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Comment by davidhollander | Hacker News Reader

Calling Facebook an oppressive and authoritarian camp violating freedom seems extremely hyperbolic. Doesn't this disservice the experience of those who have actually died in oppressive and authoritarian camps?

Is the mental pain individuals experience when using freely provided and voluntary services equivalent to the physical pain individuals experience when coerced to perform actions against their will via threats of violence?

While implicit threats of violence may exist in the majority of parent-child relationships (mandatory schooling, etc), I have not seen any evidence of such a relationship between companies like Facebook or Google and their customers.

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He wasn't talking about those camps though. He was talking about American summer camp.

Which an authority figure sent him to against his will. Authoritarian power is universally derived the ability to assert the right to legitimate force over others. This is in sharp contrast to voluntary institutions and businesses such as Facebook or Google, which assert no right to legitimate force, and are therefore limited to the power which individuals choose to grant them for catering to their preferences.

Comparing parents to genocidal dictators is quite a bit more hyperbolic than the OP.

I suspect the point of contention is lack of clarification of definitions and terms, particularly regarding 'freedom', the OP's phrase 'heinous violations of freedom', and the concept of violations of freedom in general.

I would define 'freedom' in a very narrow and non-metaphysical sense, as 'the ability to make choices free of threats of violence by others'. I derive this definition by asking the following questions: Do slaves choose where to work? Do prisoners choose what to eat? Do victims of murder choose to die? Or has someone else made the decision for them by threatening violence?

This is more or less the definition of 'freedom' by philosophers of Liberalism and more precisely http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty . Under such a definition, the concept of 'violation of freedom' is semantically linked to authority, force, and violence.

Examining Stallman's logic, one finds a variety of alternate definitions of 'freedom'. Whether these are more universally consistent definitions of 'freedom' is up for others to decide. The ongoing debate over whether it is fair to characterize the actions of Facebook and similar corporations as 'heinous violations of freedom' will remain unresolved until a definition of 'freedom' is agreed upon.

How incredibly academic. Let's leave the ongoing debate about how to "characterize [their] actions" until a universal definition of 'freedom' is agreed upon. That should satisfy the monsters.

I think Sartre settled this one. We're either wholly determined, or else wholly free. And since consciousness means that fate isn't preordained - we're free. Anyway, in case he was off the mark, the alternative is a boot on a human face and the (real, nazi, concentration) camp that you pretended I was alluding to.

As to whether there are degrees of freedom, there's room for them in that philosophy. Take away movement, that's one. Take away speech, that's another. Hey, just go down the bill of rights - you don't have any at summer camp. Is it nazi germany? Did I say that? It was freakin Jewish camp. No fun for an atheist, but at least you survive. Unlike my grandparents. Now stop your trolling and own up to a position for once in your life.

To resummarize my position above:

A 'violation of freedom' requires the use of force by an authority. A parent forcing a child to go somewhere in spite of their preferences is a 'violation of freedom'. A government forcing a citizen to go somewhere in spite of their preferences is a 'violation of freedom'. Neither the first case nor the second case are necessarily the same proportionality or equally 'heinous'. 'heinous violations of freedom' implies massive and egregious use of force by authority. The institutionalized system of heinous violations of freedom is known as Authoritarianism.

A company voluntarily offering a free service that users have the option of using if it fulfills their preferences has not committed a 'violation of freedom'. It is not capable of committing a 'violation of freedom' unless it first asserts the right to use force and becomes an authority. Accusing it of violations of freedom that are heinous is to accuse it of Authoritarianism.

Have I "owned up" to my position by repeating it with sufficient clarity? Could you be kind enough to point out the logical fallacies in my position, which I have offered for public critique solely so that others may help me clarify it, before accusing me of trolling?

I do not believe this matter has been previously settled by Sartre without the use of metaphysics, I generally side with Wittgenstein that clarity of definition is needed to resolve philosophical conflict.

That people voluntarily gave facebook a temporary claim to certain inalienable rights is undeniable. What happened was that the userbase shifted and became larger, the power of the individual became weaker, and the rights and obligations vested in the company in the initial user agreement were eroded to the point of meaninglessness, without ongoing consent from the user. So at this point, your data is theirs. Moreover, there is no other alternative. Facebook is 'Brave New World' in miniature. It's easy enough to stand outside it and scoff, but the truth is that no one who's signed up for it can ever free themselves from its grasp, nor their personal information from its database.

I'm not sure what clearer example of Authoritarian behavior I could give. The only thing that makes it like summer camp is that a lot of people still seem to like it for the sense of group camaraderie its membership instills, despite its ever-encroaching and heavy-handed tactics. In that sense, its appeals to group happiness aren't too different from that of any communist party.

I watched you over several threads act as if I were talking about concentration camps, or making some absolutist moral judgment on the site or its users. I did none of those things. My point was that group thinking leads to moral equivocation, tolerance for authoritarianism and overall civic rot, and that we're better off if more off-beat, free thinking, smart people decline their invitation to this behemoth, or burn it in effigy. There's no need for a universal agreement on the nature of positive v. negative freedom for this rejection to go forward... and the fact that you chose to misinterpret the most basic of my references, "camp", to mean a nazi death camp, most likely means you either didn't read what I wrote or you were trolling.

> no one who's signed up for it can ever free themselves from its grasp, nor their personal information from its database.

I've personally deleted all my personal information from my first Facebook account a few years ago. There were zero consequences for doing so. I didn't even loose any friends, so I put it back up after a year offline to make it easier for people to find my email address and phone number.

> My point was that group thinking leads to moral equivocation, tolerance for authoritarianism and overall civic rot, and that we're better off if more off-beat, free thinking, smart people decline their invitation to this behemoth, or burn it in effigy

Why does Facebook promote authoritarian group think and civic rot more than email, text message, instant message, twitter, voice mail, phone calls, television, and newspapers? Is social media in general or Facebook in particular more likely to promote "groupthink" and "civic rot" than older forms of media? How can we confirm or disprove this hypothesis? Do protest organizers using Facebook to orchestrate the Egyptian revolution provide evidence supporting or negating your hypothesis?

> chose to misinterpret the most basic of my references, "camp", to mean a nazi death camp, most likely means you either didn't read what I wrote or you were trolling.

My position regarding 'violation of freedom' is hopefully clear: even comparing Facebook to summer camp is hyperbolic. As innocent as summer camps are, they violate far more freedoms than Facebook. Attendance is compulsory, and as you pointed out, your freedom of speech and ability to dissent as an atheist was denied.

I believe we share the same concerns regarding groupthink and authoritarianism. I also enjoyed your prior allusion to Orwell. But like Orwell, I believe the most harm comes from imprecision in the meaning of language. I do not believe your definition of 'freedom' and 'heinous violation of freedom' allows one to differentiate between the acts of Facebook and the acts of full blown authoritarian governments with camps. That is, I believe your method of reasoning will actually make it harder for people to identify institutions that fall into the later category, which is why I posed the question as to whether this disservices those who have suffered under such institutions.

The alternate definition of freedom I proposed was that of John Locke. He used it to derive a principle in Two Treatises on Government for detecting when governance is illegitimate and may be overthrown. I believe adopting such a position regarding freedom will help further your goal of opposing authoritarian groupthink more so than your current method and organizational target.

I think you are vastly discounting social pressures of peer groups that prefer convenience, have very limited technical understanding, and avoid contemplating issues that may arise later. I don't use FB, but I now often feel left out of conversations with people whom I've known for 15 years.

I agree to the existence of economies of scale and social preference for standardization but not to your ad hominems.

Questions: Does Facebook constitute a monopoly? Is there a difference between natural monopoly and coercive monopoly? Does Facebook compete in the narrow market of personal webpages, or in one of the broad markets of information, media, or time? If Facebook is bad, is television better? If I choose not to watch the same TV series as someone, and cannot hold a conversation regarding the characters, would I be right in blaming the television manufacturer, the television channel, or the show's screenwriter? Is it possible for me to forcibly obtain social fraternity from others without also denying them their liberty?

I don't think he was trolling, but simply gut-reacted to the negative sentiment surrounding FB. People that use, and are solidly invested in, the FB platform might perceive your commentary as a kind of personal attack.

I do not, and I really appreciate your thoughts here, as they echo my own (though I think you've articulated the issues better than I've ever seen). In my view, no centralized entity could ever occupy the role FB is attempting to claim; certainly not a commercial entity.

I see. So you were going for some sort of indirect reductio ad absurdum argument. Not without merit, but it will go over people's heads 99.99% of the time and not because they are all idiots.

What? He/she wasn't relating it to oppressive camps at all. Perhaps re-read the comment.

I think that Facebook is relatively oppressive and authoritarian in the context of online services and social software in general. Extending the analogy to another context (death camps?) is... well, I don't know how to describe the irrelevance.

You missed his or her assertion of logical equivalence between Facebook and camp:

>Facebook = camp.

If Facebook is oppressive and authoritarian, and Facebook is camp, is camp oppressive and authoritarian?

The absurdity of internment camps is relevant because his or her logic does not allow one to differentiate between the actions of Facebook and the actions of authoritarian government.

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