Hacker News Reader

Comment by VMG | Hacker News Reader

Except that it is completely voluntary.

No. It's completely "voluntary" and the quotes are important: if your whole social environment standardizes on a platform, you're an outcast if you don't step aboard. If your professional environment standardizes on a platform, you're an outcast if you don't step aboard.

It's only actually completely voluntary if you have infinite money and no issue (and no repercussion from) completely dropping whole social and professional circles out of your life.

And that still requires the network/system is honest about it[0], when Google automagically creates a G+ account for you when you sign up for (supposedly) unrelated services or forces you to create one to access other content, "voluntary" is really debatable. Again, unless you have no issue shedding whole social circles instantly.

[0] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/google-doubles-p...

The thing is that surveillance should be reserved to people who lived under something like the Stasi regime and had to risk their life to escape.

You only have to pick up the phone instead of using the computer.

[edit]

G+ doesn't change the surveillance situation at all. I have a G+ account and I don't do anything with it. Google doesn't have any additional information.

I agree. I've certainly personally paid a large price socially for leaving Facebook (after the photo recognition scandal) and professionally after leaving LinkedIn (after the advertising incident).

I don't know if I've ever really bought into this. I've yet to hear the story of the individual who lost all social ties because they quit Facebook. I made the decision about a year ago, due to excess wasted time on the site and have yet to face any real negative side effects to doing so.

People were social long before Facebook was around, and can remain so without it. Even with an account, the information you share on Facebook is voluntarily given.

I think what Facebook has done most effectively is given people the illusion that their lives are somehow more social because of it.

It's not as if it's either/or. Clearly it is true that new technologies -- say, for example, the telephone -- affect our social lives. Consequently, abstaining, for whatever reason, from using those technologies will affect your social life. To what degree and in what manner totally depends on the individual involved, the technology itself, the way it is being used, etc.

However, one thing is certain, I think. Some technologies may have a transformative effect: The fact that you could act in manner X to get result Y before the technology gained widespread use does not mean you can continue to do so after it has. I'm sure this was true for the telephone, and I'm pretty sure it's true for Facebook and its replacements.

We need more people making this point. How did we manage to socialise up until a mere four years ago? It's still possible today without Facebook. People who say they can't quit Facebook are like people who say it's too hard to quit smoking. No, you really can. You just don't want to.

That's not strictly true; you have to consider the entire system, not just the individual. It's not like only you picked up this new tech and can therefore, if you will it, drop it. Everyone else in your social circle needs to, as well.

It's the same as asserting that people can communicate without phones, or that they can get news without the internet, the phone or newspapers. Sure, they can, but it's incredibly inefficient, exponentially so when everyone else still does.

(I've still managed to stay away from Facebook, but, then, I don't have many friends.)

I think its both. While it may be possible in your group of friends to quit Facebook, it might not be so for other people. Imagine quitting the telephone. People were social long before the telephone was around, and can remain so without it. I know that quitting Facebook wouldn't harm my socialization too much, but quitting the telephone probably would. I can imagine people for whom quitting Facebook would have similar effects as me quitting the telephone.

I know a few people who haven't been invited - or have found out too late - about events because they were organised on Facebook and they're not on it.

Those same people are regularly out of the loop in conversations their friends have on Facebook, which at times makes them feel a little isolated.

I've heard of one person who made a huge social faux pas because they couldn't read about someone's breakup on Facebook.

The same are all true of some people I know who live on LiveJournal.

Facebook is a great tool for socialisation, and because of that a lot of people use it. When your social circles use it heavily and you don't, you miss out. Yes, you can do all that socialisation outside of Facebook, but the fact remains that a lot of people don't, and you can't really choose how your friends socialise.

It's not an absolute. You're unlikely to become completely socially ostracised because you're not on Facebook, but it can certainly make some peoples social lives more difficult not being on it.

There /is/ social pressure for some people to use Facebook.

So? If this is a problem, sign up with the minimum amount of information necessary. (Which, as of time of writing, is first/last name, email, gender, and DOB.. and the DoB doesn't have to be legitimate)

You are not forced to share anything. If you want to use Facebook as strictly a messaging platform, there is no negative effect for doing so.

Characterizing it as "surveillance" is RMS's typical good-natured extremism.

There are lots of people for who name and gender are hot topics.

And with the "Like" buttons you /are/ forced to share your browsing history (no, being able to circumnavigate it by blocking it doesn't count)

..And if it's that much of a hot topic for you, you don't sign up. Or use fake info. Who's going to know, as long as your name isn't Clark Kent with a picture of Superman?

Also, singling out Facebook for what every advertiser cookie has done since the mid 90's seems a bit silly.

> you're an outcast if you don't step aboard. If your professional environment standardizes on a platform

Although employment and social circles DO limit your range of actions, you accept the tradeoff voluntarily in exchange for benefits. You can find a new job or people to associate with if the benefits do not justify the cost, without your employer or friends being able to legally threaten you with violence. On the other hand if you refuse to allow surveillance or investigation by the law, they are authorized to use as much force as is necessary to seize your property, imprison you, or execute you. It's completely voluntary in that regard.

"Voluntary" can be viewed as an antonym for "coerced", where coercion implies an underlying threat of violence. Forced denial of an individuals life, liberty, and property can be construed as violence or coercion. Such properties do not presuppose the presence of another person or governing body, so may be considered intrinsic to the individual. However, employers or friends denying the deliverance of their property or empathy to you cannot be construed as violence or coercion. Such exchanges presuppose the presence of multiple people, and therefore cannot be considered the denial of a property intrinsic to one individual.

I agree that people voluntarily join Facebook, but expectations are important. If I volunteer only to realize your intentions were far removed from my expectations then we have a problem.

Imagine I start a FREE postal delivery service for writing letters to your friends. But when your letter shows up at the destination, it is full of advertisements that I hand picked for your friend based on the content of your correspondence. Oh yeah, also the police asked for a copy of the letter. Oh yeah, and we also showed the letter to a bunch of your other friends because we changed our delivery rules and figured you wanted to opt-in. Didn't think you would mind.

But you can't complain. The service was free and you signed up voluntarily.

I'm neither pro / con on the Facebook thing. I never know when the real world rules should apply to the electrons. I think we are just making it up as we go.

Signing up and using facebook is voluntary. But how do you deal with other people signing up and giving facebook information about you? These people certainly don't have malicious intent, yet the end result is that facebook has a pretty good profile of me even though I've never once signed up for the service. Off the top of my head, they have:

My personal email. My work email (can infer where I work from this). Many of the people whom I know who searched for me on facebook. Highschool friend links (can infer my highschool and possibly even age from this). I know for a fact that they have photos of me tagged with my name.

I didn't authorize any of this, yet there it is. Never before has it been so easy to aggregate this sort of information, or perhaps even possible.

You have to do extra work to opt out of Facebook tracking, though. At least your IP address will be tracked everywhere if you don't block Facebook somehow.

just imagine the legal consequences if establishing a connection to your computer wasn't regarded as being voluntary

Considering that Facebook has been caught tracking people without Facebook accounts, I won't go so far as to say that it is completely voluntary.

well it depends on if you can or can't know in advance if you are tracked on some website. but if you are worried of tracking there are allready available solutions to that problem . like proxyes, but that is another safety hazard by itself. world is not necessary a safe place.

True, but you shouldn't have to know in advance. It should be illegal for companies to track you; especially companies who you do no business with.

People can be tricked into giving away absolutely everything. As Facebook so aptly proves.

It still happened voluntarily. I'm not saying that this means that it is therefore morally good, I'm just staying that there is a qualitative difference between facebook and the secret police terrorizing people in dictatorships.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com