Reasons not to use Facebook

It wasn't common knowledge at all. When I tried telling people about ECHELON I was told it was a crack-pot conspiracy theory, despite the evidence being available.

There were a few people who actually extrapolated the technical abilities to their possible extents and realized what was possible, indeed probable, but they were not the majority.

Despite Nicky Hager's testimony before the European Parliament in 2001, here in Australia, many people didn't even realise the DSD existed (Now ASD) until about 2011, and a lot of their abilities weren't known until 2013. The collusion between the ASD and other foreign departments was ignored, or even seen as positive, by any main-stream press coverage at the time.

Saying this was common knowledge in 1996 is attributing your specialist knowledge to the entire population, who couldn't, and still can't, really be bothered by said knowledge. You may have known about it, but the vast majority of the world didn't. And now that they do, they sadly still don't really care.

As an example, there's now an Academy Award winning documentary relating to mass government surveillance available online, legally, for free. Do you think I can get any of my non-tech friends to watch it?

> Without DRM e-readers e-books would never exists

That is a strawman. Three are certsinly booksellers who never went near DRM and argue strongly against DRM.

Exempel: http://www.baenebooks.com

Ah I see, I suppose we interpret what I asked for differently. I had hoped for en example of some specific statement (perhaps from John Gilmore) that can be dated to more than 10 years ago, thus proving that "Many people made such claims long before he did."

It's not even that I doubt you, just that nagging feeling in the back of my head that say "He haven't given an example of a person making such a claim dated earlier than 10 years ago." I have to apologize because I feel that this has more to do with some mild form of OCD on my part.

Yes, you clearly said nothing about action (I don't see why you're adding "also" because that was exactly what I was addressing in my last comment?). I'm not sure what you mean by "Powerless in government is an orthogonal concept" and thus I wouldn't know how I conflated them (not even sure what "them" refers to, action and governemnt, powerless and government?)? I do agree that I made a strawman and for that I apologize, to clear this up could you answer the question in my last comment: "what point were you making when stating that we're almost entirely powerless in representative government if not to argue against taking action?"

Facebook doesn't invade anyone's privacy. They aren't going into your house and rifling through your things. People post things on facebook because they want other people to see them. If you don't want to do that, then don't use facebook.

You can't stop other people from talking about you, or from taking pictures of you or relating stories that involve you. That's always been a part of social life. If you consider that to be an invasion of your privacy, then leave society and live as a hermit. It probably won't be fun, but it will be very private.

I know several people who don't use facebook, myself included, because they just aren't interested in the service that it provides. Philosophical concerns about the nature of privacy don't really factor into it. The social fashions about what's cool and what isn't cool will change with the winds. It isn't worth paying attention to. If facebook or any other social software is valuable to you, then good, use it. If not, no sense complaining about what other people decide to do with their time.

There are the people who grew up watching the privacy invasion happen, and there are the people who grew up with it. I felt often like I was in the middle, but bad experience made me realize that privacy is something worth fighting for.

We've picked the low hanging fruit of clever applications of the data analysis of 'the general population' to recommend us better movies, better things to purchase, search engines adapted to our tastes, and so on.

The absence of privacy is an absence of a safe mind. I grew up enjoying privacy on the internet (or the illusion of) because I was able to learn who I was, and I was able to have my own voice and my own opinions. When my mind became convinced that that was only an illusion, it mentally crippled me. I wasn't able to follow thought paths I deemed unsafe. The definition of unsafe comes from a collection of reasoning (or rationalization) that is mostly irrational - being that it is contextually formed without careful analysis and methodical direction. When one feels like every machine is stalking them, and can eventually be connected back to a person who can make a judgement on that individual's life path without the awareness and consent of the individual, I think we've made a big mistake as an intelligent species.