10 ms·
You won't find FSF on Facebook
Well, you might, but they say it isn't them.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- JWyme 16y agoI 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
- elvirs 16y agoI 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.
- wulczer 16y agoHasn't this been discussed before? The Person of the Year award is supposed to be given to the most influential person of the year, not the nicest or the most ethical one. Zuckerberg did become a widely recognizable person and you can't say he has not become influential too. Joseph Stalin got the award twice, 'nuff said. Disclaimer: I'm not comparing, just pointing out that the FSF's reaction is kind of attacking the straw man here.
- r00fus 16y agoI'm making a guess that FSF (and EFF) would probably have preferred the most influential person to win, namely Julian Assange.
- tzs 16y agoHow is Assanage more influential? A lot of the opposition groups behind the mass uprisings sweeping the Arab world credit Facebook as a key tool for organizing their revolutions. Facebook is seriously changing people's lives on a large scale. Wikileaks has mostly provided diplomatic gossip, with a few things tossed in that will harm people, and a smaller number of things tossed in that will help people.
- chalst 16y agoIn Tunisie, at least, many people have said the Wikileaks exposure of Ben Ali's corruption were influential. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/25/whispering_at_autocrats?page=0,0 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/25/whispering_...
- protomyth 16y agoYou gotta wonder though, how many people are touched each day by the work of Zuckerberg versus the work of Assange.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Natsu 16y agoVery true. http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/13/wikileaks_and_the_tunisia_protests http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/13/wikileak...
- statictype 16y agoIf directly touching people's lives was any sort of criteria then I think Jonathan Ive or Steve Jobs ought to be a better candidate. Or Larry/Sergey.
- ryanto 16y agoThis 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 foremost a gold mine for government surveillance and advertisers. I would think just about any popular web site would be a gold mine for such information. It has nothing to do with Facebook. Doesn't this sentence hold true if we replace Facebook with Google? This seems like a tinfoil/scare everyone into believing Facebook is evil and out to get you. > and then maybe relays it to the intended destination, if it suits him. In some cases he does not — witness the recent reports of Facebook's messaging service blocking messages based on the words and links in them, because those links point to services which Facebook would prefer we not discuss. Comeon, examples/proof please. Is Facebook blocking URLs to competition or child porn sites? There is a pretty big difference here. I would think that the FSF should be on Facebook, trying to spread their message, gaining support, and discovering new users. They have an interesting problem, a lot of support, and some very big challenges ahead of them... and yet they spend time publishing articles like this and making fancy dislike buttons. FSF you should be ashamed.
- jambo 16y agoFacebook could (and probably does) collect the data necessary to track people around the web, whether or not they click on 'like buttons'. Whether other sites, like Google, can do this too, is immaterial. When people are logged into Facebook, an ever increasing slice of their browsing history can be logged and tied to their real identity. Almost none of the people I know who aren't hackers have any awareness of this.
- kprobst 16y ago> Whether other sites, like Google, can do this too, is immaterial. It's material if the FSF isn't putting up a "Google is evil" page on their website and handing out "Don't google me, bro" buttons, like they are doing with Facebook. The FSF seems to think it's better to attack Facebook with ideological ad corporatio arguments, rather than concentrate their resources on educating people about how to their services intelligently. Facebook isn't sharing anything about me that I don't want them to know. And I understand that if I'm not paying for it, I'm the product. So I don't give them my address or my phone number or my cat's nickname. And that's what I tell every friend and family member on Facebook. I don't tell them that Zuckerberg is "evil". The FSF has tried that before with other companies and you'd think they would have figured out by now that it simply doesn't work.
- IvarTJ 16y agoFacebook appears to have had a tremendous effect on countries like Tunisia and Egypt. The alternatives that FSF lists may not have been as effective because of the technical difficulty for a large number of people to set up such a service.
- michaelchisari 16y agoTrue, but most people won't have to set up an Appleseed server. Most people will just join an existing one, much like email services. And the potential for decentralized alternatives in places like Tunisia and Egypt are much greater than Facebook. Centralized services are much easier to block or shut down than decentralization.
- VladRussian 16y agoRevolutions've happened before Facebook. There was some anecdotal evidence that more people went on the streets of Egypt when Internet got shut down and they couldn't anymore just sit in front of the computer and read updates.
- Rariel 16y agoThank you!! Because revolutions didn't happen until facebook/twitter were invented. They might have helped, but this was brewing for ummm 30 years or so.
- ascendant 16y agoFSF 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.
- rdl 16y agoThe 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).
- joebananas 16y agoWhy do you use words like communism when you don't know what they mean?
- gloob 16y agoI expect that by "communism" the poster means "a belief system I don't agree with"[0]. (In fairness, given that there are probably dozens of mutually-incompatible Marxist/socialist/communist philosophies, combined with the poster's use of the prefix "pseudo", means that pretty much any belief can, with sufficient effort, be described as "pseudo-communist".) [0] (My understanding (I'm Canadian) is that this use of the word is a rather quaint Americanism, and has, fortunately, mostly failed to propagate into other dialects of English.)
- tedunangst 16y ago"Everything must be shared" sounds like a reasonable (if simplified) definition for both communism and FSF's goals.
- gojomo 16y agohttp://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Software-Foundation/112270732121738 http://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Software-Foundation/11227...
- mkr-hn 16y agoThat's not official according to the article.
- gojomo 16y agoDoes that matter much? The Facebook Likernet is coming, and the FSF will be represented on it, regardless of its preferences. Also, an FSF fan club without the most doctrinaire FSFers (who refuse to use Facebook) is an interesting syncretic phenomenon in itself, for reasons that both overlap and diverge from the reasons the FSF itself is interesting.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jfm3 16y agoWhy do you use words like "Unix pipes" when you don't know what they mean?
- mkr-hn 16y agoI don't even know what he means. Is he talking about | or BSD sockets? It's a mystery.
- chriscorcoran 16y ago| not BSD Sockets.
- chriscorcoran 16y agoYeah, that was an attempt at sarcasm. Clearly it didn't work. I was tying to imply that FSF types want all web apps to be accessible via the command line. <sarcasm>Because who needs a fancy tabbed browser when you've got lynx?</sarcasm> Just for the record, I am well aware of what Unix pipes are and how to use them :)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- gloob 16y agoI don't entirely understand why you would spend your time trying to imply something about the FSF that is completely unrelated to what the FSF cares about. Could you fill me in, perhaps?
- chriscorcoran 16y agoI tried to make a joke playing off the stereotype of what some people think those working for the FSF look like. In short that they're all typical unix grey beards and are professional internet curmudgeons. It didn't work. Sorry.
- smcl 16y ago"Because 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" I thought you had to have a facebook account to "like" something, either on facebook itself or sites with the FB "like" link. Anyone know otherwise? edit: Just logged out of FB, opened a random Time article (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2049569,00.html http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2049569,00.htm...) and clicked "like" - and was asked to login to FB. Hmm
- elehack 16y agoThe "Like" button infrastructure (images, JavaScript) is loaded from Facebook's servers via a cross-domain request. Those servers can theoretically use cookies or IP addresses in conjunction with referrers to do tracking even without clicking Like, for both authenticated and unauthenticated users. Some content is loaded off of their CDN, which I highly doubt is doing any tracking. The non-CDN pings are quite possibly not doing tracking, but it would be possible for Facebook to enable some tracking with most people never noticing.
- trotsky 16y agoWhy wouldn't they be doing tracking? It seems like a big portion of the benefit to them in doing connect/like/etc. They do make their money selling ads, and they are seemingly hot to collect as much information as possible.
- stanley 16y agoThis is Facebook we're talking about, right? Of course they're tracking. If no other reason than for ad retargetting.
- mkr-hn 16y agoIt seems like logging enough detail to matter on so many loads would cost more in time and money than the data is worth. edit: And then I did the math. A 15 byte IP (pretending all IPs are made of four 3 digit numbers) plus a 400 byte URL across 1b accesses is less than half of a terabyte hard drive. Guess we're doomed.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- michaelchisari 16y agoSmall quibble, they're using the wrong url for Appleseed. It's actually: http://opensource.appleseedproject.org http://opensource.appleseedproject.org
- jdp23 16y agoAt one level, it's the thought that counts -- great to see Appleseed mentioned. At another level, it's disappointing they didn't take the time to get things right
- code_duck 16y ago>"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.
- jrockway 16y agoAs we've learned from the whole HBGary Federal thing, there is plenty of money to be made in doing the government's dirty work.
- redthrowaway 16y agoExcept they didn't make any money, which is the sad irony of the whole situation. Yes, there are likely many others out there willing to do the work, but the fact that H&W, a DoJ-recommended firm, turned to HBGary et al, who didn't have any real experience doing what they said they could, suggests that this isn't something the gov't is doing regularly...yet.
- sinaiman 16y agoPeople 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.
- sinaiman 16y agoThis 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. ;)
- jwwest 16y agoThe public at large doesn't care and more to the point and the public at large usually aren't affected by loss of privacy - it doesn't inconvenience them enough to bother them. Diaspora and other such projects are a complete joke. People aren't going to run their own server. Make it easy, make it fast and get their friends to use it, that's it. Nothing else matters.
- michaelchisari 16y agoPeople aren't going to run their own server. Why do people keep repeating this fallacy? People won't have to. None of these projects are focused on single-user P2P approach. For all of 30 seconds, Diaspora insinuated that, but that was before they had actually written any code. If you feel these projects (including mine) is a joke, I'd love to hear feedback why, but please don't repeat falsehoods about how the software is meant to be used.
- jwwest 16y agoSimplicity mostly. People want to be abstracted away from the nitty gritty details. Open ID failed because you couldn't explain it to your grandmother. But you can explain, "oh yeah, you can just click this button and login with your facebook account" Maybe this is just marketing. If individuals don't run their own server and hold control of their own data, then who does? Whoever is running the node. I know as nerds, we like to get our geek boners over cool projects that aren't mainstream, and fight the man and all, but people on the street could give a crap less. It means that these are stillborn ideas. Does this mean you should stop fighting the good fight? No, but I wouldn't hold my breath for critical mass.
- michaelchisari 16y agopeople on the street could give a crap less. It means that these are stillborn ideas. People don't need to know what an apache, django or drupal is in order to use a website based on it. It's a fallacy to think that the user has to be aware of what the underlying software is in order for that software to catch on.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- iuguy 16y agoThat's alright, I wasn't planning on friending the FSF anyway. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that people have the right to their views and their right to licence things and act accordingly, but the zealotry in the FSF is just too much for me to handle.
- juiceandjuice 16y agoUntil there's a Free Utilities Foundation, or even a Free Infrastructure Foundation, there won't be a 'free' facebook.
- drm237 16y agoDon't look now but Adsense and every other ad network can track your movements online too! In keeping with their Facebook stance, FSF should block the GoogleBot and get off of Google too.