
Facebook - pearjuice
http://stallman.org/facebook.html?
======
throwawaykf02
To save everyone the time, here's a typical Internet thread about Stallman:

\- He's crazy!

\- But he's right!

\- Right? He's just been stating the obvious all this time!

\- NSA surveillance!

\- Hadn't anyone heard about Echelon?

\- He stands for freedom of users!

\- But users don't care about those freedoms, they just want something that
works!

\- He's antisocial and extremely rude!

\- Autism spectrum.

\- But he's not diplomatic at all, we don't want him as a spokesperson for
Open Source!

\- It's GNU/Linux, not Linux.

\- See? It's nitpicking things like GNU/Linux that make even open source
enthusiasts hate him!

\- Only the userland is GNU anyway.

\- GPL!

\- Emacs!

\- GCC!

\- HURD!

\- Toejam.

~~~
jawns
I feel like he could reduce the crazy vibe by hiring a web designer to
overhaul this page. Well-designed crazy usually looks a little more sane than
poorly designed crazy.

~~~
phaer
In my opinion his page is quite well designed. It's easy to navigate, it's
obvious whats navigation and whats content. The page is very readable, you see
links easily. The page loads fast and is responsible in the sense that it
usable on all devices and clients i tried (including my phone and w3m in a
terminal).

I guess what you mean by "well-designed" is more colors and and images, but i
prefer his page over those ajaxy blogspot-themes, which get completely
unusable if you are on a phone-line-connection in a remote area, and a few
other pages. And that even though i have nothing against good modern css in
general :)

~~~
interstitial
Needs more parallax. I feel like I'm reading or something: I get the annoying
sensation of thinking. I want to feel like the internet is washing over me and
flowing through me. That I am one with magic electrons and the thought-beams
of narcissists and sycophants.

------
lifeisstillgood
There is a reason Linus is the figurehead of the Kernel project - he has a
track record of choosing directions that later turn out to be fruitful.

There is a reason GvR is the figurehead of the Python Language - he has a
track record of choosing directions that later turn out to be fruitful.

There is a reason Stallman ...

Look the guy spotted the trends waaaaay earlier than anyone else and be put
his money where his mouth is. The original GPL is no less crazy than this.
Hell most of us agree with this one.

------
mark_l_watson
Wow, that is a long (if sometimes repetitive) list! Hopefully Richard had help
putting that list together. I have two general comments:

1\. I am surprised how many non tech Saavy people I talk with are starting to
understand privacy issues.

2\. I had dinner last night with some Silicon Valley residents who were
talking about what a horrible investment Facebook would be long term. New
things will replace Facebook, and they will eventually have fewer active
users.

A bit off topic, but advice I like to give people is to use one specific web
browser for social media connected sites like Facebook, GMail + Google+,
Twitter, etc. and another web browser with locked down security for all other
browsing. This is easy to do, lets people enjoy the social media stuff if they
like, and still maintain some degree of privacy.

~~~
easong
Disclaimer: I work for Disconnect

[https://disconnect.me/](https://disconnect.me/) is designed to allow people
to protect themselves from being spied on across the internet by Facebook,
Google, et al without the inconvenience of using a separate browser or similar
methods.

Anecdotally, I've also experienced a growth in non-techie interest in online
privacy - in the pre Snowden era, I would have to explain myself and justify
what I do every time I was asked where I worked. Nowadays, I get asked for a
download link.

~~~
dizzystar
I started using your service in place of ghostery. I like both of them and I
truly appreciate what you guys are doing here.

The only short-coming is that my browser sometimes freezes when it is blocking
certain flash objects. I consider it a minor inconvenience and a worthwhile
trade-off. In general, sites load way faster. I am often appalled when I see
the amount of trackers being blocked on some of these pages. It shows why the
web, despite running on faster servers and delivering content across faster
networks to faster computers, appears to be slowing down year after year.

It also reminds me that I have a responsibility to the users who visit my
sites. I will never use any ad-tracking or social-media tracking software on
my sites. I will host my own ads on my site and not depend on third-party
companies to insert and regulate my ad presence. I will use minor tracking
tools, but solely with the aim of improving user experience.

In all, I am very glad that you guys are doing what you are doing. In some
meta respects, I think you are improving not only the state of the uses who
use your product, but also the general well-being of the entire internet. Once
we can extinguish the abusive trackers out there, we all can learn how to
monetize our sites in a respectful and appropriate fashion.

~~~
mark_l_watson
I also don't track users at my sites except for anonymous cookies on my
cooking web site. The cookie lets me identify them anonymously so I can keep
track of food they have on hand for suggesting recipes.

I put a lot of work into my sites and the really large payoff is meeting
people with similar interests and also people who might want to use my
consulting services. It would make me sad to have to abuse people's privacy in
order to make a living. (I am contracting at Google for a while, but I
generally think that mostly Google falls into the good guys camp, as opposed
to Facebook - just my personal opinion.)

------
greenyoda
The link to an ACLU article on how Facebook censored an ACLU Facebook post on
censorship was quite interesting:

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-national-
se...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-national-
security/naked-statue-reveals-one-thing-facebook-censorship)

------
SimHacker
I just uploaded a scan of the Copyleft (L) sticker that I mailed to RMS, which
inspired him to use the term for free software. And I wrote up the story
behind it:
[http://www.donhopkins.com/home/copyleft/](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/copyleft/)

~~~
tripzilch
Awesome. Thanks for the story.

(btw you need to add a <meta charset="utf-8" /> or something similar to that
site, some of the quotes get funky)

------
jroseattle
My only issue with Richard's rant here is -- why stop at Facebook? The social
network/media economy is responsible for lots of business plans, with lots of
people vested in their success.

There are others out there besides Facebook.

~~~
gress
Yeah - it seems weird to point at Facebook when the elephant in the room is
Google.

~~~
belorn
While Google is a larger issue regading privacy, facebook is a larger issue
regarding lock-in. Anyone who do not have an facebook account know how often
information is locked into facebook, never reaching anyone who chooses not to
participating in giving facebook more information.

------
Double_Cast
> If you do as I do, and reject Facebook, you are safe from this form of
> snooping.

Am I? As far as I understood, Facebook tracks internet users who have never
even created an account.

~~~
balabaster
I concur - Facebook's plugins to every damn website means that they can tell
where your IP address is visiting and correlate a "profile" over time based on
the sites you visit. So while they may not know your name, they can tell (as
long as it's a property they have a partnership with) where you've been. Site
owners that care about privacy should reject all the social plugins that also
do this. So if there's a Facebook Like button, or a Facebook comment system on
the page, whether you utilize them or not, their plugin was called in order to
load it and in turn, you've been tracked.

~~~
mikevm
That's why I use Ghostery.

~~~
balabaster
Thanks - just checking that out, looks potentially interesting.

~~~
gitaarik
Also check out [https://disconnect.me/](https://disconnect.me/)

------
thearn4
No disagreement with RMS actually, but just out of curiosity:

Back when land-line telephone subscription was more popular, did folks used to
complain about the phone company putting their name and address (by default)
in a large directly shared with the entire public?

I know you could pay a fee to be unlisted, but didn't it strike anyone as a
gigantic privacy issue in general?

~~~
dredmorbius
Tools to automatically search and utilize that data were somewhat limited.
There were classes of people who could suppress their listing. And you could
(generally) hide behind an initial and no-address listing as well (phone books
listed _both_ phone number _and_ street address by default).

It was a very, very different age in many ways.

What ubiquitous cheap computing and fast connectivity creates is the
possibility for thousands to millions of systems to attack a given person
simultaneously (DDoS, distributed brute force attacks), or for a very small
number of actors (as few as one) to attack from one to billions of people
simultaneously.

The phone book vector was, by contrast, limited in that:

⚫ It only listed your name, phone number, and street address. Not reams of
additional information.

⚫ Utilizing it required a phone call (toll calls, remember those), postage, or
a street visit. Attacks, in other words, cost real money (at least for most
players).

⚫ There was limited additional data readily linked by those data. Again, not
the mebabytes to gigabytes of information in a typical social networking
profile.

Yes, some players had access to more powerful tools -- but even marketing
databases and the like were vastly more primitive than they are now, and
hugely less available. Depending on when exactly you're talking about (1930s
to 1980s), there might have been some computer capacity, but you'd likely have
had to have spent several hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions,
even as late as the 1980s, to effectively utilize the data in an automated
fashion.

And yes, there were people who complained and concealed their listings, but
the risks were very, very different in magnitude then.

------
phy6
Also, 22k people like his fan page. [https://www.facebook.com/pages/Richard-
Stallman/112830992063...](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Richard-
Stallman/112830992063167)

~~~
worldsayshi
edit: Hmm, you probably wasn't trying to imply this..

But... that's not a fan page. It's just a wikipedia mirror. Like this one:
[https://www.facebook.com/pages/Quantum-
Physics/1101559390141...](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Quantum-
Physics/110155939014122)

Compare to this (a fan page):
[https://www.facebook.com/daftpunk](https://www.facebook.com/daftpunk)

Difference being that the mirror is (semi-) automatically generated.

This page:
[https://www.facebook.com/richardmatthew.stallman](https://www.facebook.com/richardmatthew.stallman)

.. is probably what Stallman is referring to.

------
Aardwolf
But he has his photo and text on his website, so the NSA can see that, so a
photo on Facebook would not add anything new?

~~~
jd007
The point is on his website, he chooses what photograph of himself is put
there. On Facebook, you have no control when others are sharing photographs
with you in them. On your own website you would presumably not post
photographs of yourself that compromises your privacy, but when others do so
on social networks, there is no guarantee like that (unless every single one
of your friends on Facebook explicitly gets permission from you for every
photo they post to Facebook that contains you before sharing, which never
happens).

~~~
neilc
_On Facebook, you have no control when others are sharing your photograph._

The same is true of the Internet in general.

~~~
jd007
Yes it is true for the Internet in general. But Facebook is a bit special in
that you can easily search for a person by name and have all photographs of
him/her in one big organized pile, which is not possible on the Internet in
general.

~~~
randomdata
Only the people of Facebook, or external entities who are explicitly granted
permission, can perform that search though. It's not like I can just hop on
Facebook and find all the picture of you, unless you have already permitted me
to.

If you are an entity like the aforementioned NSA, searching the entire
Internet for your photo isn't really any more challenging than using Facebook.
The computing resources necessary are considerably larger, but that is a
relatively small barrier.

~~~
schoen
I see at least two ways that having data in Facebook has the potential to help
governments learn more about people: things (relationships, events,
biographical data) are pre-structured in a single clear ontology, and Facebook
has direct access to all of the facts in the system.

If we imagine a more decentralized system, people might well still adopt a
single ontology for events and relationships, but much "private" information
might actually never be revealed to third parties, as opposed to disclosing
all of it to Facebook and asking Facebook to limit whom they show it to.

------
davidjgraph
I wonder why he doesn't suggest actively building a fake Facebook profile to
dilute the accuracy of the information being mined? What's the worst that can
happen, the account is blocked...

~~~
grecy
By even going to the site, you are giving them data. They have your IP
address, the unique attributes of your browser, etc. etc.

Once they figure out the profile is fake, they list you in the "trouble maker"
category and step up monitoring that IP/browser combination until they know
who you are, then they link that with everything they have on the real you
(bank account, property, job, etc.)

Eventually, one day, you're trying to board a plane and you get denied because
you've been known to disseminate "false or misleading information".

Playing their game validates it. Just don't play.

~~~
mateo411
What unique aspects of your browser? The User-Agent header will tell you the
kind of browser you have. However, it's unlikely that you are using a browser
that's very unique.

They can use cookies to identify you. But you have to keep going back to their
website.

~~~
grecy
I'm unique among the 3.6 million tested so far.

[https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

~~~
eps
You know, I've been to this site several times, but noticed just now that it
says "1 in 27588" about plugins of *stock iPad browser". This seems to be off,
way off.

~~~
MrBra
Yes but that still makes your browser unique, isn't it?

------
smky80
I really would like to see Facebook broken up via the Sherman Antitrust Act,
or some such legislation.

As I see it, the "network externality effect" which keeps such monopolies in
business could perhaps be mitigated by creating a sort of social network
"DNS", which could be created by the government or a private corporation.
Facebook/Google+/etc would be clients that would make requests for someone's
data via the DNS. So it would basically serve as a "Bridge" or "Facade" to use
a design pattern.

Example if Suzy is on Facebook, and Lucy is on Google+, when Suzy rquests
Lucy's photos, Facebook sends an API request to the DNS
"request_photos('Lucy', 'Suzy')", the DNS sees Lucy is on Google+ and forwards
the request there.

The purpose of the bridge/facade then is to make it not really matter where a
person stores their data or what client they use to view others. You just need
some sort agreed upon API for determining where the data for each person is,
an for sharing data between services.

For someone with more strict privacy concerns, the DNS for such a person could
simply record that the person uses this social networking service, which
doesn't allow requests from outside. Again the benefit here of the API would
be that to add yourself to that service would be as simple as
"upload_photos(serverX, request_photos('Suzy', 'Suzy'))", etc.

I'm sure there's a million things wrong with the above, but just a random
thought.

~~~
daveid
I'm not so sure about government-controlled DNS... But what you are describing
is "federation" and that's what Diaspora and identi.ca are built around.
Everyone can run their own server, and every server can talk to each other,
allowing users from different servers to interact seamlessly.

~~~
smky80
Ah, that makes a lot of sense, thanks for that. I guess what I would like to
see is some kind of government mandate to force social networks and the like
to follow this model.

------
evincarofautumn
Oh Stallman, such a character. Some of these are legitimate concerns, some
just gave me a great laugh. For example, weigh these two against one another:

> Facebook deleted a statement by a human rights group, then said that was a
> mistake. That Facebook invited the group to post the statement again —
> instead of undoing the deletion — demonstrates arrogance.

> Facebook permanently records everything you do, even what you look at, even
> items that are "deleted".

Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by ineptitude! Either
Facebook is an evil omnipresent observer, permanently recording everything…or
some representative goofed up and they can’t undo the deletion of the data
because they _actually deleted the data_.

But hey, if he wants to avoid Facebook and recommend against it, that’s fine.
We should all make our own value assessments and our own decisions about
privacy concerns, though. Just consider that Facebook’s occasional privacy
_blunders_ might be…just that.

------
adwf
As much as I've avoided Facebook for so long, I've come to the realisation
that if you want to use the internet, old-school "full" privacy is dead and
gone.

I've had a profile on FB for a long time now, but never ever used it. I've had
the javascript blocked around in my general web browsing, never installed the
phone app, etc. All I've ever received is the occasional email saying that
someone has tagged me in a status/photo. These annoyed me a little, as I
wanted to avoid FB as much as possible, whilst still being sociable with my
friends.

I came to a sad epiphany a few months ago however. I realised that even if I
weren't aware of all the photos/tags being posted of me, I'd still be tagged
by my friends regardless. Even if I completely cancelled my account, the
photos are still going up because I still meet with my friends and have an
active social life. This is when I realised what I needed to do.

It is the exact same situation as when someone makes a small jest at your
expense at a party. If it's a friend, you know they're just messing around and
taking the piss, you laugh it off, not offended. If it's not a friend however,
you might get a little offended by it. "Were they insulting me? Trying to
embarrass me? Should I laugh it off as a joke?" It's potentially annoying,
just as a violation to your privacy is. Inevitably, you have only a few
choices: Laugh, insult them back? (guess it depends on your culture/how rude
it was!) Some people might even just punch the guy...

You can't punch Facebook. (I wish)

It isn't gonna go away just because you're upset.

So the question here is: Why do we laugh these little embarrassments off? The
little invasions of our private self that we find annoying?

Because it's a way of owning the situation. You can't be offended/embarassed
by something you laugh off and apparently don't care about. "Yeah, my Karaoke
is terrible, but I love it!", "Yeah, I do have a habit of giggling in a funny
way, hahahaha!". It's exactly the same when you look at highly confident
people, they never seem embarrassed by anything at all. They just smile and
carry on.

Well I made a decision a couple of months ago to take the exact same approach
to Facebook, so I'm on it properly now. I can't punch FB in the face, but I
can take ownership of my own public persona. My friends/aquaintances are going
to be posting about me regardless, might as well take control of the situation
and make sure I _know_ everything is good.

PS: And hey, there are still plenty of good uses of FB anyway, might as well
enjoy the perks too.

PPS: I'm aware that it's a shitty situation. I almost feel like I've got
Stockholm syndrome and have just given in. But FB isn't going anywhere soon.

~~~
kh_hk
Leaving Facebook is / can also be a time investment. Years ago I found out I
was spending way too much time there on things I do not want to care about
(note the distinction between caring, not wanting to care, and not caring).

Do I really want to invest my time untagging myself from shameful photos, even
issuing take-down requests to my own friends? I was not invited to a party
because I do not have a facebook account? I am the expensive friend, who can't
be contacted using whatsapp or facebook? I am not able to show off my
"awesome" travels in order to step up on the social ladder? Cry me a river, I
tell them, and myself every time.

~~~
sasas
> Leaving Facebook is / can also be a time investment.

Absolutely. It can also be an investment in reducing those narcissistic
tendencies we all have hidden away ...

------
linux_devil
Realized this late , but saving lot of time since past 6 months . Deactivated
facebook , and find more time to actually go out and socialize. Don't even
know if it was adding to efficiency.

------
sidcool
May be this is an unpopular opinion, but facebook is a 'for profit' business.
If we want to use it for free, we should be ready to pay some price for it. I
am not a particular fan of facebook, except for it's ability to help me
connect within closed private groups and tracking technology and programming
news. I don't post photos or statuses on facebook.

Again, this is not absolving facebook of their dark patterns of snooping on
users and their broken privacy framework. Even Google is not an ideal in this
case.

------
drakaal
Stallman is an idiot.

When you post to your blog you tell the NSA what you know. When you attend a
conference where Stallman speaks and paid with your credit card the NSA knows
you support his ludicrous ideas.

Stallman thinks information should be free, but apparently that doesn't
include information about where you shop. Sure I get it. Information should be
free unless he can charge you to hear him speak, or it is his information.

You can't have it both ways.

Also, is CSS bad in some way? Do themes support the Evil too? Cause for a
famous guy that is one ugly website.

------
eonil
Anyway, ideal implementation for accessibility and readability. Must be the
standard of HTML styling.

------
RexRollman
I stay away from Facebook, Twitter, and Google for many of the reasons that
Stallman lists. I treat email like a postcard and I do nothing on the Internet
under my real name.

That said, I know many people don't care about this stuff, and I applaud their
lack of concern.

------
jokoon
is there a way to make a browser block any access to those like widget, or any
other facebook access ?

I haven't been or used on facebook for years now, and those tracking things
weird me out

~~~
drill_sarge
just put the facebook addresses in your hosts file, f.e.

0.0.0.0 www.facebook.com 0.0.0.0 facebook.com 0.0.0.0 login.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 www.login.facebook.com 0.0.0.0 fbcdn.net 0.0.0.0 www.fbcdn.net 0.0.0.0
fbcdn.com 0.0.0.0 www.fbcdn.com 0.0.0.0 static.ak.fbcdn.net 0.0.0.0
static.ak.connect.facebook.com 0.0.0.0 connect.facebook.net 0.0.0.0
www.connect.facebook.net 0.0.0.0 apps.facebook.com

~~~
jokoon
thanks a lot !

------
jgalt212
per Stallman:

The NSA tracks Americans' social networks, and Facebook is just one of its
sources.

maybe so, but they don't seem to be doing it very effectively. If so, they
would have been a. more closely following the the Boston Marathon bombers. b.
would have been able to ID them from photos pulled from the surveillance
tapes.

so while the NSA and their recent "efforts" are pretty scary and de jure or de
facto illegal, it is the government, so how effective can they really be at
keeping an eye on us?

~~~
tripzilch
Oh it's effective alright, it's just that keeping you safe from terrorist
attacks is not what it's effective _at_.

------
hernan604
The best thing about fecesbook is the UX. They have done such a great job even
illiterate people can use it.

Its a great tool to get UX ideas.

Old timers will remember bbs, irc. And after Okrut was created, many people
left the old services. Now, many of them migrated to fecesbook.

That same people also are not interested in NSA or privacy. They just want to
make noise, search and be found by other people like them.

~~~
dingaling
I had occasion to use Facebook recently ( a relative asked me to upload a
photo to her profile while she was busy ). I can honestly say I was utterly
baffled by the UI.

Eventually my 83-year-old great aunt came in and showed me what sequence of
links to click to arrive at an upload icon. _shrug_

I spend 10 hours a day on a command line.

------
martinvol
Did he check that all the websites he linked were fully open source? Just
asking.

------
dlsx
If only the mainstream media would listen to humanitarians like RMS. Instead
they choose to listen to greedy slime balls that end in BERG.

Money is the root of all evil. Combine that with privacy, and Facebook IS the
new root of all evil. I deleted my account years ago, and I know with 100%
certainty it will never be purged. It's criminal, and I fucking loathe this
fact. I would pay to cave in some of the faces at Facebook.

~~~
valtron
You forgot /stein$/ and /^Gold/. Also, you didn't mention "big-nosed"! What is
this, a civil discussion??

~~~
mikevm
If OP was being anti-Semitic, then it would surprise him that RMS is also of
the Jewish persuasion.

~~~
killwhitey
RMS is an atheist

~~~
mikevm
I guess I should've said "of Jewish ancestry".

------
eonil
This makes me curious of his thought on Google+

~~~
apetresc
Take a wild guess. I'm sure you can guess it.

------
tarekmoz
He never used Facebook, but oh gawd he loves to use <hr/>.. :)

------
_Simon
Getting a little bored of RMS now. He's becoming increasingly like chicken
little rather that the boy that tells the emperor he's naked.

~~~
hayksaakian
I think you might be getting bored of him because society has accepted that
the emperor is naked and doesn't care.

~~~
interstitial
Society likes staring at the Emperor's junk and hopes he keeps tweeting it.

