Reasons not to use Facebook

You don't use Facebook, yet lead with claim that it doesn't invade anyone's privacy...

Regrettably there are numerous, well documented cases of Facebook doing exactly this. They've literally been taken to court over it several times (look into "Sponsored Stories," "Beacon," etc).

Even if you don't use it, they have a shadow profile of you over there waiting, with relationships pre-graphed, simply by virtue of being in friends' contact lists who do.

The site "Likes" things on peoples behalf just because they talk about it (even negatively!) with others. It occasionally automatically "friends" people because you looked at their profile and mutual friends in common. It constantly takes liberties with people's relationships, friends, and preferences, without asking. The mobile app turns on the damn mic to listen to ambient noise in the background so it can try learn what you're listening to or watching on TV!

None of this is to try to convince you to care or take up the pitchfork against Facebook, but they're not like other sites. Harvesting your contact info from your friends phone to add you to their graph is an invasion, in my view (glib app permissions dialog, notwithstanding).

As a person who is only one person, society only changes when one person can reveal or demonstrate to others the concepts that form the ground of the argument.

Otherwise it's just crap stuffed up in your own head.

For him, it is more irritating to live in a world that thinks it is okay to regularly violate people through crossing boundaries of what they consider personal information. For you, it is more irritating to go into a public space and have to deal with other people's opinions.

Everyone is fine with things as long as things are perfect for them. But you can't just wear blinders over your eyes when other people are obviously suffering, and just because you can't empathize with why those people are suffering doesn't make their suffering any less deserving or worthy of understanding, lest you expect the world to treat your suffering in the same cold, disconnected, blinded manner.

I'm sorry he embarrassed you, he would probably embarrass me too in the day to day minutia. But I absolutely stand by him mentally, because I believe and value the world he believes in and values. In theory everything is honky-dory. In practice, society and the individual actually has to deal with problems as they exist. Otherwise they fester and turn into more difficult problems that take a long, long time to understand - some of which are very very difficult to understand after enough time has passed and enough damage has been done.

I can't tell you how much I as a programmer and computer scientist, how much I have benefited from the movement that came from Richard Stallman. I can't tell you how much my mind has benefited from it. I don't care that his actions contradict his core philosophy. They are attempts at connecting a gap between theory and real life.

If the source of code was as privatized and closed as some kinds of knowledge can be, I'd be nothing. I consider it a privilege to share an existence with a person who has helped shaped the world in that way, no matter how annoying or crotchety or irritating he may become. There is always a difference between the ideal a person represents and the person they are. It comes at a high cost to be a public figure, but some people see the value of the world they want to create for everyone to be worth more than that - and maybe that's what the people around him who allow him to use their cellphones see too.

No, singling out one sentence from my answer and attacking it is a strawman.

But ok, to correct myself: without DRM ebooks would never exists at this scale and people would never buy ebooks readers at this scale and read ebooks at this scale.

Ten years ago ebook reader was a niche, used only by geeks. Today, thanks to aggressive Amazon pricing and (DRM-ed) ebooks, it's a common item. And popularity of ebook readers (namely - Kindle) started some new things: I love SF, and last year I bought a lot $1.99 books from self-publishing authors who would probably never find a place to publish their books without widely available ebook readers (read: Kindle). So, to return to original question - what are such a burning "problems" that Stallman predicted?

> The site "Likes" things on peoples behalf just because they talk about it (even negatively!) with others. It occasionally automatically "friends" people because you looked at their profile and mutual friends in common. It constantly takes liberties with people's relationships, friends, and preferences, without asking. The mobile app turns on the damn mic to listen to ambient noise in the background so it can try learn what you're listening to or watching on TV!

If you don't mind, do you have any sources for this? (Not talking about the mic thing, but the automatic liking and befriending)

First I thought it was a typo, but it can't be, there are too many occurrences - looks like Stallman is intentionally referring to FB users as 'useds':

> Facebook carefully studies all the text that its useds type in and then don't submit.

> Facebook, as an "experiment", collected the text its useds started to enter as status updates and ultimately did not send.