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 ;)
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.
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.
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.)
I don't normally indulge trolls, but you're priceless! So the NSA and CIA (the government) covertly control and encourage Facebook, but you want the same government to save you from this "evil"? Cognitive dissonance much?
NSA and CIA are not the elected government that you see. Thre president or congress are not in charge, only the appearance of being in charge is shown. There's a whole secret world we're not privy to.
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.
My point was that even though he happens to be spot-on in his very pithy remark about the disease that is Facebook, if you know anything at all about RMS -- or have interacted with him personally, for a minute or two -- you'll know that he's so far off the page from the vast bulk of humanity (in terms of how he communicates) that it's difficult to take anything he says about the pros and cons of social media very seriously.
"Perhaps someone who has such narrow and specialized communication needs that they need to browse the web via email isn't in the best position to be dictating what communication methods the world at large should use".
Boiled down futher:
"What's good (and bad) for one person with specific needs isn't the same for everyone else".
You made nothing more than an ad hominem attack. First you wanted us to discount Stallman's argument because of...wait for it...the way he reads web pages.
Second you wanted us to discount Stallman's argument because "he's so far off the page from the vast bulk of humanity (in terms of how he communicates)".
Can't imagine how such a mess at communicating and someone so very far off the page keeps duping all those folks who keep inviting him to speak (as well as the folks who gave him the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer award, the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, andseveral honorary doctorates):
Mar 01, Madrid, Spain "Por una sociedad digital libre"
Mar 07, Sunnyvale, CA "Copyright vs. Community"
Mar 13, Republic of Singapore "Free Software and Your Freedom"
Mar 14, Republic of Singapore "For a Free Digital Society"
Mar 27, New York, NY "For a Free Digital Society"
Mar 29, West Lafayette, IN "The Free Software Movement"
Apr 03, Ashland, OR "Copyright vs. Community"
Apr 04, Ashland, OR "For a Free Digital Society"
Jul 10, Dresden, Germany "The Free Software Movement"
Some communicator.
Now. Do you actually have anything at all to say about Stallman's actual argument(s) in that thread? Did you even read them?
Do you know why RMS wgets webpages to his email instead of reading them through a browser like 99.999% of the web-using world?
If the answer is no, then you don't know if it's a need or a choice or some variation between the two - and I daresay you're accusing him of something untoward.
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 ;)