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Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook

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Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook

#341

Post by majewsky »

drdaeman wrote: post #43
babuskov wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only the paragraph width was set to something reasonable (say, 33em) it would be great.

At first, I thought "hmm, the site (or, actually, its visitors) would probably benefit from some piece of CSS that just does a bit of nicer-looking typography - to be easier for the readers' eyes." But then I had also thought "nope, I suspect I'm misdirecting my wishes - it's the browsers (and their users) that should benefit from a default stylesheet that looks better than the current not-so-nice defaults."

> it's the browsers (and their users) that should benefit from a default stylesheet that looks better than the current not-so-nice defaults.

I'm sure browser vendors agree, but it would break too many sites. It's the old backwards-compatibility game.

Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook

#342

Post by sangnoir »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #250
Retric wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's useful to have someone out the outer edge of a issue as a benchmark. At somepoint the person who compromises less wins. Copy protection does not protect copy's it prevents them. Calling it protection is letting one side win before you start talking.

There's a term for this in the realm of public debate, which I am presently unable to recall, but the gist of it is the idea that you ask for a much greater concession than you really want in the hope the stakeholders settle closer to your ideal than if you'd simply laid your cards on the table. By doing this repeatedly and over time we can (slowly, maybe less slowly?) change the course of history.

> There's a term for this in the realm of public debate, which I am presently unable to recall, but the gist of it is the idea that you ask for a much greater concession than you really want...By doing this repeatedly and over time we can (slowly, maybe less slowly?) change the course of history.

That concept is likely moving the Overton Window[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook

#343

Post by nathan_long »

beagle3 wrote: post #71
mwfunk wrote: post #34

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. 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"…

I do not use "democrap" or "republicant", as they do not promote the discussion or understanding in any way. However, I did adopt Stallman's "Copy Restriction" (instead of "Copy Protection") and "Digital Restriction Management" (instead of "Digital Right Management") - because they are a much better description of what the concept actually is for 99% of the people. I started doing this after I told someone that I wil…

Trying to set the terms used in a political debate is incredibly common. In the abortion debate, the two sides call themselves "Pro Life" and "Pro Choice", which both sound good on the surface. Who wants to be anti-choice or anti-life?

The PATRIOT Act was not called the Increase Spying on Citizens Act, but perhaps it should have been.

The unfortunate fact is that if your political adversaries have already chosen a favorable-sounding, possibly-dishonest name for something, it's very hard to persuade people of your position while using the other side's terms.

Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook

#344

Post by stephenr »

avindroth wrote: post #263
Frondo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for putting this all so eloquently. I'd even go so far as to say, the fact that so much of us are talking about this rhetorical device (one I think is pretty childish and distracting) means he's missed the mark in writing a persuasive essay. A lot of us aren't talking about the merits of using Facebook vs not, because we're talking about that dumb neologism instead. Shakespeare, he is not. Which is too bad, be…

Seeing the discussion about this neologism as the first comment on the thread was disappointing. There were many important issues raised in the article. In a way, Stallman uses the word "used" because he is writing for a certain audience. For one, he is writing for himself, but also the vast majority of his audience are hackers. And these hackers are curious enough to read the strange language choice and think about…

> but also the vast majority of his audience are hackers. And these hackers are curious enough to read the strange language choice and think about what that might mean.

The focus of this very comment thread is proof that isn’t the case. Plenty of us agree with the basic premise, but take issue at his entire approach to communicating with people, and thus don’t consider the article “good”.

> If he really wanted to make an approachable article, this should be titled

Or he could just write it like he’s expecting adults to read it, and drop the condescending and childish names he makes up for everything he disagrees with.

Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook

#345

Post by p4wnc6 »

aninhumer wrote: post #288
p4wnc6 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time I run into one of his idiosyncratic terms, it interrupts my train of thought, and dislodges any argument he had been constructing there. In the spirit of ergodic literature, such as the use of extensive, awkward footnotes in Infinite Jest, some consider this to be a good and effective thing. If the reader isn't willing to put in the cognitive effort to constantly overcome this and extract the meaning of…

Well it's nice that the true believers get something entertaining to read, but there are a lot of people looking for reasons to disagree or criticise who might find themselves converted if he put in some effort to address his arguments to them. As the figurehead of Free Software, we should expect more from him than esoteric literature.

It's not the true believers who should be happiest about the effects of ergodic writing. Instead, it's the ones who disagree, but for serious reasons. If someone would only be converted if the writer makes it super easy, then I think e.g. Stallman feels like why should he waste his time on someone like that?

Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook

#346

Post by kstrauser »

jordigh wrote: post #332
kstrauser wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He insists on the term, but he doesn't mean something very specific when he says "free". Unlike what most of his opponents seem to believe, he does not mean "copyleft only" when he says "free". He means the exact same thing as "open source", just like "global warming" means the same thing as "climate change". Same thing, different political slant. That's not remotely true. When RMS says "free", he means "copyleft".…

> When RMS says "free", he means "copyleft". No, no, no, no, a thousand times no: Freedom 3 includes the freedom to release your modified versions as free software. A free license may also permit other ways of releasing them; in other words, it does not have to be a copyleft license. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html > Source: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h... . Do people ev…

"It does not have to be", but in practice it usually is (although he accepts BSD, even though it doesn't guarantee users' access to modifications). RMS advocates "liberated" software, or software that is itself free from being locked into a proprietary fork. That's the whole point of the GPL family of licenses. If you read the corpus of his works - I have - he very consistently talks about the importance of software freedom and how that Open Source can refer to many very non-Free things.

> Do people even read this whenever they quote it?

Did you? He writes:

"Yet some open source supporters have proposed “open source DRM” software. Their idea is that, by publishing the source code of programs designed to restrict your access to encrypted media and by allowing others to change it, they will produce more powerful and reliable software for restricting users like you. The software would then be delivered to you in devices that do not allow you to change it.

"This software might be open source and use the open source development model, but it won't be free software since it won't respect the freedom of the users that actually run it. If the open source development model succeeds in making this software more powerful and reliable for restricting you, that will make it even worse."

Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook

#347

Post by kstrauser »

arximboldi wrote: post #307
kstrauser wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He insists on the term, but he doesn't mean something very specific when he says "free". Unlike what most of his opponents seem to believe, he does not mean "copyleft only" when he says "free". He means the exact same thing as "open source", just like "global warming" means the same thing as "climate change". Same thing, different political slant. That's not remotely true. When RMS says "free", he means "copyleft".…

Open source does imply rights to alter and redistribute: https://opensource.org/licenses https://opensource.org/faq#free-software The terms Free Software and Open Source are the same from a technical point of view, to the extent that they describe the same set of software. However, they are different in that they connote different views about the world---people saying free (or libre) software take a stance in that so…

Here's an example of Open Source software that the FSF doesn't consider to be Free Software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Open_Source_Agreement

There is a big overlap in the Free/Open Source Venn diagram but they are not the same thing.

Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook

#348

Post by beagle3 »

baby wrote: post #235
beagle3 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not use "democrap" or "republicant", as they do not promote the discussion or understanding in any way. However, I did adopt Stallman's "Copy Restriction" (instead of "Copy Protection") and "Digital Restriction Management" (instead of "Digital Right Management") - because they are a much better description of what the concept actually is for 99% of the people. I started doing this after I told someone that I wil…

> You are, indeed, used by facebook when you interact with it But we're using it too. So maybe, "exchange" would be a better word? Although, with most of nowadays' apps (youtube, google, gmail, facebook, whatsapp, ...), the way they use "us" is really limited compared to the practicality they provide.

I am not using Facebook, but if it weren't for uBlock origin and friends, Facebook would be using me.

Re: Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook

#349

Post by [deleted] »

baby wrote: post #235
beagle3 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not use "democrap" or "republicant", as they do not promote the discussion or understanding in any way. However, I did adopt Stallman's "Copy Restriction" (instead of "Copy Protection") and "Digital Restriction Management" (instead of "Digital Right Management") - because they are a much better description of what the concept actually is for 99% of the people. I started doing this after I told someone that I wil…

> You are, indeed, used by facebook when you interact with it But we're using it too. So maybe, "exchange" would be a better word? Although, with most of nowadays' apps (youtube, google, gmail, facebook, whatsapp, ...), the way they use "us" is really limited compared to the practicality they provide.

[deleted]
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