Stream of consciousness: Facebook
So my Facebook account from high school got broken into today. I guess someone stole a password from some Heartbleed-vulnerable server or something. I dunno. I logged back in, changed the password, and shut down the account.
It got me thinking about why I left, and why I continue to stay away.
In college, I was pretty heavily involved in the free software philosophy, and I couldn't really reconcile my interest in keeping software free with using non-free software - even if it was "trivially free" in that the only person running the software had rights to it. So I left, and was stubborn with my friends, and didn't come back.
Now, I guess the cognitive dissonance is slightly less - I see that it would serve a useful purpose (getting back in touch with friends, and getting in touch with new friends too), plus I am slightly less wary of non-free software than I used to be. I think there is a harsh reality, where sometimes there is no good free software for the job, and sometimes we must augment our use of free software with non-free software to accomplish something we want.
So I guess my question for you pumpers is: What should I do? Am I crazy? Do you have a reason to not use Facebook that I'm missing? Do you think I'm making a strange kind of sense and that maybe I should reactivate the account again? I'm so confused.
Mark Holmquist at 2015-01-06T13:05:08Z
Aaron Wolf likes this.
as far as not seeing every thing on the timeline with Facebook due to the algorithm (which I suspect involves deep learning), that can be changed by either sorting by or changing feeds to most recent vs top stories/news feed (depending on access method)
marktraceur, why thank you for your kind words. It's always useful to learn that one doesn't have friends and is perceived as a stubborn, isolated asshat.
Also interested in the fact that there are those who are outside (or is it above?) society and babysit it in various ways. Shocking that we burden them so, I say.
It's a huge problem and shame but unfortunately this is far from new. When I was in high schol a friendo of mine organised his birthday party on facebook and he was annoyed I didn't come because I didn't know about it as I didn't use Facebook.
Equally and more recently the local Green Party back in the UK I was a part of used Facebook to share news and updates of upcoming events.
I think if this is going to be won it'll be won on bases of facebook doesn't respect users privacy and therefore you ought not to have an account rather than on some free software argument I think.
Tsyesika@io.theperplexingpariah.co.uk at 2015-02-18T09:15:20Z