This article is a joke, it's something I would expect to find on some tech/news gossip website. Is this what FSF has become?
> so many sites — including TIME — use Facebook's user-tracking "Like" button, Zuckerberg is able to collect information about people who aren't even users of his site. These are precedents which hurt our ability to freely connect with each other. He has created a network that is first and 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.
What do you mean? This is what FSF has always been like.
They're shockingly zealots in defending absolute gpl-style freedom over all your digital goods.
In all honesty I don't think a decentralized and "Free" facebook would work. The centralization is a feature that most people want; it's part of why it "just work" without you having to become a system (or a network) administrator.
Imagine:
Mom: How come I'm not receiving updates from your aunt anymore?
You: Well, you have to wait for $INSERT_TECHNICAL_TERM to propagate or something.
Mom: Do I have to enter her hash-thing again?
or worse:
Mom: I'm getting a lot of spam
You: You have to install morton anti-spam social-edition
Mom: It won't install.
You: sigh here I come.
It's like email, but much worse because it has way more features, and more ways for things to go wrong.
Plus, I think Mark Zuckerberg actually donated money to the Diaspora project.
Facebook 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.
No (said Google). That's what I mean - you really don't understand. You see, I don't care if people come and look at these hen scratches or not. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. As long as I can sell a few advertisements on that page of my guidebook I really don't care. After all, what better praise for a Guidebook than to help people find out what's wrong with it? Just leave your manuscript with me. I'll look after it.
He held out his hand, imperious now. I felt disheveled after my long night. My brain was spinning. I could see no alternative. In a vain attempt to maintain some self-respect I drew myself up to my full height and pulled back my shoulders, adopting a bearing appropriate for my class. "All right Google. Here you go. Don't lose it now."
"Thank you sir. You can be sure I won't lose it. I never do lose anything you know."
I turned away from him and stumbled down the stairs. I had ended up giving him an order, and he had accepted it. Yet I could not shake the impression, even as he brought me a glass of sherry that evening in my sitting room, placing the silver tray beside me with deference, that Mr. Google - far from being a butler and travel guide - was more a master than a servant.
>"He has created a network that is first and foremost a gold mine for government surveillance and advertisers."
It would be nice for more people to realize this. Really, they're lining up like sheep for government monitoring, and Zuckerberg and Co. are happy to comply. FB seems thrilled with the prospect of being the eyes and ears of Big Brother, actually.
People should just read more. Everything is in Facebook's terms and privacy policy, isn't it? If you can't agree with the terms of service, then you shouldn't use the service IMO.
Hasn'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.
Facebook 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.
Revolutions'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.
I personally think advertisers knowing more about preferences is better than if they know less.
Every day we are exposed to crapload of advertisement that are in no way related to me and what those ads do is only annoy me. But there is nothing I can do, I cant turn off all the ads on Time Square, or pay the TV network to turn off all of the ads on my favorite tv channels, same for radio (thanks to adblock I manage to get rid of large portion of ads on the web).
If advertisers knew that I am a male ( a no secret, nothing I would hide) it would escape me from being exposed to all of the annoying ads of pads, make up, and other women centric products. that only would be a huge relief.
If advertisers knew I am straight ads for gay social networks would not come up on facebook for me.
I can state at least 10 more points.
The bottom line is, as long as a certain lines are not crossed (like diseases, home address, etc.) letting advertisers know more about us could be good.
"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?
The "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.
Don'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.
I hate the argument of "Google is doing it too!" Just because someone else is behaving (what I would consider to be) badly doesn't make the behavior any less reprehensible.
That'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.
I believe that with anything the extent that Facebook can do for good equals the extent that it can do for bad. So yes, they have a lot of information that could be used for good, bad, or (more likely) some of both. I certainly don't recall anyone FORCING anyone to click a "like" button nor have a Facebook account. If you are worried about this sort of thing then don't do it. I don't understand why there are so many people attempting to create a rebellion against a service that no one forced them to be a part of.
The 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.
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.
FSF doesn't like a service that doesn't operate exactly how the FSF thinks they should. Shocking.
I don't take anything they or their pseudo-communist leader say seriously anymore. Back when Stallman started attacking OpenBSD because of their ports tree I knew he had finally lost it.
The fair criticism of Stallman is that he is absolutist, idealist, extreme, and uncompromising. Whether those things are positive or negative is really up to how you feel about the relative importance of Free Software vs. other issues.
I am personally willing to compromise quite a bit on the free software issues for other gains, but I think the "right to read" consideration for consuming materials other than code are less ok for compromise. I use and enjoy facebook, but look at their motivations and culture as a company before deciding how much to trust them.
I trust the people at facebook a lot more than a lot of companies, so one of my main concerns with facebook is that third parties might purchase, steal, or compel access to their data to use against users (e.g. Corrupt governments).
[+] [-] ryanto|15 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] hasenj|15 years ago|reply
What do you mean? This is what FSF has always been like.
They're shockingly zealots in defending absolute gpl-style freedom over all your digital goods.
In all honesty I don't think a decentralized and "Free" facebook would work. The centralization is a feature that most people want; it's part of why it "just work" without you having to become a system (or a network) administrator.
Imagine:
Mom: How come I'm not receiving updates from your aunt anymore?
You: Well, you have to wait for $INSERT_TECHNICAL_TERM to propagate or something.
Mom: Do I have to enter her hash-thing again?
or worse:
Mom: I'm getting a lot of spam
You: You have to install morton anti-spam social-edition
Mom: It won't install.
You: sigh here I come.
It's like email, but much worse because it has way more features, and more ways for things to go wrong.
Plus, I think Mark Zuckerberg actually donated money to the Diaspora project.
[+] [-] Natsu|15 years ago|reply
You haven't been paying attention, have you?
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/22/facebook-blocks-lamebook/
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=31987371885&topic=...
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/84319/20101122/facebook-priv...
[+] [-] _ouxp|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jedsmith|15 years ago|reply
You mean there was a time when FSF didn't launch ideological arguments to demand that people use software from the GNU Project?
I'm not picking a side, just pointing out that this is par for the course. If it isn't GPL, it's evil.
[+] [-] PakG1|15 years ago|reply
http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2008/03/mr-googles-guid...
Fun quote from the post:
No (said Google). That's what I mean - you really don't understand. You see, I don't care if people come and look at these hen scratches or not. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. As long as I can sell a few advertisements on that page of my guidebook I really don't care. After all, what better praise for a Guidebook than to help people find out what's wrong with it? Just leave your manuscript with me. I'll look after it.
He held out his hand, imperious now. I felt disheveled after my long night. My brain was spinning. I could see no alternative. In a vain attempt to maintain some self-respect I drew myself up to my full height and pulled back my shoulders, adopting a bearing appropriate for my class. "All right Google. Here you go. Don't lose it now."
"Thank you sir. You can be sure I won't lose it. I never do lose anything you know."
I turned away from him and stumbled down the stairs. I had ended up giving him an order, and he had accepted it. Yet I could not shake the impression, even as he brought me a glass of sherry that evening in my sitting room, placing the silver tray beside me with deference, that Mr. Google - far from being a butler and travel guide - was more a master than a servant.
[+] [-] code_duck|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rokhayakebe|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sinaiman|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] indigoviolet|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wulczer|15 years ago|reply
Disclaimer: I'm not comparing, just pointing out that the FSF's reaction is kind of attacking the straw man here.
[+] [-] r00fus|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barista|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IvarTJ|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelchisari|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elvirs|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] smcl|15 years ago|reply
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.htm...) and clicked "like" - and was asked to login to FB. Hmm
[+] [-] elehack|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] drm237|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickbp|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] docgnome|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelchisari|15 years ago|reply
http://opensource.appleseedproject.org
[+] [-] jdp23|15 years ago|reply
At another level, it's disappointing they didn't take the time to get things right
[+] [-] _b8r0|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] JWyme|15 years ago|reply
[1] Clarification
[+] [-] gojomo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkr-hn|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] juiceandjuice|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwwest|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ascendant|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] joebananas|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forensic|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|15 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jfm3|15 years ago|reply