You can use Facebook in a way that doesn't endanger your personal privacy, it can be primarily a consumption platform for the endangered privacy of all of your associates. :)
The most insidious thing that Facebook has done, is litter the web with their "Like" buttons. Oh sure, they're not the ones who have put up "Like" buttons around the web, all they've done is insist that websites who do want a "Like" button have to use file assets & scripts from their webserver.
Well, by tracking where the "Like" button gets loaded, they can tell what you've been watching out on the web, even if you don't touch the "Like" button. Loading the button is enough. And on that basis, anyone who's set their pages up to use the "Like" button is informing on you. And in turn, your very use of the web becomes part of Facebook's surveillance.
In fact, just thinking about it now ... why did I switch? I should try Firefox again.
To quote it exactly: "You injure other people today also using social media. You’ve informed on them. You’ve created more records about them. You’ve added to the problems not of yourself but of other people. If it were as simple as just you’re only hurting yourself I wouldn’t bother pointing it out to you. See, that’s the difference, okay? The reason that this all works is that even when you know you’re hurting other people, you’re too selfish to stop. And there are hundreds of millions of people like you. That’s why it works."
As a qualification for reporting / thinking / writing on the issue -- no.
Moglen is saying that before Betabeat can report, they must agree with him. Which ignores the possibility, remote as it may be, that Eben Moglen could be wrong about something. And, the implications of the example he sets for others.
Respect for freedom of speech is more than insistence on a constitutional norm. It is an attitude of respect for the possibility that you might be wrong even in your strongest beliefs. Such respect is our surest protection against absolutism.
Moblen may think his intransigence adds urgency to his message, and it has gotten him a forum this time. But even so he's deteriorating the culture of free speech and thought, and free-riding on the maintenance of that culture by the maturity of others.
I have long been worried about the implications of friending everyone you know. If you have to go on the run, and everyone you've ever talked to for more than 15 minutes is listed on Facebook, you're not going to have many places to hide. I am "friends" with only a handful of people, mostly close family, which doesn't really expose any new relationships.
Not to forget the images tagged with your name ...