<story><title>Reasons not to use Facebook</title><url>https://stallman.org/facebook.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joeyspn</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s a funny one: Stallman came to my uni to give a speech to CompSci alumni 10 years ago, and he told the audience that he didn&amp;#x27;t own a cellphone, cos phones were being used to track people. He also talked about the backdoors in several OS&amp;#x27;s. Everybody was laughing at his words. We&amp;#x27;re talking 10 years ago.&lt;p&gt;Few months ago remembering this speech with old uni mates we talked about how damn right that excentric man was. He saw it coming, and tried to warn everybody... Maybe he&amp;#x27;s a bit of an &amp;quot;extremist&amp;quot;, but he certainly has a point.</text></item><item><author>MCRed</author><text>Can you give an example?&lt;p&gt;For instance, I was aware of Stallman in the 1980s, read his writings back then, didn&amp;#x27;t think they were correct, and the future he predicted has not come to be.   Yes there are some of us who are that old.   Specifically, he said that without the virility of his license, there would be no free&amp;#x2F;open source software and that all software would be locked down and proprietary.&lt;p&gt;The entire open source movement is a disproof of stallman&amp;#x27;s position from that period.&lt;p&gt;He has repeatedly claimed that companies won&amp;#x27;t contribute to open source, and so you have to force them to with the GNU license, and yet history has disproven this one.&lt;p&gt;Given that this is pretty much the central tenant of his ideology, and it has been markedly disproven over the past 30 years, I too wonder why people listen to him.</text></item><item><author>kragen</author><text>People value Stallman’s opinions on these matters so highly because he has a remarkable history of being right about them ten or fifteen years before it becomes clear to everyone else that he was right, and he takes the risk of saying what he sees even when it will offend people.  In fact, that’s why he’s famous; he’s certainly a good hacker, but the world has quite a number of good hackers who aren’t famous because they didn’t notice the &lt;i&gt;political&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;social&lt;/i&gt; aspects of what they were doing the way Stallman did.&lt;p&gt;I am not going to bother to rebut your examples in detail, but I will say that I seriously doubt that you were present when Facebook decided on its names policy or that you have much access to information about what effects it has had, and you seem to think companies didn’t exist before 1995.</text></item><item><author>paulsecwhatt</author><text>I honestly don&amp;#x27;t understand why people value Stallman&amp;#x27;s opinions on these matters so highly. I completely disagree with him on essentially everything he writes about these topics.&lt;p&gt;Granted, he&amp;#x27;s an incredible programmer who contributed immensely to the development of our modern operating systems and the tools we use, and people here love to bring that up (&amp;quot;what - you DON&amp;#x27;T KNOW WHO STALLMAN IS? SHAME? HOW DARE YOU CRITICISE HIM?&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;Does this make his opinion on Facebook or privacy or freedom any more correct or valid? No.&lt;p&gt;Just like I wouldn&amp;#x27;t listen to Usain Bolt if he were trying to teach me the biological mechanisms behind doping, I can&amp;#x27;t see why Stallman&amp;#x27;s opinion is considered so correct in these matters.&lt;p&gt;IMO his ramblings about personal liberties and freedom being infringed by everything under the sun from Amazon to Google to Facebook are oversimplified and childish. The world isn&amp;#x27;t black and white and he obviously fails to understand the entire point behind many of these companies. When Facebook makes you use a real name it&amp;#x27;s not because theres some &amp;quot;Mr. Evil&amp;quot; at the top level plotting to steal your freedom, it&amp;#x27;s because it leads to a better working social network.&lt;p&gt;Just his description of AirBnB is ridiculous: &amp;quot;Airbnb requires you to run nonfree software (an app, or Javascript). It puts you in a data base easily available to Big Brother (just like a hotel).&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s an immensely stupid argument, because any _viable_ company that wants to provide a service that a consumer other than Stallman himself will use will &amp;quot;infringe&amp;quot; on those two idiotic requirements.&lt;p&gt;TL;DR. Just because he did something amazing in one field&amp;#x2F;area, doesn&amp;#x27;t mean he is not spewing complete BS. For a similar example, see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/01/dna-james-watson-scientist-selling-nobel-prize-medal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;commentisfree&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;dec&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;dna-jam...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>_nedR</author><text>This, exactly.&lt;p&gt;Stallman is taking a stand here. We might think that he is a dangerous extremist for his actions and stances (Not using proprietary software, mobile phones, javascript-enabled websites). But what he is actually doing is sacrificing his life to make his points (which are for the most part completely valid). I would guess, even he knows that most of his ideals are impractical in today&amp;#x27;s world, but he is walking the walk and planting the flag firmly, saying this is &amp;quot;How thing should be&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The difference between a crackpot and a visionary is that what the visionary says make more sense as time passes. IMO, Stallman&amp;#x27;s track record is infallible in this regard.</text></comment>
<story><title>Reasons not to use Facebook</title><url>https://stallman.org/facebook.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joeyspn</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s a funny one: Stallman came to my uni to give a speech to CompSci alumni 10 years ago, and he told the audience that he didn&amp;#x27;t own a cellphone, cos phones were being used to track people. He also talked about the backdoors in several OS&amp;#x27;s. Everybody was laughing at his words. We&amp;#x27;re talking 10 years ago.&lt;p&gt;Few months ago remembering this speech with old uni mates we talked about how damn right that excentric man was. He saw it coming, and tried to warn everybody... Maybe he&amp;#x27;s a bit of an &amp;quot;extremist&amp;quot;, but he certainly has a point.</text></item><item><author>MCRed</author><text>Can you give an example?&lt;p&gt;For instance, I was aware of Stallman in the 1980s, read his writings back then, didn&amp;#x27;t think they were correct, and the future he predicted has not come to be.   Yes there are some of us who are that old.   Specifically, he said that without the virility of his license, there would be no free&amp;#x2F;open source software and that all software would be locked down and proprietary.&lt;p&gt;The entire open source movement is a disproof of stallman&amp;#x27;s position from that period.&lt;p&gt;He has repeatedly claimed that companies won&amp;#x27;t contribute to open source, and so you have to force them to with the GNU license, and yet history has disproven this one.&lt;p&gt;Given that this is pretty much the central tenant of his ideology, and it has been markedly disproven over the past 30 years, I too wonder why people listen to him.</text></item><item><author>kragen</author><text>People value Stallman’s opinions on these matters so highly because he has a remarkable history of being right about them ten or fifteen years before it becomes clear to everyone else that he was right, and he takes the risk of saying what he sees even when it will offend people.  In fact, that’s why he’s famous; he’s certainly a good hacker, but the world has quite a number of good hackers who aren’t famous because they didn’t notice the &lt;i&gt;political&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;social&lt;/i&gt; aspects of what they were doing the way Stallman did.&lt;p&gt;I am not going to bother to rebut your examples in detail, but I will say that I seriously doubt that you were present when Facebook decided on its names policy or that you have much access to information about what effects it has had, and you seem to think companies didn’t exist before 1995.</text></item><item><author>paulsecwhatt</author><text>I honestly don&amp;#x27;t understand why people value Stallman&amp;#x27;s opinions on these matters so highly. I completely disagree with him on essentially everything he writes about these topics.&lt;p&gt;Granted, he&amp;#x27;s an incredible programmer who contributed immensely to the development of our modern operating systems and the tools we use, and people here love to bring that up (&amp;quot;what - you DON&amp;#x27;T KNOW WHO STALLMAN IS? SHAME? HOW DARE YOU CRITICISE HIM?&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;Does this make his opinion on Facebook or privacy or freedom any more correct or valid? No.&lt;p&gt;Just like I wouldn&amp;#x27;t listen to Usain Bolt if he were trying to teach me the biological mechanisms behind doping, I can&amp;#x27;t see why Stallman&amp;#x27;s opinion is considered so correct in these matters.&lt;p&gt;IMO his ramblings about personal liberties and freedom being infringed by everything under the sun from Amazon to Google to Facebook are oversimplified and childish. The world isn&amp;#x27;t black and white and he obviously fails to understand the entire point behind many of these companies. When Facebook makes you use a real name it&amp;#x27;s not because theres some &amp;quot;Mr. Evil&amp;quot; at the top level plotting to steal your freedom, it&amp;#x27;s because it leads to a better working social network.&lt;p&gt;Just his description of AirBnB is ridiculous: &amp;quot;Airbnb requires you to run nonfree software (an app, or Javascript). It puts you in a data base easily available to Big Brother (just like a hotel).&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s an immensely stupid argument, because any _viable_ company that wants to provide a service that a consumer other than Stallman himself will use will &amp;quot;infringe&amp;quot; on those two idiotic requirements.&lt;p&gt;TL;DR. Just because he did something amazing in one field&amp;#x2F;area, doesn&amp;#x27;t mean he is not spewing complete BS. For a similar example, see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/01/dna-james-watson-scientist-selling-nobel-prize-medal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;commentisfree&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;dec&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;dna-jam...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>_ak</author><text>Of course phones were used to track people 10 years ago. And it wasn&amp;#x27;t even a secret. Location-based services were the hot shit back then for mobile carriers (at least in Europe).&lt;p&gt;Making that to be a big conspiracy to infringe upon everybody&amp;#x27;s freedom and privacy is what makes Stallman&amp;#x27;s position so ridiculous. It always sounds like the rambling of a technophobic. No, that&amp;#x27;s not entirely true. Like the rambling of an old man who wants computing and technology in general to be exactly like it was in the 70&amp;#x27;s when he was sharing a mainframe with his pals at uni, and who can&amp;#x27;t think of anything more innovative than that.</text></comment>