Richard Stallman On Facebook's Privacy Scandal: We Need a Law. There's No Reason We Should Let Them Exist if the Price is Knowing Everything About Us (nymag.com) 367
From a wide-ranging interview of Richard Stallman by New York Magazine: New York Magazine: Why do you think these companies feel justified in collecting that data?
Richard Stallman: Oh, well, I think you can trace it to the general plutocratic neoliberal ideology that has controlled the U.S. for more than two decades. A study established that since 1998 or so, the public opinion in general has no influence on political decisions. They're controlled by the desires of the rich and of special interests connected with whatever issue it is. So the companies that wanted to collect data about people could take advantage of this general misguided ideology to get away with whatever they might have wanted to do. Which happened to be collecting data about people. But I think they shouldn't be allowed to collect data about people.
We need a law. Fuck them -- there's no reason we should let them exist if the price is knowing everything about us. Let them disappear. They're not important -- our human rights are important. No company is so important that its existence justifies setting up a police state. And a police state is what we're heading toward. Most non-free software has malicious functionalities. And they include spying on people, restricting people -- that's called digital restrictions management, back doors, censorship.
Empirically, basically, if a program is not free software, it probably has one of these malicious functionalities. So imagine a driverless car, controlled of course by software, and it will probably be proprietary software, meaning not-free software, not controlled by the users but rather by the company that makes the car, or some other company. Well imagine if that has a back door, which enables somebody to send a command saying, "Ignore what the passenger said, and go there." Imagine what that would do. You can be quite sure that China will use that functionality to drive people toward the places they're going to be disappeared or punished. But can you be sure that the U.S. won't?
Richard Stallman: Oh, well, I think you can trace it to the general plutocratic neoliberal ideology that has controlled the U.S. for more than two decades. A study established that since 1998 or so, the public opinion in general has no influence on political decisions. They're controlled by the desires of the rich and of special interests connected with whatever issue it is. So the companies that wanted to collect data about people could take advantage of this general misguided ideology to get away with whatever they might have wanted to do. Which happened to be collecting data about people. But I think they shouldn't be allowed to collect data about people.
We need a law. Fuck them -- there's no reason we should let them exist if the price is knowing everything about us. Let them disappear. They're not important -- our human rights are important. No company is so important that its existence justifies setting up a police state. And a police state is what we're heading toward. Most non-free software has malicious functionalities. And they include spying on people, restricting people -- that's called digital restrictions management, back doors, censorship.
Empirically, basically, if a program is not free software, it probably has one of these malicious functionalities. So imagine a driverless car, controlled of course by software, and it will probably be proprietary software, meaning not-free software, not controlled by the users but rather by the company that makes the car, or some other company. Well imagine if that has a back door, which enables somebody to send a command saying, "Ignore what the passenger said, and go there." Imagine what that would do. You can be quite sure that China will use that functionality to drive people toward the places they're going to be disappeared or punished. But can you be sure that the U.S. won't?
You know what.... (Score:5, Insightful)
he is 100% correct. I used to make fun of him in the 90s... but as I get older, I perceive him to be a kind of digital profit in the desert.
sexy stallman benis (Score:5, Insightful)
He isn't mad. Far from it.
He's just right, and that ticks off many people who don't want to "get" it. Watch now all those infantile asshats poking fun at him to detract from what matters.
Telling the truth and standing by it ain't always easy. And he's not... always diplomatic, mind you :-)
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He isn't mad. Far from it.
Mad, unlikely, an asshole, most likely. We tried to invite him at a conference we were organizing in 2004, and submitted a two pages list of requirements, from hotel connectivity to tea brands. And I'm not even getting started about the way he behaves in the FSF, he made a lot of damages in their projects...
Re: sexy stallman benis (Score:4, Funny)
Did he ask for a parrot?
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Post the requirements on SmokingGun, along with all the rock star contract riders. Should be good for laughs.
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Here. Let me help you.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Richard+M+stallman+speaking+requirements [lmgtfy.com]
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Most likely Asperger or autistic. He just gets hyper focused on details.
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He isn't mad. Far from it.
Mad, unlikely, an asshole, most likely. We tried to invite him at a conference we were organizing in 2004, and submitted a two pages list of requirements, from hotel connectivity to tea brands. And I'm not even getting started about the way he behaves in the FSF, he made a lot of damages in their projects...
There was a quote, I forget where it comes from:
"Yes he's an arsehole. But he's *our* arsehole. And you can't hate your own arsehole."
Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only are your values perverted (another poster rightly points out that you can't take it with you) what's left behind is a bad way to treat people—proprietary software is rightly identified as user-subjugating by rms. Technical achievement and business deals come and go, but treating people ethically sticks with people for a long time and sets a great example for how we can run a society that we can live with.
In fact, Steve Jobs (while heading up NeXT) was the first commercial copyright infringer of GCC [gnu.org], then known as the GNU C Compiler later the GNU Compiler Collection when it compiled a lot more languages than just C. NeXT needed a compiler, GCC did the job, and NeXT wrote Objective-C support for GCC then chose to distribute only object code for NeXT's GCC variant. This was a clear violation of the GNU GPL v2 (the relevant GCC license at the time) as there was no complete corresponding source code on offer or copy distributed alongside the binaries. Someone from the FSF (I'm not sure who, Eben Moglen perhaps?) had a talk with NeXT and after some discussions (which I'm guessing were quite unpleasant for Jobs and NeXT's lawyers to hear) NeXT ended up doing what they should have done from the start: shipping complete corresponding source code to their variant of GCC with the GCC binaries. The copy I saw was in a box of Extended Density (2.88MB) floppy disks.
Brad Kuhn, former FSF Executive Director current President and Distinguished Technologist at the Software Freedom Conservancy, has told this story before and he (probably rightly) speculates this is what drove Apple to become the irrational GPL-hater they are today: NeXT got caught treating their users badly, violating GCC's license, and subverting a license designed to let them do what they needed while also treating the users justly. This is why Apple is moving toward a non-copylefted compiler (which Kuhn speculates they'll someday stop contributing to when it becomes good enough for them to use without caring about contributing back). This is why Apple switched away from the (I'm told better functioning) Samba to some proprietary SMB implementation for MacOS X. I'm told some other GPL-covered software on MacOS X remains out of date; if that's so, this is probably why. And it's telling that Apple is no rush to replace CUPS as they did Samba and GCC—Apple bought Easy Software (which wrote CUPS) thus making Apple CUPS' copyright holder so Apple went from being a GPL licensee to being a GPL licensor. This also helps illustrate why Apple's view of the GPL is irrational: GPL-covered programs were perfectly good for them throughout NeXT and Apple's early days with MacOS X, and the GPL is apparently remains a fine license when licensing to others. But share and share alike is apparently not the way they want to treat their users for plenty of other software they distribute.
Re:You know what.... (Score:5, Funny)
I perceive him to be a kind of digital profit in the desert.
Stallman is the last person I would perceive to be a capitalist, no matter what climate he operates in. The problem is getting enough electricity to actually do any bit-mining, and then keeping your systems cool in the heat.
I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's insane to say something like Facebook should not exist because they can know everything about us.
The things that they know, ANYONE could know if they did what Facebook did. It's how the web and internet generally works that enables this, not Facebook.
Getting rid of Facebook is treating only the symptom, not the underlying problem... but here's the real issue, do the vast majority of people even want this problem fixed? I do not think they really care. Have you seen Facebook usage graphs recently? There was a dip around all the furor over Facebook but then it went right back up again... what Stallman and other technologists MUST come to grasp is that most people fundamentally do not value privacy much at all, so they are willing to trade it away for nearly anything. You have to start at that point and see how you go about helping people, not playing whack-a-mole with companies that make use of this fundamental aspect of human nature.
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but "most people don't care" isn't always a reason in favor of, or against, a particular policy desire. That's tyrrany of the majority.
If you're saying that what Stallman should be doing is explaining why people should care, he's been doing that for 30 years. Just how successful he's been, and how effective his methods are, are subject to debate, but I certainly think it's occurred to him that he needs to make a case for why people should care about privacy (among other things).
I don't think he's advocating a Whac-a-Mole approach. He's advocating sweeping legal changes that wouldn't just affect Facebook, they'd affect any company taking a similar approach.
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Sure, but "most people don't care" isn't always a reason in favor of, or against, a particular policy desire. That's [tyranny] of the majority.
But that's usually meant to imply the majority decides for everyone, like how much taxes you pay or where the roads are built or whatever. You can hardly call peer pressure being forced to use Facebook. Maybe if it eventually goes all Chinese-like with a social credit system where you have to praise the government to get anywhere in life, but right now I'd say using it pretty damn voluntary. If you wanted to stop every harmful things people do to themselves you'd shut down McDonald's before you shut down Fa
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Having a Facebook account is voluntary.
Having your personal data collected by Facebook is not.
Back when Facebook was first taking off, I used to get E-Mails trying to get me to sign up: "Do you know this person?"
Once, I got one that asked me if I knew so-and-so. And, well, I did, because I used to date his daughter in high school.
I never signed up for Facebook. But Facebook's got a profile on me. A profile that was able to determine, based on other people's data and searches, that I have a tenuous, secon
Still voluntary (Score:2)
Having your personal data collected by Facebook is not.
Sure it is - if you (A) don't use the internet, or (B) always using private browsing mode how would Facebook be tracking anything about you?
There are a lot of tracking mechanisms but also ways to get around them, including simply not using the medium they all use to track you - not just Facebook.
Re:Still voluntary (Score:5, Informative)
Your picture is taken with a group of friends, one of whom posts the picture (and list of people in it) to Facebook (which includes GPS and timestamp). And since they already got your contact info from your friends phone book, they can correlate that data point to others they have on you from other sources.
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Exactly what happened to me. A "friend" posted a group shot that identified me. That exact photo now shows up everywhere that collects profiles, even though I've never joined Facebook, and never published that photo.
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So you're basically arguing that Internet users who don't always use private browsing mode are consenting to being tracked?
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Re:I disagree-Majority wins. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes -- now.
As recently as a few years ago, this was not the case; a majority were against those things.
So, are gay rights and marijuana decriminalization right because the majority wants them -- or were they always right, even when the majority didn't want them?
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That's what they said 10 years ago.
Re:I disagree-Majority wins. (Score:5, Informative)
I believe I just did.
You're mistaken. It's impossible to know the amount of public support for gay marriage with absolute certainty, but we can state with a very high degree of certainty that it's above 50%.
No, they weren't. Nate Silver [fivethirtyeight.com]:
While most 2016 polls were off, they were within the margin of error. They were off by less than 4 points.
Current polling [wikipedia.org] consistently shows support of gay marriage above 60%. Now, statistics is not an exact science -- the actual number could be a few points below that. 59%, 58%, 57%...sure. But under 50%? No. These are multiple reliable polling agencies. It's entirely possible that they're all off by 2-3 points, as the 2016 election showed us. But the odds that they're all off by more than ten points (and, in some cases, as many as 15) are so low as to be effectively impossible.
Further, current polls on public opinion of gay marriage are consistent with two things: increasing acceptance of gay marriage over time, and historical instances where public opinion on civil rights issues changed following court decisions.
That's kind of my point (Score:2)
Majority want Gay and Lesbian rights as well as allowing Marijuana and few are fighting against that.
Exactly, and as we can plainly see gay marriage is now pretty much universally possible, and soft drugs are rapidly on the way to full legalization.
I'm not sure which way you thought I was going with my post but I agree with you, why is this situation any different? People want cool technical things that work by trading privacy for whatever. So what good will it do trying to ban that? You will just be fig
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Utterly Wrong (Score:2)
Said cool technical things could still exist, and would like be more cool and technical, if we had data protection/privacy laws.
They would by definition not exist because laws would either prevent them form existing (as was RMS's desire) or be so cumbersome to actually use due to various laws that in fact no-one would use them so they would not exist.
There's no reason we have to be tied to our current data laws.
You are right, they should all be jettisoned as they are holding any society that adopts them fr
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Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
SuperKendall disagrees with RMS. Groundbreaking and new. More on this, including video, at 11. But first, our lead story: Should laws prohibit Facebook from carrying out their technically-legal but morally-dubious business strategy? Let's go to Jim with details. Jim?
Jim: Thanks Linda. Facebook would like us to ask whether they should be forgiven in exchange for improving their stewardship of our personal data. However, should we trust Facebook to reform themselves, or should we legislate instead to force Facebook to act? That's the main question here.
Linda: Sounds complex, Jim. What are the main arguments in favor of legislation?
Jim: Well, Linda, in our current state, not only can businesses store enormous amounts of personally-identifying information, or "PII", without any accountability, but they can also sell those databases to other businesses, as Facebook does, or they can become targets for hackers, like anybody from Target to Equifax to the Nova Scotian government.
Linda: Sounds dangerous, Jim. Can the government protect us?
Jim: Not likely, Linda. The government can store PII too, and while our current government doesn't use PII against citizens very often, only using it to gerrymander and influence voting patterns, other governments around the world use PII to violate human rights. These protestors in favor of legislation argue that we can bind the government's use of PII, so that no organization, GO or NGO, can build up a database like this.
Linda: I don't know, Jim; I like my Facebook account.
Jim: So do I, Linda. Whatever we do from here, though, we can't deny that Facebook has changed our lives, and our lives now depend on changing Facebook. Back to you.
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Curious as to how you keep the government from building a PII database. It's not like they don't have Census
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
but here's the real issue, do the vast majority of people even want this problem fixed? I do not think they really care.
It's not that people do not care - they do not understand. Ask people a straightforward privacy question, like for example, "would you want a 24 hr live video stream of your bedroom broadcast onto to the internet for everyone to see?" - and most people would recoil at the thought and give you a resounding "Hell no!" as an answer. That's because that's a simple scenario to imagine, and people get it and understand the repercussions instantly.
The type of data gathering Facebook, Google, et al. do and the type of things they do with that data is way too abstract and complicated for people to grasp instantly. It's difficult to understand the possible (and existing) repercussions. In some ways, it is all (still) too subtle - until there is some major scandal (bigger than this political campaign stuff - something like phones snapping randomly pictures of people while on the toiler and posting them to all social networks, I mean, something that shocking and obvious and deeply embarassing to almost everyone), this will remain so.
People understand the way other people affect their privacy - that is why they freak out if they think their phone is listening in on to their conversations, or secretly taking pictures or videos. That's like other people peeping on them, and it also feels like the device is gathering information they didn't allow it to gather. On the other hand, the way computer algorithms affect their privacy, that's too complex and abstract. It's hard to instantly get the consequences of an algorithm mining your photos, mining your social media posts, and crossreferencing that with your movement (since it's tracking your location) to infer information about you - information that you probably did not want to share. People usually think - well, I posted all those pictures on facebook, so who cares if other people see them? I posted some stuff on Twitter, it was meant for other people to see, so what? They don't generally get meta-data, cross-referencing, and inference...because for humans to do that, you need to be a private eye and devote your entire day to making the connections, it's hard work - just to figure out that for one person. To do it human-style, Facebook would need as many employees as it has users (almost). Computers analyze the data much more quickly. People are generally not aware of that.
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OMG I HATE SPAM CALLERS
While intentionally staying blind to the ocean of databases we've been swimming in for 50 years. Their form, their technical structure may have changed over the decades, but we've been compiling since we learned how to make electronics store data.
Granted, it's an invisible ocean, and it's impossible to mentally picture in any detail. Thank god it's all a pile of christmas wire, spaghetti, incompatible with each other, held by actors with no intrinsic incentive to meld. Cars have VINs
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
most people fundamentally do not value privacy much at all, so they are willing to trade it away for nearly anything.
This is only for as long as their privacy is not visibly compromised. Pretty much anyone would be outraged if their browsing history was shared with their peers, but this is some of the least intrusive information FB collects on you.
Another way to look at this. 100% people who were dragged/publicly shamed on social media regret sharing personal details that enabled such occurrence.
The issue is not disregarding privacy, the issue is lack of foresight and planning ahead.
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Let's put it to a public vote and find out! Democracy is still a good thing, right?
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Re:I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
The things that they know, ANYONE could know if they did what Facebook did. It's how the web and internet generally works that enables this, not Facebook.
Silicon Valley isn't the web, they are the corruption of the web. Step outside your bubble, shill.
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Informative)
I think it's insane to say something like Facebook should not exist because they can know everything about us.
The things that they know, ANYONE could know if they did what Facebook did.
What Mr. Stallman is saying is that we should enact laws against collecting all of this personal information. And if the result of those laws is that companies like Facebook go out of business because they can no longer be profitable without that capability, then they should be allowed to fail and no longer exist.
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What's that supposed to mean? Just as well, the things the organized crime knows ANYONE could know if they did what the organized crime does.
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I don't think so. Legislation doesn't solve societal problems, it just provides a legal framework for people to solve their own, either through the courts or through their representatives ( or via law enforcement). The alternative is individuals solving the problem by going after companies like Facebook with guns. Even boycotts (which are good) won't
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Did you read the full interview?
He's not just advocating legislative changes; he's advocating cultural and ideological ones too.
Wow, you packed an awful lot of straw into that man.
Re:even more complex (Score:5, Insightful)
Except he's right in this case. This isn't a chasing after the item that caused the issue like what you mean with guns and knives eliminating murder. This is a case where a group/individual/company is acting in a way that's negative on society as a whole. Don't forget it was just a few years ago that media, psychologists, governments and so on were pushing the "if you don't have social media, you're a rapist/pedophile/terrorist/etc." The violation of privacy can be solved by law, by requiring clear and concise requirements. In the US you already see this with health information. Nearly all western countries have a broad privacy protection law of some kind, the US is the odd one out.
Keep in mind that privacy rights have not kept pace with changing technology. The base is already there, fixing the existing law will solve the problem.
Re:Stallman wants a bigger NSA, I take it? (Score:4)
Why are subjects needed? (Score:3, Insightful)
âoeEmpirically, basically, if a program is not free software, it probably has one of these malicious functionalities.â
Yeah citation needed there buddy.
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Yeah citation needed there buddy.
Not really.
empirical - based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.
So the sentence parses out as "according to Stallman's observations and experience, if a program is not free software, it probably has one of these malicious functionalities."
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I don't think it needs to be anecdotal.
"If you're blocked from information, the block isn't for your sake." is a solid enough axiom to start from.
It may not necessarily be malicious, but it can be assumed (fuck off citationboy) to serve the other side of the table. Sealed judgements, sealed transcripts, sealed devices, sealed software. If something happens behind closed doors without you, that's a disadvantage, big or small.
Conversely, the power to conceal is always an advantage, big or trivial. It's option
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Actually, what's true is that most software with malicious functionality is closed-source... but most software does not have any of that.
Most software, in fact, is not even connected to the internet, or at least is indifferent to whether the internet exists.
I've worked as a software developer for 4 different companies since the 1990's, and there are *NO* projects that I've ever worked on or were even in development by those companies that collected data about it users without *EXPLICIT* permission, and
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At no time was that information ever sold, traded, or given away... we used it only to make the software better... and in no case did we ever actually track "who" was proving the information.
I am willing to bet that all of the software programs you worked on were one that users paid for? That business model does not work with Internet software and websites like Facebook and Google. Their software offers users a service for free, and so they need to somehow make money to stay in business. The way they do that is with Ads. The way they make the most money off those Ads, is by learning about what people like, so they can show you the ad that is most likely to make you click on it, earning them
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Re:Why are subjects needed? (Score:4, Interesting)
So what you're saying is that in the 1960s when we kids all watched cartoons on Saturday morning, we were being 'sold' since the shows were free and sponsored by commercials?
No, Not true.
I don't know about the 1960s, but a few decades later we can say "Yes, true, and the people running the TV channels are very aware of it". The CEO of TF1, the biggest French TV channel, has actually said it himself unambiguously in 2004: "Ce que nous vendons à Coca-Cola, c'est du temps de cerveau humain disponible" which can be translated as "What we sell to Coca-Cola is human brain availability time". He was explaining that the human brain must be receptive to ads, therefore TV programs should ease this receptiveness by being entertaining and relaxing, to prepare the brain between two messages. In the same paragraph he said that the base job of TF1 is to help Coca-Cola sell their product. He then proceeded to explain that they must contantly seek the TV programs that will help them achieve that goal.
It's all described here but only in French: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Stallman puts blame in wrong place. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you put your life on the net, the data will be collected.
You could build a FOSS global gossip network and it would still have it's data harvested. For example: I guarantee Github's data is scraped.
Don't put your life on the net, do put disinformation on the net. It is that simple.
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So don't buy a house, get a mortgage, register to vote, start a business, have a phone number, or any of the other hundreds of things we do that get our information scraped?
People complain about FB because it's an easy target. Most would freak out if they knew what Lexis-Nexis and dozens of similar companies have on them, collected mainly from public records. Your life is already in the public domain.
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Way to move the goalposts. That's all been true since the 1950s.
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And there is a simple solution to these problems of private data collection.
Make it illegal to collect like Europe did, then these companies can't collect this data and sell it. We need a privacy law in this country, not just for government but everyone. It should not be legal to gather all this personal information about people. And claiming there are others like Lexus-Nexis doing the same thing doesn't mean it's right.
I personally consider this data collection a deep threat to not only the country (these
Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place. (Score:4, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I used to work in journalism as a reference librarian and researcher.
There are MANY legitimate reasons for many public records to be public. It's in the public's interest to know if one person or company is buying all the land/homes/businesses in an area (and who's lending them the money to do it). It's in our interest to know who owns businesses. It's in the government's interest to know where people live and how to contact them, and it's in the public's interest to know what the government knows about us.
When records are public, people are going to collect them, analyze them, and put them together in more useful ways (and often provide them for sale). It's certainly not a perfect system, and it makes people feel funny when someone knows things about them. But I'm not sure catering to your funny feeling (even if you think it's somehow a threat to democracy) is worth the tradeoff of not having this information be publicly accessible.
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Yes -- but people could audit the code and find out exactly what data was being harvested, make informed decisions, and fork it to create an alternate version that didn't harvest the same data.
(Besides which point, RMS is proposing something beyond software licenses here; he says that such data-gathering should be illegal unless absolutely necessary to the purpose of the business, and heavily taxed if so.)
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Yes -- but people could audit the code and find out exactly what data was being harvested, make informed decisions, and fork it to create an alternate version that didn't harvest the same data.
This is the same logical fallacy that results in statements like "FOSS is so good because if you don't like how something works or need a new feature you can add it yourself." Ninety-nine and 54 one hundredths of the users have no clue how to audit the code, and thus no way of making the "informed decision", and even fewer would know that "fork" wasn't what you eat with.
And then you have to ask, exactly what is a "malicious functionality"? Does it include using the code for malicious purposes? (It can func
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That's a fair criticism. But, just as a non-programmer can benefit from the Linux kernel or the Firefox browser, the wisdom of crowds play
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the wisdom of crowds plays a role. No, not everyone is a programmer. But everyone can benefit from the work of programmers.
"Code audits" are not "wisdom of crowds". Code audits are performed by very few people, and while you may subscribe to the notices that report such results, the vast majority of people do not. The "crowd" has no wisdom about security issues; it's select people who spend the time looking for them and a slightly larger group that cares enough to read the reports.
Whether that information makes it to the public as a whole in large part depends on the apparent nuttiness of the reporter. Act like chicken little,
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"The wisdom of crowds" (in this context, at least) assumes that we're talking about groups of people who are reasonably well-informed about the subj
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Yes -- but people could audit the code and find out exactly what data was being harvested, make informed decisions, and fork it to create an alternate version that didn't harvest the same data.
Just to be clear, I don't advocate for the current situation. But I'm curious if you could elaborate on how this would work on such a "gossip network". Say a user has presence on this network, and has taken time to cultivate a list of friends, post pictures, send messages, and so forth. Then user learns that certain data is harvested, and is not happy about it, and decides to fork an alternate version.
So the user, who also has the right technical skills and available time, creates a one-off of the ori
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App(s) get installed, all data visible to that user gets scraped.
You can't build a gossip network and not let users see the data. If they can see it, it can be scraped.
DDT (Score:2, Troll)
Yeah Social Media turned out a lot like DDT.
We should ban it.
eh (Score:4, Insightful)
Just one small problem (Score:3)
Let's put his two core statements in closer proximity: "public opinion in general has no influence on political decisions" and "we need a law".
Hold up your hand if you see the problem...
Comment removed (Score:4)
Coporations and government, same rules (Score:4, Interesting)
The facebook fiasco is bad, but there simply needs to be the same rules for corporations that exist for government. The data that corporations collect now make laws against search and seizure and privacy regulations laughable. They can't get your data directly but simply allow Google and Facebook to know everything about you then get it that way. I went to a hospital this past weekend that wanted to scan my drivers license just to go see my dad in the hospital. I refused and said I prefer to move about anonymously and refused to give it up. Where are we going to be when EVERY place demands identification? The government can't directly track your movements gestapo "paper's please" style, but they'll effectively have the exact same trail. It's not acceptable for your identification to be needed to participate in society.
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Human wants to see it with his eyeballs? Sure.
Scan it to a digital state of infinite duration scope and use? No deal.
What hurts is that your average surface dweller thinks it's the other way around.
Yes, we need a law (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, we no longer have the power to get them created. That power now belongs to the rich, who have purchased the legislators. They create the laws that benefit them, and block the laws that would benefit us. I'm pretty sure the only thing that will change this is revolution - and that is becoming both increasingly less likely, (via bread-and-circuses, propaganda, and various other forms of Kool-Aid), and increasingly less possible, (via mass surveillance and, appropriately enough, Facebook). Not to mention that in a revolution, pretty much everyone loses big time, at least in the short term...
wiretapping non users (Score:5, Interesting)
Neo Liberal doesn't mean left wing (Score:3)
For the record, Stallman is very left wing. [stallman.org]
We need a Consitutional Amendment (Score:2)
The Right to Privacy.
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What money-loving neoliberal plutocrat would go for an Amendment? It's already established they don't listen to public opinion.
We have a two party system both trying to maintain the status quo for a small minority of their supporters. It's not so much a democracy as a patrician republic.
plutocratic neoliberal ideology (Score:3)
He doesn't score points with language like this.
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this is an irrelevant discussion (Score:2)
No matter what RDS thinks, or you or I think, no law will be made. You can squeak in protest all you want if you have the time and energy to waste.
Laws are made by legislators, guided by powerful market forces. There don't seem to be any legislators here, and certainly none that care to protect your privacy.
Re:Richard Stallman is a clueless communist (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Richard Stallman is a clueless communist (Score:5, Insightful)
"Pass a law to solve a problem" is the refrain of the incompetent.
You couldn't be more right, we need to repeal the laws which forbid us from hunting marketing, sales, PR, and generally corrupt people for sport. Deregulate murder and this issue would be gone within a year.
Re:Fuck Richard Stallman (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody forces you to use Facebook.
"Force" is a funny word, but a lot of people with Facebook profiles never asked for them. Facebook has unwilling users.
Nobody forces you to put every intimate detail about your personal life on Facebook.
Again, "force" is a funny word. But not everything Facebook collects is consciously volunteered.
How much do you pay to use Facebook?
Just my soul. Market value on souls these days is pretty poor anyway. Used to be you trade one for a chance at a golden fiddle.
Re:Fuck Richard Stallman (Score:5, Insightful)
Some things facebook collects without my permission:
My name and the name of my family members when someone puts a photo up and labels it with names.
The location and time the photo was taken. Also, it has a collection of people who share the same photo and a list of
the things those people like and don't like , their political interests and where they live.
By making connections between the people and data-mining the photo's with my name, you can certainly find out things like,
locations of been, political events, people I associate with and love.
Everything needed, to stalk, harass or attempt to co-erase me into something you I otherwise might be unwilling to do.
( of coarse that was all Ok, when the think tanks that supported Obama were using it, now everyone is up in a tizzy because a group that helped the republics used it). Works both ways. If you keep and gather the data , someone will get it and use it.
I think a right to be forgotten law is more then overdue in the good old USA. Of coarse one things I've always wondered about that is how much data do you need to keep on someone so that you know you should not collect data on them :)
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Re:Fuck Richard Stallman (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody forces you to use Facebook.
You need to catch up with some news :-
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Facebook is treating people as users even if they have never joined it. Actually it is not news, we knew this already, but sounds like it might be news to you.
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There are still libertarians today? Yes, we don't need laws. We need headshots. Then you can tell us about your "freedom" and "inaliable rights".
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Somalia needs more philosophers of your calibre.
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Facebook is a private business. Nobody forces you to use Facebook.
Go look up "shadow profiles" and rethink your statement. You're already on Facebook, whether you have an account or not.
Re: Rooted in Vietnam-US War (Score:2, Interesting)
The Amerikuk Right needed someone to blame for their loss in Vietnam, y'know rather than admit they were wrong in waging a war of oppression against the Vietnamese people (there was also no secret bombings of, say, Cleveland.. the immorality was ALL America's to own) so they blamed "Liberals" for young black men not wanting to blindly go die in Nam for Whitey Nixon (if thoe damn LIBERALS had just known their place we'ld have WON THE NAM!).
It all falls out from there.. refusal to admit ones wrongdoings leads
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There were very big differences in what the Obama campaign did with Facebook and what Cambridge Analytica did with Facebook. It all comes down to transparency and explicit consent.
http://www.politifact.com/trut... [politifact.com]
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Seen it. It's great.
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You may have missed the bit where Facebook collected and saved information on people who were not users and never signed up. And where never offered a way to opt-out.
Just because Stallman is a crackpot doesn't mean what he says is automatically wrong. Only that it is important to examine the validity given the source. I think in this case some of the things he mentions does ring true. On other topics I strongly disagree with Stallman.
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"I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see https://git.savannah.gnu.org/g... [gnu.org]) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first, then a graphical browser if the page needs it (using konqueror, which won't fetch from other sites in such a situation). "
"I usually use a string between two tin cans, for offline web browsing, but the cans are hand-forged in public forges according to freely available schematics and the string is assembled my me from the lint from my clothes dryer." -- Sound like Stallman.
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