TechBytes Episode 70: How Browsers and Social Networking Sites Facilitate Surveillance - Part 1
Channel: schestowitz
Date: 2012-07-23

Q: Dr. Roy Schestowitz: Obviously, quite famously, the FSF has made a statement about Facebook and my question was, what is your take on Google Plus? I know you've stated that in your Web site very briefly. And also, are there any centralised platforms that you actually deem benign?

Dr. Richard Stallman: Well, the first question is, well, the FSF doesn't talk about Facebook too much. It's a different issue from the Free software issue. So, I'm concerned with other issues of freedom besides that of Free versus proprietary software. So, I disapprove of Facebook because it collects a lot of personal information and I don't think it's good for anything to do that.

When I give a speech, at the beginning I ask people, "please don't put a photos of me in Facebook." And now I explain why. When you put a photo with people in it in Facebook, Facebooks asks people -- asks users -- to enter the names of those people. In other words, that photo gives Facebook an opportunity to do ad surveillance of those people. Those query the victim of having a photo put in Facebook. So, I would suggest that if you are friends with somebody that you treat that someone well by not putting photos of that person in Faceebook. And and in any case, I ask people not to put photos of me in Facebook. Now, there are many other bad things Facebook does. See http://stallman.org/facebook.html stallman.org/facebook.html for a list of quite a few.

But what about Google Plus? Well, from what I know, which is not everything, Google Plus does some of these bad things but not all. One bad thing that they both do is require people to give their real names. Now, Google Plus says that in some cases we're wiling to publish a pseudonym but they demand to know the person's real name. Well, I think that's enough reason not to use it. I urge you not to use such communication systems which demand to know who you really are. Because if they do that, they're basically one more eye of Big Brother.