So am I the only person who thinks this characterization of facebook as a "parasite" or a "disease" is meaningless, useless hyperbole?
Facebook isn't any more of a "parasite" than email.
Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project."
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Re: Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project."
#62Facebook may have a million negatives but for many families FB has replaced email and other forms of communication. Remember, many families have members in Europe, China, California, Texas...Costa Rica...or college so FB is an excellent tool to share what happened (new baby born for example) in real time. They are other methods no doubt, but FB seems perfect for that.
I have an account to do just that, keep track of what's happening with my extended family and friends I lost touch with ages ago. A lot of the pictures, comments, likes and so on are designed to show off but so what? It mirrors real life ;)
Re: Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project."
#63Off topic: Why is he signing his mail with "Dr" Richard Stallman? His Wikipedia page only mentions a BA.
Re: Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project."
#64Outspoken misanthrope with poor social skills and a tendency towards an absolutist black/white view of the world dislikes social networking? Color me surprised...
Now that you got your ad hominem out of the way, maybe you could focus on the issues RMS brings up.
He didn't actually bring up an issue there. His message reduces to "I don't like Facebook and don't think you should use it because I think is harmful to your users in some unspecified way."
For those curious, here's what appear to be his views on Facebook:
http://stallman.org/facebook.html
That doesn't strike me as a serious set of issues either, more a collection of possibly-bad things put together by somebody who didn't like it from the start.
That's not to say that there isn't a good case to be made for staying away from Facebook. But I don't think Stallman is making one.
Re: Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project."
#65I am somewhat surprised to find that apparently I am just about the only one who has nothing but complete ambivalence to Facebook.
I don't see it as the parasitic pariah Stallman makes it out to be, nor do I dote on every status update of a friend or family member that scrolls across my screen.
If you were to ask me if I hate Facebook, I might agree. But the truth is I hardly use it enough to muster up much of a reaction. I almost never post. The only thing I really use it for is to get invited to things or figure out when someone's birthday is. I'm secretly very lamely proud of my non-activity.
But it's a scourge against humanity? It's a parasite on our populace? It suckers unsuspecting people into a one-way relationship where they are wholesale taken advantage of with no gain?
I call bollocks.
Re: Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project."
#66Not completely unrelated, but Exfoliate for Android (not by me) is a great tool to automate deletion of your Facebook content (posts, likes, photos, etc..) that are older than x days. It's incredibly useful, but a hard find if you don't know it exists.. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.worb.andro...
This might make it harder for normal people to find, but FB keeps your data around after it's "deleted" and I'm sure law enforcement has access to it as well.
You're right, but don't miss the bigger 'security picture' where we don't deal with absolutes, but probability and ease.
This wouldn't protect you from a CIA sponsored deep dive of your information, but it does give you a considerable advantage over your peers, scammers, and many levels of legal inquiry.
Re: Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project."
#67Outspoken misanthrope with poor social skills and a tendency towards an absolutist black/white view of the world dislikes social networking? Color me surprised...
That's what I've thought for a long time too, until I realized that the person writing http://www.osnews.com/story/25469/Richard_Stallman_Was_Right... has a point.
Wow, excellent link. I never saw it this way. Has it been posted on HN? It should be if not.
Re: Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project."
#68Outspoken misanthrope with poor social skills and a tendency towards an absolutist black/white view of the world dislikes social networking? Color me surprised...
Compare RMS' achievements in the social field (you know, like starting the social movement to popularize free software) with, well, just about anyone else on this planet before judging his social skills as poor.
Yes, he did a lot. 25-30 years ago. What's he done lately?
Re: Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project."
#69I was an outspoken Facebook-hater for a long time. Perhaps my most quotable moment on HN to date was saying "I have no love for their product or their business model, but their engineering is diesel." My wife recently convinced me to give it another try. I didn't use my complete name, and was judicious about the information I associated with my profile. And yet, I proceeded to connect in a deep and healthy way with s…
> connect in a deep and healthy way with some people that I'd fallen out of touch with
You must have had fallen out of touch for a reason, hadn't you?
I think this is the major reason why I am not using Facebook to find and connect with my old friends. If those connection would have been worth keeping up with, I am sure I wouldn't have lost them at the first place. Now, of course there are stories when some family members got lost at teen age and found each other through social network, I get it, but those are in minor, gems worth a short article on social blog.
After you re-connected with them again, after a while, most likely the same thing will happen. You will get out of regular touch and they will fall in the grey zone. Of course its harder to "loose" people nowaday because we living in much smaller world. And on the top of that, if you are a hard worker, if you have family, a bunch of close friends with whom you socialize, go to restaurants, movies, camping, etc, then do you really find time to socialize online? Isn't it enough that we forget about our spouses or parents birthdays sometimes, about anniversaries, other important events, don't always make on time to pick up son or daughter from school? I believe if you at least try to fullfill your daily obligations towards your job, families and friends, then you don't have time for social networking.
Re: Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project."
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I for one think it's a great analogy (having been in a camp I can definitely say that I didn't enjoy it and I was rejected based on that). I silently deleted my facebook account about two years ago because I didn't like losing my time looking at stupid stuff. I found out that falling into the Facebook time vortex was too much of an inconvenience and the only way around that was to delete Facebook. Now when I say that…
To many people, Facebook is the default communication channel. To delete your Facebook account is like to be offered a free iphone + unlimited contract and refuse it; the idea of removing your name from the social phonebook is beyond the comprehension of many people. And subconsciously, you're removing value from other people's valued medium/experience. By not having account, you must have some opposition to somethin…
How is this different from someone saying, I am offended you don't smoke weed, or I am offended, in this country of XYZ religion, you are not ?