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You won't find FSF on Facebook

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Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#81

Post by ubernostrum »

michaelchisari wrote: post #42
hasenj wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this what FSF has become? What do you mean? This is what FSF has always been like. They're shockingly zealots in defending absolute gpl-style freedom over all your digital goods. In all honesty I don't think a decentralized and "Free" facebook would work. The centralization is a feature that most people want; it's part of why it "just work" without you having to become a system (or a network) administrator. Imag…

As a developer of a decentralized social networking project (Appleseed), I think you have a misconception of how these projects work. Your mother will never have to manage any of that stuff. She'll just log in to socialsite.com and interact with your aunt, who's on othersite.org. If there's an issue with communication between them, the administrators of respective sites will deal with them. Your mom won't notice it a…

Your mother will never have to manage any of that stuff. She'll just log in to socialsite.com and interact with your aunt, who's on othersite.org.

As I said when Diaspora first started making headlines, this is incorrect. Both your mother and your aunt would be signing in to (name of decentralized social service).google.com, just like everybody else except for a handful of geeks who take pride in running their own nodes.

Because, really, the only way decentralized social networking will work is if everybody ends up centralized again on one node, run for free (most likely) or very cheap (not as likely) by some big company they trust. AKA, Google, who'd certainly love to have access to all the types of data Facebook currently has.

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#83

Post by joe_the_user »

hasenj wrote: post #26
ryanto wrote: post #4

This article is a joke, it's something I would expect to find on some tech/news gossip website. Is this what FSF has become? > so many sites — including TIME — use Facebook's user-tracking "Like" button, Zuckerberg is able to collect information about people who aren't even users of his site. These are precedents which hurt our ability to freely connect with each other. He has created a network that is first and fore…

> Is this what FSF has become? What do you mean? This is what FSF has always been like. They're shockingly zealots in defending absolute gpl-style freedom over all your digital goods. In all honesty I don't think a decentralized and "Free" facebook would work. The centralization is a feature that most people want; it's part of why it "just work" without you having to become a system (or a network) administrator. Imag…

The thing about the FSF is that they have been tremendously influential. Facebook runs on quite a number of technologies released under ... the FSF's GPL.

By setting an extremely high bar, they've managed to get a lot of people to move towards that bar. Not as close as they'd like, I'm sure but much closer than they'd otherwise have moved.

The FSF has made a priceless contribution whether or not we're going to see a world that conforms to their vision.

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#84

Post by JWyme »

I believe that with anything the extent that Facebook can do for good equals the extent that it can do for bad. So yes, they have a lot of information that could be used for good, bad, or (more likely) some of both. I certainly don't recall anyone FORCING anyone to click a "like" button nor have a Facebook account. If you are worried about this sort of thing then don't do it. I don't understand why there are so many people attempting to create a rebellion against a service that no one forced them to be a part of.

[1] Clarification

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#85

Post by sinaiman »

code_duck wrote: post #43

>"He has created a network that is first and foremost a gold mine for government surveillance and advertisers." It would be nice for more people to realize this. Really, they're lining up like sheep for government monitoring, and Zuckerberg and Co. are happy to comply. FB seems thrilled with the prospect of being the eyes and ears of Big Brother, actually.

People should just read more. Everything is in Facebook's terms and privacy policy, isn't it? If you can't agree with the terms of service, then you shouldn't use the service IMO.

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#86

Post by sinaiman »

sinaiman wrote: post #85
code_duck wrote: post #43

>"He has created a network that is first and foremost a gold mine for government surveillance and advertisers." It would be nice for more people to realize this. Really, they're lining up like sheep for government monitoring, and Zuckerberg and Co. are happy to comply. FB seems thrilled with the prospect of being the eyes and ears of Big Brother, actually.

People should just read more. Everything is in Facebook's terms and privacy policy, isn't it? If you can't agree with the terms of service, then you shouldn't use the service IMO.

This mentality should also extend to any sites using the "Like" button...they should all be mentioning that they (and their affiliates) place cookies on your system.

Right from Time's privacy policy:

We use cookies to understand Internet usage and to improve our content, offerings and advertisements. For example, we may use cookies to personalize your experience at our web pages (e.g., to recognize you by name when you return to our site), save your password in password-protected areas and enable you to use shopping carts on our sites. We also may use cookies to offer you products, programs or services. Similarly, as part of an arrangement with our business partners (including, those who present or serve the advertisements that you see on our web pages) we may also access cookies placed by others and allow others to access certain cookies placed by us.

We may also use small pieces of code such as "web beacons" or "clear gifs" to collect anonymous and aggregate advertising metrics, such as counting page views, promotion views or advertising responses. These "web beacons" may be used to deliver cookies that conform to our cookie policy. For more information regarding cookies, please click here.

If you're not cool with that, stop visiting the site or disable your cookies. ;)

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#87

Post by michaelchisari »

ubernostrum wrote: post #81
michaelchisari wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer of a decentralized social networking project (Appleseed), I think you have a misconception of how these projects work. Your mother will never have to manage any of that stuff. She'll just log in to socialsite.com and interact with your aunt, who's on othersite.org. If there's an issue with communication between them, the administrators of respective sites will deal with them. Your mom won't notice it a…

Your mother will never have to manage any of that stuff. She'll just log in to socialsite.com and interact with your aunt, who's on othersite.org. As I said when Diaspora first started making headlines, this is incorrect. Both your mother and your aunt would be signing in to (name of decentralized social service).google.com, just like everybody else except for a handful of geeks who take pride in running their own no…

Both your mother and your aunt would be signing in to (name of decentralized social service).google.com, just like everybody else except for a handful of geeks who take pride in running their own nodes.

Or Microsoft's node, or Yahoo's node, or Amazon's node or anyone else with the infrastructure to run a huge scale social site.

But all that aside, you don't consider this a better situation than now, where all data is walled off and silo'd and the biggest player is an effective monopoly with much, much less interest in privacy and data security than Google? And geeks have no option whatsoever to operate a social network independently?

If not, what do you propose, other than acquiescence?

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#88

Post by rdl »

ascendant wrote: post #7

FSF doesn't like a service that doesn't operate exactly how the FSF thinks they should. Shocking. I don't take anything they or their pseudo-communist leader say seriously anymore. Back when Stallman started attacking OpenBSD because of their ports tree I knew he had finally lost it.

The fair criticism of Stallman is that he is absolutist, idealist, extreme, and uncompromising. Whether those things are positive or negative is really up to how you feel about the relative importance of Free Software vs. other issues.

I am personally willing to compromise quite a bit on the free software issues for other gains, but I think the "right to read" consideration for consuming materials other than code are less ok for compromise. I use and enjoy facebook, but look at their motivations and culture as a company before deciding how much to trust them.

I trust the people at facebook a lot more than a lot of companies, so one of my main concerns with facebook is that third parties might purchase, steal, or compel access to their data to use against users (e.g. Corrupt governments).

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#89

Post by georgemcbay »

trotsky wrote: post #79
adw wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Facebook crowd is 500m people. The number who even know what BitTorrent is compared to that is a rounding error.

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-smashes-12000000-bitt... That's from 2008 announcing Pirate Bay had hit 12 million concurrent peers on their tracker. That's not total users, that's total online. Take that number and multiply it by 5 to 10 to estimate total users, double it to account for the rest of the global trackers (low?) and increase it by some percentage to account for 3 years of growth and you're in the…

By having 12 million concurrent peers on their tracker, aren't they pretty much de facto centralized even if the protocol is theoretically decentralized?

If The Pirate Bay disappears tomorrow do all of those users just switch over to another tracker? Very likely not. They'd just wait around to hear about the next Napster->Kazaa->LimeWire->Pirate Bay from their tech savvy friends, remaining mostly oblivious to the technology being used under the hood.

Re: You won't find FSF on Facebook

#90

Post by elvirs »

I personally think advertisers knowing more about preferences is better than if they know less.

Every day we are exposed to crapload of advertisement that are in no way related to me and what those ads do is only annoy me. But there is nothing I can do, I cant turn off all the ads on Time Square, or pay the TV network to turn off all of the ads on my favorite tv channels, same for radio (thanks to adblock I manage to get rid of large portion of ads on the web).

If advertisers knew that I am a male ( a no secret, nothing I would hide) it would escape me from being exposed to all of the annoying ads of pads, make up, and other women centric products. that only would be a huge relief. If advertisers knew I am straight ads for gay social networks would not come up on facebook for me. I can state at least 10 more points.

The bottom line is, as long as a certain lines are not crossed (like diseases, home address, etc.) letting advertisers know more about us could be good.

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