Amazing how many people hate Facebook. And the animosity towards it has steady been growing. So much so that a new Free software version is being developed which will allow for user to control the software and control the data on their own servers. Check out this article on the New York Times:
Four Nerds and a Cry to Arms Against Facebook
The project they speak of can be located here:
Apperantly, they were inspired by a talk given by the esteemed Mr. Eben Moglen on how the new computer industry business model of Software as a Service and social networking platforms essetially provide third parties access to your information. Hopefully it will be released under the GNU Affero General Public License which works well for ensuring that users freedoms are maintained when using Web Applications. If you haven’t seen the video I suggest you do. Moglen express many of the dangers of thinking that putting your private information in the hands of many of these companies and government agencies is an innocent affair. He also goes in to detail about how what can be even more insightful about looking at people’s personal information is the inferences people and very sofisticated software can make off that system. Take a look at the presentation here:
Eben Moglen on the Dangers of the Cloud – Part 1
Eben Moglen on the Dangers of the Cloud – Part 2
I’ve said it before. Eben Moglen is a please to listen to. Do a Google or YouTube search for many of his videos and see what comes up. If you can stand his highly intellectual vocabulary(he is a lawyer), then it’s an amazing experience. Enjoy.
Oh, also check out this article on why you should delete your Facebook account:
Ten Reasons You Should Delete Your Facebook Account.
I’m not deleting mine for the time being. However, I’ve decided to stop using it. I figure they’ve already got the information I’ve given them about me and are not going to delete it. I don’t plan on giving them any more.
At some point I’ll have to point out some of the finer details of problems with Mega Search Engine Giant Google, and the critiscims around how they deal with privacy.
Critiscims of Google
Scroogle – A search engine that masks your IP from being tracked when looking for stuff on Google