

You won't find FSF on Facebook - hallowtech
http://www.fsf.org/facebook
Well, you might, but they say it isn't them.
======
ryanto
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.

~~~
hasenj
> Is this what FSF has become?

What do you mean? This is what FSF has always been like.

They're shockingly zealots in defending absolute gpl-style freedom over all
your digital goods.

In all honesty I don't think a decentralized and "Free" facebook would work.
The centralization is a feature that most people want; it's part of why it
"just work" without you having to become a system (or a network)
administrator.

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.

~~~
trotsky
Seems like a pretty misguided point of view. Something tells me a sizable
amount of the facebook crowd is comfortable downloading torrents, I'm pretty
sure that counts as distributed/decentralized. As far as free software, is
your mom unable to use any website that uses apache, ngix, php or ruby? Almost
everyone has a broadband router that is almost entirely open source. My Mom
and Dad both use an open source browser, what do yours use?

Is your point that only companies worth $50bn can build usable web apps, or
that anyone that doesn't want to sell your data can't do UX?

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

~~~
trotsky
[http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-
smashes-12000000-bitt...](http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-
smashes-12000000-bittorrent-users-080424/)

That's from 2008 announcing Pirate Bay had hit 12 million concurrent peers on
their tracker. That's not total users, that's total online. Take that number
and multiply it by 5 to 10 to estimate total users, double it to account for
the rest of the global trackers (low?) and increase it by some percentage to
account for 3 years of growth and you're in the hundreds of millions of users
range, possibly as high as 300M or more.

I'm not a crazy bittorrent fanboy, in fact I'm quite the opposite, but I think
it's clear that the number of users of a decentralized system can far exceed
any "rounding errors" of facebook's numbers.

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

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

~~~
trotsky
The pirate bay hasn't actually run a tracker for a year now or so. BT uses a
system called DHT (and maybe something else) that lets the peers handle the
tracking themselves. The peers do need to boot strap off of something, but
it's very minimal afaik.

Even when they did use a tracker it's probably more reasonable to think of it
as a directory server more like LDAP or such. At their base even classic
decentralized protocols like SMTP rely on DNS as a directory, IP on routing
tables etc.

~~~
Scaevolus
While DHT is indeed decentralized, a central tracker is still preferred since
it can quickly give an authoritative list of peers (rather than a
probabilistic one).

Private sites tend to disable DHT anyways, since it's much harder to detect
cheating without central trackers.

The important thing is that trackers are easily decentralized, since they're a
per-torrent URL.

------
code_duck
>"He has created a network that is first and foremost a gold mine for
government surveillance and advertisers."

It would be nice for more people to realize this. Really, they're lining up
like sheep for government monitoring, and Zuckerberg and Co. are happy to
comply. FB seems thrilled with the prospect of being the eyes and ears of Big
Brother, actually.

~~~
jrockway
As we've learned from the whole HBGary Federal thing, there is plenty of money
to be made in doing the government's dirty work.

~~~
redthrowaway
Except they didn't make any money, which is the sad irony of the whole
situation. Yes, there are likely many others out there willing to do the work,
but the fact that H&W, a DoJ-recommended firm, turned to HBGary et al, who
didn't have any real experience doing what they said they could, suggests that
this isn't something the gov't is doing regularly...yet.

------
wulczer
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.

~~~
r00fus
I'm making a guess that FSF (and EFF) would probably have preferred the most
influential person to win, namely Julian Assange.

~~~
protomyth
You gotta wonder though, how many people are touched each day by the work of
Zuckerberg versus the work of Assange.

~~~
statictype
If directly touching people's lives was any sort of criteria then I think
Jonathan Ive or Steve Jobs ought to be a better candidate. Or Larry/Sergey.

~~~
protomyth
I do believe Facebook has a tad bit more users than Apple products. I also get
then feeling, just walking around the area, that people spend more time on
Facebook than Google.

------
IvarTJ
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.

~~~
VladRussian
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.

~~~
Rariel
Thank you!! Because revolutions didn't happen until facebook/twitter were
invented. They might have helped, but this was brewing for ummm 30 years or
so.

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

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

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

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

------
smcl
"Because so many sites — including TIME — use Facebook's user-tracking "Like"
button, Zuckerberg is able to collect information about people who aren't even
users of his site"

I thought you had to have a facebook account to "like" something, either on
facebook itself or sites with the FB "like" link. Anyone know otherwise?

edit: Just logged out of FB, opened a random Time article
([http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2049569,00.htm...](http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2049569,00.html))
and clicked "like" - and was asked to login to FB. Hmm

~~~
elehack
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.

~~~
SwellJoe
"I highly doubt is doing any tracking."

On what evidence do you have this doubt?

facebook has a long history (the entirety of their existence) of being
extremely greedy about personal data. Whenever outsiders have had the chance
to see inside their thought process on collecting data, it has always been
clear they'll collect anything and everything they can. What they're doing
with it might not be nefarious; but they love personal data like no company
ever before, and go to great lengths to own it.

I'd be surprised if they _aren't_ tracking every request that passes through
their servers and gathering usage patterns of everyone on the Internet,
regardless of whether someone is logged into facebook or not, and regardless
of whether the request originated on a facebook property. That's just the kind
of thing facebook does, as far as I can tell. If they aren't doing it already,
it's just a matter of time.

~~~
elehack
I'm speculating that the CDN servers are running stripped-down, static-file-
only HTTP servers that don't integrate with a more complex user-identification
and logging infrastructure to help with throughput.

I could be completely wrong.

~~~
SwellJoe
I agree that they probably aren't doing complex user-identification...probably
no cookies or JavaScript or anything like that happening on their CDN.

But, IP alone would be enough to follow the trail of most people (I know all
the caveats about IP!=individual, but that data is still far from worthless),
and collecting IP trails would be absolutely trivial and practically free from
a performance perspective. The difference in a high performance webserver
environment with logging vs. without logging is less than one
percent...probably much less.

With a bit of clever data juggling, and logging of user agents and other
information about the client, compare that to past visits from the same IP on
properties where facebook has more data (from cookies and logged in activity),
and identify users by name with pretty good accuracy.

In short: Performance is not a factor for logging, and facebook wouldn't need
a large amount of additional cooperation from the client, like cookies or
JavaScript bugs, to track users who aren't logged in. They just need to
combine the already available log data in useful ways. A big part of the
reason all these fancy distributed key/value stores and BigTable imitators
exist (and why facebook has developed their own in-house) is for processing
exactly this kind of data.

I'm extremely confident that facebook logs everything, though I have no idea
what sorts of things they do with the resulting data.

------
drm237
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.

~~~
nickbp
Adsense and Indexing are separate services. One tracks you, the other tracks
published sites.

------
michaelchisari
Small quibble, they're using the wrong url for Appleseed. It's actually:

<http://opensource.appleseedproject.org>

~~~
jdp23
At one level, it's the thought that counts -- great to see Appleseed
mentioned.

At another level, it's disappointing they didn't take the time to get things
right

------
iuguy
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.

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

[1] Clarification

------
gojomo
[http://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Software-
Foundation/11227...](http://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Software-
Foundation/112270732121738)

~~~
mkr-hn
That's not official according to the article.

~~~
gojomo
Does that matter much? The Facebook Likernet is coming, and the FSF will be
represented on it, regardless of its preferences.

Also, an FSF fan club _without_ the most doctrinaire FSFers (who refuse to use
Facebook) is an interesting syncretic phenomenon in itself, for reasons that
both overlap and diverge from the reasons the FSF itself is interesting.

------
juiceandjuice
Until there's a Free Utilities Foundation, or even a Free Infrastructure
Foundation, there won't be a 'free' facebook.

------
jwwest
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.

~~~
michaelchisari
_People aren't going to run their own server._

Why do people keep repeating this fallacy? People won't have to. None of these
projects are focused on single-user P2P approach. For all of 30 seconds,
Diaspora insinuated that, but that was before they had actually written any
code.

If you feel these projects (including mine) is a joke, I'd love to hear
feedback why, but please don't repeat falsehoods about how the software is
meant to be used.

~~~
jwwest
Simplicity mostly. People want to be abstracted away from the nitty gritty
details. Open ID failed because you couldn't explain it to your grandmother.
But you can explain, "oh yeah, you can just click this button and login with
your facebook account" Maybe this is just marketing.

If individuals don't run their own server and hold control of their own data,
then who does? Whoever is running the node.

I know as nerds, we like to get our geek boners over cool projects that aren't
mainstream, and fight the man and all, but people on the street could give a
crap less. It means that these are stillborn ideas. Does this mean you should
stop fighting the good fight? No, but I wouldn't hold my breath for critical
mass.

~~~
michaelchisari
_people on the street could give a crap less. It means that these are
stillborn ideas._

People don't need to know what an apache, django or drupal is in order to use
a website based on it. It's a fallacy to think that the user has to be aware
of what the underlying software is in order for that software to catch on.

------
ascendant
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.

~~~
joebananas
Why do you use words like communism when you don't know what they mean?

~~~
ascendant
because it gives my rant a nice tinge of political edginess.

I view the FSF as software socialists, as in they have a utopian view of how
things should be and everyone should buy in and give all of their stuff to
everyone else for the good of the community. I also view socialism as an
impossible ideal to achieve. In my opinion, all attempts at socialism have
ended in communism, where the ruling class tells the people they have
socialism but in reality the people at the top of the chain don't buy into it
and live much better lives.

Finally, I used the prefix "pseudo" because obviously we're talking about
software and not the rise and fall of empires (although Facebook is sort of a
digital empire) so I didn't want to attach a full-on label of "communism" to
it.

edit: I'm sure someone who has studied politics way more than I have will come
in here and point out that I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground, and
that's fine. I bitched about the FSF and I feel better so my mission was
accomplished.

Yes, vote me down further! PUNISH ME FOR USING WORDS YOU DO NOT LIKE.

~~~
michaelchisari
_I'm sure someone who has studied politics way more than I have will come in
here and point out that I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground, and
that's fine._

Hello! :)

Socialism, Communism, et all are very broad terms. It would behoove any points
you make to not use them pejoratively, because they are simply too broad to
use in the way you're using them. Especially utopianism, which no more
describes socialists than it describes many capitalists.

You could make an argument that the FSF follows the ideals of a very soft
libertarian socialism, but that's a stretch.

The FSF is very single-issue, they don't talk about social equality, they
don't even have a critique of capitalism and wages. If they're communists,
they're particularly undeveloped ones.

~~~
ascendant
Your logic is really taking the air out of my rant. This is more entertaining
than doing actual work though so that's why I'm still going with it.

