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)

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?

Comments

You know what....

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:You know what....

[Narcocide]

Stallman is losing credibility fast.

Saying it doesn't make it true.

Re:You know what....

[Obfuscant]

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.

Agreed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook should be shutdown, and Zuckerburg will need to be hanged at the town square for his crimes against humanity.

Re:Agreed.

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Facebook should be shutdown, and Zuckerburg will need to be hanged at the town square for his crimes against humanity.

Firm but fair.

I disagree

[SuperKendall]

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

[Thad Boyd]

but here's the real issue, do the vast majority of people even want this problem fixed? I do not think they really care.

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.

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

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).

not playing whack-a-mole with companies that make use of this fundamental aspect of human nature.

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.

Re:I disagree

[MostAwesomeDude]

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.

Re:I disagree

[hazardPPP]

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.

Re:I disagree

[Kjella]

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 Facebook.

Re:I disagree

[Thad Boyd]

Man, that typo on "tyranny" is really bugging me. Wish I could go back and fix it.

Re:I disagree

[sinij]

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.

Re:I disagree

[Ichijo]

do the vast majority of people even want this problem fixed?

Let's put it to a public vote and find out! Democracy is still a good thing, right?

Re:I disagree

[Visarga]

When you get at FaceBook size, knowing so much everything about people becomes more than a symptom. At this scale it is a problem in itself. The potential for abuse is on a whole new level.

Re:I disagree

[NicknameUnavailable]

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

[Thad Boyd]

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, second-degree connection to this particular gentleman. And that was a dozen years ago; who knows how much information it's got on me now?

And that's before we even get into the Facebook tracking scripts hidden on most major websites. A typical Slashdot reader knows those are there and how to block them, but most people don't.

Re:I disagree

[bgarcia]

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.

Re:I disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

yes processing power changes quite a lot of things. To the point that it is almost possible to trace a single dollar note with its unique number - here you go with a privacy that cash offers you. If they put a rfid chip on it (for safety reasons of course what else) who the hell knows what this chip is doing? I certainly will not. But indeed we already have chips with ability to tell to whoever has an access to them and is capable of asking a question what did we do yesterday at 19:01. This way if my ex wanted to, she could have traced me to a call girl and demand higher contributions because I have apparently more free funds than I should have had etc It is apparently possible to buy this sort of information now. CA did that. Who else did that? Is it ok if nobody else did violate TOS and only FB violated our privacy?
Probably not. Can you as a single person fight it? No. The 'majority does not understand' is irrelevant because they do not want to understand and the reason is: energy spent on that is wasted as they on their own cannot do anything. A huge corp can buy the law. A political party may have an idea on its own (although that is increasingly just a financial operation not an intellectual one).
Bottom line: you are right the ping haired idiot hit the painful point about your phone with FB app is listening to your conversations and sounds you produce when on/under your partner - that even if true freaks the majority out (not sure why but I have asperger and the thought about fornication is just foreign to me).

Re:I disagree

[SigmundFloyd]

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'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.

Re:I disagree

[thinkwaitfast]

Not according to Plato. The people who wrote the US constitution were the leading philosophers and scientists of their time and were very afraid of democracies, and wrote as such, which is why the us US a republic.

Re:I disagree

[Falos]

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 but there's no master DB, just connected pools, often poorly. But every year this majestic and mighty clusterfuck surrounding our 21st century lives, that absolute king of all katamari blobs, becomes slightly more compatible with itself.

I'd be happy if people just understood that logging =/= monitoring. No, "google" (FBI, etc) isn't watching your porn tastes. But their algorithm is.

Re:I disagree

[CrimsonAvenger]

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.

Curious as to how you keep the government from building a PII database. It's not like they don't have Census data, tax data, that sort of thing.

And it's not like they won't do something they really, really want to do, just because it's illegal.

Or that any actions by the citizenry will make them stop, even if they get caught. All they have to do is pinky-swear that they've stopped and will never, ever do it again....

Re:I disagree

[thePsychologist]

>but here's the real issue, do the vast majority of people even want this problem fixed?

No, but then the majority of drug addicts probably wouldn't choose to avoid their next hit either.

Re:I disagree

[king neckbeard]

The same way a functional government forces monopolies to cease to exist. We have a thousand things that are more indicative of a police state than regulating storage of personal information.

Re:I disagree

[AmiMoJo]

Should laws prohibit Facebook from carrying out their technically-legal but morally-dubious business strategy?

It probably isn't legal in many places. Building shadow profiles, for example, has been found to be illegal in some EU member states already and definitely will be in all of them from next month when the GDPR comes in.

Re: I disagree

[mapkinase]

You said it like it is. Nothing to add here.

Facebook is to share life events with family and friends. Nobody is interested in this except salesmen of campware and all other goods that could be peddled to people.

Today my weather app shows me ads of things I browsed on Amazon yesterday. Now this is creepy, but I still do not care. I do not like that for now I can't block them.

Re:I disagree

[sad_]

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.

I don't think that is true, however there are different levels of privacy which people are willing to give up or not care about. but at a certain point everybody cares about some level of privacy.

Re:I disagree

[sinij]

Government's key role is to enforce some degree of foresight. You fix roads before they crumble. You don't dump poison into rivers until rivers catch fire.

It is very logical to have gov't prevent abuse of the data that you shortsightedly over-shared.

Re:I disagree

[exomondo]

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.

And it's tyrannical to suggest that it should be taken away 'for their own good' because people can't be trusted with their own information.

If you're saying that what Stallman should be doing is explaining why people should care, he's been doing that for 30 years.

The issue is the dishonesty and hyperbole, we all know that your freedom is taken away when you use proprietary software, sure you're not granted the freedom to modify the software but that is a very different thing and it is freedom of choice as to whether you use it and for how long. If I go to your house I don't have the freedom to just change things and do whatever I please, but then I'm also not imprisoned there, I can leave whenever I want.

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.

Restricting the freedom of what anybody can do with the information freely available on the open internet is exactly the kind of tyrannical approach groups like the MPAA take. The hyperbole of taking away profits that never existed is also analogous to Stallman's argument of taking away a freedom you were never granted in the first place.

Why are subjects needed?

[j_rhoden]

âoeEmpirically, basically, if a program is not free software, it probably has one of these malicious functionalities.â

Yeah citation needed there buddy.

Re:Why are subjects needed?

[mark-t]

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 even then, it was always stated up front exactly what information was being collected, and how it was going to be used.

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. Effectively, it was anonymous for our purposes.

Or is my experience the exception, and not the rule?

Re:Why are subjects needed?

[Known Nutter]

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."

Re:Why are subjects needed?

[tattood]

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 money.

Re:Why are subjects needed?

[mark-t]

Good point... but then is it true that most closed source software is given away? I'm not so sure about that.

Re:Why are subjects needed?

[Falos]

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 optional for fuck's sake. You control it.

Re:Why are subjects needed?

[mark-t]

Doesn't it still have to be verifiable?

Re:Why are subjects needed?

[AHuxley]

Someone is the product. The user is sold.

Re:Why are subjects needed?

[Bing Tsher E]

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. The 'user is the product' meme is tired, incorrect, and people like you are wearing it out as a useful concept. Which is okay, but you're discrediting your argument with such a poor meme.

Re:Why are subjects needed?

[Known Nutter]

No. That's what "or" means.

based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

- based on observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic

- concerned with observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic

or

- verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic

Re:Why are subjects needed?

[mark-t]

I understood that "empirical" required reproducibility or verifiability... otherwise it's no different than anecdotal evidence.

Re:Why are subjects needed?

[toutankh]

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/...

sexy stallman benis

[Anonymous Coward]

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 :-)

Re:sexy stallman benis

[x0ra]

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

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Did he ask for a parrot?

Re:sexy stallman benis

[HornWumpus]

Post the requirements on SmokingGun, along with all the rock star contract riders. Should be good for laughs.

Re:sexy stallman benis

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, he's the Steve Jobs of Free Software. As in, he literally wrote the definition for Free Software and made everyone accept it as a term. The difference is that Steve Jobs was the asshole who went with the fashions and made several up on his own because he was literally trying to sell you something. RMS was and is trying to figuratively sell you on something, and the only way to win converts is to be the asshole that seems to belligerently stand for something without wavering.

The real truth? RMS is mad. It just happens that the world is a lot madder. What part of "keep our children safe" and "don't tell people online your name, address, etc", and "let's give our all our information to Facebook, Twitter, etc" ever made any sense? The real joke to me is that as pervasive is it is, incredibly minor real harm has occurred. I'm still waiting for the real witch hunt to begin, when it's found out that some of the people who got Facebook's data were also pedophiles and used it to abuse children. Mark my words: it happened.

Re:sexy stallman benis

[sconeu]

Here. Let me help you.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Richard+M+stallman+speaking+requirements

Re:sexy stallman benis

[AuMatar]

Most likely Asperger or autistic. He just gets hyper focused on details.

Re:sexy stallman benis

[jareth-0205]

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."

Re:sexy stallman benis

[rtb61]

Some people have difficulty saying no, so rather than say no, he guilefully created a series of obstacles. Just because he did make public appearances, does not mean he enjoyed making public appearances and likely took steps to avoid them and better that people think he is weird, which probably amuses him, than they be offended by his refusal and harm the cause he supports. Some people just like to sit back and advise, rather than taking the public spotlight and their behaviour can become quite odd to support that and to avoid insulting people by refusing (a better method is, 'Oh that sounds really interesting but I am an antisocial bastard so, sorry no I don't go in for that sort of stuff', be right up front about it, works for me, delivery counts, do it in a light and funny fashion with an underlying message of reality, don't forget to laugh as you walk away).

Re:sexy stallman benis

[exomondo]

Why do we need a law when using Facebook or any of the other Social Media application and services are non-mandatory?

Because of the notion of freedom of choice, RMS wants to make that choice for you rather than you be free to make it yourself. His logic is that you shouldn't be free to give up your freedom or privacy, now maybe that would be true if 'freedom' was a blanket definition but it isn't.

If you use proprietary software the concept that you have "given up your freedom" is not really true, you just haven't been granted specific freedoms and even then that is only for a very narrow definition of "freedom" and only in a very specific context and for a specific time (which is almost always at the behest of the person involved), for example yes, when I use Photoshop to edit an image I wasn't granted the freedom to modify Photoshop but I never had that in the first place and - much like pirates can't take away the profits that MPAA affiliates never had - nobody can take away the freedom to modify Photoshop that I never had. More to the point, freedom of choice means I can use GIMP if I want to but that doesn't mean my freedom to use Photoshop should be taken away simply because I can't modify it.

Re: sexy stallman benis

[Z00L00K]

Sorry, we are all out of Norwegian Blue.

Re:sexy stallman benis

[serviscope_minor]

Mad, unlikely, an asshole, most likely.

Possibly. You don't singlemindedly devote yourself to a cause for your entire life and be a go along/get along kind of guy, pretty much by definition.

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.

I guess that's the price; he doesn't ask for big appearance fees or anything. Is that assholey? I don't know, but if I was spending several months (or more) every year away from home, I'd get pretty picky about where I'm staying.

And I'm not even getting started about the way he behaves in the FSF, he made a lot of damages in their projects...

I don't know about a lot, but the decision over GCC plugins definitely qualifies as damaging.

Re:sexy stallman benis

[TheRaven64]

Why do we need a law when using Facebook or any of the other Social Media application and services are non-mandatory? Nobody is forced to publish the details of their lives on any of these services.

I would be completely happy if this were the case. I have never signed up to Facebook and never agreed to their T&Cs. As long as this means that Facebook does not collect any information about me, then that's completely fine. Unfortunately, that's not even slightly the case.

Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[HornWumpus]

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.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[Stan92057]

what about the non user/members? they, I never agreed to any of their terms..And as its been pointed out you need to be a full blown lawyer to read and really understand what your agreeing too..that's abuse also. i bet 99.99% of their user have never read the terms and really understand how much they are being mined of

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[The Good Reverend]

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.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[Thad Boyd]

You could build a FOSS global gossip network and it would still have it's data harvested.

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.)

For example: I guarantee Github's data is scraped.

I was given to understand that the FSF considers Github to be nonfree because it requires the use of nonfree scripts. But I could be mistaken.

Don't put your life on the net, do put disinformation on the net. It is that simple.

It's really not, though. I run uBlock Origin, NoScript, and Privacy Badger, but most users don't. Most people routinely access third-party sites that run Facebook and Google tracking scripts that monitor their browsing habits, and don't even realize it.

And my browser extensions don't prevent other people from disclosing data about me. I don't use Facebook, but of course I know people who do. They've searched for my name, and allowed Facebook to build a pretty good profile of my mutual friends and acquaintances. Some have probably even tagged me in photos.

Of course, I post under my own name and I've posted photos of myself online. And you're right: those disclosures were my choice. But that's not true of everybody. Even if you don't use your real name, even if you don't use social networks, even if you don't post photos of yourself, you still have limited control over that information.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[HornWumpus]

Way to move the goalposts. That's all been true since the 1950s.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[Obfuscant]

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 function in a malicious way?) All FOSS can do that. There is nothing in MySQL or any other database that prohibits it from being used to collect and collate data about everyone. My apache web server will happily log every web page you look at on my site, including the 1 pixel tracking images in your email. If I want to find our what mailserver you use I can log the accesses that happen too fast to be you clicking on a link. (I bet a lot of people don't know that some anti-spam "appliances" will access links in incoming email to test them for known malware, which creates a log entry on the web server. I don't have to guess whether your email address is valid, I just put a link in spam to you and watch for your email server to rat you out. And then I wait for your html email client to load the 1 pixel tracking image to know when you read my email.)

The fact is that Facebook collects data about people because it can, and it can collect things because people tell it things. If you make a law to prevent Facebook from collecting the data the people tell it, then they'll have to stop people from telling it, and they'll flock to the next social media site that lets them share their lives and feel important because they think someone cares. There's a reason why most social media sites tell you how many followers or friends you have, and it's to make you feel loved and wanted and important. Unless Stallman thinks he can change that part of human nature, then he's going to fail before he even begins. Sounding like a nutter will only make people tune him out and he'll be less likely to get his message across.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[mccrew]

You could build a FOSS global gossip network and it would still have it's data harvested.

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 original gossip network and moves to it. What are the chances that all this person's friends are going to come over too? What about other users who are unhappy about different aspects of this network, who create their own one-offs? Which one do you join? Where are your friends?

With the so-called network effect, each additional user make the network more valuable. This seems like a recipe for a downward-spiraling "anti network effect."

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[HornWumpus]

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.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[Thad Boyd]

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.

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 plays a role.

No, not everyone is a programmer. But everyone can benefit from the work of programmers.

Provided there's enough interest in a piece of software, third-party developers will audit the code and disclose their findings. This happens with proprietary software too, of course, but it's not as easy to determine what data Facebook or Google are collecting as it would be with a FOSS piece of software.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[Thad Boyd]

Vendor lock-in and difficulties in migration are issues, but I don't think they've got much to do with whether the underlying software is free or proprietary.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[Obfuscant]

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, talk about laws prohibiting things like Facebook, and people will tune you out. When you use the phrase "police state" referring to Facebook, people will run from you. Add in a demand that such companies not be allowed to exist and you've completely lost them. Not "mystified" lost, but lost their interest and their attention.

but it's not as easy to determine what data Facebook or Google are collecting as it would be with a FOSS piece of software.

Facebook could be completely open software like the Apache web server is and you'd never know what data Facebook is collecting. I can configure Apache to keep all kinds of stuff on every visitor to my websites but you'll never know what my logging looks like based on a code audit of the Apache source.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[AHuxley]

Other people put up group images and tag every face. The user is the product.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[rahvin112]

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 corp's sell the data for foreign nations) but to democracy as well.

We need to add a constitutional amendment on privacy. The founders had no idea what was coming technologically speaking. Facebook and others have created the technology to truly implement the government of the book 1984 and that should scare the dickens out of everyone.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[Thad Boyd]

"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.

"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 subject under discussion, not the population at large. It's a variation on the "given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow" maxim.

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, talk about laws prohibiting things like Facebook, and people will tune you out. When you use the phrase "police state" referring to Facebook, people will run from you. Add in a demand that such companies not be allowed to exist and you've completely lost them. Not "mystified" lost, but lost their interest and their attention.

If your point is that Stallman is not the most effective advocate for his political positions, you won't get any argument from me.

Facebook could be completely open software like the Apache web server is and you'd never know what data Facebook is collecting. I can configure Apache to keep all kinds of stuff on every visitor to my websites but you'll never know what my logging looks like based on a code audit of the Apache source.

Certainly, but I'd know the maximum amount of data you could possibly be logging.

Stallman's argument is that systems should be designed so that they can't store private data -- or that, where private data is required for their function, that they face tax penalties and tight restrictions on its use.

That introduces all kinds of implementation questions, of course.

The big one is, what about cases where people want to disclose personal information? What should the restrictions be on collection and usage of data that's intentionally disclosed in a public context, but not intended to be used by advertisers or political campaigns? That's a difficult question, to say the least.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[The Good Reverend]

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.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[110010001000]

" I can configure Apache to keep all kinds of stuff on every visitor to my websites but you'll never know what my logging looks like based on a code audit of the Apache source."

Sure I would know. I would know the *possible* data you can collect by looking at the source. If Facebook source was truly open we would know what data is possibly currently being collected simply by looking at the source.

Re:Stallman puts blame in wrong place.

[bingoUV]

Are you better than Stallman ?

Add in a demand that such companies not be allowed to exist and you've completely lost them

If you don't read Stallman's statement before commenting on it, by your logic :
1. You've completely lost your audience
2. "People" will run from you
3. People will tune you out

Agree 100%

[Anonymous Coward]

If facebook suddenly disappeared would it really matter?

DDT

[Zorro]

Yeah Social Media turned out a lot like DDT.

We should ban it.

The Reign of Terror

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it you don't know much about history or literature. If you did, you'd have a sense of what happened in the French Revolution. Read Dickens' Tale of Two Cities. You'd better hope the guillotine isn't turned on you.

He is like Nostradamus

[s3cr3to]

Maybe some of us can't or won't believe him; but, just wait until what he says happens (sooner or later).

Re:He is like Nostradamus

[Bing Tsher E]

If you are ignorant and it's confusing, just say so. Don't imply the speaker is rambling.

eh

[buddyglass]

Seems like proper labeling requirements would do the trick. Have them state up front in simple, easy-to-understand-for-a-non-technical-person terms what data they collect, who they share it with, and what someone could do with it. Then, if people still want to use the service, they can, and they'll do it with eyes open.

Re:eh

[buddyglass]

I meant a boolean thing, in the sense that you're either on the platform or not. Not some sort of granular controls for people who are on the platform. Tell a prospective user, before he or she signs up, "We will collect X, Y and Z and allow A, B and C to access that data under conditions R, S and T". Then you can either sign up, or not.

Re:eh

[buddyglass]

Could you not go in and revoke permissions granted to the apps?

Re:eh

[buddyglass]

Key words from what I wrote: "simple, easy-to-understand-for-a-non-technical-person terms". If you're presented with an EULA that's not overly burdensome and you click OK without reading it then that's on you, and I don't feel sorry for you. Granted, most EULA's are currently what I'd consider to be "overly burdensome".

What's your opinion of Captain Stern?

[Anonymous Coward]

"He's nothing but a low-down, double-dealing, backstabbing, larcenous perverted worm! Hanging's too good for him. Burning's too good for him! He should be torn into little bitsy pieces and buried alive!"

Just one small problem

[bradley13]

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...

Re:Just one small problem

[squiggleslash]

I see the problem, it's that you've selectively quoted the interview and missed out gobs of context, including the fact that he believes we need wholesale social reform.

Re:Just one small problem

[squiggleslash]

The squishy stuff in the middle that you like to read doesn't fix the glaring non sequitur.

1. There is no non-sequitur. The complaint of the GP was that the two lines contradicted one another. Just as you just repeated.
2. Yes, it fixes the supposed contradiction between the two assertions. Completely. 100%. How are you not seeing that? Stallman isn't arguing that a law can be passed in the current environment, he's arguing that social reform is needed to ensure politicians are elected who don't pass laws that are corrupt, and then that once this is done we can finally pass laws to solve real problems.

It's not hard. You and the GP are just idiots who want to bash Stallman for the sake of bashing him.

Coporations and government, same rules

[rtkluttz]

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.

Re:Coporations and government, same rules

[Falos]

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.

Re:Richard Stallman is a clueless communist

[Richard Stalin]

They will continue doing things we hate unless we make the things we hate illegal.

Yes, we need a law

[jenningsthecat]

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...

Re: Rooted in Vietnam-US War

[Anonymous Coward]

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 to greater trauma and devastation of the self. SAD.

Re:I disagree-Majority wins.

[Thad Boyd]

Majority want Gay and Lesbian rights as well as allowing Marijuana and few are fighting against that.

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?

Re:Johnny Stinktits

[sexconker]

Seen it. It's great.

Re:even more complex

[PopeRatzo]

Richard Stallman is falling into the same trap that we've been stuck in for ages - he thinks that there is an easy legislative road out of societal problems.

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 work because Facebook has designed itself so that its users are not its customers. You serve Facebook whether you choose to or not. The only realistic counterbalance to this type of corporate power is government action.

You're too smart to believe the right-wing nonsense that all government is bad. Government is people, my friend.

wiretapping non users

[Stan92057]

I am not a member,user of FB then why the hell should they data mine me others because our relatives put a picture up that happen to have me in them? I never agreed to FB terms and they don't have a right to spy on me at all. IMO what they are doing is wiretapping on mega scales..Someone should be in jail for wiretapping non users......

Re:even more complex

[Thad Boyd]

Richard Stallman is falling into the same trap that we've been stuck in for ages - he thinks that there is an easy legislative road out of societal problems.

Did you read the full interview?

He's not just advocating legislative changes; he's advocating cultural and ideological ones too.

This is the same nonsense that people quote when they think that banning guns and knives will eliminate murder...

Wow, you packed an awful lot of straw into that man.

I'd be in favor of a law...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.. Stallman's right on this. Besides any company who's founder said this...

ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard
ZUCK: just ask
ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
FRIEND: what!? how'd you manage that one?
ZUCK: people just submitted it
ZUCK: i don't know why
ZUCK: they "trust me"
ZUCK: dumb fucks

Is not really a company you want to trust your data with wither it's personal or professional.

Re:even more complex

[Mashiki]

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.

That's kind of my point

[SuperKendall]

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 fighting against human nature which has never worked, ever.

Re:That's kind of my point

[king neckbeard]

People want cool technical things. They accept trading privacy for said cool technical things. Said cool technical things could still exist, and would like be more cool and technical, if we had data protection/privacy laws. There's no reason we have to be tied to our current data laws.

Neo Liberal doesn't mean left wing

[rsilvergun]

or socialist. Yeah, this is slightly off topic, but folks get confused so much when they hear this term that I think it's worth pointing out. Neoliberal is in line with the "Clintonian" or "Corporate" side of the Democratic party. e.g. Low regulations, free trade, legalize things that aren't directly harmful like drugs, etc. It's like a pro-corporate libertarian.

For the record, Stallman is very left wing.

Re:Neo Liberal doesn't mean left wing

[mjwx]

For the record, Stallman is very left wing.

Erm... after reading that I think it's clear that you don't know what left wing is.

Nowhere in that page has he asked for collective ownership or limitations on personal property. You know, actual very left wing ideas. If anything, he's centre right.

Re:Welcome to the party pal

[PopeRatzo]

and Obama made huge use of Facebook along with other data mining for two successful campaigns, which apparently was OK and widely lauded at the time. Just where do conservatives invite any blame for collection entirely run for and by liberals, that conservatives just happened to also make use of?

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...

The Obama campaign created a Facebook app for supporters to donate, learn of voting requirements, and find nearby houses to canvass. The app asked users’ permission to scan their photos, friends lists, and news feeds. Most users complied.

The people signing up knew the data they were handing over would be used to support a political campaign. Their friends, however, did not.

The people who downloaded the app used by Cambridge Analytica did not know their data would be used to aid any political campaigns. The app was billed as a personality quiz that would be used by Cambridge University researchers.

Aleksandr Kogan, one of the Cambridge researchers involved in the project, sold the data to the upstart political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The company then sold its services not only to the Trump campaign, but to the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz and the senatorial campaign of Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., among others.

When Facebook discovered a developer had shared users’ data without their consent in 2015, it asked both the original app and the consultancy to delete the data. That didn’t happen.

I assume you will object to these facts because they are from a Pulitzer Prize winning non-profit who promotes checking facts. Let me know and I'll provide other sources, but you'll have probably have a problem with those too. Here is the transparency statement of that Pulitzer Prize winning non-profit so you can see who's paying for these facts, which you probably believe are liberal facts, which by your definition cannot be true.

http://www.politifact.com/trut...

Re:I disagree-Majority wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

As recently as a few years ago, this was not the case; a majority were against those things.

When put to a vote, the majority is still against it.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008)

The 5 most dangerous words in the English language

[Anonymous Coward]

There oughta be a law.

Re:Richard Stallman is a clueless communist

[NicknameUnavailable]

"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.

Nope!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tyranny Of The Majority is only an issue when it comes to rights. How is Facebook use or non-use a rights issue? If you don't want your data collected, you can opt out of Facebook.

Now, recently it has been revealed that Facebook also collects data on non-users. OK, that might be an issue. However it could be addressed without the hammer that Stallman floats (the dissolution of Facebook).

This is the problem with Stallman. In principle, I can get on board with the notion that any particular corporate entity should not make us create national policy, and in principle if they do, I'd be willing to contemplate that corporate entity's restructuring or destruction. However, let's get real. How many people actually want Facebook to go away permanently, or feel that their behavior in any way rises to the level where this should be discussed?

As usual Stallman winds up sounding like the crazy dude, in torn and dirty clothes, walking the streets with a sandwich board. "The End Is Near!" quoth Stallman, and the citizens carefully avoid eye contact and start moving away.

Re: Fuck Richard Stallman

[edris90]

If business is need not fear community reprisal or curtailment, it outgrows it usefulness

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[gnick]

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

[edris90]

It's not one or the other, it's a dynamic relationship. In the end it must be destatabilized to end the malcontent it Generates. That goal is only detracted from when you play the blame game. If we stop looking for excuses to do nothing, and aren't afraid to get creative with the approach we can hit it from all sides, individual, culture, and law, and by doing so each method compliment s and covers the gaps to ensure a the malevolent function is dissolved. You soundike a quitter in this specific context. Looking for reasons to stay the same rather then grow.

Still voluntary

[SuperKendall]

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

[Actually, I do RTFA]

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?

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.

Re:Still voluntary

[marcle]

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.

Re:Still voluntary

[SigmundFloyd]

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?

So you're basically arguing that Internet users who don't always use private browsing mode are consenting to being tracked?

Re:Still voluntary

[silkenphoenixx]

Honestly, I don't know why private mode isn't the default mode on most browsers. Who wants websites to be able to leave things on your computer just because you've clicked on them? News sites (slashdot included) are pretty bad at this - visit one site and you have cookies from dozens of domains. I would prefer it if I were asked if the browser would like to keep the cookies (yes I know you can set browsers up to clear cookies when you exit but this isn't default behaviour and it's a pain to make a persistent white-list. Easier if the browser were to ask "You've just logged in to - would you like your login to persist?" with a "don't ask again" option too.)

Re:I disagree-Majority wins.

[Thad Boyd]

You can't really say this.

I believe I just did.

Until there is another secret vote, which won't happen because SCOTUS ruled the way they did, it is impossible to know if the majority is in favor or not.

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%.

The last set of national polls were useless in determining the thinking of the electorate.

No, they weren't. Nate Silver:

Another myth is that Trump’s victory represented some sort of catastrophic failure for the polls. Trump outperformed his national polls by only 1 to 2 percentage points in losing the popular vote to Clinton, making them slightly closer to the mark than they were in 2012. Meanwhile, he beat his polls by only 2 to 3 percentage points in the average swing state. Certainly, there were individual pollsters that had some explaining to do, especially in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Trump beat his polls by a larger amount. But the result was not some sort of massive outlier; on the contrary, the polls were pretty much as accurate as they’d been, on average, since 1968.

While most 2016 polls were off, they were within the margin of error. They were off by less than 4 points.

Current polling 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.

Re:Welcome to the party pal

[Anonymous Coward]

"Their friends, however, did not."

That's enough to make them equivalent.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[nukenerd]

Nobody forces you to use Facebook.

You need to catch up with some news :-

https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

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.

We need a Consitutional Amendment

[gatkinso]

The Right to Privacy.

Re:We need a Consitutional Amendment

[OrangeTide]

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.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[thinkwaitfast]

Google maps lists businesses even if companies don't join or pay for it. I can google my name and find it listed on dozens of mylife.com type websites. And I wonder how many professors on ratemyprofessor.com actually signed up for that feature?

Re:Ban websites that allow you to enter informatio

[OrangeTide]

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.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[Serge_Tomiko]

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".

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[fish_in_the_c]

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 :)

Re:I disagree-Majority wins.

[fish_in_the_c]

That's what they said 10 years ago.

Steve Jobs Richard Stallman

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual difference is Steve Jobs was successful at business and made billions creating something people wanted to buy, while Stallman has been wildly unsuccessful and is mad about it and blames other people for his failures; that's why he wants to resort to legislation to force people to act like him.

Re: Steve Jobs Richard Stallman

[Z00L00K]

And Jobs was really a bigger asshole than Stallman.

One point is also that by having a number of hard to solve requirements for participation you limit the number of invitations and get time over for the ones that you like.

brilliant ...

[Hugh Jorgen]

Dumbfuck, laws change nothing only criminalize behavior, rarely does it change it. If you create a law it must be enforceable and penalties attached, waste of energy, just like Facebook.

Re:brilliant ...

[Bing Tsher E]

That is true when it is laws that prohibit individuals from certain activities. In the case of laws that prohibit organizations from certain activities, when the organization is caught, it can easily be dismantled.

That's a big difference, and it debunks your notion that 'laws change nothing.' When the assets of the organization are being liquidated to pay the fine, a whole bunch of something is being changed.

plutocratic neoliberal ideology

[hduff]

He doesn't score points with language like this.

Re: plutocratic neoliberal ideology

[DNS-and-BIND]

Well, it's accurate. How would you put it?

Re:plutocratic neoliberal ideology

[AHuxley]

PRISM was the wake up call. Now the tech industry understands more and still wants back into getting spied on?

Re:plutocratic neoliberal ideology

[Thad Boyd]

That's the name of my prog rock band.

Re:Steve Jobs Richard Stallman

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual difference is Steve Jobs was successful at business and made billions creating something people wanted to buy, ...

If all you're concerned about is making billions and being successful at business, don't be surprised if people forget you in 20 years. Certainly, Steve Jobs didn't take those billions to the grave, and they didn't stop him from dying--or being wise enough to get chemotherapy early instead of waiting.

.. while Stallman has been wildly unsuccessful ...

Apple computers never got above 5% market share. GNU/Linux is at about 1%. That's wildly unsuccessful compared to Apple? In the phone/tablet space, sure, Apple is well ahead of any sort of GNU-based phone. Then again, most everything about a phone/tablet has been precisely the sort of tracking that RMS abhors, so I don't think he'd really want to be associated with it..

... and is mad about it and blames other people for his failures; that's why he wants to resort to legislation to force people to act like him.

This I agree with, but not in the sense you mean. He's mad that after clear spelling out the threats, people willing embraced it like a bunch of morons. A lot of people here argue it's too complex, and it's gotten to the point that even people who aren't involved at all are still be tracked indirectly--if 98% of people take and share photos and software scans them, you basically can't interact with society at all to avoid being tracked. It's little wonder then that he wants legislation because people are apparently too stupid to listen to what he's repeated said and dismissed him as mad.

People embrace the devil. Most evangelists aren't exactly the most happy of people.

Re: Rooted in Vietnam-US War

[thinkwaitfast]

Truman got us into Vietnam, heavily ramped up by Kennedy and Nixon got us out.

Re:Ban websites that allow you to enter informatio

[hduff]

"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...) 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.

Utterly Wrong

[SuperKendall]

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 from full potential.

Re:Utterly Wrong

[king neckbeard]

The current incarnation would not exist, but that doesn't mean that social media would cease to exist altogether. It's not as if Facebook is high quality in any way. They just benefit from a network effect, and others would fill that niche if Facebook were gone.

Re:Utterly Wrong

[exomondo]

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.

Which is basically Diaspora...you would have to create laws to kill competition in order to have a hope at making it successful.

this is an irrelevant discussion

[swell]

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:whataboutery

[thinkwaitfast]

That was never stipulated nor implied.

Re:Libertarianism is growing

[MoaDweeb]

Somalia needs more philosophers of your calibre.

Re:Business contact info is not personal

[thinkwaitfast]

There probably a dozen public websites with my address because I happened to get an FCC license.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[jareth-0205]

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:I disagree-Majority wins.

[king neckbeard]

There's a much stronger argument for the War on Terror and the War on Drugs fitting those goals.

Re:I've just realized what Stallman has backwards

[Thad Boyd]

...the "free" in "free software" does not refer to cost.

I've had bosses force me to use Facebook

[rsilvergun]

so I can give the company a like. I'm not the only one. So yeah, lots of people force people to use Facebook. It's like Cell phones. These days if you apply for any job better than burger flipper's assistant and don't have one you're unemployable. Facebook is getting there, and don't think they haven't noticed (and are taking steps to encourage this line of thought).

Re:I've had bosses force me to use Facebook

[gnick]

"Force" is still a funny word. Your boss didn't force you to use Facebook. You traded privacy for employment.

My boss admitted to me that she did some cyber-stalking on me when considering me for employment. She didn't mention Facebook, but I'm sure she saw what was public. I'm not dumb enough to make public anything that's going to cripple me. The worst I had to answer for were some negative comments I made about Outlook in an entry for Ed Skoudis's old 'Crack the Hacker' challenge. IIRC I won a signed book and a PDA for that entry, but I had to promise my boss not to gripe about using Outlook.

Re:I've had bosses force me to use Facebook

[dryeo]

So once all jobs require a Facebook account, you will still be free to starve.

Re:I've had bosses force me to use Facebook

[dcw3]

Oh bullshit. I'm a hiring manager, and yes we do occasionally check social media. The only reason you might be unemployable is because you're making shit up.

Re:I've had bosses force me to use Facebook

[gnick]

once all jobs require a Facebook account

Is this something you worry about? I don't see this in our future. A LinkedIn account might have helped me find a job, but I found a good job without one. I'm friends with a few past coworkers and bosses on Facebook, but nobody at my current position. I just checked to see if my current employer has a FB presence; we don't.

you will still be free to starve

There's always crime. Roving mobs of the FB-less. Organized crime might be out; they might want you to 'Like' the gang.

Re:What a misleading ignorant twat.

[Bing Tsher E]

Do you want to pay $5 per month for your Gmail account?

Actually, yes, I pay about $10 a year for my email account, from Fastmail. I bought it after Google started getting weird about my gmail account, wanting a 'phone number' because 'bad things could happen to your account, you know....' I said the heck with that, having a permanent durable email address that can't be cancelled by some marketing operation is worth it to me.

Re:"Old man yells at cloud"

[Bing Tsher E]

Better yet, don't pay much attention to what Anonymous Cowards type on websites.

Re:Free = no value

[Bing Tsher E]

So what you are saying is:

1. Because a caribou out running on a plain is 'free' it has no value.

and

2. That you don't know what the fuck you are saying, but you type lots of words anyway.

Why do we even read the Anonymous Coward crap? A.C. comments should be restricted to about twenty words.

Re:Libertarianism is growing

[Martin Blank]

I've been hearing this since the early 1990s. They still can't crack more than a few percentage points in any national poll, even the ones asking who they'd *like* to vote for rather than who they *plan* to vote for. I don't see them doing all that well in other countries, either, even those that have a half-dozen or more parties in the legislative bodies.

Re:Welcome to the party pal

[Thad Boyd]

You do know that SuperKendall literally made no reference to CA

Well, aside from the part where he was commenting on an article whose headline contains the phrase "Facebook's privacy scandal."

Re:Stallman wants a bigger NSA, I take it?

[king neckbeard]

no, stallman wants REASONABLE legislation, which may cause unreasonable businesses to fail if they can't adapt. Stallman advocates for smaller government overall than most libertarians, he just doesn't see private businesses as being all that different from governments. And in that regard, he is completely right.

Re:Steve Jobs Richard Stallman

[Martin Blank]

Worldwide, Apple's computer market share is around 8%. In the US, it's been at or above 10% since at least 2012, getting close to 15% several times.

It's still very much a minority in the non-server computing world, just not as much of a minority as you think.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[dryeo]

"Right to be forgotten" would require amending the Constitution to eliminate that pesky Free Speech Clause in the United States Constitution.

No it wouldn't, it would just require the Supreme Court to declare more speech being non-protected, something your Supreme Court is good at.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[dcw3]

What a fucking stupid thing to say. If you go out in public at all, your picture will be taken, and most likely get posted somewhere without your permission. Unless you plan to hide in a fucking cave the rest of your life, you won't avoid it. Now go crawl back in your hole, you fucking moron.

Re:I disagree-Majority wins.

[Martin Blank]

Marriage is deeply enshrined in wide-ranging parts of law. Spouses get presumptive rights for hospital access and medical decisions and are generally first to receive the estate of the deceased when there's no will. Taking the state out of marriage would greatly complicate all of that: hospitals would have to see a copy of a notarized contract between two people to determine if someone is allowed to see the patient or make decisions, and already complex intestate deaths would be forced into the courts.

Those are just the two immediate issues that come to mind. There are plenty of others that would have effects ranging from weak (getting rid of tax benefits for married couples) to significant (survivor of a relationship not getting Social Security Survivor Benefits).

Sure, 40% of first marriages end in divorce, but that means that 60% end in the death of a spouse. Average marriage lengths may be under a decade, but that includes second and later marriages, which are even less successful. Median marriage lengths for first marriages are much longer; I've seen suggestions of 40+ years but can't find a reliable source, but the US Census Bureau did a study published in 2009 that found more than half of people first married between 1960 and 1964 reached their 40th anniversary. Similar numbers reached their 35th, 30th, 25th, and 20th anniversaries in the following five-year groups. It seems that if a first marriage, at least, can get past 10 years or so, it tends to hold on pretty well.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[uncqual]

The interpretation required would be so extreme as to render the Free Speech and Free Press clause of the First Amendment to be nearly impotent. It would require judicial handstands almost as extreme as some want the courts to do in an attempt to invalidate the Second Amendment because they know there isn't public support for repealing it.

So, maybe the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals would uphold a "right to be forgotten" law, but neither the "liberal" or "conservative" wing of the Supreme Court would let their ruling stand.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[uncqual]

The courts have long upheld that what happens in public is, just that, public. The police can observe it (and record it) just as you can observe (and record) the police. If you don't want pictures of yourself urinating in public, don't do it. If you don't want pictures of yourself pouring a mug of beer over your own head, don't do that in a public place.

Since the dawn of civilization, people have known what other people did in public. Although, now, with larger more anonymous communities coupled with the ease of mobility allowing one to easily move hundreds or thousands of miles away every few years, you have more privacy from those around than you once did (unless you do something so notorious and stupid that it goes viral).

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[dryeo]

Hopefully you're right. Both 1st and 2nd amendments are very simple and yet have been limited quite a bit.

Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF.

[jbn-o]

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, 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.

Ego-driven naming and backlash against principles

[jbn-o]

It's so telling that people would ever push an ego-based argument about the name "GNU" (as in GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux) when "Linux" is clearly the egotistical name. RMS has consistently stood behind the idea that he wants GNU to get a fair share of the credit for the systems that contain GNU so people are reminded of software freedom. That's not egotistical at all. But the name Linux points to one guy, Linus Torvalds. Linux was never an OS and still isn't; if all one has is Linux one doesn't have the majority of the code one needs to do practical work or that one would expect an OS to do (even if that expectation is kept low, such as doing everything on the command line). Linux was and remains a kernel. Even in 2018 it's hard to give credit where credit is due on /., what a shame.

RMS referenced "The Corporation"

[jbn-o]

"The Corporation" features Robert Hare's analysis of corporation as psychopath. RMS is likely referring to this when he said:

Q: As somebody who's had your set of experiences and expertise, I'm curious: Do you feel like you've had any experiences that lend particular insight into how these companies work?

A: They're corporations. Corporations have been compared to psychopaths.

The Corporation is an excellent documentary. I highly recommend the 2-disc DVD set and the additional features and alternate audio tracks. There are other copies on archive.org too. And I see the same team is now working on a sequel.

Re:You know what....get rid of government.

[silkenphoenixx]

Governments I think can and should collect certain data about citizens. Births, marriages, deaths, ownership of land or other assets. They don't need to spy to the extent that Google or Facebook does though. (That being said, many of them want to.)

Re:I disagree-Majority wins.

[silkenphoenixx]

Can something be inherently right? This I think depends largely on your viewpoint. We can't be too quick to cast aspersions at what has been looked at as right and wrong in previous generations or by societies different than the one we are in. The fact that gay marriage (for example) has only recently become legal while for centuries was illegal suggests that it's not exactly self-evident that it is right, even though today it is popularly believed to be so.

Re:even more complex

[silkenphoenixx]

Well, he's only partly wrong, IMO the part that he's wrong about is that people are peaceful. Many are, but many aren't.

The purpose of government is to protect the rights of its citizens, be it from foreign powers or from each other. Yes, laws are enforced by use of force, and the fact that the government has the power to enforce them which generally prevents people from abusing each other in one way or another (though as is self-evident, this isn't a deterrent if the person thinks they can get away with it).

It's a mistake to suggest that governments don't govern with the use of force at least (if not violence / aggression), but it's an even bigger mistake to think that people would live peacefully together if governments were taken away.

Re:Ban websites that allow you to enter informatio

[serviscope_minor]

So Richard Stallman wants to ban websites

FFS no, why do people insist on misreading what Stallman says so aggressively? It's like you're determined for him to be wrong no matter what he actually says.

He said companies, not websites. He doesn't want to take the form off your crappy former-geocities page, don't worry.

He wants (among other things) laws put in place to limit the power of companies in this regard.

How about you stop with the kneejrek reaction, engage your brain and address what he said, not what you wanted him to have said?

Re:I've just realized what Stallman has backwards

[serviscope_minor]

If it is "free" software it is much more likely to have "malicious functionalities" because the world is NOT free.

A nice sunset is malicious too. The world isn't free, after all.

It's your choice

[mapkinase]

I did not let Facebook steal my private data because I did not give it away to Facebook.

Re:Steve Jobs Richard Stallman

[MichaelSmith]

Linux runs 96% of servers on the internet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF

[TheRaven64]

There's a lot missing from that story. For example:

The GCC Objective-C code was shockingly bad. It's about 10,000 lines of code in a single file doing everything from semantic analysis to code generation. It has no clean layering, so GCC still accepts different subsets of Objective-C syntax in C and C++ mode. It is full of comments that refer to pre-NeXT versions of Objective-C that the released code has never supported.

There are two parts to an Objective-C implementation, the compiler and the runtime. With ARC, the compiler is the more complex of the two, but back in 1988 the majority of the complexity was in the runtime. NeXT was not forced to release the code for their runtime, which made the compiler useless on non-NeXT platforms. Eventually other GCC contributors wrote a replacement runtime, but this was not quote compatible with the NeXT one and so the ugly GCC code was then full of 'if (next_runtime)' chunks.

By forcing NeXT to release the code, rather than persuading them to join the community, they burned any goodwill that existed. NeXT (and Apple) never imported the GNU changes into their GCC tree, so never got any of those 'if (next_runtime)' checks. This meant that new features of the language were supported by the Apple fork and were difficult to merge into upstream GCC. As a result, modern GCC supports a dialect of Objective-C circa 2005, and only gained support for that around 2010. And, because of aforementioned layering issues, it doesn't support most of these features in Objective-C++ mode.

In other words, if the GCC Objective-C story is a poster child for the success of the GPL (and for a long time, it was on the FSF web site) then the GPL is an abject failure.

Re:Richard Stallman is a clueless communist

[stealth_finger]

Here's an idea, Stallman: do something productive for society and make products people can actually use (in other words, win on the market) rather than faking for government goons to enforce your will with guns.

"Pass a law to solve a problem" is the refrain of the incompetent.

Just don't tell them. Simple.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[fish_in_the_c]

A 'right to be forgotten' i imagine would something more like a take down notice.
Companies make money by collecting information, who does that information belong to?
One possibility is the information belongs to the person it is 'about'.
So we could pass a law saying you 'either' you may publish no information about non public figures without their express permission OR
if requested you must delete all information you have retained from all databases ( and back ups) for a given individual.

I could see how that could get into constitutional issues , a balancing of free speech vs the right to privacy.
Of coarse, if we have such a strong right to privacy that the state doesn't even have the ability to prevent a woman from killing her child ( Roe vs Wade).
Then it would seem the right to privacy generally trumps the right to freedom of speech , unless there is compelling public interest or the speech is of an innately political nature.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[fish_in_the_c]

hmm... do you consider data retention a form of speech? What about account information? Or Tax id's should publishing those be considered freedom of speech or freedom of the press? Generally companies get in trouble for breaking data privacy laws. Is it really that much of a stretch to expect them to delete the data?

I think some simple tests are easy enough to apply:
1) does serve as to support or a form of political speech? ( or is it just hanging around because someone dumped it there).
2) Is the data being reported on a part of what is normally considered 'public record'.

I think if it doesn't fit one of those 2 criteria you should be able to require a company to delete all records of your existence and relationship with them from all databases.

Of coarse some of this can be handled through developing new social norms. For instance, is it unreasonable to expect your friends not to publish pictures of your children on Facebook? Personally I'd say it is rude at least without permission, even more so if they label them. ( not sure I'd go so far as to say we need a law against it, but there are many things that are wrong for which it is ineffective and or unwise to attempt to create legislation to curtail).

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[rundgong]

how much data do you need to keep on someone so that you know you should not collect data on them

NONE.
Unless you have an entry in your database saying "this user has agreed to have it's data collected", you should not be collecting that data. It's as simple as that!

Re:I disagree-Majority wins.

[K10W]

Majority want Gay and Lesbian rights as well as allowing Marijuana and few are fighting against that.

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?

I don't believe that many folks core beliefs changed that much if at all personally, however admit I may be way out here as based mainly on personal observation and annecdotal evidence is not reliable but it does fit human psychology and bigger picture at a glance. Most folks have very little beliefs on a given issue with very shallow understandings and core belief and they change what they answer based on what is percieved as the accepted societal norm. Even those who have a deeper opposing view will often virtue signal to distance themselves from the less popular view they hold. Very few seem to have the spine to go against the group expectation regardless of reputation and social life cost for what they believe in so they tend to get grouped in with the easy to discredit extreme or unbalanced with agenda types. For instance in this case I know of several who are not homophobic but disagree privately but openly claim support for gay marriage. They do not wish to be grouped with homophobic types and have no actual issue with gay people, they just don't believe in the precedent set by devaluing traditional marriage, the weaking of family unit and so on all of which requires deeper understanding and debate so to most colleagues, friends, family and so on they go with the crowd to the point some even act like standard bearers of the opponents against anti gay marriage types.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[uncqual]

Your tests are not as simple as you seem to think.

First, the First Amendment does not protect just "political speech". With narrow exceptions, it protects all forms of speech for all purposes - including artistic, educational, religious, and entertainment. So, why have an exception to data retention restrictions for just data that might be useful in supporting political speech.

Second, identifying that something will, someday, support political speech is impossible. For example, if there is a video of random unknown John Doe grabbing a coworker's ass at a company event, does retaining that serve to support political speech? Well, generally no of course. However if twenty years later, John Doe ends up running for President on a platform including "Eliminate Sexual Harassment in the Workplace", the video will have turned out to be useful in supporting political speech -- but if Google, Bing, Facebook, Wayback Machine, and the local newspaper et al had been forced to delete and deindex it at Doe's "forget this" request a year after it was made public, voters and journalists would never know to even inquire as to the apparent hypocrisy on the part of Candidate Doe.

Third, a LOT of things are reported that are not "public record" - investigative reporters, for example, sometimes get data that is not "public" (for example, from an employee of a company they are investigating). Surely if such an investigation results in the discovery that General Electric knowingly cut corners in the design of a nuclear reactor that then caused a radiation release that killed thousands of people, the reporter should be free to reveal the information they discovered and not be required to "take it down" when GE requested that it be "forgotten".

Re:I disagree-Majority wins.

[complete loony]

We know almost exactly how much support there was for gay marriage in Australia, since 80% of people returned the survey form.

Re:Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF

[exomondo]

proprietary software is rightly identified as user-subjugating by rms.

That's just rubbish, it's the sort of hyperbole that causes people to not take the free software ideology seriously. If I want to edit an image I am not "subjugated" if I choose to use Photoshop to accomplish the task any more than I am if I use GIMP to accomplish the task. Even worse is his assertion that proprietary software takes away users' freedom, which is again wrong and is the same silly notion used by the MPAA affiliates to describe their "stolen" profits. Something that was never granted cannot be taken away.

Free software certainly has its merit and advantages but the hyperbole and half-truths that RMS engages in just makes him sound like a complete kook and it's no better than the sort of idiotic arguments the **AA folks make about piracy.

A free and open internet means you don't restrict that information or what can be done with it, if you don't want it on there then don't put it there but don't try and use lawyers to prevent the existence of the free and open internet.

Re:I've just realized what Stallman has backwards

[shanen]

What do you think is the motivation of the sunset?

What do you think is the motivation of creating software?

Possibly false premise in the verb.

Re:I've just realized what Stallman has backwards

[shanen]

That's another problem with rms. He doesn't understand what freedom means. Because of Slashdot limitations, below is only a partial equation.

Counterexample: Vietname war

[eric_harris_76]

A new phenomenon? Hardly.

How long did the US stay in Vietnam after most Americans thought it was time to get out?

Re:I've just realized what Stallman has backwards

[serviscope_minor]

What do you think is the motivation of the sunset?

You said A exists because B. I pointed out your premise about B was false. I accept your somewhat ungracious withdrawal of your claim that the world is NOT free.

What do you think is the motivation of creating software?

Is this the bit where you try to insist I have malicious intentions when I release free software?

Re:Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF

[jbn-o]

NeXT was not forced to release the code for their runtime, which made the compiler useless on non-NeXT platforms. Eventually other GCC contributors wrote a replacement runtime, but this was not quote compatible with the NeXT one and so the ugly GCC code was then full of 'if (next_runtime)' chunks.

In other words, had the FSF let NeXT run roughshod over them by remaining silent about continued infringement on the generous GNU GPL v2 license terms, as you seem to think would have been a good idea, people would have had even less code on which to implement anything instead of gaining something with "a replacement runtime". You're actually arguing for a more difficult set of improvements for GCC because that would have been more convenient for proprietors (NeXT and later Apple).

By forcing NeXT to release the code, rather than persuading them to join the community, they [the FSF] burned any goodwill that existed.

By committing copyright infringement against a very generous copyright holder licensing its work for all to build upon and share, NeXT created that bad will. Maybe NeXT should have written their own code or licensed a compiler from someone willing to work with them on proprietary terms. That's what Apple is doing today, perhaps guided by having learned that the FSF isn't going to ignore being mistreated when it offers its work for all to run, share, inspect, and modify (even commercially).

In other words, if the GCC Objective-C story is a poster child for the success of the GPL (and for a long time, it was on the FSF web site) then the GPL is an abject failure.

Only in your topsy-turvy view where works offered on a share-and-share-alike basis are somehow bad and only worth as much respect as a proprietor feels like doling out. And those copyright holders who stand up for software freedom are somehow doing the wrong thing because life became more inconvenient for proprietors and perhaps require some more work to make something more featureful.

Re:Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF

[jbn-o]

A free and open internet means you don't restrict that information or what can be done with it, if you don't want it on there then don't put it there but don't try and use lawyers to prevent the existence of the free and open internet.

You're arguing for exploitation. Free software licenses, particularly strongly-copylefted free software licenses, are designed to ensure software freedom remains intact for everyone who gets a copy. Defending software freedom requires standing up for one's free software license, in court if need be. After all, we're not talking about some proprietor licensing their work on restrictive terms, we're talking about the FSF licensing under the GNU GPL v2; a generous copyright holder licensing their work under terms that allow us to leverage their achievements for our own gain (even privately) so long as any published software remains in the commons for us all to use (share and share alike). If you don't like that, don't distribute strongly-copylefted free software. This choice means not giving up on the freedom that came with the software and not treating other people badly by denying them those freedoms (an undefended GNU GPL'd work is functionally no different from a non-copylefted free software license, also called a "pushover" license). The freedoms of the Internet aren't threatened by people running, inspecting, sharing, or modifying strongly-copylefted free software.

oh dear

[KingBenny]

nothing like mass hysteria on something everyone actually already knew was happening to bring out the carrion eaters all across the planet ... i suppose there will be pop tarts too who suddenly start rioting because its an easy way to the spotlight ...
where the hell would facebook have gotten their money from if not from user data ?
yea its the 'how' and its the bla and actually its simply something someone gratefully used to give the competition a headshot and now all the lag behind carrion feeders want their share
dont get me wrong im not a zuckerfan ... but its so typically typical again

Re:Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF

[TheRaven64]

NeXT believed that they were complying with the GPL. They shipped GCC with the option to load a plugin that handled Objective-C. The Objective-C code was in a separate module. It never went to court, so it's not clear which way the license would have been interpreted, but this is exactly what nVidia does with the Linux kernel, so it's not clear that a court would have found that this actually was copyright infringement. NeXT decided that the code was not worth very much and throwing it over the wall was cheaper than going to court. If the code had been valuable, they'd have defended it and may or may not have been forced to release it.

As the maintainer of the GNUstep Objective-C runtime, I can attest to the fact that the code in GCC is of negative value. If the FSF had been forced to implement it from scratch, they'd have been better off (Iain Sandoe is now starting to clean it up, some decades later, and I wish him well). Meanwhile, I started hacking on clang and added an abstraction layer that makes it easy to support multiple runtimes. The Apple folks, including quite a lot of former NeXT employees back then, picked this up and helped us maintain something that made it easier for us to support a different implementation. Oh, and they also open sourced their runtime, though it's quite closely integrated with functionality that's only available on Darwin so it's not that interesting to anyone else.

Public masturbation of 664417

[shanen]

Z^-1

Re:Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF

[exomondo]

Ok I think you misunderstand. What I said is that the idea that proprietary software "subjugates users" is nonsense, it is just simply hyperbole as I demonstrated with the example. Use of hyperbole like this undermines the whole free software movement as a whole because it is so demonstrably false and so easy for users to immediately see that it is false because they have freedom of choice.

Defending software licenses, be those free or proprietary is the right thing to do, you seem to think I disagree on that point but I do not. However saying that companies that aggregate data freely available on the internet (subject of this story), like Facebook, are not allowed to do that is an affront to a free and open internet.

Re:Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF

[jbn-o]

The FSF apparently believed NeXT was not complying with the GPL. If it's not clear what a court would have found, it is a half-truth to try and draw the conclusion you do comparing this to the nVidia infringement case concerning the Linux kernel without looking at more than one case: such as whether courts tend to favor copyright holders' interpretation of their chosen licenses, and how well courts understand the GPL. We know that NeXT valued that code, that code was critical to NeXT's development system; code for which there was no alternative then. NeXT's decision to "throw code over the wall" (as you passive aggressively say) came after talking to the FSF. NeXT did not do this on their own.

Your entire second paragraph is basically a red herring, as whatever technical issues were present in NeXT's Objective-C code and your further prognostication on FSF adding Objective-C support in GCC don't have any bearing on whether what NeXT did was copyright infringement against what was and is a very generous license. It doesn't matter if you conclude that the FSF would have been better off in some alternate version of events because that didn't happen.

Re:Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF

[jbn-o]

I didn't misunderstand; you didn't demonstrate hyperbole in the way you think you did. Your one-sided application of the term hyperbole is telling and inverted ("the whole free software movement as a whole" is not undermined, but the power proprietors wield to take advantage of computer users causes all proprietary software to come under suspicion by default precisely because we can't tell what's really going on, improve, or share modified proprietary software regardless of our skill and motivation). https://gnu.org/malware has plenty of examples of proprietary malware that work precisely because that software doesn't respect a user's software freedom; as that page says,

Power corrupts; the proprietary program's developer is tempted to design the program to mistreat its users. (Software whose functioning mistreats the user is called malware.) Of course, the developer usually does not do this out of malice, but rather to profit more at the users' expense. That does not make it any less nasty or more legitimate. Yielding to that temptation has become ever more frequent; nowadays it is standard practice. Modern proprietary software is typically a way to be had.

Also, you oversimplify what's going on with Facebook: the harm of Facebook's data collection is partially attributable to proprietary software. There are other methods by which Facebook harms people (both its users and non-users) that don't involve proprietary software, so there's plenty of good reason not to trust spying services like Facebook. Depending on the method, software licenses might not be relevant at all. But software licenses don't all treat users the same way even if they all hinge on copyright law, therefore there's nothing compelling anyone to view all licenses the same way.

Re:Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF

[TheRaven64]

We know that NeXT valued that code, that code was critical to NeXT's development system; code for which there was no alternative then.

That is categorically not true. NeXT licensed the StepStone Objective-C compiler (as I recall, they actually bought it outright and then licensed it back), which was a source-to-source translator from Objective-C to C. They could have used this without modifying GCC at all, though at the cost of worse debug info.

NeXT's decision to "throw code over the wall" (as you passive aggressively say) came after talking to the FSF. NeXT did not do this on their own.

I don't know why you think 'throw code over the wall' is passive-aggressive phrasing. That's exactly what they did. They continued to maintain their own GCC fork, providing code dumps but nothing to make it easy to integrate the code upstream. It wasn't until many years later that Apple pushed their code into a branch in GCC's svn and the FSF relaxed their requirement on copyright assignment to allow some of it to be merged back into the main trunk.

It doesn't matter if you conclude that the FSF would have been better off in some alternate version of events because that didn't happen.

On the contrary, it did happen with Clang. Apple released clang under a permissive license, which allowed them to incorporate parts of the front end into their proprietary IDE. On non-Apple systems, Clang provides vastly better support for Objective-C than GCC ever did. The end result is that, if you care about Objective-C on Free Software systems (as I do), you are better off avoiding GCC. Hardly a resounding win for the GPL.

Re:Jobs likely hated that he got caught by the FSF

[exomondo]

I didn't misunderstand; you didn't demonstrate hyperbole in the way you think you did.

Actually I did, with a very clear, specific and real example that you demonstrably cannot disprove. That's the reason I used a specific scenario rather than trying to paint broad strokes like you (and the FSF) have. While I agree with what you say being true in some circumstances it clearly is not true in all circumstances so your broad assertions are dishonest at best.

I don't subscribe to an absolutist view on this sort of thing, but I do understand that when absolutists put a stake in the ground it's very hard to walk that back and admit they were wrong or perhaps overzealous. But then people are more likely to be on your side when you admit you've made a mistake rather than when you continue flogging the dead horse.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[fish_in_the_c]

All of your points are valid, however, that doesn't mean what currently is , 'should be'. Just because something 'might' be used as political speech or art etc at 'some point' doesn't justify the invasion of privacy that is entailed in allowing anyone with a camera to do whatever they want with any image of me captured at any time in my life. If it did there would be no reason I couldn't use the image of Courtney Love or Melinda Trump and cut them onto the faces of actresses in my porno movie.

Seriously , unless something is 'currently' being publicly reported in a 'registered new source' there is only one other legitimate to keep personally identifiable information , that being billing. Every other use basically equates to 'so we can make money , so we can make more money'.

The idea that every arbitrary piece of information that exists about an individual for their entire lifetime should be used against them when it is most convenient for some archivist to find it is almost the point of 'right to be forgotten' law.

Take your example, perhaps said politician has had a sincere change of heart about sexual harassment, dragging up old footage from the past can really only server one purpose from a political perspective which is to focus the mind of the public on the wrong doings of the person in the past in what is as often as not an erroneous attempt to discredit their character in the current moment. The reality is that past behaviors is often times NOT a good indicator of current character and behavior because bad experiences with past behaviors is exactly how people learn. So as a good rule of thumb, if they are not currently doing it, and haven't in the last 5 years, the evidence presented is as likely as not , irrelevant to a persons current character, because it is impossible to know the effects of those events on the individual.

Re:Fuck Richard Stallman

[uncqual]

Interestingly, you used the vague terms "perhaps" and "likely" and "often" as well as selected a rather arbitrary "5 year" relevance window. These are your political opinions and mine may (and I suspect do) differ greatly. A ten year old video of a politician engaging in sexual harassment video IS politically relevant to some voters. If you don't think it is, fine -- just ignore the video. However, those that do think it's relevant should be able to see it and judge for themselves.

The whole nature of the Free Speech and Free Press clauses of the First Amendment is that there is virtually no control over such things because by necessity the inverse that means that the very government that controls speech and press is also the government that has a vested interest in suppressing relevant information. China would be a good example here. And, if it wasn't for the First Amendment, imagine what Trump and Sessions and the newly formed Ministry of Truth cabinet department would consider relevant -- they might decide that ten minutes is the window of relevance and ban all discussion of anything Trump did more than ten minutes ago.