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Reasons not to use Facebook

stallman.org

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Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#211

Post by cwyers »

kragen wrote: post #55
paulsecwhatt wrote: post #45

I honestly don't understand why people value Stallman's opinions on these matters so highly. I completely disagree with him on essentially everything he writes about these topics. Granted, he's an incredible programmer who contributed immensely to the development of our modern operating systems and the tools we use, and people here love to bring that up ("what - you DON'T KNOW WHO STALLMAN IS? SHAME? HOW DARE YOU CRI…

People value Stallman’s opinions on these matters so highly because he has a remarkable history of being right about them ten or fifteen years before it becomes clear to everyone else that he was right, and he takes the risk of saying what he sees even when it will offend people. In fact, that’s why he’s famous; he’s certainly a good hacker, but the world has quite a number of good hackers who aren’t famous because t…

Stallman's work has enabled a vision almost exactly the opposite of what he wanted - the gratis nature of free software has been a far greater impact than the libre. It's enabled cloud computing by making OS and software licenses scale out affordably, letting everyone leverage low-cost commodity hardware in the place of big iron. In terms of libre, though, the closed-source PCs that ran Windows that Stallman still wars so vigorously against are far more free-as-in-freedom than the cloud computers running mostly "free software." Same with all the Android phones that run a GPL'd kernel but are far more locked down than Windows. The Affero license and the anti-Tivoization clauses have been shutting the barn door after the horses have left. The free-software movement has been pivotal in providing lots of free software in the gratis sense, and that free software has enabled a far less libre computing paradigm than what came before. So you'll excuse me if I am unsure what his remarkable history of being right has been.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#212

Post by leni536 »

Dramatize wrote: post #150
jfoster wrote: post #47

I view my decision to use Facebook as a transaction. Sure, I lose some "privacy", but I also get a lot of value in return. I use quotes around "privacy" because I'm not sure I understand it the same way that Facebook critics do. When I'm using a changeroom, I expect privacy. When I take on a pseudonym and don't identify myself by name, I expect privacy. When I'm knowingly uploading photos that I am happy for the worl…

I agree. I don't understand what the issue is. I know that anything I add to Facebook will be used to sell advertising to me(I use AdBlock). The best feature of Facebook is groups. It's the easiest way to keep up to date with my gym group, motorcycle group etc.

What was wrong with mailing lists?

> It's the easiest way to keep up to date with my gym group, motorcycle group etc.

Of course it is the easiest if they use a Facebook group in the first place. They could use a mailing list (or Google group) and you could keep track of it with any mail service (even your own) of choice.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#213

Post by loup-vaillant »

paulsecwhatt wrote: post #45

I honestly don't understand why people value Stallman's opinions on these matters so highly. I completely disagree with him on essentially everything he writes about these topics. Granted, he's an incredible programmer who contributed immensely to the development of our modern operating systems and the tools we use, and people here love to bring that up ("what - you DON'T KNOW WHO STALLMAN IS? SHAME? HOW DARE YOU CRI…

> The world isn't black and white and he obviously fails to understand the entire point behind many of these companies.

Yeah, the world is all grey. We all know that. What you should keep in mind however, is that there are shades of grey.

And those companies are darker than they need to be.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#214

Post by rakoo »

manigandham wrote: post #80
paulsecwhatt wrote: post #45

I honestly don't understand why people value Stallman's opinions on these matters so highly. I completely disagree with him on essentially everything he writes about these topics. Granted, he's an incredible programmer who contributed immensely to the development of our modern operating systems and the tools we use, and people here love to bring that up ("what - you DON'T KNOW WHO STALLMAN IS? SHAME? HOW DARE YOU CRI…

I'm with you. Seems like FUD here with this post, there are a few decent ideas about privacy but its a social network and used for connecting to people. Maybe they can relax the real name policy some more but I have plenty of friends that don't use their actual real/legal name and never had a problem. There are effective privacy controls in place now and things like being served ads is such a silly issue to complain…

> it's a business that needs to make money, how else is that supposed to happen?

That's their problem, not ours. We're not the ones in charge of deciding how exactly they're supposed to make money. If they can't, so be it.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#215

Post by orbifold »

manigandham wrote: post #80
paulsecwhatt wrote: post #45

I honestly don't understand why people value Stallman's opinions on these matters so highly. I completely disagree with him on essentially everything he writes about these topics. Granted, he's an incredible programmer who contributed immensely to the development of our modern operating systems and the tools we use, and people here love to bring that up ("what - you DON'T KNOW WHO STALLMAN IS? SHAME? HOW DARE YOU CRI…

I'm with you. Seems like FUD here with this post, there are a few decent ideas about privacy but its a social network and used for connecting to people. Maybe they can relax the real name policy some more but I have plenty of friends that don't use their actual real/legal name and never had a problem. There are effective privacy controls in place now and things like being served ads is such a silly issue to complain…

If a business model is not viable without mass surveillance and unprecedented amount of privacy invasion, maybe one should try to come up with better alternatives. Luckily Facebook is already being unbundled and I'm sure with changing technology the need for a centralized hub for social interaction over the internet will fade away. One way could be via the development of new protocols, like an improvement of Email, that could be implemented by many different servers and clients. Another the advent of IPv6 and the fact that it makes p2p protocols more viable.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#216

Post by bo1024 »

jfoster wrote: post #47

I view my decision to use Facebook as a transaction. Sure, I lose some "privacy", but I also get a lot of value in return. I use quotes around "privacy" because I'm not sure I understand it the same way that Facebook critics do. When I'm using a changeroom, I expect privacy. When I take on a pseudonym and don't identify myself by name, I expect privacy. When I'm knowingly uploading photos that I am happy for the worl…

I think a main point is about indirect effects of privacy loss that are hard to see and reason about directly.

Example #1: You visit a website completely unrelated to facebook. The site has a "like" button on the page enabling them to access Facebook's data about you (depending on cookies etc). You observe advertisements or content tailored based on your personal information or things you like. Maybe you are offered different prices for the same product depending on your age, gender, location, etc.

Example #2: A potential employer accesses, perhaps indirectly, information about you that would be illegal to ask you directly (marital status, etc).

Example #3: One of your facebook "friends" signs up for some arbitrary service enabling that service to access your contact and personal information and connect it with e.g. the photos you mentioned. Arbitrary things happen, e.g. your photos are used to advertise some product you find distasteful, your contact and personal information is sold to telemarketers or spammers, and so on.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#217

Post by tedunangst »

detaro wrote: post #157
tedunangst wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't let people use two factor auth, they bitch about your lack of security. If you let people use two factor auth, they bitch that you're collecting phone numbers. Can't win.

What Facebook 2FA uses SMS and the app? All I know is either sending codes per SMS you enter on the web page or using a code generator app. Setting it up doesn't even require the Facebook app, let alone it reading SMS. Am I missing something? (I don't use Facebook much)

Not sure. I neither provided Facebook with my phone number, nor use Android, so I can't say whether it could verify for your phone number like that or not. But reading SMS codes seems like something an app could do instead of making the user enter it by hand.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#218

Post by SeanDav »

There seems to have been a sea change in opinion of many HN posters here, especially among the more recent visitors to HN. A couple of years ago Facebook was considered by many here to be an invasion of privacy and just not worth the effort. That general opinion seems to have changed for some. A lot of newer posters seem to be of the opinion that lack of privacy is a cost worth paying for convenience and will apologize for, defend and even support companies like FB that blatantly invade privacy.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#219

Post by tomjen3 »

vvpan wrote: post #39
abdias wrote: post #20

Considering that Zuckerberg is a great admire of China and apparently socialism[0], it doesn't come to me as a huge surprise that these "ethics" are guidelines for Facebook. “I’ve also bought copies of this book for my colleagues,” Zuckerberg was quoted as saying by a Chinese news website. “I want them to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics.” [0]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/1…

You say "socialism" like it's a bad thing.

Objectively it causes harm, far more so than it brings benefits. Hence it is, objectively, bad.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#220

Post by apetrovic »

quanticle wrote: post #133
MCRed wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example? For instance, I was aware of Stallman in the 1980s, read his writings back then, didn't think they were correct, and the future he predicted has not come to be. Yes there are some of us who are that old. Specifically, he said that without the virility of his license, there would be no free/open source software and that all software would be locked down and proprietary. The entire open source…

Stallman predicted the rise of e-readers and the problems that would arise from DRM protected e-books.

What exactly is a "problem"?

I don't live in US. Ordering books online and shipping them to my house used to be slow and expensive process. Now I can buy books from Amazon, for a half the price than printed books (3x the price if I account the shipping). Yeah, I can't read that book on anything except Kindle (device or Kindle app). But I know what I'm buying, and I'm ok with that. I enjoy the option to have my books synchronized over my Kindle, iPhone and iPad. It's fantastic when I'm on vacation, in some other country, and I can buy the e-book immediately, instead of dragging around lots of paper books (as I used to do).

And I pay for all of that with DRM. I'm ok with that. If the book is such important to me I'll buy the paper version.

That's the problem with Stallman, and all radicals. Everything is black and white for them. Without DRM e-readers e-books would never exists. Stallman thinks that it's ok, it's better to not have e-books if there's DRM. I don't think so. I like to have an option. I don't have any "problems" Stallman predicted.

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