Originally published at: After Whistleblower Revelations, It’s Time to Unfriend Facebook
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I steered clear of Facebook almost from the beginning. I never had a reason to help Facebook gather data on citizens. I recommend Privacy Badger by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on your browser to snip everybody’s ability to spy on you without your direct participation in their software packages.
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I have mixed feelings about the platform given how much it’s done for the pain patient community in both directions, for better and worse.
In the end, I’m deeply uncomfortable with the constant downgrading of human agency by people who don’t like living in a state of informational freedom, and all the good and bad that goes with it.
and the emphasis on political speech is the most noxious of all, because it’s clearly a case of “truth imperialism” masquerading as public health
there’s a lot about facebook i’d love to dump. i’d prefer not to have to use it to do my job, frankly.
but there is still a lot of user control of this platform provided user are savvy about how it works, and if there’s one thing I would support, it’s an honest introduction to the system being mandated and having easy access to the tools that allow you to control your experience better.
e-mail will allow people to connect online with family and friends and share
photos or sending letters as has been done for thousands of years works too.
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for years as a hs teacher i listened to school administrator after administrator singing the praises of internet technology including social networks- these students they promised would be the most informed, most globally aware students ever- in my experience it was almost the exact opposite- the students i taught in the last decade were the most isolated, most ill- informed , and most globally unconnected i have ever seen- the internet has a place in the classroom and can be an excellent tool- but it has to be tempered with traditional teaching methods and traditional subject areas
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Expected more from AGoodman. This is just a description of what we more or less already knew. And this person from facebook with her documents is just confirming what research has known a decade ago. I don’t call her a whistle blower as she seems too choreographed to be called that, and as what she is proposing is in tandem with the empire’s philosophy of managing the rest of the world. Around 90% of facebook users, from what I heard in democracynow, are non English speakers. So, facebook is an american company that mediates communications for the rest of the world (~200 nation states)…this is an unprecedented model in human history (and not just facebook alone). It is in this context that we expect journalistic input to guide and enlighten us. So miss Assange and his brilliant analysis and interpretations.
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America is Beowulf and facebook is the dragon. : (
Facebook is an acquaintance. I do use the platform. People are on it with whom I could not otherwise easily communicate. They matter.
We need a platform or platforms broadly used and independent of government oversight, free from centralized profit and its derangements, and potentially anonymous. We have not suffered as much as we will: government and industry have only begun to to coordinate abuse.
We have scraps: better platforms, the TOR browser, duckduckgo search, and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption. Using these helps everyone.
Facebook colludes with corporatized government to censor and track users. The US state
- holds prisoners for profitt
- tortures for entertainment
- kills by fiat and with “collateral” murders
- claims sovereignty to imprison even foreign journalists
- traces everyone’s words, connections, and location fairly effectively 24/7 and 365
- plants stories in various media to distort understanding of events
- Governs without consent: its policies bear no statistically significant resemblance to public opinion
We do not need rulers to further push Facebook to censor and divulge your information
The US government does not want to force Facebook to respect your privacy. It now forces various communications platforms not to.
Facebook is an acquaintance. It is not trustworthy. Migrating might be a partial answer. Putting censors under agency control is not: it is the problem.
Left Facebook in 2017. I don’t miss Zuckerstan in the least. It’s a land where the selling wind never stops.
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