Facebook could (and probably does) collect the data necessary to track people around the web, whether or not they click on 'like buttons'.
Whether other sites, like Google, can do this too, is immaterial. When people are logged into Facebook, an ever increasing slice of their browsing history can be logged and tied to their real identity. Almost none of the people I know who aren't hackers have any awareness of this.
> Whether other sites, like Google, can do this too, is immaterial.
It's material if the FSF isn't putting up a "Google is evil" page on their website and handing out "Don't google me, bro" buttons, like they are doing with Facebook.
The FSF seems to think it's better to attack Facebook with ideological ad corporatio arguments, rather than concentrate their resources on educating people about how to their services intelligently. Facebook isn't sharing anything about me that I don't want them to know. And I understand that if I'm not paying for it, I'm the product. So I don't give them my address or my phone number or my cat's nickname. And that's what I tell every friend and family member on Facebook. I don't tell them that Zuckerberg is "evil". The FSF has tried that before with other companies and you'd think they would have figured out by now that it simply doesn't work.
Google isn't trying to grab all that data. And Google has worked with them to protect private data, including measures like shortening the time it takes them to anonymize the data they've collected.
Facebook, meanwhile, is working to sell your entire social graph to advertisers for profit. If they're being singled out, it's because they're the worst of the lot.
Comments
Facebook could (and probably does) collect the data necessary to track people around the web, whether or not they click on 'like buttons'.
Whether other sites, like Google, can do this too, is immaterial. When people are logged into Facebook, an ever increasing slice of their browsing history can be logged and tied to their real identity. Almost none of the people I know who aren't hackers have any awareness of this.
> Whether other sites, like Google, can do this too, is immaterial.
It's material if the FSF isn't putting up a "Google is evil" page on their website and handing out "Don't google me, bro" buttons, like they are doing with Facebook.
The FSF seems to think it's better to attack Facebook with ideological ad corporatio arguments, rather than concentrate their resources on educating people about how to their services intelligently. Facebook isn't sharing anything about me that I don't want them to know. And I understand that if I'm not paying for it, I'm the product. So I don't give them my address or my phone number or my cat's nickname. And that's what I tell every friend and family member on Facebook. I don't tell them that Zuckerberg is "evil". The FSF has tried that before with other companies and you'd think they would have figured out by now that it simply doesn't work.
Google isn't trying to grab all that data. And Google has worked with them to protect private data, including measures like shortening the time it takes them to anonymize the data they've collected.
Facebook, meanwhile, is working to sell your entire social graph to advertisers for profit. If they're being singled out, it's because they're the worst of the lot.
* ad corporationem
Handy Chrome extension that blocks Like buttons and their ilk:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ejpepffjfmamnamb...
I've been using it for months... no regrets. And the web is generally faster because Facebook JS takes ages to load.