You won't find FSF on Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#41

Post by jfm3 » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 8:58 PM UTC

chriscorcoran wrote: post #23

jfm3 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you use words like "Unix pipes" when you don't know what they mean?

Yeah, that was an attempt at sarcasm. Clearly it didn't work. I was tying to imply that FSF types want all web apps to be accessible via the command line. Because who needs a fancy tabbed browser when you've got lynx? Just for the record, I am well aware of what Unix pipes are and how to use them :)

Wait, I get it now. This as an ad hominem attack against the FSF that assumed the reader would hold "UNIX pipes" and command lines as bad things.

I think you're on the wrong forum.

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#42

Post by michaelchisari » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:02 PM UTC

hasenj wrote: post #26

ryanto wrote: post #4

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 fore…

> Is this what FSF has become? What do you mean? This is what FSF has always been like. They're shockingly zealots in defending absolute gpl-style freedom over all your digital goods. In all honesty I don't think a decentralized and "Free" facebook would work. The centralization is a feature that most people want; it's part of why it "just work" without you having to become a system (or a network) administrator. Imag…

As a developer of a decentralized social networking project (Appleseed), I think you have a misconception of how these projects work. Your mother will never have to manage any of that stuff. She'll just log in to socialsite.com and interact with your aunt, who's on othersite.org.

If there's an issue with communication between them, the administrators of respective sites will deal with them. Your mom won't notice it anymore than when she notices Facebook's internal servers are experiencing a glitch.

And honestly, people don't "want" centralization of social networking any more than they "wanted" the centralization that AOL featured over the decentralization of the web.

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#43

Post by code_duck » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:03 PM UTC

>"He has created a network that is first and foremost a gold mine for government surveillance and advertisers."

It would be nice for more people to realize this. Really, they're lining up like sheep for government monitoring, and Zuckerberg and Co. are happy to comply. FB seems thrilled with the prospect of being the eyes and ears of Big Brother, actually.

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#44

Post by burgerbrain » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:03 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #36

joebananas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you use words like communism when you don't know what they mean?

"Everything must be shared" sounds like a reasonable (if simplified) definition for both communism and FSF's goals.

Only if you understand neither.

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#45

Post by burgerbrain » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:06 PM UTC

chriscorcoran wrote: post #23

jfm3 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you use words like "Unix pipes" when you don't know what they mean?

Yeah, that was an attempt at sarcasm. Clearly it didn't work. I was tying to imply that FSF types want all web apps to be accessible via the command line. Because who needs a fancy tabbed browser when you've got lynx? Just for the record, I am well aware of what Unix pipes are and how to use them :)

Weird, last I checked my "command line" browser had tabs.

looks down

Yup, still does.

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#46

Post by trotsky » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:08 PM UTC

hasenj wrote: post #26

ryanto wrote: post #4

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 fore…

> Is this what FSF has become? What do you mean? This is what FSF has always been like. They're shockingly zealots in defending absolute gpl-style freedom over all your digital goods. In all honesty I don't think a decentralized and "Free" facebook would work. The centralization is a feature that most people want; it's part of why it "just work" without you having to become a system (or a network) administrator. Imag…

Seems like a pretty misguided point of view. Something tells me a sizable amount of the facebook crowd is comfortable downloading torrents, I'm pretty sure that counts as distributed/decentralized. As far as free software, is your mom unable to use any website that uses apache, ngix, php or ruby? Almost everyone has a broadband router that is almost entirely open source. My Mom and Dad both use an open source browser, what do yours use?

Is your point that only companies worth $50bn can build usable web apps, or that anyone that doesn't want to sell your data can't do UX?

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#47

Post by stanley » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:09 PM UTC

trotsky wrote: post #27

elehack wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Like" button infrastructure (images, JavaScript) is loaded from Facebook's servers via a cross-domain request. Those servers can theoretically use cookies or IP addresses in conjunction with referrers to do tracking even without clicking Like, for both authenticated and unauthenticated users. Some content is loaded off of their CDN, which I highly doubt is doing any tracking. The non-CDN pings are quite possibly…

Why wouldn't they be doing tracking? It seems like a big portion of the benefit to them in doing connect/like/etc. They do make their money selling ads, and they are seemingly hot to collect as much information as possible.

This is Facebook we're talking about, right? Of course they're tracking. If no other reason than for ad retargetting.

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#48

Post by forensic » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:11 PM UTC

ascendant wrote: post #7

FSF doesn't like a service that doesn't operate exactly how the FSF thinks they should. Shocking. I don't take anything they or their pseudo-communist leader say seriously anymore. Back when Stallman started attacking OpenBSD because of their ports tree I knew he had finally lost it.

Stallman supports the free market, he's just anti intellectual property.

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#49

Post by ascendant » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:12 PM UTC

joebananas wrote: post #9

ascendant wrote: post #7

FSF doesn't like a service that doesn't operate exactly how the FSF thinks they should. Shocking. I don't take anything they or their pseudo-communist leader say seriously anymore. Back when Stallman started attacking OpenBSD because of their ports tree I knew he had finally lost it.

Why do you use words like communism when you don't know what they mean?

because it gives my rant a nice tinge of political edginess.

I view the FSF as software socialists, as in they have a utopian view of how things should be and everyone should buy in and give all of their stuff to everyone else for the good of the community. I also view socialism as an impossible ideal to achieve. In my opinion, all attempts at socialism have ended in communism, where the ruling class tells the people they have socialism but in reality the people at the top of the chain don't buy into it and live much better lives.

Finally, I used the prefix "pseudo" because obviously we're talking about software and not the rise and fall of empires (although Facebook is sort of a digital empire) so I didn't want to attach a full-on label of "communism" to it.

edit: I'm sure someone who has studied politics way more than I have will come in here and point out that I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground, and that's fine. I bitched about the FSF and I feel better so my mission was accomplished.

Yes, vote me down further! PUNISH ME FOR USING WORDS YOU DO NOT LIKE.

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#50

Post by jwwest » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 9:17 PM UTC

The public at large doesn't care and more to the point and the public at large usually aren't affected by loss of privacy - it doesn't inconvenience them enough to bother them.

Diaspora and other such projects are a complete joke. People aren't going to run their own server. Make it easy, make it fast and get their friends to use it, that's it. Nothing else matters.