Facebook and friends
On the school yard all the cool kids smoked.
I don't smoke.
I don't do Facebook, GMail, and friends.
I hope you see the link.
More elaborateled: I've grown up in a country having big brother organizations like the Stasi. They were wrong. The fact that big-brother-like organizations are run by private entities those days doesn't make them more more accurate. I reject Web 2.0 - if it means establishing Stasi-like organizations.
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This site's webmaster failed misserably in upgrading the underlaying web framework.
The comment system is entirely broken right now. Sorry!
And most web2.0 apps ask you for your gmail login to find your friends...
Agree here, thanks for sharing this Mathias.
Although there are legitimate privacy concerns with Facebook and other Web 2.0 platforms; I think the analogy with the Stasi is fallacious.
The Stasi were set-up to maintain an opressive regime. It was in their interests to abuse peoples privacy.
It is not in the interest of Google, Facebook et al. to abuse peoples trust. They trade in it. Without it they have no business.
Certainly there is a chance for individual employees to abuse that trust. For this reason, individuals should be careful with the information they put online.
Privacy and convenience are always a trade off. Just because this trade off doesn't add up for you, doesn't mean Facebook/Gmail/Google Docs = Stasi.
The difference between Stasi (and similar governmental attempts to spy on their own citizens) and Web2.0 community stuff run by private organizations is that you can opt-out of the latter. As soon as there is a Google army forcing you to get a Gmail account using the threat of violence and/or imprisonment if you refuse, your comparison would be justified.
I see you went straight for #4. Bravo.
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/...
John: And for how long can we still choose this?
John: Guess we don't have to look far into the future to imagine a scenario, where you do not get good jobs without joining the Web 2.0 crap. Would that be sufficient as thread of imprisonment for you? Also I wonder where you see the opt-out choice after joining: Google even is proud of not allowing you to delete your very own data. Being allowed to delete data is a very important digital freedom in my opinion.
Dan Coulter: Congratulations, you jumped directly to #4b: "At some point in time, claim the other person would claim you are a nazi."
Let me explain even more in detail: Primary goal of the Stasi was to collect information about preferences and relationships of each citizen. In lack of better technique they needed many agents to observe the people. In the days of Web 2.0 they would have saved that money and just have crawled those pretty "community sites". Web 2.0 allows more complete observation than Stasi officiers ever would have dreamed off, and I am truely shocked that people give away such detail of information for free. It makes me wonder whom the people of 1989 fought for.
Well, but finally I absolutly do not have to convince you of anything and I didn't intend so when posting that article. My primary goal was to say in public that you do no have to waste time in sending me invitations for those community sites, as I consider them being deadly wrong.
I completely agree with you aligning Facebook with the Stasi, something that might be controversial but they're both data gathering and people watching organisations.
I think it's best to be cynical, it's perhaps arguably even more cut throat these days... down the lines, what are Facebook going to do with all this wealth of data they have on most of the adult professionals and future professionals? Data mine.
Not just a controversial comparison, but a godwin's-law breaking, insensitive and straight up stupid comparison to boot. Comparing facebook to smoking was silly enough.
Hi Mathias! I completely agree with you (without reading the links, I imagine what the information will look like). As you I don't use Facebook and GMail and recommend to everybody not to use them.
Facebook : too dangerous with all the information they want to keep for everyone.
GMail + Google search tracking : too dangerous as well. The Google company will be able to know what you look for and with who you are talking. That's too much!!!
When I am telling that they are too dangerous I mean that the potential business freedom risk is too high. They will be able to sell you the exact service on the right moment. That makes them too powerful comparing to their competitors. No competitors will mean monopoly and no moor freedom!!!
At the place of Facebook - you stupid public - just try to use your old handbook with your real friends and stop doing as you have thousands of fake ones! It's just ridiculous!!!
Use yahoo mail for your mails, google for search queries, but keep buying from not google or microsoft dependant companies.
Cheers ;-)