You won't find FSF on Facebook

Hasn't this been discussed before? The Person of the Year award is supposed to be given to the most influential person of the year, not the nicest or the most ethical one. Zuckerberg did become a widely recognizable person and you can't say he has not become influential too. Joseph Stalin got the award twice, 'nuff said.

Disclaimer: I'm not comparing, just pointing out that the FSF's reaction is kind of attacking the straw man here.

This article is a joke, it's something I would expect to find on some tech/news gossip website. Is this what FSF has become?

> so many sites — including TIME — use Facebook's user-tracking "Like" button, Zuckerberg is able to collect information about people who aren't even users of his site. These are precedents which hurt our ability to freely connect with each other. He has created a network that is first and foremost a gold mine for government surveillance and advertisers.

I would think just about any popular web site would be a gold mine for such information. It has nothing to do with Facebook. Doesn't this sentence hold true if we replace Facebook with Google? This seems like a tinfoil/scare everyone into believing Facebook is evil and out to get you.

> and then maybe relays it to the intended destination, if it suits him. In some cases he does not — witness the recent reports of Facebook's messaging service blocking messages based on the words and links in them, because those links point to services which Facebook would prefer we not discuss.

Comeon, examples/proof please. Is Facebook blocking URLs to competition or child porn sites? There is a pretty big difference here.

I would think that the FSF should be on Facebook, trying to spread their message, gaining support, and discovering new users. They have an interesting problem, a lot of support, and some very big challenges ahead of them... and yet they spend time publishing articles like this and making fancy dislike buttons. FSF you should be ashamed.

Facebook appears to have had a tremendous effect on countries like Tunisia and Egypt. The alternatives that FSF lists may not have been as effective because of the technical difficulty for a large number of people to set up such a service.

You gotta wonder though, how many people are touched each day by the work of Zuckerberg versus the work of Assange.