
Reasons not to use Facebook - jestinjoy1
https://stallman.org/facebook.html
======
paulsecwhatt
I honestly don't understand why people value Stallman's opinions on these
matters so highly. I completely disagree with him on essentially everything he
writes about these topics.

Granted, he's an incredible programmer who contributed immensely to the
development of our modern operating systems and the tools we use, and people
here love to bring that up ("what - you DON'T KNOW WHO STALLMAN IS? SHAME? HOW
DARE YOU CRITICISE HIM?")

Does this make his opinion on Facebook or privacy or freedom any more correct
or valid? No.

Just like I wouldn't listen to Usain Bolt if he were trying to teach me the
biological mechanisms behind doping, I can't see why Stallman's opinion is
considered so correct in these matters.

IMO his ramblings about personal liberties and freedom being infringed by
everything under the sun from Amazon to Google to Facebook are oversimplified
and childish. The world isn't black and white and he obviously fails to
understand the entire point behind many of these companies. When Facebook
makes you use a real name it's not because theres some "Mr. Evil" at the top
level plotting to steal your freedom, it's because it leads to a better
working social network.

Just his description of AirBnB is ridiculous: "Airbnb requires you to run
nonfree software (an app, or Javascript). It puts you in a data base easily
available to Big Brother (just like a hotel)."

That's an immensely stupid argument, because any _viable_ company that wants
to provide a service that a consumer other than Stallman himself will use will
"infringe" on those two idiotic requirements.

TL;DR. Just because he did something amazing in one field/area, doesn't mean
he is not spewing complete BS. For a similar example, see:
[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/01/dna-
jam...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/01/dna-james-watson-
scientist-selling-nobel-prize-medal)

~~~
manigandham
I'm with you. Seems like FUD here with this post, there are a few decent ideas
about privacy but its a social network and used for connecting to people.
Maybe they can relax the real name policy some more but I have plenty of
friends that don't use their actual real/legal name and never had a problem.

There are effective privacy controls in place now and things like being served
ads is such a silly issue to complain about... it's a business that needs to
make money, how else is that supposed to happen?

What is the overall point at the end of this? Basically we should all just be
anonymous forever? Facebook is just a decade old, society/culture is still
catching up and we really don't need all this doom/gloom every time. And yea,
I didn't know who this guy was until this post.

~~~
icebraining
_I have plenty of friends that don 't use their actual real/legal name and
never had a problem._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement)

 _things like being served ads is such a silly issue to complain about... it
's a business that needs to make money, how else is that supposed to happen?_

Hum, charge people?

 _What is the overall point at the end of this?_

"Don't use Facebook." I thought that was clear.

~~~
manigandham
Fine, the real name policy is a fuzzy issue and not really fit for discussion
here.

Charging people doesn't work since most people want the convenience and
ability to communicate with friends but don't want to pay for it. Not a viable
model for Facebook. I'm sure you don't just browse the web and offer to pay
every site you visit do you?

"Don't use Facebook" is not the point, this is all about fear of privacy in
general and just targeted at Facebook but much of it is FUD.

------
Frondo
My problem with essays like this is that they don't address the more critical
underlying point: most people don't recognize privacy as a human right, and
most people don't realize _why_ privacy is important and worth protecting.

To most people, "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide"
sounds _reasonable_.

That's the deeper problem at work here. With more people on board to why
privacy matters, articles like this will be more of an "oh, yeah!" instead of
a "so what?" kind of thing.

~~~
tome
> To most people, "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide"
> sounds reasonable.

So what's the correct position, and why?

~~~
crdoconnor
There will always be times when the moral and just thing to do is to break the
law. Without privacy, you are not free to break those laws.

If you're happy living under a police state in meek compliance then you have
nothing to hide. If you'd turn over Anne Frank to the authorities in a
heartbeat then you have nothing to hide.

If you ever plan on doing the right thing by disobeying the authorities, at
any point in the future, then you need privacy _now_. Later might be too late.

------
SeanDav
There seems to have been a sea change in opinion of many HN posters here,
especially among the more recent visitors to HN. A couple of years ago
Facebook was considered by many here to be an invasion of privacy and just not
worth the effort. That general opinion seems to have changed for some. A lot
of newer posters seem to be of the opinion that lack of privacy is a cost
worth paying for convenience and will apologize for, defend and even support
companies like FB that blatantly invade privacy.

~~~
karmacondon
Facebook doesn't invade anyone's privacy. They aren't going into your house
and rifling through your things. People post things on facebook because they
want other people to see them. If you don't want to do that, then don't use
facebook.

You can't stop other people from talking about you, or from taking pictures of
you or relating stories that involve you. That's always been a part of social
life. If you consider that to be an invasion of your privacy, then leave
society and live as a hermit. It probably won't be fun, but it will be very
private.

I know several people who don't use facebook, myself included, because they
just aren't interested in the service that it provides. Philosophical concerns
about the nature of privacy don't really factor into it. The social fashions
about what's cool and what isn't cool will change with the winds. It isn't
worth paying attention to. If facebook or any other social software is
valuable to you, then good, use it. If not, no sense complaining about what
other people decide to do with their time.

~~~
pckspcks
There is no way to not use Facebook.

Let me repeat that: THERE IS NO WAY TO NOT USE FACEBOOK.

Everyone's photos: Mine, yours, Stallmans, get posted to Facebook, annotated
with our names (which is increasingly becoming easy enough to do with ML --
the human component will increasingly decline). If at least one of your
friends uses Facebook, Facebook has profile information on you.

Stallman doesn't have a Facebook account, but things posted to Facebook
identify where Stallman is, who his friends and peers are, who he interacts
with, etc.

Signing up for a Facebook/Google Scholar/Researchgate/etc. simply gives you
some level of control over the visibility of the information collected about
you. If you care about your personal brand, there is strong reason to do it.
It's almost blackmail. But if you don't do it, you're still on Facebook;
simply without the EULA, and without any control.

~~~
raphael_l
There is no way to not use life.

Let me repeat that: THERE IS NO WAY TO NOT USE LIFE.

Simply substituting one word for another shows you how you just can't hold
Facebook responsible for this. People are and have been able to share
information in myriads of ways. Facebook is just one of them. They could be
telling information person to person, via a phone call, via e-mail or simply
standing in the street and shouting it out. I can be in the next room and a
friend of mine could show photos of me to a stranger. I could be thousands of
miles away and a friend of mine could reveal my private information to someone
else.

What's stopping me to simply create a personal website where I post
information about me and my friends? Who's responsible then? The server host?
Or is it the me, the one who put all the information on the site, visible for
everyone?

People complain about censorship, but basically what they're saying is that
they want all information except the one kind where something is revealed
about them. If you don't want this information to be shared, then ask your
friends to stop posting your name, photos, e-mail, whatever.

Please note that I'm simply responding to the argument that Facebook mines all
the data your friends put up. In my wildest dream I wouldn't call FB one of
the good guys, nor would I condone most of their practices (e.g. their "Like"
buttons on external sites). All I'm saying is that people seem very eager to
hand off responsibility to software, machines, corporations. And in some cases
that simply doesn't work.

~~~
jacquesm
> Simply substituting one word for another shows you how you just can't hold
> Facebook responsible for this.

Single word substitutions of words that have no relationship with each other
do not prove anything. Facebook and life are from entirely different
categories in the taxonomy of useful (and not so useful) terms.

The use of certain digital services should be voluntary, not implicit because
your associates use it.

~~~
raphael_l
While I agree that substituting a single word is a very easy target and easily
manipulated, so that I shouldn't have gone for it, I think "life" is very
relevant in this case, as for many people it is either part of their life or
their _social_ life exclusively evolves around FB.

All I'm saying is that when a friend of yours decides to share information
about you in public, you should hold them responsible and not the channel he
is sharing this information. That's it.

------
GigabyteCoin
A friend of mine was turned off of a potentially new employee the other day
because the candidate exclaimed that they recognized a customer from their
instagram profile and that they followed it, loved it, etc.

The customer was obviously embarrased, exclaimed that he had not used
instagram in over a year, and promptly left the store.

This left an uneasy feeling in my friend (the store owner). Which confused me
to be honest. What did that customer expect when they placed their picture and
basically entire lives on a public website with geotagged images? The new
employee was told to be talkative with all clients as they worked in customer
service, and so they attempted to strike up a conversation or at least a
similar interest in the customer's publicly viewable leisure activities.

That was how the candidate discovered him on instagram in the first place by
the way. It was because he only posted pictures of the local area.

~~~
keithpeter
_" The customer was obviously embarrased, exclaimed that he had not used
instagram in over a year, and promptly left the store."_

Was there a significant age difference between the luckless candidate and the
customer? Just guessing.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
Maybe 10 years, not much of an age difference as far as I know. They were all
under 40 I imagine.

------
pooogie
His opinion may seem ridiculous to many here, but the following has happened
quite a few times before:

1\. Stallman shares radical opinion

2\. He's ridiculed for his outlandish claims

3\. Some news breaks or things happen gradually

4\. Now people say 'Stallman called it' or realize he was right all along

~~~
peteretep
Some examples, please

~~~
pooogie
Sorry I'm on mobile so I can give one:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Read](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Read)

~~~
motbob
We are still far away from this short story reflecting reality. Do you have a
better example?

~~~
kuschku
Another great example would be the example of stallman "In the future,
debuggers will be illegal to use" and a recent court case where a person was
sent to jail for accessing a website with a spoofed user agent using wget.

~~~
peteretep
If you're talking about weev, I can not think of a more disingenuous way of
describing what he was sent to jail for. Otherwise, I can't find what you're
talking about with a simple search.

I am completely unsure how you went from a prediction that hasn't come true to
an unrelated computer crime.

~~~
kuschku
There was a court case, where the argument was that "as spoofing a useragent
is not a common use case that a normal computer user could do, it has to be
considered criminal activity in itself". This is what I was referring to.

------
mark_l_watson
Another good article by Richard Stallman - his ideas keep gaining even more
relevance for me.

I do use Facebook to plug my books and to hopefully drive traffic to my blog
articles, but I have been considering cancelling my account.

I have similar issues with Google, but with Google I get much more value:
using G+ to promote my own web properties, and generally really useful
services.

That said, I have switched to using my GMail address as a secondary email that
I don't often check, and having the people most important to me use my own
email address. Also, I give this advice all the time: choose one web browser
like Chrome for use just with social media (Google, Facebook, and Twitter web
properties) and another web browser for everything else.

~~~
ericfontaine
> I do use Facebook to plug my books and to hopefully drive traffic to my blog
> articles

The trick is configuring your blog to autopost to facebook, for which I use
[https://wordpress.org/plugins/add-link-to-
facebook/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/add-link-to-facebook/) which also
automatically grabs likes and comments from the facebook post and adds them to
the wordpress comments database. Maybe this is acknowledging facebook's value,
but at least I don't have to personally interact with facebook, nor are
visitors to my blog tracked by facebook's javascript.

------
jfoster
I view my decision to use Facebook as a transaction. Sure, I lose some
"privacy", but I also get a lot of value in return.

I use quotes around "privacy" because I'm not sure I understand it the same
way that Facebook critics do. When I'm using a changeroom, I expect privacy.
When I take on a pseudonym and don't identify myself by name, I expect
privacy. When I'm knowingly uploading photos that I am happy for the world to
see, I don't have much of an expectation of privacy, and without an
expectation of privacy I'm not sure I have any privacy to lose. That said, I
don't think about this too much, so would love to hear well-reasoned arguments
against my point of view on that.

~~~
bo1024
I think a main point is about indirect effects of privacy loss that are hard
to see and reason about directly.

Example #1: You visit a website completely unrelated to facebook. The site has
a "like" button on the page enabling them to access Facebook's data about you
(depending on cookies etc). You observe advertisements or content tailored
based on your personal information or things you like. Maybe you are offered
different prices for the same product depending on your age, gender, location,
etc.

Example #2: A potential employer accesses, perhaps indirectly, information
about you that would be illegal to ask you directly (marital status, etc).

Example #3: One of your facebook "friends" signs up for some arbitrary service
enabling that service to access your contact and personal information and
connect it with e.g. the photos you mentioned. Arbitrary things happen, e.g.
your photos are used to advertise some product you find distasteful, your
contact and personal information is sold to telemarketers or spammers, and so
on.

~~~
yeukhon
1) This is more of how Facebook makes money with ads and providing
"personalized experience" just as Google does. Fundamentally not a flaw in
Facebook, but a debatable practice. And do you have source Facebook would
share my age and my gender to third-party even if I list them to be private?
The only thing that might be possible is Facebook internally does the
calculation. Giving away to third-party vs FB doing the computation aren't
exactly the same.

2) If you join an online community, you have to pay a price. You might tagged
your friend or your friend tagged you and the setting is not strict enough,
then how is that Facebook's fault?

3) Again, that's the price a social network has to pay.

Back in the days people take film-based pictures and there is no way to
massively store and distribute to the world. Now the digital age has changed
the way we distribute information about one another.

Doesn't matter if Facebook is 100% free software and decentralized. One person
leaks everything leaks. There is no real 100% anonymity. You have to make
contact with another human being.

------
junto
Facebook is like a dentist. The benefit is that you get to spy on old friends
who aren't really friends anymore, but you have to remember that a) the
dentist is going to cause you pain, and b) he's going to invoice for for the
pleasure of doing so. The difference is that the dentist has your best
interests at heart, whilst Facebook has its own best interests as its primary
focus, its customers secondary, and hint hint - you aren't the customer.

~~~
blawa
Thank you, I was fearing I'll see an ad-hominem argument criticizing Stallman
and thereby nullifying the arguments while actually not saying anything
against the arguments. Your points are right, and personally, I don't see a
reason to follow people who're not friends anymore

~~~
junto
My biggest problem with Facebook is that my contact details are uploaded to
Facebook by my "friends" without my permission. I choose not to he Facebook
user but people I know are persistently sharing my contact details with them
and I assume even my contact details photo which they can later match using
facial recognition to other photos uploaded by friends without my permission.

------
Veedrac
Since this seems to just be a braindump, I might as well add Veritasium's
comments on the matter:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag)

I found them pretty interesting listening from a content-distribution and
-consumption side of things, rather than from a social-network perspective.

------
gaadd33
> Algorithmic filtering can affect history, not just hide history. Facebook's
> filtering algorithm suppressed news about the thug riot in Ferguson until
> after it became national news.

Calling all of the protestors in Ferguson "thugs" seems pretty off base. I'm
surprised he characterized everyone there like that when his previous few
points seemed to be in favor of the ability to protest the government. I guess
he only feels that way when it's not in the US?

It's interesting he drew that conclusion from the article he links to, given
that they mention prior to things such as twitter it would only be
characterized on the news as a place to avoid due to "looters, thugs,
troublemakers" in a minor segment.

~~~
tree_of_item
You misunderstood, he's calling the _cops_ thugs, not the protestors. If you
read the rest of his website you will see that he refers to police as "thugs"
regularly:

> US citizens: call on Obama to curb militarization of thugs.

> Everyone, call on Pasco to fire and prosecute the killer thugs

> "Flood Wall Street" protesters have been acquitted of charges; the thugs'
> order for them to disperse was ruled unconstitutional.

> It is good that they were acquitted, but there must be some penalty for
> thugs that violate protesters' rights.

and so on.

~~~
_ak
And that is one reason why he is so terrible at communication. Nobody
understands what he really means in that particular case, unless you were able
to derive his specific meaning of "thug" from his previous writings. Inventing
your own private sociolect and using it in published texts is a bad idea.

~~~
keithpeter
UK note: I had to check the reference to work out that the thugs mentioned had
uniforms.

I found the playful use of 'used' along with other vocabulary changes to be
reasonable and engaging. This playfulness with language may create problems
for readers whose first language is not English.

------
ramigb
From an avid FB user who spent three hours a day to someone who has his
account deactivated for more than a month, that is how much convinced i am
that FB is nothing but utter garbage and i just had enough with it.

~~~
zo1
I've also noticed a stark reduction in content from friends. Perhaps we're all
growing up and posting less, perhaps Facebook's algorithms are hiding all
their posts for some arbitrary reason, I don't know.

All I know, is that if it weren't for the few vocal friends and pages that
keep things mildly interesting, I would have no reason to be on Facebook at
all.

------
Yhippa
Would he be better off creating a minimal verified profile to de-legitimize
other fake profiles? I know he would never do that but it's an interesting
thing to consider in today's world.

Let's say you're not averse to social media/networking. Do you go ahead and
claim your name so that someone with a list of compromised or usernames don't
grab it before you do?

~~~
kashkhan
wouldn't it be easy for facebook to deactivate the current fake account?

------
esfandia
Here's one thing I like about Facebook: it has stopped the flood of chain-
emails I used to receive from random "friends". They post that stuff on
Facebook now instead. It's the perfect honeypot.

~~~
killerpopiller
why not make a list of good things FB has done for you and compare?

\- less chain mails -

~~~
notfoss
\- Shadow profile (So that I don't have to waste energy creating one) -

------
kartikkumar
Although I can get the rationale of most things he says, I’m not sure that
he’s always offering sane alternative options:

> Don't be tracked — pay cash.

I’m wondering how he imagines this would pan out. Is RMS also against banking,
since banks mine your data too. Does he suggest stuffing your mattress full of
cash? (serious question).

In the US, where credit ratings are essential to be able to make any
sizeable/significant purchases (car, house etc.), I’m wondering what he
suggests as being the alternative. Or is he just supposed to reject all
purchases that aren’t feasible with cash?

I’m curious if he’s opposed to Bitcoin too.

I’m not familiar enough with his writings to discern whether he’s simply a
dissenter or also someone that has a view towards sane, realistic solutions.

~~~
notthemessiah
> I’m curious if he’s opposed to Bitcoin too.

He likes the privacy aspect of it, but has concerns with how it enables tax-
evasion, and lack of monetary policy, hence why TALER (Taxable Anonymous Libre
Electronic Reserves) is a GNU project:
[https://gnunet.org/taler2014ghm](https://gnunet.org/taler2014ghm)

------
jdkanani
> We call them "useds" rather than "users" because Facebook is using them, not
> vice versa.

This line summarizes it all up.

------
abdias
Considering that Zuckerberg is a great admire of China and apparently
socialism[0], it doesn't come to me as a huge surprise that these "ethics" are
guidelines for Facebook.

“I’ve also bought copies of this book for my colleagues,” Zuckerberg was
quoted as saying by a Chinese news website. “I want them to understand
socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

[0]:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08/why-
does-mark-zuckerberg-want-facebook-employees-to-read-the-chinese-presidents-
book/)

~~~
vvpan
You say "socialism" like it's a bad thing.

~~~
zo1
Well, to some it _is_ a bad thing. Then again, we do all have our own
opinions. And we, as a society, have not yet achieved consensus/agreement on
whether socialism is good/bad.

------
nerdy
RMS is a strange duality. On the one hand he's a freedom advocate and has put
considerable effort forward to make our world a better place; it's hard to not
have a great deal of respect for him. On the other hand he's brilliant but
quite frankly a lunatic, benign freedom extremist... and I don't even have a
Facebook account! I can only imagine how he might come off to people who're
hardcore social media consumers.

------
Aoyagi
The worst thing about Facebook I personally see is the peer (or even
professional) pressure to have an account there and be active. And them doing
what all (American?) megacorps do: buying small companies, stripping them of
assets, absorbing them and forgetting them.

Then again, some people build start-ups for this very reason, don't they.

------
smutticus
The #1 reason not to use FB is you cannot bitch about FB. I have little
patience or sympathy for people who use FB and constantly complain about it.
They should stop using it.

I don't use FB, which means I have little reason to bitch about it, and if I
do want to bitch about it I don't sound like a hypocrit.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
As a complimentary perspective:

For those who haven't seen it, I think Slavoj Žižek and Paul Holdengräber on
"Surveillance and whistleblowers" is worth a watch. The part about
surveillance starts at 21:14 so this link will take you there
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIPjmmmh_os#t=21m14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIPjmmmh_os#t=21m14s)

Žižek: "The most dangerous unfreedom is the unfreedom you don't even
experience, as such. If some of you are feminists ... every good feminist will
tell you the first step of feminism is just to realise your situation of
oppression... We need something similar here. That's the first point. The
second point ... I'm a little bit sceptic about this paranoia 'ooh we are
totally controlled' and so on and so on, I think we shouldn't take this too
seriously. And this doesn't make the situation any easier if anything it makes
it more... it [paranoia] is justified, but we should be aware, again we go in
to metaphorics again the NSA the Big Eye knows everything, again the mega-
machinery is extremely stupid, they don't know what they know. Do you
remember, this is a very superficial anecdote ... a guy in LA was Googling the
ways to kill your wife something like that, a couple days afterward the FBI
brutally entered his house arrested him blah blah blah. Why? Because Google
reported this to FBI. But do you know what was the result, this guy was a was
one of the you know all the [TV] series CIS / police investigation, we was
simply writing a scenario and wanted to check you know, and you have this
again and again or form China they told me a wonderful example of this
stupidity a guy just before Tiananmen [Square] anniversary a guy was an
English professor in Beijing was flirting with a lady in London, and since
they were both educated he used a wonderful quote from Shakespeare, because
you know in Elizabethan England the word "protest" meant also "I publicly
declare" and he quoted to her "I protest my love to you" chop-chop and the
conversation was cut short because the word "protest" was prohibited because
of associations with Tiananmen, what I find so ridiculous is that if the guy
were to be extremely vulgar and told the lady something like "I will fuck your
brain out" everything would be okay, you quote Shakespeare... You know
computers just give you immense amounts of data and you can play with it."

Errors and omissions intentional as I'm directly transcribing Žižek talking.

He then goes on to relate an experience as a young adult in Slovenia meeting
with his friends and upon parting, knowing everything was recorded, they
didn't hind anything and at the end of the conversation they would say
something like "Mother baked a good apple pie" and then later found out this
really confused the people monitoring their conversations.

~~~
anigbrowl
Žižek's first hand experience of communism and being (somewhat) punsihed for
being a dissident (by being unable to get employment for several years despite
his strong academic credentials) are quite insightful, although he does take
the scenic route when it comes to articulating his points. That's OK though, I
find his talking pleasant to listen to even though I've heard most of his
jokes many times now.

------
mtarnovan
First I thought it was a typo, but it can't be, there are too many occurrences
- looks like Stallman is intentionally referring to FB users as 'useds':

> Facebook carefully studies all the text that its _useds_ type in and then
> don't submit.

> Facebook, as an "experiment", collected the text its _useds_ started to
> enter as status updates and ultimately did not send.

~~~
jacquesm
I often have multiple really dumb typos in my text when I'm using an
unfamiliar keyboard and they're remarkably 'internally consistent'.

~~~
mtarnovan
This is not a typo, see jdkanani's comment.

------
patrickdavey
If you haven't watched it yet, I can highly recommend the documentary
'citizenfour', which is about the meetings between Snowden and Laura Poitras,
Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian intelligence reporter Ewen MacAskill.

Free to watch here:

[https://thoughtmaybe.com/citizenfour/](https://thoughtmaybe.com/citizenfour/)

------
Create
“As your client knows, Mr. Zuckerberg goes to great lengths to protect the
privacy of his personal life.”

Which adds a wrinkle: Some people requiring nondisclosure are the very ones
who have built an industry on its opposite, the disclosure of personal
information.

------
hobarrera
I've never understood why people insist on enumerating reasons why _not_ to
use facebook.

There's already a lack of reasons to use it (unless you count funny games and
cat pictures), shouldn't that be enough in itself?

------
AnonJ
Stallman is becoming quite increasingly peculiar. Not really interested in his
talks. His software was great but his ideology (and generally that of FSF) is
probably a kind of out of touch with the reality.

------
PebblesHD
At this point in the evolution in technology, I find that Stallman is
increasingly irrelevant when his commentary is basically stating every basic
point of the site and then saying its bad. Don't want to use your real name?
Don't join a site where the goal is to publicly connect with people you know.
Don't want your privacy violated, post only what you feel comfortable with.
With every new step in the advance of technology and the Internet of things,
services such as, but not necessarily including Facebook will have access to
an ever expanding array of information about our lives. This information can
be used for good as well as bad, but this doesn't mean we shouldn't persue it.

~~~
logn
Almost none of his complaints strike at essential features of a social
network. Real names, censorship, tracking un-submitted text, etc are all just
evil and not part of any functionality users care about.

~~~
cloakandswagger
Being able to search and find people by their real name is actually a feature
I value very highly in a social network.

~~~
Sanddancer
Being able to search and find people by the names they actually use on a day
to day basis is actually a feature I value very highly in a social network.
Being able to hide from abusive people in one's past is actually a feature I
value very highly in a social network. I know a number of people --
transpeople, people from other countries, people who just don't like their
given name -- who don't use their "real" name in "real" life. Why should
facebook require one's legal name when no in person congregation requires you
to wear a name badge that identifies you with a name you may not be
comfortable with?

~~~
TwoBit
Because it's your legal name?

~~~
jat850
You may not be aware that in some jurisdictions (Quebec is an example),
marriage is not a sufficient legal reason to change your legal name, yet most
people informally identify with a spousal name change. It would seem like an
overstep for Facebook to regulate against this by policy. That's only one of
many, many examples where people shouldn't be forced into using their legal
name simply BECAUSE it's their legal name.

------
daminimal
With 112 mentions of Facebook I'd say this is a great ad.

------
zachrose
I like:
[https://stallman.org/common/stallman.css](https://stallman.org/common/stallman.css)

~~~
GhotiFish
why?

------
EGreg
Why is "user" replaced with "used" everywhere? It isn't a typo, it's
Stallman's NLP-style punning?

~~~
dredmorbius
See the footnote in the article (also noted multiple times above):

"We call them "useds" rather than "users" because Facebook is using them, not
vice versa."

------
vohof
People tend to overthink this. The only reason alot of people use facebook is
because that's where all their friends are.

------
whowhat
Why did this topic fall to the second page on HN so quickly, despite its
relatively high upvotes, activity, and recency?

------
pain
Reasons to support free [http://www.getaether.net](http://www.getaether.net)
and [https://www.matrix.org](https://www.matrix.org) software.

Desperate developers needing research time and money for supporting and
advancing federatable networks.

------
erodingvar
> if you talk about your friends in Facebook, you're ratting on them

This statement reveals the paranoid perspective behind this publication.

While there are many valid reasons why some people may not want to use
Facebook, I think it's as interesting to wonder reasons why people would be so
opposed to everyone using it.

I think had Stallman been less weird, he may feel differently about Facebook.
For someone like him, any personal details visible to others is likely to
result in harm to him.

When you don't fit, everything hurts, and it's easy to feel like all those
institutions are evil. But that's just you Richard. For most people, Facebook
isn't much of a threat.

~~~
codesuela
So what are you saying? Its OK to hurt people who don't fit in?

------
cddotdotslash
Yes, Facebook tracks you and complies with government requests in the
countries it operates in. Is anything new or is the author just spreading FUD?

------
revicon
While I agree w/ some of the points Stallman makes, essays like this that rely
on hyperbole to rile up readers turn me off and detract from the issues the
author is trying to bring attention to.

One example: Stallman states "Facebook's mobile app snoops on SMS messages"
and links to this article:
[http://www.efytimes.com/e1/fullnews.asp?edid=128859](http://www.efytimes.com/e1/fullnews.asp?edid=128859)

"... during installation, the Facebook mobile app for Android platform seeks
certain 'permissions' with the latest update going a step ahead in asking
users to allow the app 'Read your text messages (SMS or MMS)'."

So during installation (on android), Facebook is asking permission to access
SMS, which you can choose to enable or not. This is a far cry from his
statement that "Facebook's mobile app snoops on SMS messages."

There are good points in this essay, but the amount of alarmism mixed in makes
it much harder to sift through.

~~~
kragen
It is not correct to say that you can choose to enable this permission or not;
or, rather, it is true only in a narrow technical sense — if you choose not to
enable this permission, standard Android will refuse to install the Facebook
app. And what legitimate reason could Facebook possibly have to request that
permission in the first place?

There may be some examples of hyperbole in that article, but the example you
chose is not one of them.

~~~
tedunangst
Phone number verification? I have an iPhone, which doesn't ever let apps read
text messages, which actually would be nice sometimes when my banking app
would like to verify it's running on my phone, as opposed to somebody else's
phone.

~~~
darklajid
Why would Facebook need to verify a phone number? It's a social network, used
for jokes, farmville and whatnot. Most people I know that are on FB don't even
use their 'real' name. IF someone provides a telephone number in his account
details, FB can treat it like a string.

I understand why FB would like to 'verify a number', but why should we allow
that to happen? Why is this a valid reason to ask for permissions on my phone?

~~~
tedunangst
If you don't let people use two factor auth, they bitch about your lack of
security. If you let people use two factor auth, they bitch that you're
collecting phone numbers. Can't win.

~~~
darklajid
The problem is scope.

TFA is nice. Maybe mandatory when you're providing a service that passes a
certain threshold?

But that permission obviously isn't the right answer. FB should ask for
permissions to read _all_ SMS to make TFA via SMS a tiny bit more comfortable?

No. TFA solutions exist. Google Authenticator (I wouldn't trust Google with
anything, but that's "open" as far as I know) or the Yubico aequivalent are
perfectly fine choices for T/HOTP. If you want to send SMS instead (why??),
let the user enjoy their platform's copy/paste support to give you the code.

There is not a single reasonable argument, why Facebook (or.. any. Seriously:
I cannot think of ONE reason) should be able to read your text messages.

Bringing up TFA is probably (hey, not my native language, I certainly never
joined a debating group or whatnot) a failure to argue the point and has a
nice latin name or something. Maybe about a true of false Scotsman or what do
I know..

If I say "FB shouldn't read texts" that has no relation to "FB should not
implement TFA". Nor is it reasonable to imply that they cannot, without that
permission.

~~~
tedunangst
> FB should ask for permissions to read _all_ SMS to make TFA via SMS a tiny
> bit more comfortable?

If Android had a permission called "Only read one text message to verify your
phone number" maybe Facebook could use it.

Honestly, I don't know what Facebook is trying to do, but similar arguments
come up frequently with Android apps. The permission model is IMO broken,
because it requires upfront permission for everything the app may ever want to
do. There's no way to install something, minus SMS permission.

Maybe Facebook is evil and does want to read all of your texts and upload them
to advertisers. Maybe they don't. It's hard to determine that simply from the
requested app permissions, given the poor granularity of those permissions.

