Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project."

Said the man who reads web pages through an email client.

And everyone reading this will be sharing the link on Facebook :)

Woah. I had no idea csail-related archives were published on the web....strange feeling to realize you've been in a glass house the whole time you thought you were in a regular house.

I only post that comment here because it served as a reminder to me that, for all the privacy reasons we shake our fists at Facebook, FB actually does a lot to surface privacy issues to us that were always there (like whether or not a lab mailing list is publicly available) but you might not have noticed.

When I was a kid, my parents sent me to camp, even though all I wanted to do was sit home and write text adventures in BASIC. I hated camp. I hated the kids, and the counselors, and most of all I hated how everyone acted like if you didn't like it, if you weren't having fun, then there was something messed up about you.

Facebook = camp. The most oppressive and authoritarian thing about it is, at root, that most people appear to enjoy it and not see any problems with it, while you view it as this heinous violation of your freedom and imposition on your private space. The worst thing about it is that sinking feeling that no one cares what you think.

Feelings like this have been articulated far more effectively, and by individuals far more likely to have an impact. It's kind of questionable that a one-paragraph throwaway rant like this has hit the front page of HN. But if that indicates that a lot of people around here have burned their facebook accounts, or are planning to, that would be a hopeful sign for civilization.