I turned off ublock so that I could load the stylesheet. Nope, stallman's site just looks like that. It's actually refreshing, just a radical departure from the status quo. Although, it is RMS so should've expected that...
If only the paragraph width was set to something reasonable (say, 33em) it would be great.
Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook
31–40 of 376 posts
Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook
#32Recently my girlfriend discovered the depth of the program FB started to listen to the microphone, even if the app isn't on. She never installed the FB app on her new phone. Multiple times in the last month, some VERY specific topic of conversation IRL has shown up as an ad in her FB stream. Most recently, a coworker told her about a "Custom Martin" guitar he had just bought. Later that day there was an ad for a custom Martin guitar. She's never searched for that, liked anything related, there's absolutely no other reasonable explanation, and facebook has made it clear they were going to start listening. They were serious. We later discovered that new Samsung phones have FB installed as a "system app" that can't be uninstalled, and that app has permission to turn on the microphone whenever, without permission. Her phone listens to everything she says all day. Anyone with the FB app (whether they choose to install it or not in the case of Samsungs) is being listened to at all times. To me, this is worse than every single thing on RMS's list. It's kinda terrifying.
Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook
#33One point from the article I found most interesting:
> Pages that contain Facebook "like" buttons enable Facebook to track visitors to those pages. Facebook tracks Internet users that see "like" buttons, even users who never visited facebook.com and never click on those buttons.
> The ACLU has a way of enabling users to click a Facebook "like" button, which avoids this problem. Its pages have a link called "like us on Facebook" that leads to a Facebook page where it is possible to push a "like" button for the ACLU. But if you don't follow that link, Facebook gets no information about your visit to the ACLU page.
I'd love to learn more about these sorts of strategies for subverting the Facebook omniscience.
Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook
#34If someone can't state their point without warping the very language they use to support their point, it makes it very hard to feel like anything they're saying is credible.
Example 1: someone is trying to convince me to vote Republican. They go through the Republican platform issue by issue, and compare/contrast it to the Democrats' stand. However, every time they use the word "Democrat" they instead say "Democrap" or "Dumbocrat" or "Dumbocrap". That does not make me think they are clever wordsmiths; rather, that makes me think that they think I'm an idiot and that they think they can actually manipulate me with such silliness. It also makes me think they arrived at their own philosophy not by trying to understand opposing views, but by inventing their own strawmen for whatever tribe they imagine they are opposed to. It makes me think they are driven by tribalism rather than ideas.
Example 2: well, here, RMS' insistence on using the word "useds" rather than "users" when referring to people who are on Facebook. Yeah, I get it. Ha ha ha. It doesn't make me think you're clever, it makes me think you literally do not possess the capacity to reason about anything without invoking strawmen. It calls into question every single observation you are making. It makes it sound like you don't respect the people you are supposedly trying to convince, and are instead just enjoying preaching to your choir.
It's not like an isolated incident, it is literally his primary rhetorical device in nearly everything he's written over the last 3 decades. Even the appropriation of generic terms like "free" to mean very, very, very specific and non-intuitive things reeks of intellectual dishonesty. It's so frustrating because he does have some (some) very insightful and constructive ideas about a lot of things, and could be such a positive contributor to the world, but it's like he wants to alienate his non-choir audience right out of the gate. It's like he's terrified of actually engaging with people that are not already 100% (not 99.9%, he demands 100%) on his side. He is right about some (some) things, but so many, many people will never know it because he wants to shoot himself in the foot as soon as possible.
Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook
#35Recently my girlfriend discovered the depth of the program FB started to listen to the microphone, even if the app isn't on. She never installed the FB app on her new phone. Multiple times in the last month, some VERY specific topic of conversation IRL has shown up as an ad in her FB stream. Most recently, a coworker told her about a "Custom Martin" guitar he had just bought. Later that day there was an ad for a cust…
Oh, and also - this morning FB suggested I may know the Lyft driver from last night. I wasn't even the one who ordered the Lyft, I just rode in it. I don't have the FB app installed on my phone. WTF?
Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
This does give it a kind of bearded-conspiracy-theorist-ish vibe that puts me off too. But the underlying point in using the word makes sense and hey, maybe it'll deter some people from using Facebook without knowing exactly what they're subjecting themselves to. I can see such a thing sticking in people's minds.
I think it's going to take someone with greater... ahem ...social intelligence than rms to convey the dire reality of facebook's omniscience.
So you're understanding the grave seriousness of the considerations, but still waiting for somebody different to convey that to you?
Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook
#37Recently my girlfriend discovered the depth of the program FB started to listen to the microphone, even if the app isn't on. She never installed the FB app on her new phone. Multiple times in the last month, some VERY specific topic of conversation IRL has shown up as an ad in her FB stream. Most recently, a coworker told her about a "Custom Martin" guitar he had just bought. Later that day there was an ad for a cust…
Oh, and also - this morning FB suggested I may know the Lyft driver from last night. I wasn't even the one who ordered the Lyft, I just rode in it. I don't have the FB app installed on my phone. WTF?
For that, I was under the assumption that the 'People you may know' on facebook was also who had been looking at you on Facebook, so the driver might have been looking you up.
Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook
#38Recently my girlfriend discovered the depth of the program FB started to listen to the microphone, even if the app isn't on. She never installed the FB app on her new phone. Multiple times in the last month, some VERY specific topic of conversation IRL has shown up as an ad in her FB stream. Most recently, a coworker told her about a "Custom Martin" guitar he had just bought. Later that day there was an ad for a cust…
Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook
#39If someone can't state their point without warping the very language they use to support their point, it makes it very hard to feel like anything they're saying is credible. Example 1: someone is trying to convince me to vote Republican. They go through the Republican platform issue by issue, and compare/contrast it to the Democrats' stand. However, every time they use the word "Democrat" they instead say "Democrap"…
> mwfunk 2 minutes ago
If someone can't state their point without warping the very language they use to support their point, it makes it very hard to feel like anything they're saying is credible.
Thanks for saying that - that's one reason why I struggle to take this article seriously.
Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook
#40One thing worth noting is that, unfortunately, lacking a Facebook account doesn't truly shield you from it... people can still mention you, tag you in pictures, etc.