
Stallman: "Facebook is an international parasitism project." - psawaya
https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-related/2012-January/006990.html
======
feralchimp
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
> 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.

~~~
feralchimp
This might be one of the rare cases where "you'll understand when you're
older" is the most elegant and truthful response available.

But I'll understand if that's not very satisfying, so...

Interpersonal connections just _do not_ exist in some sort of static and
immutable categorical hierarchy, wherein all those that share in the Platonic
ideal of WORTH KEEPING are definitely kept above some threshold of positive
health and repair, and those that do not are just as destined to fade
naturally. If you're "sure that" you would recognize and maintain any
connection that is worth keeping, then you're only correct insofar as the
connection might not be worth maintaining for the other person. :)

The reason for this is that, in short, you can't see as far into the future as
you think you can.

As you get older, you (hopefully) gain some perspectives that retroactively
_change the past_. You occasionally notice important, even semi-profound
things about people you used to know; things you had never really noticed
before, that you could not have possibly noticed before because circumstances
had not yet unearthed those facets of their character. High school isn't life.
College isn't life. The first ten years of your career aren't life.

"Life changing" experience can come at any time, and it doesn't just change
your life _after_ the experience, but also reaches back into your experience
of things that occured before.

 _drops mic_

~~~
joering2
> "you'll understand when you're older"

In order to know this you had to be young and "get older". Social networks are
only 10 years old, approx.

What social network did you use 25 years ago?

~~~
feralchimp
Social network != internet-connected social network. My statements are more
about people (and the experience of living among them) than they are about
Facebook or any other internet site. Graph visibility / searchability has
increased, bandwidth has increased, latency has decreased. But the rules of
human interaction and gaining perspective on the human condition have more or
less (I suspect, not really my field) stayed relatively consistent since the
days of parchment and ship transit.

------
evgen
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
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
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
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>

> 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.)

~~~
mquander
Do you care to elaborate? Your whole blog post is spent describing his rude
tone, not addressing any of the content of his remarks.

It is really, really not obvious to me whether the world would be better off
if you and I stopped writing proprietary software, did something else as a
career, and wrote free software as a hobby. That is a hard question. My
intuition agrees with Stallman.

Whether or not you agree too, it's obvious from his published opinions that he
has thought hard about (and acted in accordance with) the specific goal: _what
helps humanity the most?_ That is the clear point of his answer to you and it
is the polar opposite of misanthropy.

------
eob
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.

------
9999
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.

~~~
crazygringo
> 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
There's a distinction between having something taken and giving it freely.
Facebook haters have the cognitive ability to make this distinction, but lack
the integrity to do so.

~~~
tikhonj
Ad hominems never help your argument but do degrade the discussion. Please
avoid them.

The idea of "giving away" a right is not _that_ simple--for example, I think
there are certain rights you cannot legally waive. Even if what Facebook is
doing is _legal_ (which it probably is), this same principle can reasonably be
extended to condemn what they are doing from an ethical standpoint.

Additionally, Facebook does not only affect the people using it. Information
about people without accounts (provided by people with accounts) is still
archived and searchable, potentially by unsavory entities. For these people, a
certain right to privacy is basically taken away, and certainly _not_ given
away.

~~~
tedunangst
I'm serious. Deliberately failing to make that distinction is intellectually
dishonest, and that degrades the discussion.

As to your second point, Facebook is not running around taking pictures of
you. Your friends are. If your privacy is being violated, it's your friends
(to use the term loosely) who are doing it. Facebook provides a platform, but
they are not the primary actor. That's another distinction I don't see being
made frequently enough.

------
gavinlynch
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
You're not the only one. Most of us avoid posting _because_ of our
ambivalence.

------
stcredzero
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
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.

------
jpeterson
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
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
[http://www.scribd.com/facebook/d/78445521-Role-of-Social-
Net...](http://www.scribd.com/facebook/d/78445521-Role-of-Social-Networks-in-
Information-Diffusion)

This looks like it could be the paper in question.

------
sp332
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-Jan...](https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-
related/2012-January/006993.html)

------
fudged
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
They are no longer minor decisions once they are adopted by the masses.

~~~
fudged
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.

------
Karunamon
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
email is not a private company looking for using you as their product.

~~~
Karunamon
"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
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.

------
jpdoctor
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
Here's a good counterargument, entitled "In Defense of Negativity":
<http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20110903-00>

~~~
majmun
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
> 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
> 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.

------
franciscoapinto
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-Jan...](https://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-
related/2012-January/006998.html).

~~~
hackermom
I can't quite see what's funny about the response.

~~~
zem
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.

------
derefr
> 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.

------
kefs
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.andro...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.worb.android.exfoliate&hl=en)

~~~
sp332
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
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.

------
rbarooah
Many of Stallman's complaints about Facebook (
<http://stallman.org/facebook.html> ) apply equally to Google.

Does anyone know whether he regards them in the same light?

~~~
koeselitz
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."

~~~
fl3tch
One problem with the privacy-protectionist view is that half of my email
recipients use one of the three major email services (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo
Mail), so even if I decided not to use them, half of my email would end up on
their servers. Taking that into consideration, and adding the fact that I
haven't found an email service that I've liked within an order of magnitude of
Gmail, it doesn't make sense to boycott it. You just have to assume that the
email providers are reading your messages and act accordingly. Some things I
talk about over email, and some things I don't.

~~~
whichdan
Only half?

(I wish I was joking.)

------
aangjie
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. :-)

------
mc32
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.

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

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

~~~
rpt
He has a bunch of honorary doctorates. I guess those confer the right to sign
Dr. (?)

~~~
jpdoctor
Yes. BTW, he did not finish his PhD, which he began at MIT. Side note: MIT
does not award honorary doctorates at all.

------
bullies
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.

------
fioll
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.

------
jordhy
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?

------
spodek
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
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
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.

------
kaiwen1
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.

------
nirai
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!

------
danbmil99
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?

------
shreeshga
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.

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

------
psychotik
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
You don't have to use facebook, you want to. A product doesn't force, humans
do.

~~~
psychotik
To understand user scenarios, I _have_ to.

~~~
Ideka
Classic: "having to" vs "wanting to".

------
smashing
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
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-
net...](http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-social-network-
users/)

~~~
mhewett
Most of my Baby Boom-era friends are on Facebook. Some of them are on it a
LOT.

------
javert
First time I've _ever_ agreed with Stallman.

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

~~~
Ideka
Care to elaborate?

------
noduerme
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.

~~~
coffeemug
There is a world of difference between citizens complaining how their
governments are corrupt, and husbands complaining how their wives boss them
around. The former is a macro problem - if you're unhappy there's very little
you can do to make a difference, you really need _everyone_ to get behind your
cause but because of weird behavioral science quirks this happens very rarely.
The latter is a micro problem - learn to have the courage to set boundaries in
your life, and the problem will go away.

Facebook is a problem of the latter form. It's entirely within your control to
limit the information you give them, carefully select privacy settings (which
are quite extensive), or not create an account at all. In any case, nothing
about it is _heinous violation of your freedom and imposition on your private
space_ , since the whole thing is voluntary.

To me the problem seems the opposite of the camp problem. There are a few
"weird" kids who cannot understand how people could possibly like Facebook, so
they make it a personal crusade to make it known all the time. Look, our adult
society is pretty good at accepting behavioral outliers. Not ideal, but
probably the best the world has ever known. But sometimes it's the outlier
that's the problem. Consider that many people don't see Facebook as a privacy
issue once they've weighed everything carefully and not because they're
idiots. Perhaps they treat "Facebook-haters" strangely not because they're not
on Facebook, but because they go out of their way to annoy everyone by trying
to make a point out of it all the time?

~~~
charlieok
You tried camping and it was awesome. It was fun getting a group together and
having a lot of interaction with them. Working on projects together, sharing
gossip at meals and in tents, going on day trips and coming back with pictures
and stories. Great stuff. People who spend time camping together share a bond
and become potential lifelong friends.

When camping was new, relatively few people went camping. The most exciting,
adventurous and challenging way to camp is, of course, to bring your own food
and gear and rough it, just you and nature.

Some businesses saw an opportunity to introduce a lot more people to camping
and make some money. They'd build some cabins around a lake and do some
marketing. It's not the same, but most people weren't going to rough it in the
woods anyway, right?

A Harvard kid announced a new camp one day for other Harvard kids. Everyone
who was anyone started going to Mark's camp. If you knew people going to this
camp, and you wanted to really connect with them, you had to go to Mark's camp
to do it. Sure, there were other ways to connect with them, but Mark's camp is
where people are spending a lot of their time and Mark's campfire is where
they share their stories. In fact, over a tenth the population of planet Earth
has made Mark's camp their hangout.

You still love camping as much as you ever did, and you want to connect and
share stuff with all your family and friends. But it really grates on you that
you have to walk through Mark's gate and live by Mark's rules in order to do
that. Isn't there some way you could round up a crew, leave Mark's camp
behind, and strike out into the wild somewhere, just you and your friends, to
do some _real_ camping?

~~~
aasarava
If camping is a metaphor for social interaction, then wouldn't picking up the
phone, or writing a letter, or sending an email, or a text, or driving over to
your friends' houses and saying, "Hey, let's go to a coffee shop" be the real
camping you're looking for?

You're setting up a zero sum analogy, assuming that everyone is so busy on
Facebook that they no longer interact or share photos/jokes/memes in other
ways. Not sure that's really the case.

~~~
alanh
There are events, parties, groups, and meet-ups which are exclusively
organized on Facebook.

But we can fight back. Quoting Dave Winer:

> _BTW, I get invited to events that say check out the Facebook page for
> details about where to be and when. If I care about the event, I write back
> to them telling them I don't use Facebook, and would read about it if they
> put up a blog post. Otherwise I can't come. If people hear that a few times,
> it'll start changing behavior. It's not the kind of thing you need a lot of
> people to do to force change. It's kind of like Apple refusing to put Flash
> on their iPhone and iPad. I don't imagine too many events would get
> reconceived just for me, but if a few more people do it, that could be
> enough to make the change._

------
loverobots
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 ;)

------
ktizo
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.

------
marshallp
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
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
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.

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

~~~
babarock
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
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
False equivalence. But do go ahead and give us your argument for how hypocrisy
is more admirable.

~~~
3143
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.

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

~~~
Estragon
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.

