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Comment by PebblesHD | Hacker News Reader

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.

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I think you're firstly mischaracterising what Stallman is saying, and secondly forgetting exactly who Stallman is.

This isn't just a list of attributes with "NO" written next to it, Stallman's outlaying precisely why those attributes are detrimental to privacy and how they erode the freedoms he believes in. He even gives specific examples and links to source articles.

Someone who hasn't ever really considered the implications of using Facebook, like a teenager who's come of age in a world where sharing everything about yourself is the norm, reading this article might make them think a bit more about what they share and why, and what the implications might be. For that reason alone there's value in what Stallman has to say.

And in any case, this is who he is. It's not like he doesn't understand the evolution of technology - hell, he helped more than most to evolve it - and it's not like he doesn't understand why you and I use Facebook. He just doesn't agree with our motivations, doesn't feel it's worth the corresponding privacy trade-offs, and has made it the work of his lifetime to be an advocate for the privacy we're so eager to give away.

>At this point in the evolution in technology, I find that Stallman is increasingly irrelevant

Funny, because after all the NSA/Snowden/Confirmed-backdooring-everywhere hooplah I feel as if his view points--especially those having to do with machine ownership and the need for free software to get to that point--are increasingly relevant.

Agreed. I appreciate Free Software a hell of a lot more now that I know the US government basically has secret control over any US tech company they are interested in. Free software isn't immune to outside influence, but it feels a hell of a lot safer than blind trust in companies we know are compromised.

Just recently the complaints about all kinds of bad software behavior having me seeing why Stallman has been right all along.

Think about the idealized versions of software we see on certain movies and TV shows, or even art. They're all cluttered and free from ads or exploitation - because that's what people really want. I understand people need a way to pay for their site, but we've gone overboard with surveillance and monetization of the user.

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.

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

This can be an optional disclosure made by people who wish to be found by their real name.

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?

Because it's your legal name?

What is so important about displaying the legal name, especially in cases (like the GP explained) where nearly no-one in ones social environment knows it? If Facebook had legal reasons to know it they still could make displaying it optional.

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.

The UK, for one, does not have the concept of a 'legal name'. Your name is whatever you choose to call yourself.

Even a deed poll has no official weight, it's just a statement of a name you have chosen. Hence 'poll' instead of 'certificate'.

If you don't like Facebook's value proposition, you're always free to build your own social network with the features you like. Nobody forces you to use Facebook.

No, you value an environment safe enough that people can use their common name -- the one that you would likely know them by.

You do not care about government recognized names. And declaring a network safe for personally identifying information does not necessarily make it so.

In fact, it's an absolute bare minimum for an even remotely usable social network.

Why? There are tons of online communities that mostly know each other by handles and still might profit from using facebook. Right now they stay entirely seperated unless everybody is OK with linking their "real" identity to their online one.

(If I wanted to contact you the ability to search for a real name would be completely useless to me. Being able to find someone called "baddox" might help. If that name then is linked to your real identity or not would be a different matter)

Because IRC, ICQ, MSN, Lunarstorm, Instagram, all those PhpBB and vBulletin boards we all used to use (and still do) was never even "remotely usable"....

The only way facebook differs to most of them is that it markets itself to being a general social network, not one specifically about programming, horses, biking, photography or another specialized field. Finding your friends by alias was never a problem, it's just like asking someone for their phone number.

One of the annoying things about Orkut was that most people used to change their name to something hippie and it became very hard to identify them when they messaged (scrap?) me.

> Don't want your privacy violated, post only what you feel comfortable with.

That sounds nice and simple, but it's sadly not enough. You also have to worry about other random people in your life uploading your info (even unknowingly):

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2013/06/facebook-shadow-profiles/

http://www.zdnet.com/article/firm-facebooks-shadow-profiles-...

I shudder to think about what info they've amassed about me even though I've never had an account.

I only have a test account through my company that does not even have my name and that I used only once. The suggestions they mail are eery - e.g. they suggested my girlfriend from 12 years ago which I haven't spoken to for ~6 years to that account.

>>At this point in the evolution in technology, I find that Stallman is increasingly irrelevant

In your HN profile you say that you are a college student and are "still learning the ropes of how the world works." And yet you arrogantly dismiss the ideas and opinions of one of the leading professionals in your own field, who is at least a couple of orders of magnitude more knowledgeable and accomplished than you.

Allow me to give you some unsolicited advice: the best way to learn about how the world works is to be humble, keep an open mind and avoid dismissing what smart people say as "irrelevant." Just because someone is smart may not make them right, and you definitely don't have to agree with them, but you can still learn something from them if you make a genuine and honest effort.

Still learning is not a barrier to finding the ideas of any particular person antiquated. Look where we are with wearable technology and integration into every part of our lives, and the applications this access has in areas like medicine, then feel free to imagine this ageing pioneer of open software standing in the corner shouting "no no no it has my data it's evil I don't want to be monitored". While he would have an entirely valid point it defeats the entire goal of the technogy.

>and then you arrogantly... Maybe, and that's your opinion, but sadly you responded to such arrogance with condescending 'advice' attacking my perspective instead of proposing where either I or he could have changed out points.

> Don't join a site where the goal is to publicly connect > with people you know.

That's all well and good until your child's school starts requiring you to do so to sign up for parent-teacher conferences, say.

There's all sorts of stuff being done via Facebook that really shouldn't be totally public but is because some _one_ person has decided to put it all out there, violating the privacy of all the other people involved.

Yes, this happened before Facebook. The difference is that Facebook actively tries to get people to do such things.

> Don't want to use your real name? Don't join a site where the goal is to publicly connect with people you know."

ironically, many people joined facebook with the names they used in "real" life, only later to find their accounts suspended because they didn't use their "real name". Additionally, some people joined facebook to connect with certain groups of people they wanted to interact with but coudldn't in their real geographic area (e.g. threatened minority groups or viewpoints that are thinly scatted across the globe), so they may have been allured by facebook's promise to help connect them, only to find later when facebook changes their name policy that their account is suspended.

> Don't want your privacy violated, post only what you feel comfortable with.

Facebook's data collection go beyond the information that you post, but extends to all the metadata and interactions that many users for the most part are unaware that they are giving out and may would prefer not to reveal. Had people listened to Stallman more, these interactions would more likely be handled by people's own private or community servers running free software, allowing people to share only the information that they want to be shared publicly, and keep other information & metadata private.

Personally I am not for real name policies, but I do believe that these problems should be fixed properly if possible, which is why I consider employee gagging the worst part of the Google+ nymwars for example.

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