13 ms·

Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project."

350 points by psawaya 15y ago

partytime 15y ago
Said the man who reads web pages through an email client.
- gcb 15y ago
  You aren't more same just because you read email in webpages Not that it makes it any betterfor him either.
- partytime 15y ago
  Thanks for the downvotes, everyone. My point was that even though he happens to be spot-on in his very pithy remark about the disease that is Facebook, if you know anything at all about RMS -- or have interacted with him personally, for a minute or two -- you'll know that he's so far off the page from the vast bulk of humanity (in terms of how he communicates) that it's difficult to take anything he says about the pros and cons of social media very seriously.
  - waqf 15y ago
    I didn't understand that comment, either. Was your argument "he's right, but nobody agrees with him, so he's wrong"?
    - Karunamon 15y ago
      You're being purposefully obtuse at this point. Maybe: "Perhaps someone who has such narrow and specialized communication needs that they need to browse the web via email isn't in the best position to be dictating what communication methods the world at large should use". Boiled down futher: "What's good (and bad) for one person with specific needs isn't the same for everyone else".
      - partytime 15y ago
        Yeah, that's pretty much what I was getting at. Thanks.
        logjam 15y ago
        No, that's not what you were getting at, at all. You made nothing more than an ad hominem attack. First you wanted us to discount Stallman's argument because of...wait for it...the way he reads web pages. Second you wanted us to discount Stallman's argument because "he's so far off the page from the vast bulk of humanity (in terms of how he communicates)". Can't imagine how such a mess at communicating and someone so very far off the page keeps duping all those folks who keep inviting him to speak (as well as the folks who gave him the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer award, the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, andseveral honorary doctorates): http://www.fsf.org/events/rms-speeches.html http://www.fsf.org/events/rms-speeches.html Mar 01, Madrid, Spain "Por una sociedad digital libre" Mar 07, Sunnyvale, CA "Copyright vs. Community" Mar 13, Republic of Singapore "Free Software and Your Freedom" Mar 14, Republic of Singapore "For a Free Digital Society" Mar 27, New York, NY "For a Free Digital Society" Mar 29, West Lafayette, IN "The Free Software Movement" Apr 03, Ashland, OR "Copyright vs. Community" Apr 04, Ashland, OR "For a Free Digital Society" Jul 10, Dresden, Germany "The Free Software Movement" Some communicator. Now. Do you actually have anything at all to say about Stallman's actual argument(s) in that thread? Did you even read them?
      - logjam 15y ago
        You just conflated "need" with "choose" to make what is either an obtuse or dishonest point for your own purposes. Which is it?
        Karunamon 15y ago
        Do you know why RMS wgets webpages to his email instead of reading them through a browser like 99.999% of the web-using world? If the answer is no, then you don't know if it's a need or a choice or some variation between the two - and I daresay you're accusing him of something untoward. If the answer is yes, which is it?
- babarock 15y ago
  Completely agreed, he completely lacks class. Even better, let's attack his ideas on basis that I don't like his beard, or that he looks a little chubby. He's not living in "the past", his living in his convictions. And that in itself is to be admired.
  - 3143 15y ago
    It's only admirable if you agree with those convictions. Otherwise you have to end up admiring people like the Westboro Baptists and the KKK.
    - logjam 15y ago
      False equivalence. But do go ahead and give us your argument for how hypocrisy is more admirable.
      - 3143 15y ago
        It's not. Babarock said that living in your convictions is itself admirable. But I disagree - if your convictions are bad, living by them is bad too.
jpeterson 15y ago
This is the only time I've ever agreed with RMS. Facebook is a disease. Please do not require me to log in to it for your cause.
- Estragon 15y ago
  Came back from a talk by a Facebook Data Team member a little while ago. Don't have time to look it up now, but he cited Bakshy et al 2012 as a paper describing Facebook research in which a proportion of "Likes" from friends were censored for selected users in order to gather information on a social science question. The talk was pretty incoherent on what question they were investigating; I get the impression that it was pretty innocuous, something like "more activity in your feed makes you share more," maybe. Still, it makes me wonder why people are signing up for this fishbowl.
  - ben1040 15y ago
    http://www.scribd.com/facebook/d/78445521-Role-of-Social-Networks-in-Information-Diffusion http://www.scribd.com/facebook/d/78445521-Role-of-Social-Net... This looks like it could be the paper in question.
- freehunter 15y ago
  I agree that Facebook login should not be mandatory, but I do like the option to not have to create another account with every site just to leave a comment or try their service. Facebook and OpenID should be standard options, as well as local accounts. Although I dislike some of Facebook's policies, I don't hate them.
  - salgernon 15y ago
    I deleted my facebook account because I determined that what it cost me to host my data there (and to consume their services) was more than I was willing to spend - and that this cost was creeping up over time without giving me the opportunity to decline. The currency in this case is the information that I'm providing them, either explicitly through postings and 'Like's on external sites, or implicitly by their plumbing of my social graph. I would actually feel much better if facebook were a paid service, since then they would have an incentive to maintain me as a customer. I'd rather that a third party with whom I've already established a financial relationship (Apple, Amazon, UPS or Fedex, etc) could provide an authentication token that could be used as a universal login.
mxweas 15y ago
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/File:Stallman-medres.jpg https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/File:Stallman-medres.jpg
- Estragon 15y ago
  The caption on the page linking to it makes it even funnier. Still, I don't think this has anything to do with the thread.
evgen 15y ago
Outspoken misanthrope with poor social skills and a tendency towards an absolutist black/white view of the world dislikes social networking? Color me surprised...
- Udo 15y ago
  I agree about the absolutist black/white world view but it is unclear to me how RMS is a misanthrope. Skimming the whole discussion on that mailing list it's also apparent to me that - while RMS did go offtopic by advising people to not use Facebook - poor social skills were in fact exhibited by the next commenter who replied to him in a very sarcastic and hostile way. Taking the subject matter into account it would have made sense to instead chastise Stallman for exploiting an entirely different discussion (apparently about some student project) and injecting his own absolutist view into the original story that was at best only tangentially connected to Facebook.
  - msbarnett 15y ago
    Well, there is the mailing list incident where, when someone congratulated another contributor on the birth of their child, Stallman labelled the entire phenomenon of childbirth as "menacing" and went on to say "these birth announcements also spread the myth that having a baby is something to be proud of, which fuels natalist pressure, which leads to pollution, extinction of wildlife, poverty, and ultimately mass starvation." Not to get into the whole discussion about whether that was the right forum or etc, but by definition I'd say being generally anti-humanity-propogating-itself meets the bar for "misanthropy".
    - zbuc 15y ago
      Also the conversation a few weeks back where free software enthusiasts who developed non-free software at their jobs were talking with him... http://lunduke.com/?p=2273 http://lunduke.com/?p=2273 > You see, I make software for most of my living. And I talked with Stallman (in email) before the show, about how I would love to get any ideas he has on how a developer, of proprietary software, can move that software to a Free and Open license… while still keeping food on the table for his family. From a practical standpoint. > This is a topic that has come up time and again. And I really wanted to get Stallman’s thoughts on the matter. > So, near the beginning of the interview, I ask him about that. How does someone like me make the move to working on only Free Software and still support his family? > The end result was that he feels that all developers and businesses of proprietary software should fail. And that it is more important for there to not be proprietary software… than it is to be able to feed your children. > I’m not kidding. I’m not exaggerating. I’m not putting words in his mouth. I even asked him, point blank, to verify his stance. > He did not say that having Free Software is more important than kids having food to eat. I repeat: He said that it was more important that non-free software be gone… than for you to be able to feed your kids. That’s how evil he thinks non-free software is. Evil enough to justify causing significant harm to your family to do away with a small amount of it. (Of course this isn’t the first time Stallman has been anti-children.)
negamax 15y ago
And everyone reading this will be sharing the link on Facebook :)
sp332 15y ago
I love how the response is basically "c'mon Richard, let's be more short-sighted about this." https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-January/006993.html https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-Jan...
eob 15y ago
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.
noduerme 15y ago
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.
- VMG 15y ago
  > 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. While many of my friends enjoy Facebook and I'm still to lazy to upload a profile image and mainly use it to find out where the next birthday party is located, I really can't say that I am feeling oppressed. Some people just like camp.
  - anon808 15y ago
    I don't think the original comment is saying there's something wrong with liking camp, but there's something wrong with people liking camp because they're supposed to like camp. of course we can't look into people's hearts and see if they actually like something or they're just liking it because they're supposed to like it, but if you pay attention and see how much care people put into doing things, it becomes obvious if it's an actual willed choice or a default reaction.
    - gavinlynch 15y ago
      "but there's something wrong with people liking camp because they're supposed to like camp" Huh? Don't understand what you are talking about... A quick study of human history and psychology will show that this is a bedrock of human behavior. For good and ill, it is what I would regard a well-accepted facet of human nature. We wouldn't be the species we are without the pressures of 'social norms'
mc32 15y ago
I feel it more a mutualistic (symbiotic?) relationship. If it were not, I believe people would abandon the platform --which they may, at soem point when something else proves more beneficial to them. Kind of like gut fauna --but more optional than gut fauna. Parasitic, seems a bit strong --but I guess, to make a point, the analogy kind of works --just not for me.
franciscoapinto 15y ago
The ensuing discussion is good. I recommend you all read this reply; I laughed pretty hard https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-January/006998.html https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-Jan....
- hackermom 15y ago
  I can't quite see what's funny about the response.
  - zem 15y ago
    the combination of a pertinent observation (that facebook's "800 million active users" userbase was perhaps less relevant than one might think, or why spam mailing lists with a link to a facebook poll), and the over-the-top comedic writing style used to point it out. i laughed pretty hard at it too.
AznHisoka 15y ago
Dunno what is the point of this article, but I definitely agree with what he says.. did the OP post this to embarrass this dude? it did the opposite for me.
- psawaya 15y ago
  Not at all. I sympathize with what rms is saying, and hoped it would provoke discussion about the daily tradeoffs of using Facebook.
smashing 15y ago
I just thought Facebook was a way for millennials to share photos online. It is likely riding on a wave of "easy enough for anyone" that technology provides. Nevertheless, it is a company out to make a profit, so it does provide lessons for people who use this site. Anyway, that's me defending Facebook for the day. Have a good one ;)
- psawaya 15y ago
  According to this (dated) study, Facebook has a fair share of Gen X'ers. http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-social-network-users/ http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-social-net...
  - mhewett 15y ago
    Most of my Baby Boom-era friends are on Facebook. Some of them are on it a LOT.
fudged 15y ago
I agree with many of Stallman's views to some extent, but it's very hard to ignore that he is willing to sacrifice anything and everything for what are essentially minor decisions. It's good that we have him around to consider the utopian extremist viewpoint, even if it's rarely the favorable option. We aren't all made of money... the benefits outweigh the risks for most services where we pay with our ad-viewing, closed platforms, and information gathering. People can volunteer time and effort into building free systems, but nobody is going to donate data centers and storage space. I think there are limitations to the free mentality for widely adopted services.
- why-el 15y ago
  They are no longer minor decisions once they are adopted by the masses.
  - fudged 15y ago
    An instance of a common practice is a minor decision, in my opinion. You may be adding fuel to the fire, but the proportion is insignificant.
derefr 15y ago
> In other words, the question of comparing the good of these projects against the harm of Facebook arises because someone made an snap choice. Who says it was a snap choice? For X project that needs viral promotion to achieve critical mass (either in support--like a donation drive--or just participation--like a vote), you can rank places to put that mechanism by how viral and well-connected the networks that "flow through" that place are. Facebook frequently tops such rankings, if there isn't a specific niche hang-out available where you can target all the "super-connector" nodes at once.
rbarooah 15y ago
Many of Stallman's complaints about Facebook ( http://stallman.org/facebook.html http://stallman.org/facebook.html ) apply equally to Google. Does anyone know whether he regards them in the same light?
- jrockway 15y ago
  Take a guess: https://www.google.com/webhp?q=stallman%20google https://www.google.com/webhp?q=stallman%20google
  - rbarooah 15y ago
    Most of that seems to be aimed at ChromeOS - which is predictable. I'm more interested in what he thinks of Google as a service.
- babarock 15y ago
  Does it really matter? As much as I agree with rms on the matter, I don't want him to become the High Judge of what's good and what's evil.
  - rbarooah 15y ago
    Wanting to know his opinion doesn't make him the High Judge. I'm curious because slthough I'm critical of Google for various reasons, I think it's hard to make a case against the value that Google search has brought to the world. In the particular thread about Facebook RMS is pretty absolute in his boycott. I wondered whether he'd be more nuanced with Google.
- koeselitz 15y ago
  If you follow the first link on the page you linked to there ("I don't use it") there is a brief discussion of his view of Gmail and Google+: "As for Facebook and Google+, I reject them on principle because they require people to give their 'real names'. I am proud to identify myself when stating my views; I can afford to do that because I am in a fairly safe position. There are people who rationally fear reprisals (from employers, gangsters, bullies, or the state) if they state their views. For their sake, let's reject any social networking site which insists on being told a user's real name... Google+ says it will offer to hide the user's real name, but demands people prove an 'established identity' or provide ID. I am suspicious of this requirement, but not sure what it will mean in practice..." "People sometimes ask me to recommend an email service. The two ethical issues for an email service are (1) whether you can use it without running any nonfree software (including nonfree Javascript code from the site), and (2) whether it respects your privacy... Last I heard, Gmail was satisfactory on issue 1, and probably so are many others. On issue 2, I have no way to verify that any email service is satisfactory. Therefore, I have no recommendation to offer... However, I can suggest that it may be wise to use an email service that is not connected with your search engine. That way you can be almost sure that your email contents don't influence your search results. You shouldn't identify yourself to your search engine in any case."
jpdoctor 15y ago
I love rms, but he needs to learn to spend his time speaking for things and not against things. How'd the campaign against Apple go, rms?
- psawaya 15y ago
  Here's a good counterargument, entitled "In Defense of Negativity": http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20110903-00 http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20110903-00
  - majmun 15y ago
    From that site: "Should a campaign for abolishing child labor talk only about how valuable adult workers are to their employers or how happy kids are when they don't work?" No, they should provide better more efficient alternative than child labor. "Should a campaign trying to abolish land mines talk only about the benefits of bomb-free fields and intact lower limbs?" No, they should provide better alternative to land mines so everybody switches to it. "Should a free speech organization only speak out about the social welfare brought by a free press and never against acts of censorship?" No, they should provide better means of communication that cannot be censored like that.
    - AlexandrB 15y ago
      > No, they should provide better alternative to land mines so everybody switches to it. This is ridiculous. You're saying that anti-landmine orgs should spend their time finding more efficient ways to kill people. > No, they should provide better more efficient alternative than child labor. What if no such alternative exists? Just because it's economically efficient, doesn't mean it's right.
      - majmun 15y ago
        > This is ridiculous. You're saying that anti-landmine orgs should spend their time finding more efficient ways to kill people. In a sense that this new weapon would obsolete land mines, and thus solve all problems of land mines. I don't see nothing ridiculous about that. > What if no such alternative exists? Just because it's economically efficient, doesn't mean it's right. Let us believe that it is not like that, otherwise ultimatly everyone that not uses child labor will die out, all that not uses land mines will lose a war. And no amount of negativity will stop it.
feralchimp 15y ago
I was an outspoken Facebook-hater for a long time. Perhaps my most quotable moment on HN to date was saying "I have no love for their product or their business model, but their engineering is diesel." My wife recently convinced me to give it another try. I didn't use my complete name, and was judicious about the information I associated with my profile. And yet, I proceeded to connect in a deep and healthy way with some people that I'd fallen out of touch with, and nurtured some newer relationships. It's a tool that has a Tendency to be dangerous, prying, and abusive to its members. But even as a field of vast moral hazard, I've come to view it as "navigable and worth the risks." Perhaps not the most glowing endorsement, but if they can convince me they're more valuable than they are dangerous, they've really done some things right in the last few years.
- joering2 15y ago
  > connect in a deep and healthy way with some people that I'd fallen out of touch with You must have had fallen out of touch for a reason, hadn't you? I think this is the major reason why I am not using Facebook to find and connect with my old friends. If those connection would have been worth keeping up with, I am sure I wouldn't have lost them at the first place. Now, of course there are stories when some family members got lost at teen age and found each other through social network, I get it, but those are in minor, gems worth a short article on social blog. After you re-connected with them again, after a while, most likely the same thing will happen. You will get out of regular touch and they will fall in the grey zone. Of course its harder to "loose" people nowaday because we living in much smaller world. And on the top of that, if you are a hard worker, if you have family, a bunch of close friends with whom you socialize, go to restaurants, movies, camping, etc, then do you really find time to socialize online? Isn't it enough that we forget about our spouses or parents birthdays sometimes, about anniversaries, other important events, don't always make on time to pick up son or daughter from school? I believe if you at least try to fullfill your daily obligations towards your job, families and friends, then you don't have time for social networking.
  - JoeAltmaier 15y ago
    Lots of rationalizations for why you don't keep in touch. Lets admit that geography, convenience, jobs get in the way as often as anything. It takes little time investment to write a thoughtful note to an old friend, facebook or not. It doesn't have to be family vs friends, we can make time for both.
ktizo 15y ago
Using Facebook as a platform for international development projects is actually abhorrent. If you do then you are requiring people who need your help, or that you want to work with, to enter into an entirely unnecessary secondary contractual agreement with an intrusive marketing company, for no reason other than sheer lazyness.
jordhy 15y ago
I can relate to his feelings. Socializing does come easy to scientists. Yet, even with all its shortcomings, I guess Facebook makes us waist less time in trivial social interactions with distant friends while still keeping in touch. Stallman is almost always polarizing, but there's something here. Does FB make society less or more efficient? Where's the proof?
kefs 15y ago
Not completely unrelated, but Exfoliate for Android (not by me) is a great tool to automate deletion of your Facebook content (posts, likes, photos, etc..) that are older than x days. It's incredibly useful, but a hard find if you don't know it exists.. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.worb.android.exfoliate&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.worb.andro...
- sp332 15y ago
  This might make it harder for normal people to find, but FB keeps your data around after it's "deleted" and I'm sure law enforcement has access to it as well.
  - awakeasleep 15y ago
    You're right, but don't miss the bigger 'security picture' where we don't deal with absolutes, but probability and ease. This wouldn't protect you from a CIA sponsored deep dive of your information, but it does give you a considerable advantage over your peers, scammers, and many levels of legal inquiry.
marshallp 15y ago
At this point facebook is just a branch of the NSA and CIA. They're laughing it up while the clueless kid Zuckerberg thinks he's creating "a social graph". How about an "open" social graph you jackass - you know, THE WEB. Hopefully governments step in to break up this evil oonopoly that's on it's way to another microsoft, AT&T, Standard Oil. However, it might too late already, since the NSA and CIA desperately want facebook to exist.
- jrockway 15y ago
  What? Can't the NSA use an open graph just as easily as a closed one? And with Facebook, you only have to worry about the government abusing the graph. With an open graph, anyone could abuse it. (Including: advertisers, angry ex-s, people that were upset that they lost a flamewar with you, etc.)
  - marshallp 15y ago
    When people use the open web they censor themselves. Also, on facebook people engage in bullshittery, while on the open, sites such as this people at least might learn/teach a thing or two.
- pork 15y ago
  I don't normally indulge trolls, but you're priceless! So the NSA and CIA (the government) covertly control and encourage Facebook, but you want the same government to save you from this "evil"? Cognitive dissonance much?
  - marshallp 15y ago
    NSA and CIA are not the elected government that you see. Thre president or congress are not in charge, only the appearance of being in charge is shown. There's a whole secret world we're not privy to.
Karunamon 15y ago
So am I the only person who thinks this characterization of facebook as a "parasite" or a "disease" is meaningless, useless hyperbole? Facebook isn't any more of a "parasite" than email.
- nooop 15y ago
  email is not a private company looking for using you as their product.
  - Karunamon 15y ago
    "Using" - more like you provide information which is the price of admission. Same as it is with any other company providing a free service. Characterizing Facebook as "evil" for this is quite silly. And much like email, you can roll your own. It's much harder, but it's possible.
    - nooop 15y ago
      If people are willing to give up their privacy to use facebook and find value in using facebook, i'm fine with that and i won't enter a jihad to make them stop using facebook, although when i can i try to make sure they are a minimum informed about what they are giving up (while trying not to be too insistent, just providing information). As for you can roll your own facebook, this is absolutely false. Facebook tries to get the whole planet registering with them, and don't have and probably will never have a protocol letting a fully featured "facebook bis" integrate with them (except maybe if legally bound to). e-mail is a completely distributed service. People using gmail are not segregated from the others. Now I'm also not pretending that facebook is evil for all that. I was initially reacting at your comparison between facebook and e-mail, which made little sense.
  - codesuela 15y ago
    substitute "e" with a "g" and there you go
- grepherder 15y ago
  I'm not taking any sides on this, but yours is another hyperbole, Facebook is definitely not as harmless as email. If every email from everyone around the world went through the same company, and they could data mine it as they wished, then they would be on equal terms.
loverobots 15y ago
Facebook may have a million negatives but for many families FB has replaced email and other forms of communication. Remember, many families have members in Europe, China, California, Texas...Costa Rica...or college so FB is an excellent tool to share what happened (new baby born for example) in real time. They are other methods no doubt, but FB seems perfect for that. I have an account to do just that, keep track of what's happening with my extended family and friends I lost touch with ages ago. A lot of the pictures, comments, likes and so on are designed to show off but so what? It mirrors real life ;)
babarock 15y ago
Off topic: Why is he signing his mail with "Dr" Richard Stallman? His Wikipedia page only mentions a BA.
- rpt 15y ago
  He has a bunch of honorary doctorates. I guess those confer the right to sign Dr. (?)
  - jpdoctor 15y ago
    Yes. BTW, he did not finish his PhD, which he began at MIT. Side note: MIT does not award honorary doctorates at all.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
gavinlynch 15y ago
I am somewhat surprised to find that apparently I am just about the only one who has nothing but complete ambivalence to Facebook. I don't see it as the parasitic pariah Stallman makes it out to be, nor do I dote on every status update of a friend or family member that scrolls across my screen. If you were to ask me if I hate Facebook, I might agree. But the truth is I hardly use it enough to muster up much of a reaction. I almost never post. The only thing I really use it for is to get invited to things or figure out when someone's birthday is. I'm secretly very lamely proud of my non-activity. But it's a scourge against humanity? It's a parasite on our populace? It suckers unsuspecting people into a one-way relationship where they are wholesale taken advantage of with no gain? I call bollocks.
- ceol 15y ago
  You're not the only one. Most of us avoid posting because of our ambivalence.
9999 15y ago
Stallman is right. What Facebook provides is a completely unoriginal set of social networking tools wrapped in a mediocre presentation layer that requires you to surrender some of your most precious human rights in order to access it. Their users are their product. They sell you to advertisers and even more unsavory corporations like Zynga that are looking to lure you into a constant dopamine feedback loop to sucker you into buying virtual goods, so you can get that same dopamine fix faster still. Both corporations are parasites of the worst sort, because you're not only giving up your privacy, freedom, and money, you're doing so for a short term and minimal reward. There will not be another Facebook, you can no longer be a "social network." Social networking at this point is just a common feature set that countless websites can easily replicate. In the future, social networking should just be a protocol that enables features like sharing photos, anecdotes, and relationships using a decentralized system. Bit torrent with identity. Or without identity if you so choose.
- ebiester 15y ago
  ...easy enough that my parents can use? That doesn't introduce a cognitive load of "oh shit how do I do that again?"
  - 9999 15y ago
    If it's a decentralized system and it uses a free and open protocol, there could be many different clients. I am sure many of them would be very easy to use, and as far as cognitive load goes, Facebook's many capricious and poorly considered UI sea changes over the years have created countless cases of "oh shit how do I do that now?"
- crazygringo 15y ago
  > that requires you to surrender some of your most precious human rights in order to access it I'm genuinely curious, which human rights? I created an account, don't really use it... and don't feel like I've had any human rights taken away.
  - tedunangst 15y ago
Alind 15y ago
I hate using real name on FB. But I really enjoy stalking people on FB. :D
aangjie 15y ago
While i was on facebook and left, my decision to leave was accelerated by the privacy concerns, rather than being the first(temporally) cause themselves. Infact, the first thing that caused me to worry about being on fb, was the amount of time i ended up spending there. All in all, am happy i am not connected/updated with all my friend's statuses. :-)
javert 15y ago
First time I've ever agreed with Stallman.
psychotik 15y ago
I have a love-hate/hypocritical relationship with Facebook, but one that prevents me from not using it. Even if I want to not use it, I have to because: 1) I have a product that users want to use with Facebook, so I need to use FB APIs etc and understand how it works for real users 2) I have a product that can benefit from viral-ness on Facebook I wonder how many other developers share such ambivalence about being forced to use a tool that you might otherwise abandon.
- bullies 15y ago
  You don't have to use facebook, you want to. A product doesn't force, humans do.
  - psychotik 15y ago
    To understand user scenarios, I _have_ to.
    - Ideka 15y ago
      Classic: "having to" vs "wanting to".
stcredzero 15y ago
I think I know what Stallman is getting at. I've been thinking about how resistance movements work. In general, they use the power of personal connections to resist the power of a government. Facebook amplified the effect of this kind of power for the Arab Spring by augmenting those kinds of connections. What if those governments had preexisting intelligence about the social graph? In World War II, Germans used paper punch cards to collate information about the so called "undesirable" residents of France and other occupied countries, and rounded most of them up in a matter of days. Just having most of the social graph in digital form would be devastating intelligence to be used by an oppressive government. I hope the engineers at Facebook have put together a "self destruct button" for Mark Zuckerburg, and that he would have the courage to use it if the government turned oppressive. In all likelihood, this did not/will not happen, however.
- biafra 15y ago
  I am very sure they do not have such a button. Primarily because they do not think about those consequences. To the contrary: Their social graph is so valuable I am sure they will do anything to protect it from being destroyed. And how do you know your government has turned oppressive? It won't be as visible as with the NSDAP the next time. Some would argue its already under way.
- zethraeus 15y ago
  Destroying Facebook from the inside, assuming you had control over and an understanding of whatever system they use to manage their server farms, would surely be trivial. I highly doubt there's something as apocalyptic as a designed "self destruct", or even a need for it.
bullies 15y ago
As a kid I was bullied for using my computer to talk to people. Now I'm bullied for not using my computer (facebook) to talk to people. The bullies never die.
shreeshga 15y ago
My social networking service: * multiple sets of friends(limited) with whom i frequently interact. * which is peer to peer. * can use from mobile. * broadcasting messages,status,pictures and songs. Facebook is not.
Ziomislaw 15y ago
Look who's talking. GPL 3 is more of a parasite than even facebook imo.
- Ideka 15y ago
  Care to elaborate?
fioll 15y ago
Facebook isn't a free service based on GNU software. I don't even see why there is any discussion at all about this. I like Stallman despite his quirks. And I respect his views. But he won't influence my decision to use Facebook or other non-GNU software. My approach, which I wish Stallman would support but he never will, is to use whatever is free that is a good service, even if it isn't truly GNU free and open-source. That is because I'm not only cheap, but I respect that often people that do good work are inspired by money. One day, after the end of the human world, the chosen few will be surrounded with those that want to do what is best for each other, not themselves. And that is the day Richard looks forward to, and he is an activist to that effect, and I think that is wonderful. However, I think he thinks he can make this happen on his own by denying capitalism. That is the wrong tact. Free can be embraced by ignoring money altogether instead of fighting it.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
nirai 15y ago
1) There is a whole bunch of messages by Stallman in that thread. 2) That discussion triggered me to install the do-not-track-plus extension in Chrome. Thanks Stallman!
richurd 15y ago
>2012 >Facebook ISHYGDDT
danbmil99 15y ago
I'm not so concerned about the privacy issues because I don't put much of my life there. For me FB is just crap UI/UX, everything about it seems non-intuitive and goes against my grain, and I cannot use it as an effective tool for what I want to do with my social network. Epiphany: maybe these two things are related?
kaiwen1 15y ago
The problem is not Facebook per se. It is that the human condition is such that FB appeals to us in vast disproportion from its value. The collective time spent on FB is travesty to our species. It's not the only one to be sure, but to the extent that people can avoid Facebook they and we are better off. Facebook is not benefiting society. It has harming it.
spodek 15y ago
255 comments and nobody mentioned Diaspora? The project is small and mainly full of geeks now, but so was Wikipedia when I started promoting it. Everybody told me it would never succeed then, but they all use it now. More relevant to this discussion, it provides a Free (as in freedom) alternative to Facebook. As long as no free alternative exists, Facebook has something going for it. Once you have an alternative, you can kick Facebook. (Also relevant, Eben Moglen, who co-wrote the GPL with Stallman, inspired Diaspora). Yes Diaspora is small. Wikipedia also once had only 10,000 articles. I recommend joining. The community is smaller than 800 million, but you can connect with me so you'll have at least one awesome person in your network there. And you own your data.
- aw3c2 15y ago
  I created a Diaspora account a while ago because I thought it would be a usable alternative and maybe I could get some friends to follow. Well, it isn't. It started with my profile picture being public, there is no way to disable that. Then I did not understand the aspect of "aspects" because at least in my language no-one ever uses that word in any way remotely related to a social network. I still have not fully understand the idea. I think it is way too intellectual and not natural. You do not get recommendations for "friends of your friends you might know". Of course it would be a privacy issue, I know that. But this is a crucial feature, if not THE crucial feature of a social network. And one thing I was looking forward to and what I thought would let me find likeminded people in this network, the ability to follow tags, seems to be restricted to my pod. Or maybe there is just no-one using it and thus there is almost zero content. The name is standing in its way too. Reminds me of the "pirate party". And I am a technology lover, hacker in mind, etc. Diaspora is not remotely close to being something I would recommend my friends.
majmun 15y ago
I see how it may seem like facebook is parasite project in a scenario of using facebook that is most common (sharing photos, liking, tagging pictures, having friends,..). But users that use facebook platform like that are all doing it by their consent. If user chooses to do so it may leave the platform at any time. While in parasitic relationship there is one side that is being parasited without consent and other that is parasite. If we must compare facebook and its most common users with realtionship in nature it is more like symbiotic relationship.

350 points by psawaya 15y ago

partytime 15y ago

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

gcb 15y ago
You aren't more same just because you read email in webpages Not that it makes it any betterfor him either.
partytime 15y ago
Thanks for the downvotes, everyone. My point was that even though he happens to be spot-on in his very pithy remark about the disease that is Facebook, if you know anything at all about RMS -- or have interacted with him personally, for a minute or two -- you'll know that he's so far off the page from the vast bulk of humanity (in terms of how he communicates) that it's difficult to take anything he says about the pros and cons of social media very seriously.
- waqf 15y ago
  I didn't understand that comment, either. Was your argument "he's right, but nobody agrees with him, so he's wrong"?
  - Karunamon 15y ago
    You're being purposefully obtuse at this point. Maybe: "Perhaps someone who has such narrow and specialized communication needs that they need to browse the web via email isn't in the best position to be dictating what communication methods the world at large should use". Boiled down futher: "What's good (and bad) for one person with specific needs isn't the same for everyone else".
    - partytime 15y ago
      Yeah, that's pretty much what I was getting at. Thanks.
      - logjam 15y ago
        No, that's not what you were getting at, at all. You made nothing more than an ad hominem attack. First you wanted us to discount Stallman's argument because of...wait for it...the way he reads web pages. Second you wanted us to discount Stallman's argument because "he's so far off the page from the vast bulk of humanity (in terms of how he communicates)". Can't imagine how such a mess at communicating and someone so very far off the page keeps duping all those folks who keep inviting him to speak (as well as the folks who gave him the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer award, the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, andseveral honorary doctorates): http://www.fsf.org/events/rms-speeches.html http://www.fsf.org/events/rms-speeches.html Mar 01, Madrid, Spain "Por una sociedad digital libre" Mar 07, Sunnyvale, CA "Copyright vs. Community" Mar 13, Republic of Singapore "Free Software and Your Freedom" Mar 14, Republic of Singapore "For a Free Digital Society" Mar 27, New York, NY "For a Free Digital Society" Mar 29, West Lafayette, IN "The Free Software Movement" Apr 03, Ashland, OR "Copyright vs. Community" Apr 04, Ashland, OR "For a Free Digital Society" Jul 10, Dresden, Germany "The Free Software Movement" Some communicator. Now. Do you actually have anything at all to say about Stallman's actual argument(s) in that thread? Did you even read them?
    - logjam 15y ago
      You just conflated "need" with "choose" to make what is either an obtuse or dishonest point for your own purposes. Which is it?
      - Karunamon 15y ago
        Do you know why RMS wgets webpages to his email instead of reading them through a browser like 99.999% of the web-using world? If the answer is no, then you don't know if it's a need or a choice or some variation between the two - and I daresay you're accusing him of something untoward. If the answer is yes, which is it?
babarock 15y ago
Completely agreed, he completely lacks class. Even better, let's attack his ideas on basis that I don't like his beard, or that he looks a little chubby. He's not living in "the past", his living in his convictions. And that in itself is to be admired.
- 3143 15y ago
  It's only admirable if you agree with those convictions. Otherwise you have to end up admiring people like the Westboro Baptists and the KKK.
  - logjam 15y ago
    False equivalence. But do go ahead and give us your argument for how hypocrisy is more admirable.
    - 3143 15y ago
      It's not. Babarock said that living in your convictions is itself admirable. But I disagree - if your convictions are bad, living by them is bad too.

jpeterson 15y ago

This is the only time I've ever agreed with RMS. Facebook is a disease. Please do not require me to log in to it for your cause.

Estragon 15y ago
Came back from a talk by a Facebook Data Team member a little while ago. Don't have time to look it up now, but he cited Bakshy et al 2012 as a paper describing Facebook research in which a proportion of "Likes" from friends were censored for selected users in order to gather information on a social science question. The talk was pretty incoherent on what question they were investigating; I get the impression that it was pretty innocuous, something like "more activity in your feed makes you share more," maybe. Still, it makes me wonder why people are signing up for this fishbowl.
- ben1040 15y ago
  http://www.scribd.com/facebook/d/78445521-Role-of-Social-Networks-in-Information-Diffusion http://www.scribd.com/facebook/d/78445521-Role-of-Social-Net... This looks like it could be the paper in question.
freehunter 15y ago
I agree that Facebook login should not be mandatory, but I do like the option to not have to create another account with every site just to leave a comment or try their service. Facebook and OpenID should be standard options, as well as local accounts. Although I dislike some of Facebook's policies, I don't hate them.
- salgernon 15y ago
  I deleted my facebook account because I determined that what it cost me to host my data there (and to consume their services) was more than I was willing to spend - and that this cost was creeping up over time without giving me the opportunity to decline. The currency in this case is the information that I'm providing them, either explicitly through postings and 'Like's on external sites, or implicitly by their plumbing of my social graph. I would actually feel much better if facebook were a paid service, since then they would have an incentive to maintain me as a customer. I'd rather that a third party with whom I've already established a financial relationship (Apple, Amazon, UPS or Fedex, etc) could provide an authentication token that could be used as a universal login.

mxweas 15y ago

https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/File:Stallman-medres.jpg https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/File:Stallman-medres.jpg

Estragon 15y ago
The caption on the page linking to it makes it even funnier. Still, I don't think this has anything to do with the thread.

evgen 15y ago

Outspoken misanthrope with poor social skills and a tendency towards an absolutist black/white view of the world dislikes social networking? Color me surprised...

Udo 15y ago
I agree about the absolutist black/white world view but it is unclear to me how RMS is a misanthrope. Skimming the whole discussion on that mailing list it's also apparent to me that - while RMS did go offtopic by advising people to not use Facebook - poor social skills were in fact exhibited by the next commenter who replied to him in a very sarcastic and hostile way. Taking the subject matter into account it would have made sense to instead chastise Stallman for exploiting an entirely different discussion (apparently about some student project) and injecting his own absolutist view into the original story that was at best only tangentially connected to Facebook.
- msbarnett 15y ago
  Well, there is the mailing list incident where, when someone congratulated another contributor on the birth of their child, Stallman labelled the entire phenomenon of childbirth as "menacing" and went on to say "these birth announcements also spread the myth that having a baby is something to be proud of, which fuels natalist pressure, which leads to pollution, extinction of wildlife, poverty, and ultimately mass starvation." Not to get into the whole discussion about whether that was the right forum or etc, but by definition I'd say being generally anti-humanity-propogating-itself meets the bar for "misanthropy".
  - zbuc 15y ago
    Also the conversation a few weeks back where free software enthusiasts who developed non-free software at their jobs were talking with him... http://lunduke.com/?p=2273 http://lunduke.com/?p=2273 > You see, I make software for most of my living. And I talked with Stallman (in email) before the show, about how I would love to get any ideas he has on how a developer, of proprietary software, can move that software to a Free and Open license… while still keeping food on the table for his family. From a practical standpoint. > This is a topic that has come up time and again. And I really wanted to get Stallman’s thoughts on the matter. > So, near the beginning of the interview, I ask him about that. How does someone like me make the move to working on only Free Software and still support his family? > The end result was that he feels that all developers and businesses of proprietary software should fail. And that it is more important for there to not be proprietary software… than it is to be able to feed your children. > I’m not kidding. I’m not exaggerating. I’m not putting words in his mouth. I even asked him, point blank, to verify his stance. > He did not say that having Free Software is more important than kids having food to eat. I repeat: He said that it was more important that non-free software be gone… than for you to be able to feed your kids. That’s how evil he thinks non-free software is. Evil enough to justify causing significant harm to your family to do away with a small amount of it. (Of course this isn’t the first time Stallman has been anti-children.)

negamax 15y ago

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

sp332 15y ago

I love how the response is basically "c'mon Richard, let's be more short-sighted about this." https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-January/006993.html https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-Jan...

eob 15y ago

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.

noduerme 15y ago

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.

VMG 15y ago
> 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. While many of my friends enjoy Facebook and I'm still to lazy to upload a profile image and mainly use it to find out where the next birthday party is located, I really can't say that I am feeling oppressed. Some people just like camp.
- anon808 15y ago
  I don't think the original comment is saying there's something wrong with liking camp, but there's something wrong with people liking camp because they're supposed to like camp. of course we can't look into people's hearts and see if they actually like something or they're just liking it because they're supposed to like it, but if you pay attention and see how much care people put into doing things, it becomes obvious if it's an actual willed choice or a default reaction.
  - gavinlynch 15y ago
    "but there's something wrong with people liking camp because they're supposed to like camp" Huh? Don't understand what you are talking about... A quick study of human history and psychology will show that this is a bedrock of human behavior. For good and ill, it is what I would regard a well-accepted facet of human nature. We wouldn't be the species we are without the pressures of 'social norms'

mc32 15y ago

I feel it more a mutualistic (symbiotic?) relationship. If it were not, I believe people would abandon the platform --which they may, at soem point when something else proves more beneficial to them. Kind of like gut fauna --but more optional than gut fauna. Parasitic, seems a bit strong --but I guess, to make a point, the analogy kind of works --just not for me.

franciscoapinto 15y ago

The ensuing discussion is good. I recommend you all read this reply; I laughed pretty hard https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-January/006998.html https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-Jan....

hackermom 15y ago
I can't quite see what's funny about the response.
- zem 15y ago
  the combination of a pertinent observation (that facebook's "800 million active users" userbase was perhaps less relevant than one might think, or why spam mailing lists with a link to a facebook poll), and the over-the-top comedic writing style used to point it out. i laughed pretty hard at it too.

AznHisoka 15y ago

Dunno what is the point of this article, but I definitely agree with what he says.. did the OP post this to embarrass this dude? it did the opposite for me.

psawaya 15y ago
Not at all. I sympathize with what rms is saying, and hoped it would provoke discussion about the daily tradeoffs of using Facebook.

smashing 15y ago

I just thought Facebook was a way for millennials to share photos online. It is likely riding on a wave of "easy enough for anyone" that technology provides. Nevertheless, it is a company out to make a profit, so it does provide lessons for people who use this site. Anyway, that's me defending Facebook for the day. Have a good one ;)

psawaya 15y ago
According to this (dated) study, Facebook has a fair share of Gen X'ers. http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-social-network-users/ http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-social-net...
- mhewett 15y ago
  Most of my Baby Boom-era friends are on Facebook. Some of them are on it a LOT.

fudged 15y ago

I agree with many of Stallman's views to some extent, but it's very hard to ignore that he is willing to sacrifice anything and everything for what are essentially minor decisions. It's good that we have him around to consider the utopian extremist viewpoint, even if it's rarely the favorable option. We aren't all made of money... the benefits outweigh the risks for most services where we pay with our ad-viewing, closed platforms, and information gathering. People can volunteer time and effort into building free systems, but nobody is going to donate data centers and storage space. I think there are limitations to the free mentality for widely adopted services.

why-el 15y ago
They are no longer minor decisions once they are adopted by the masses.
- fudged 15y ago
  An instance of a common practice is a minor decision, in my opinion. You may be adding fuel to the fire, but the proportion is insignificant.

derefr 15y ago

> In other words, the question of comparing the good of these projects against the harm of Facebook arises because someone made an snap choice. Who says it was a snap choice? For X project that needs viral promotion to achieve critical mass (either in support--like a donation drive--or just participation--like a vote), you can rank places to put that mechanism by how viral and well-connected the networks that "flow through" that place are. Facebook frequently tops such rankings, if there isn't a specific niche hang-out available where you can target all the "super-connector" nodes at once.

rbarooah 15y ago

Many of Stallman's complaints about Facebook ( http://stallman.org/facebook.html http://stallman.org/facebook.html ) apply equally to Google. Does anyone know whether he regards them in the same light?

jrockway 15y ago
Take a guess: https://www.google.com/webhp?q=stallman%20google https://www.google.com/webhp?q=stallman%20google
- rbarooah 15y ago
  Most of that seems to be aimed at ChromeOS - which is predictable. I'm more interested in what he thinks of Google as a service.
babarock 15y ago
Does it really matter? As much as I agree with rms on the matter, I don't want him to become the High Judge of what's good and what's evil.
- rbarooah 15y ago
  Wanting to know his opinion doesn't make him the High Judge. I'm curious because slthough I'm critical of Google for various reasons, I think it's hard to make a case against the value that Google search has brought to the world. In the particular thread about Facebook RMS is pretty absolute in his boycott. I wondered whether he'd be more nuanced with Google.
koeselitz 15y ago
If you follow the first link on the page you linked to there ("I don't use it") there is a brief discussion of his view of Gmail and Google+: "As for Facebook and Google+, I reject them on principle because they require people to give their 'real names'. I am proud to identify myself when stating my views; I can afford to do that because I am in a fairly safe position. There are people who rationally fear reprisals (from employers, gangsters, bullies, or the state) if they state their views. For their sake, let's reject any social networking site which insists on being told a user's real name... Google+ says it will offer to hide the user's real name, but demands people prove an 'established identity' or provide ID. I am suspicious of this requirement, but not sure what it will mean in practice..." "People sometimes ask me to recommend an email service. The two ethical issues for an email service are (1) whether you can use it without running any nonfree software (including nonfree Javascript code from the site), and (2) whether it respects your privacy... Last I heard, Gmail was satisfactory on issue 1, and probably so are many others. On issue 2, I have no way to verify that any email service is satisfactory. Therefore, I have no recommendation to offer... However, I can suggest that it may be wise to use an email service that is not connected with your search engine. That way you can be almost sure that your email contents don't influence your search results. You shouldn't identify yourself to your search engine in any case."

jpdoctor 15y ago

I love rms, but he needs to learn to spend his time speaking for things and not against things. How'd the campaign against Apple go, rms?

psawaya 15y ago
Here's a good counterargument, entitled "In Defense of Negativity": http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20110903-00 http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20110903-00
- majmun 15y ago
  From that site: "Should a campaign for abolishing child labor talk only about how valuable adult workers are to their employers or how happy kids are when they don't work?" No, they should provide better more efficient alternative than child labor. "Should a campaign trying to abolish land mines talk only about the benefits of bomb-free fields and intact lower limbs?" No, they should provide better alternative to land mines so everybody switches to it. "Should a free speech organization only speak out about the social welfare brought by a free press and never against acts of censorship?" No, they should provide better means of communication that cannot be censored like that.
  - AlexandrB 15y ago
    > No, they should provide better alternative to land mines so everybody switches to it. This is ridiculous. You're saying that anti-landmine orgs should spend their time finding more efficient ways to kill people. > No, they should provide better more efficient alternative than child labor. What if no such alternative exists? Just because it's economically efficient, doesn't mean it's right.
    - majmun 15y ago
      > This is ridiculous. You're saying that anti-landmine orgs should spend their time finding more efficient ways to kill people. In a sense that this new weapon would obsolete land mines, and thus solve all problems of land mines. I don't see nothing ridiculous about that. > What if no such alternative exists? Just because it's economically efficient, doesn't mean it's right. Let us believe that it is not like that, otherwise ultimatly everyone that not uses child labor will die out, all that not uses land mines will lose a war. And no amount of negativity will stop it.

feralchimp 15y ago

I was an outspoken Facebook-hater for a long time. Perhaps my most quotable moment on HN to date was saying "I have no love for their product or their business model, but their engineering is diesel." My wife recently convinced me to give it another try. I didn't use my complete name, and was judicious about the information I associated with my profile. And yet, I proceeded to connect in a deep and healthy way with some people that I'd fallen out of touch with, and nurtured some newer relationships. It's a tool that has a Tendency to be dangerous, prying, and abusive to its members. But even as a field of vast moral hazard, I've come to view it as "navigable and worth the risks." Perhaps not the most glowing endorsement, but if they can convince me they're more valuable than they are dangerous, they've really done some things right in the last few years.

joering2 15y ago
> connect in a deep and healthy way with some people that I'd fallen out of touch with You must have had fallen out of touch for a reason, hadn't you? I think this is the major reason why I am not using Facebook to find and connect with my old friends. If those connection would have been worth keeping up with, I am sure I wouldn't have lost them at the first place. Now, of course there are stories when some family members got lost at teen age and found each other through social network, I get it, but those are in minor, gems worth a short article on social blog. After you re-connected with them again, after a while, most likely the same thing will happen. You will get out of regular touch and they will fall in the grey zone. Of course its harder to "loose" people nowaday because we living in much smaller world. And on the top of that, if you are a hard worker, if you have family, a bunch of close friends with whom you socialize, go to restaurants, movies, camping, etc, then do you really find time to socialize online? Isn't it enough that we forget about our spouses or parents birthdays sometimes, about anniversaries, other important events, don't always make on time to pick up son or daughter from school? I believe if you at least try to fullfill your daily obligations towards your job, families and friends, then you don't have time for social networking.
- JoeAltmaier 15y ago
  Lots of rationalizations for why you don't keep in touch. Lets admit that geography, convenience, jobs get in the way as often as anything. It takes little time investment to write a thoughtful note to an old friend, facebook or not. It doesn't have to be family vs friends, we can make time for both.

ktizo 15y ago

Using Facebook as a platform for international development projects is actually abhorrent. If you do then you are requiring people who need your help, or that you want to work with, to enter into an entirely unnecessary secondary contractual agreement with an intrusive marketing company, for no reason other than sheer lazyness.

jordhy 15y ago

I can relate to his feelings. Socializing does come easy to scientists. Yet, even with all its shortcomings, I guess Facebook makes us waist less time in trivial social interactions with distant friends while still keeping in touch. Stallman is almost always polarizing, but there's something here. Does FB make society less or more efficient? Where's the proof?

kefs 15y ago

Not completely unrelated, but Exfoliate for Android (not by me) is a great tool to automate deletion of your Facebook content (posts, likes, photos, etc..) that are older than x days. It's incredibly useful, but a hard find if you don't know it exists.. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.worb.android.exfoliate&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.worb.andro...

sp332 15y ago
This might make it harder for normal people to find, but FB keeps your data around after it's "deleted" and I'm sure law enforcement has access to it as well.
- awakeasleep 15y ago
  You're right, but don't miss the bigger 'security picture' where we don't deal with absolutes, but probability and ease. This wouldn't protect you from a CIA sponsored deep dive of your information, but it does give you a considerable advantage over your peers, scammers, and many levels of legal inquiry.

marshallp 15y ago

At this point facebook is just a branch of the NSA and CIA. They're laughing it up while the clueless kid Zuckerberg thinks he's creating "a social graph". How about an "open" social graph you jackass - you know, THE WEB. Hopefully governments step in to break up this evil oonopoly that's on it's way to another microsoft, AT&T, Standard Oil. However, it might too late already, since the NSA and CIA desperately want facebook to exist.

jrockway 15y ago
What? Can't the NSA use an open graph just as easily as a closed one? And with Facebook, you only have to worry about the government abusing the graph. With an open graph, anyone could abuse it. (Including: advertisers, angry ex-s, people that were upset that they lost a flamewar with you, etc.)
- marshallp 15y ago
  When people use the open web they censor themselves. Also, on facebook people engage in bullshittery, while on the open, sites such as this people at least might learn/teach a thing or two.
pork 15y ago
I don't normally indulge trolls, but you're priceless! So the NSA and CIA (the government) covertly control and encourage Facebook, but you want the same government to save you from this "evil"? Cognitive dissonance much?
- marshallp 15y ago
  NSA and CIA are not the elected government that you see. Thre president or congress are not in charge, only the appearance of being in charge is shown. There's a whole secret world we're not privy to.

Karunamon 15y ago

So am I the only person who thinks this characterization of facebook as a "parasite" or a "disease" is meaningless, useless hyperbole? Facebook isn't any more of a "parasite" than email.

nooop 15y ago
email is not a private company looking for using you as their product.
- Karunamon 15y ago
  "Using" - more like you provide information which is the price of admission. Same as it is with any other company providing a free service. Characterizing Facebook as "evil" for this is quite silly. And much like email, you can roll your own. It's much harder, but it's possible.
  - nooop 15y ago
    If people are willing to give up their privacy to use facebook and find value in using facebook, i'm fine with that and i won't enter a jihad to make them stop using facebook, although when i can i try to make sure they are a minimum informed about what they are giving up (while trying not to be too insistent, just providing information). As for you can roll your own facebook, this is absolutely false. Facebook tries to get the whole planet registering with them, and don't have and probably will never have a protocol letting a fully featured "facebook bis" integrate with them (except maybe if legally bound to). e-mail is a completely distributed service. People using gmail are not segregated from the others. Now I'm also not pretending that facebook is evil for all that. I was initially reacting at your comparison between facebook and e-mail, which made little sense.
- codesuela 15y ago
  substitute "e" with a "g" and there you go
grepherder 15y ago
I'm not taking any sides on this, but yours is another hyperbole, Facebook is definitely not as harmless as email. If every email from everyone around the world went through the same company, and they could data mine it as they wished, then they would be on equal terms.

loverobots 15y ago

Facebook may have a million negatives but for many families FB has replaced email and other forms of communication. Remember, many families have members in Europe, China, California, Texas...Costa Rica...or college so FB is an excellent tool to share what happened (new baby born for example) in real time. They are other methods no doubt, but FB seems perfect for that. I have an account to do just that, keep track of what's happening with my extended family and friends I lost touch with ages ago. A lot of the pictures, comments, likes and so on are designed to show off but so what? It mirrors real life ;)

babarock 15y ago

Off topic: Why is he signing his mail with "Dr" Richard Stallman? His Wikipedia page only mentions a BA.

rpt 15y ago
He has a bunch of honorary doctorates. I guess those confer the right to sign Dr. (?)
- jpdoctor 15y ago
  Yes. BTW, he did not finish his PhD, which he began at MIT. Side note: MIT does not award honorary doctorates at all.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

gavinlynch 15y ago

I am somewhat surprised to find that apparently I am just about the only one who has nothing but complete ambivalence to Facebook. I don't see it as the parasitic pariah Stallman makes it out to be, nor do I dote on every status update of a friend or family member that scrolls across my screen. If you were to ask me if I hate Facebook, I might agree. But the truth is I hardly use it enough to muster up much of a reaction. I almost never post. The only thing I really use it for is to get invited to things or figure out when someone's birthday is. I'm secretly very lamely proud of my non-activity. But it's a scourge against humanity? It's a parasite on our populace? It suckers unsuspecting people into a one-way relationship where they are wholesale taken advantage of with no gain? I call bollocks.

ceol 15y ago
You're not the only one. Most of us avoid posting because of our ambivalence.

9999 15y ago

Stallman is right. What Facebook provides is a completely unoriginal set of social networking tools wrapped in a mediocre presentation layer that requires you to surrender some of your most precious human rights in order to access it. Their users are their product. They sell you to advertisers and even more unsavory corporations like Zynga that are looking to lure you into a constant dopamine feedback loop to sucker you into buying virtual goods, so you can get that same dopamine fix faster still. Both corporations are parasites of the worst sort, because you're not only giving up your privacy, freedom, and money, you're doing so for a short term and minimal reward. There will not be another Facebook, you can no longer be a "social network." Social networking at this point is just a common feature set that countless websites can easily replicate. In the future, social networking should just be a protocol that enables features like sharing photos, anecdotes, and relationships using a decentralized system. Bit torrent with identity. Or without identity if you so choose.

ebiester 15y ago
...easy enough that my parents can use? That doesn't introduce a cognitive load of "oh shit how do I do that again?"
- 9999 15y ago
  If it's a decentralized system and it uses a free and open protocol, there could be many different clients. I am sure many of them would be very easy to use, and as far as cognitive load goes, Facebook's many capricious and poorly considered UI sea changes over the years have created countless cases of "oh shit how do I do that now?"
crazygringo 15y ago
> that requires you to surrender some of your most precious human rights in order to access it I'm genuinely curious, which human rights? I created an account, don't really use it... and don't feel like I've had any human rights taken away.
- tedunangst 15y ago

Alind 15y ago

I hate using real name on FB. But I really enjoy stalking people on FB. :D

aangjie 15y ago

While i was on facebook and left, my decision to leave was accelerated by the privacy concerns, rather than being the first(temporally) cause themselves. Infact, the first thing that caused me to worry about being on fb, was the amount of time i ended up spending there. All in all, am happy i am not connected/updated with all my friend's statuses. :-)

javert 15y ago

First time I've ever agreed with Stallman.

psychotik 15y ago

I have a love-hate/hypocritical relationship with Facebook, but one that prevents me from not using it. Even if I want to not use it, I have to because: 1) I have a product that users want to use with Facebook, so I need to use FB APIs etc and understand how it works for real users 2) I have a product that can benefit from viral-ness on Facebook I wonder how many other developers share such ambivalence about being forced to use a tool that you might otherwise abandon.

bullies 15y ago
You don't have to use facebook, you want to. A product doesn't force, humans do.
- psychotik 15y ago
  To understand user scenarios, I _have_ to.
  - Ideka 15y ago
    Classic: "having to" vs "wanting to".

stcredzero 15y ago

I think I know what Stallman is getting at. I've been thinking about how resistance movements work. In general, they use the power of personal connections to resist the power of a government. Facebook amplified the effect of this kind of power for the Arab Spring by augmenting those kinds of connections. What if those governments had preexisting intelligence about the social graph? In World War II, Germans used paper punch cards to collate information about the so called "undesirable" residents of France and other occupied countries, and rounded most of them up in a matter of days. Just having most of the social graph in digital form would be devastating intelligence to be used by an oppressive government. I hope the engineers at Facebook have put together a "self destruct button" for Mark Zuckerburg, and that he would have the courage to use it if the government turned oppressive. In all likelihood, this did not/will not happen, however.

biafra 15y ago
I am very sure they do not have such a button. Primarily because they do not think about those consequences. To the contrary: Their social graph is so valuable I am sure they will do anything to protect it from being destroyed. And how do you know your government has turned oppressive? It won't be as visible as with the NSDAP the next time. Some would argue its already under way.
zethraeus 15y ago
Destroying Facebook from the inside, assuming you had control over and an understanding of whatever system they use to manage their server farms, would surely be trivial. I highly doubt there's something as apocalyptic as a designed "self destruct", or even a need for it.

bullies 15y ago

As a kid I was bullied for using my computer to talk to people. Now I'm bullied for not using my computer (facebook) to talk to people. The bullies never die.

shreeshga 15y ago

My social networking service: * multiple sets of friends(limited) with whom i frequently interact. * which is peer to peer. * can use from mobile. * broadcasting messages,status,pictures and songs. Facebook is not.

Ziomislaw 15y ago

Look who's talking. GPL 3 is more of a parasite than even facebook imo.

Ideka 15y ago
Care to elaborate?

fioll 15y ago

Facebook isn't a free service based on GNU software. I don't even see why there is any discussion at all about this. I like Stallman despite his quirks. And I respect his views. But he won't influence my decision to use Facebook or other non-GNU software. My approach, which I wish Stallman would support but he never will, is to use whatever is free that is a good service, even if it isn't truly GNU free and open-source. That is because I'm not only cheap, but I respect that often people that do good work are inspired by money. One day, after the end of the human world, the chosen few will be surrounded with those that want to do what is best for each other, not themselves. And that is the day Richard looks forward to, and he is an activist to that effect, and I think that is wonderful. However, I think he thinks he can make this happen on his own by denying capitalism. That is the wrong tact. Free can be embraced by ignoring money altogether instead of fighting it.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

nirai 15y ago

1) There is a whole bunch of messages by Stallman in that thread. 2) That discussion triggered me to install the do-not-track-plus extension in Chrome. Thanks Stallman!

richurd 15y ago

>2012 >Facebook ISHYGDDT

danbmil99 15y ago

I'm not so concerned about the privacy issues because I don't put much of my life there. For me FB is just crap UI/UX, everything about it seems non-intuitive and goes against my grain, and I cannot use it as an effective tool for what I want to do with my social network. Epiphany: maybe these two things are related?

kaiwen1 15y ago

The problem is not Facebook per se. It is that the human condition is such that FB appeals to us in vast disproportion from its value. The collective time spent on FB is travesty to our species. It's not the only one to be sure, but to the extent that people can avoid Facebook they and we are better off. Facebook is not benefiting society. It has harming it.

spodek 15y ago

255 comments and nobody mentioned Diaspora? The project is small and mainly full of geeks now, but so was Wikipedia when I started promoting it. Everybody told me it would never succeed then, but they all use it now. More relevant to this discussion, it provides a Free (as in freedom) alternative to Facebook. As long as no free alternative exists, Facebook has something going for it. Once you have an alternative, you can kick Facebook. (Also relevant, Eben Moglen, who co-wrote the GPL with Stallman, inspired Diaspora). Yes Diaspora is small. Wikipedia also once had only 10,000 articles. I recommend joining. The community is smaller than 800 million, but you can connect with me so you'll have at least one awesome person in your network there. And you own your data.

aw3c2 15y ago
I created a Diaspora account a while ago because I thought it would be a usable alternative and maybe I could get some friends to follow. Well, it isn't. It started with my profile picture being public, there is no way to disable that. Then I did not understand the aspect of "aspects" because at least in my language no-one ever uses that word in any way remotely related to a social network. I still have not fully understand the idea. I think it is way too intellectual and not natural. You do not get recommendations for "friends of your friends you might know". Of course it would be a privacy issue, I know that. But this is a crucial feature, if not THE crucial feature of a social network. And one thing I was looking forward to and what I thought would let me find likeminded people in this network, the ability to follow tags, seems to be restricted to my pod. Or maybe there is just no-one using it and thus there is almost zero content. The name is standing in its way too. Reminds me of the "pirate party". And I am a technology lover, hacker in mind, etc. Diaspora is not remotely close to being something I would recommend my friends.

majmun 15y ago

I see how it may seem like facebook is parasite project in a scenario of using facebook that is most common (sharing photos, liking, tagging pictures, having friends,..). But users that use facebook platform like that are all doing it by their consent. If user chooses to do so it may leave the platform at any time. While in parasitic relationship there is one side that is being parasited without consent and other that is parasite. If we must compare facebook and its most common users with realtionship in nature it is more like symbiotic relationship.