[habith]

Excuse the poor pun but.. are you serious?

Facebook excluded several of your friends based on their terrible name policy. They run their walled garden however they want to. Your participation in it makes you (in your own words) a "peasant".

Yet, you're not trying to go all RMS about it and you continue to use it daily to give them more money/power?

Do you see anything wrong with this picture?

Say what you want about RMS, but at least he's principled and does/says what he thinks instead of conforming to social norms.

[scrollaway]

It's not reasonable to expect people to "just not use facebook". Not that it's not possible - it is (and I don't use it), but it doesn't mean facebook can just do whatever. Reposting an old comment of mine:

For a lot of people, Facebook is "The Web". That's all or almost all they use. The less tech-literate ones don't even know "the web", they connect to Facebook. They get their news from Facebook. They communicate on Facebook. Everything they do online, they do on Facebook.

Like someone mentioned above, when you get big enough you start to have responsibilities. When your actions affect and your voice is heard by billions of people, you're no longer "some random privately-owned website"... you're a supergiant with the ability to affect the entire world.

[ryandrake]

> It's not reasonable to expect people to "just not use Facebook".

Huh? Nobody used Facebook before 2003. Now people simply can't avoid using it?

[cheez]

FWIW, I stopped using it years ago, and the thing I noticed is that FB is a good way to keep you fresh in peoples minds. Other than that, it's a great way to have something to talk about when you meet, since your life is a mystery to them.

[tallerholler]

> but it doesn't mean facebook can just do whatever.

It all comes down to this; Facebook can do whatever the fuck they want.

[pmoriarty]

"Like someone mentioned above, when you get big enough you start to have responsibilities. When your actions affect and your voice is heard by billions of people, you're no longer "some random privately-owned website"... you're a supergiant with the ability to affect the entire world."

Facebook should be nationalized.

[Natsu]

I dunno, I've never once had an account there, so it can't be that bad to just not use it. As far as I can tell, I'm missing... cow clicker? Farmville? I don't even know any more.

[PhasmaFelis]

It would be nice if I had the luxury of completely disconnecting from modern society in order to stay true to my principles. But I don't. Modern corporations have gone to great to make it extremely inconvenient to not use their services--which is exactly the problem we're talking about, isn't it? If we didn't rely on them for our daily activities, we wouldn't care if they had abusive policies.

I admire RMS' ideals, but he famously doesn't actually use the internet like anyone else does--he won't purchase or pay for anything online, he won't browse the web except via wget--which makes his pronouncements about as useful in day-to-day life as a celibate priest giving sex advice.

[briandear]

Corporations don't make you use Facebook. Your grandmother does.

[SwellJoe]

I am human, and my flaws are many.

[habith]

Likewise :)

My apologies if that was over the top, I meant no disrespect.

[davedx]

Personally I use Facebook with AdBlock and Privacy Badger enabled. They don't make very much money from me. ;)

[bigbugbag]

Yes they do, even better you probably gave them from your own pocket. You don't understand advertising do you ? It goes like this:

company has a product to sell, pays money for ads (may pay money to adblock to circumvent filters), factor the cost in the product price.

You buy the product, you pay for the advertising.

[briandear]

That's cool, but having you on the service increases the network effect, thus you really are helping them make more money.