocked...
By even going to the site, you are giving them data.
They have your IP address, the unique attributes of your browser, etc. etc.
Once they figure out the profile is fake, they list you in the "trouble maker" category and step up monitoring that IP/browser combination until they know who you are, then they link that with everything they have on the real you (bank account, property, job, etc.)
Eventually, one day, you're trying to board a plane and you get denied because you've been known to disseminate "false or misleading information".
What unique aspects of your browser? The User-Agent header will tell you the kind of browser you have. However, it's unlikely that you are using a browser that's very unique.
They can use cookies to identify you. But you have to keep going back to their website.
You know, I've been to this site several times, but noticed just now that it says "1 in 27588" about plugins of *stock iPad browser". This seems to be off, way off.
You don't have to go back to their website very often; your browsing is tracked every time you visit a page that has a 'Like' button. And as others have noted many people's browsers already have a unique fingerprint even while you are logged out of Facebook
It contributes to activity and encourages whatever friends you might have on that account to stay. I don't think there's much benefit to that unless you dedicate some time to creating around a million fake accounts with no real friends.
I really would like to see Facebook broken up via the Sherman Antitrust Act, or some such legislation.
As I see it, the "network externality effect" which keeps such monopolies in business could perhaps be mitigated by creating a sort of social network "DNS", which could be created by the government or a private corporation. Facebook/Google+/etc would be clients that would make requests for someone's data via the DNS. So it would basically serve as a "Bridge" or "Facade" to use a design pattern.
Example if Suzy is on Facebook, and Lucy is on Google+, when Suzy rquests Lucy's photos, Facebook sends an API request to the DNS "request_photos('Lucy', 'Suzy')", the DNS sees Lucy is on Google+ and forwards the request there.
The purpose of the bridge/facade then is to make it not really matter where a person stores their data or what client they use to view others. You just need some sort agreed upon API for determining where the data for each person is, an for sharing data between services.
For someone with more strict privacy concerns, the DNS for such a person could simply record that the person uses this social networking service, which doesn't allow requests from outside. Again the benefit here of the API would be that to add yourself to that service would be as simple as "upload_photos(serverX, request_photos('Suzy', 'Suzy'))", etc.
I'm sure there's a million things wrong with the above, but just a random thought.
I'm not so sure about government-controlled DNS... But what you are describing is "federation" and that's what Diaspora and identi.ca are built around. Everyone can run their own server, and every server can talk to each other, allowing users from different servers to interact seamlessly.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense, thanks for that. I guess what I would like to see is some kind of government mandate to force social networks and the like to follow this model.
Right... the solution to Stallman's concerns about government surveillance of social networks is definitely a government shutdown of Facebook and the development of a centralized social DNS created by the government.
The point was really just to push for decentralization of social networks, through some kind of mandated data-sharing interface. The "DNS" thing is probably actually unnecessary I guess, it was just a random thought.
We don't let utilities just get a monopoly in an area and then just gouge everyone, and we shouldn't allow a social network to do so either.
The NSA spying, by itself, is just a symptom of larger problem, which is the ability of a smaller, more cohesive group of people to leverage larger institutions like massive governments and corporations to control and extract rents out of the less cohesive masses. I doubt there is a technological solution to this, especially with so many engineers working for the bad side as Useful Idiots or straight up Defectors.
Oh Stallman, such a character. Some of these are legitimate concerns, some just gave me a great laugh. For example, weigh these two against one another:
> Facebook deleted a statement by a human rights group, then said that was a mistake. That Facebook invited the group to post the statement again — instead of undoing the deletion — demonstrates arrogance.
> Facebook permanently records everything you do, even what you look at, even items that are "deleted".
Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by ineptitude! Either Facebook is an evil omnipresent observer, permanently recording everything…or some representative goofed up and they can’t undo the deletion of the data because they actually deleted the data.
But hey, if he wants to avoid Facebook and recommend against it, that’s fine. We should all make our own value assessments and our own decisions about privacy concerns, though. Just consider that Facebook’s occasional privacy blunders might be…just that.
As much as I've avoided Facebook for so long, I've come to the realisation that if you want to use the internet, old-school "full" privacy is dead and gone.
I've had a profile on FB for a long time now, but never ever used it. I've had the javascript blocked around in my general web browsing, never installed the phone app, etc. All I've ever received is the occasional email saying that someone has tagged me in a status/photo. These annoyed me a little, as I wanted to avoid FB as much as possible, whilst still being sociable with my friends.
I came to a sad epiphany a few months ago however. I realised that even if I weren't aware of all the photos/tags being posted of me, I'd still be tagged by my friends regardless. Even if I completely cancelled my account, the photos are still going up because I still meet with my friends and have an active social life. This is when I realised what I needed to do.
It is the exact same situation as when someone makes a small jest at your expense at a party. If it's a friend, you know they're just messing around and taking the piss, you laugh it off, not offended. If it's not a friend however, you might get a little offended by it. "Were they insulting me? Trying to embarrass me? Should I laugh it off as a joke?" It's potentially annoying, just as a violation to your privacy is. Inevitably, you have only a few choices: Laugh, insult them back? (guess it depends on your culture/how rude it was!) Some people might even just punch the guy...
You can't punch Facebook. (I wish)
It isn't gonna go away just because you're upset.
So the question here is: Why do we laugh these little embarrassments off? The little invasions of our private self that we find annoying?
Because it's a way of owning the situation. You can't be offended/embarassed by something you laugh off and apparently don't care about. "Yeah, my Karaoke is terrible, but I love it!", "Yeah, I do have a habit of giggling in a funny way, hahahaha!".
It's exactly the same when you look at highly confident people, they never seem embarrassed by anything at all. They just smile and carry on.
Well I made a decision a couple of months ago to take the exact same approach to Facebook, so I'm on it properly now. I can't punch FB in the face, but I can take ownership of my own public persona. My friends/aquaintances are going to be posting about me regardless, might as well take control of the situation and make sure I know everything is good.
PS: And hey, there are still plenty of good uses of FB anyway, might as well enjoy the perks too.
PPS: I'm aware that it's a shitty situation. I almost feel like I've got Stockholm syndrome and have just given in. But FB isn't going anywhere soon.
Leaving Facebook is / can also be a time investment. Years ago I found out I was spending way too much time there on things I do not want to care about (note the distinction between caring, not wanting to care, and not caring).
Do I really want to invest my time untagging myself from shameful photos, even issuing take-down requests to my own friends? I was not invited to a party because I do not have a facebook account? I am the expensive friend, who can't be contacted using whatsapp or facebook? I am not able to show off my "awesome" travels in order to step up on the social ladder? Cry me a river, I tell them, and myself every time.
"Ira, I learned centuries back that there is no privacy in any society crowed enough to need IDs. A law guaranteeing privacy simply insures that bugs -- microphones and lenses and so forth -- are that much harder to spot."
--Lazurus Long, Time Enough For Love, pg 15
Realized this late , but saving lot of time since past 6 months . Deactivated facebook , and find more time to actually go out and socialize. Don't even know if it was adding to efficiency.
May be this is an unpopular opinion, but facebook is a 'for profit' business. If we want to use it for free, we should be ready to pay some price for it. I am not a particular fan of facebook, except for it's ability to help me connect within closed private groups and tracking technology and programming news. I don't post photos or statuses on facebook.
Again, this is not absolving facebook of their dark patterns of snooping on users and their broken privacy framework. Even Google is not an ideal in this case.
When you post to your blog you tell the NSA what you know. When you attend a conference where Stallman speaks and paid with your credit card the NSA knows you support his ludicrous ideas.
Stallman thinks information should be free, but apparently that doesn't include information about where you shop. Sure I get it. Information should be free unless he can charge you to hear him speak, or it is his information.
You can't have it both ways.
Also, is CSS bad in some way? Do themes support the Evil too? Cause for a famous guy that is one ugly website.
I stay away from Facebook, Twitter, and Google for many of the reasons that Stallman lists. I treat email like a postcard and I do nothing on the Internet under my real name.
That said, I know many people don't care about this stuff, and I applaud their lack of concern.
The NSA tracks Americans' social networks, and Facebook is just one of its sources.
maybe so, but they don't seem to be doing it very effectively. If so, they would have been a. more closely following the the Boston Marathon bombers. b. would have been able to ID them from photos pulled from the surveillance tapes.
so while the NSA and their recent "efforts" are pretty scary and de jure or de facto illegal, it is the government, so how effective can they really be at keeping an eye on us?
I had occasion to use Facebook recently ( a relative asked me to upload a photo to her profile while she was busy ). I can honestly say I was utterly baffled by the UI.
Eventually my 83-year-old great aunt came in and showed me what sequence of links to click to arrive at an upload icon. shrug
If only the mainstream media would listen to humanitarians like RMS. Instead they choose to listen to greedy slime balls that end in BERG.
Money is the root of all evil. Combine that with privacy, and Facebook IS the new root of all evil. I deleted my account years ago, and I know with 100% certainty it will never be purged. It's criminal, and I fucking loathe this fact. I would pay to cave in some of the faces at Facebook.
Radix malorum est cupiditas. That is to say, greed (or in early English bibles, "the love of money") is the root of all evil.
Money is a medium of exchange, a proxy token for barter. The need to have more than others (whether wealth in its various guises or power) is the corrupting influence. Or so the Pardoners would have us believe.
- He's crazy!
- But he's right!
- Right? He's just been stating the obvious all this time!
- NSA surveillance!
- Hadn't anyone heard about Echelon?
- He stands for freedom of users!
- But users don't care about those freedoms, they just want something that works!
- He's antisocial and extremely rude!
- Autism spectrum.
- But he's not diplomatic at all, we don't want him as a spokesperson for Open Source!
- It's GNU/Linux, not Linux.
- See? It's nitpicking things like GNU/Linux that make even open source enthusiasts hate him!
- Only the userland is GNU anyway.
- GPL!
- Emacs!
- GCC!
- HURD!
- Toejam.