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Reasons not to use Facebook

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Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#301

Post by eropple »

thirsteh wrote: post #288
karmacondon wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> Facebook doesn't invade anyone's privacy. What do you consider the Like, Connect, etc. buttons that are tracking virtually every page you visit, Facebook user or not?

There are a lot of things about which I'll get up over, and there are plenty of companies feted around here that I think are moral crimes in progress, but this isn't one and I think you've got the arrow of responsibility backwards. You're using websites and applications that have opted into using Facebook's infrastructure for the ends that benefit them, and as a side effect they are sharing the details of their traffic and users with Facebook. If that worries you--and I'm not saying you're wrong to be worried, though I personally don't care--you should not be using those websites. There are people who don't. I think their online lives must suck, but it's their prerogative.

I'm sure it's hard. But doing the right thing often is.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#302

Post by voodoomagicman »

SeanDav wrote: post #218

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 apologi…

I dislike Facebook because social networking is a natural monopoly and they have managed to grab ahold of it.. they have replaced some of the open and decentralized nature of the internet with the centralized and closed service they control. Competing with or replacing facebook will be very difficult because everyone's friends are already on facebook.

Wouldn't it be great if someone at harvard had come up with an open social networking protocol instead?

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#303

Post by nerdy »

RMS is a strange duality. On the one hand he's a freedom advocate and has put considerable effort forward to make our world a better place; it's hard to not have a great deal of respect for him. On the other hand he's brilliant but quite frankly a lunatic, benign freedom extremist... and I don't even have a Facebook account! I can only imagine how he might come off to people who're hardcore social media consumers.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#304

Post by smutticus »

The #1 reason not to use FB is you cannot bitch about FB. I have little patience or sympathy for people who use FB and constantly complain about it. They should stop using it.

I don't use FB, which means I have little reason to bitch about it, and if I do want to bitch about it I don't sound like a hypocrit.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#305

Post by thirsteh »

eropple wrote: post #301
thirsteh wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook doesn't invade anyone's privacy. What do you consider the Like, Connect, etc. buttons that are tracking virtually every page you visit, Facebook user or not?

There are a lot of things about which I'll get up over, and there are plenty of companies feted around here that I think are moral crimes in progress, but this isn't one and I think you've got the arrow of responsibility backwards. You're using websites and applications that have opted into using Facebook's infrastructure for the ends that benefit them, and as a side effect they are sharing the details of their traff…

Your last point is exactly right: You can't choose not to use the vast majority of sites on the Internet.

Facebook isn't the only company doing stuff like this by any stretch of the imagination, but claiming that you can just "not use Facebook" if you want to avoid them is complete nonsense, hence my original comment.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#306

Post by ericfontaine »

tedunangst wrote: post #222
jcrawfordor wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who interacted closely with RMS for several days recently, I think I should set the record straight on one important fact. RMS absolutely uses cellphones. He just doesn't own one himself. Instead, he borrows the phones of the people around him, and his assistant collects those people's phone numbers in order to call him. What this says about his philosophy probably depends significantly on how irritating y…

I guess the question is, what would happen if everybody actually listened to RMS and stopped using cell phones?

as jessaustin remarked, "[RMS] is complaining about the specific implementation of mobile tech with which we're currently saddled."

Listening to RMS would mean that if you do carry a mobile device, that it would use entirely free software including all drivers and bootloaders, that it only communicates with other hardware running entirely free software (i.e. only basetowers or wifi routers running free software), and that all the internet services accessed ran entirely free software (e.g. private email servers instead of gmail, pump.io & GNU social instead of twitter & facebook, mediagoblin instead of youtube, wikipedia, yacy or some other free software for search, etc.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#307

Post by xxxyy »

MisterWebz wrote: post #231
SeanDav wrote: post #218

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 apologi…

When you're highly invested in the tech scene and are depending on its continuing profitability, then it's only natural that you denounce people who attack it. What we're seeing here is a conflict of opinion between the so called hackers and the people who think they're working on something that will be acquired by one of the tech giants.

You've got a point there.

However, not every modern tech-buzzed startup wins the market by rejecting privacy and playing the next Facebook. Consider Xiaomi, Uber or SpaceX good examples.

Or in other words: social media is not everything there is in the tech scene. The landscape is not simply a battle of bearded-hardcore-hackers vs brogrammers. Seriously, there's plenty for everyone.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#308

Post by paulsecwhatt »

apetrovic wrote: post #220
quanticle wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This. Exactly.

I'm sure Stallman absolutely HATES services such as Spotify. However the as I mentioned in the parent comment, the world is not black and white, and thus viable solutions will always be in a middle-ground.

Nothing he could ever say would bring me from playing music with ridiculous ease in Spotify to downloading "free" ogg files and playing them in GNU Mediagoblin, or something similar.

As a side note: the FSF complains liberally about different "evil" products using javascript on their "giving guide". Stallman himself asks us not to "mistreat" family by giving them non-free gifts. Yet they themselves use javascript for analytics. Proving how ridiculous some of these practices are.

https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/2014/

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#309

Post by fit2rule »

MCRed wrote: post #295
fit2rule wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman predicted the total surveillance state, and warned of the very dire circumstances it put us all in.

Have you ever heard of George Orwell? It's like you guys go to some sort of indoctrination camp and become members of a cult.

What an offensive thing to say. Of course I've heard of Orwell.

So?

What is it about you which predisposes you to reject someone just because "they weren't the first"? It is you exhibiting cult-like behaviour in this case, if all you can do to denigrate and negate Stallman is say "but, but .. he wasn't the first" and assault his character as if he is some sort of ripoff artist.

So what? Orwell is dead, and rapidly becoming irrelevant in the younger generations. Whereas the still-alive and relevant Stallman has tirelessly fought to educate people on the misuse of technology by nefarious, anonymous actors, in a grand and increasingly dangerous fiasco. Your desire to negate Stallman as a personality would have only one effect: to remove a significant barrier for the rising super-surveillance state.

What are your intentions in doing so, precisely? You wish to see what Stallman fears, and which is enslaving us all, come to pass?

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#310

Post by fit2rule »

MCRed wrote: post #296
fit2rule wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly warned us, and Stallman has picked up the light to be shone on these dark territories from others before him, but who in the contemporary era has done as much as Stallman to educate the public as to the dangers of the usurpation of technology by nefarious agencies? I don't understand the need to denigrate Stallman for these deeds - what purpose does it serve to extinguish this light?

Basically, everyone working on it has done more than Stallman. All stallman does is post rants and demand adoration. He hasn't actually done anything. Well, he has opposed a lot of tools that would help protect against the surveillance state because they didn't fit his ideology.

I believe your point of view is highly naive, and very seriously deficient in intelligence. Stallman has worked tireless to enlighten younger generations of technologists on the issues of privacy and security in the dawning intelligence age. He is no cult figure - but who can you name who has done as much as he has to bring these issues to the table when, instead, quite viciously, the powers-at-large would rather it all be swept aside? Be careful that you are not becoming the very thing you are resisting, in this argument. Stallman is not the only figure out there working on this - thank the stars - but he has definitely been a leader of opinion on the issue of free speech, free technology, and just use of technology to allow peace - where many, many more would rather be using it all for war and oppression.

Perhaps you don't actually know enough about Stallman to be forming an intelligent opinion, yet. Here, educate yourself on his works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

He's done a few GNU things you might not be familiar with. Things which have had a massive impact on the way technology has been made available to the masses. Without Stallman, there would be even more walled gardens by now, and fewer generations of new technologists, aware of their technological freedom to contribute to society in an open and free manner, out there in the world at large.

Please, reconsider your naive and ill-formed opinion. It does you no good.

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