On Mon, Jun 09, 2014 at 11:36:01AM +0100, Amin Sabeti wrote:
> Rick, I think you delete the problem instead of solving it!
I suspect that's because I have a different definition of the problem. ;)
Outsourcing your communications to a so-called "social network" whose
interests (a) diverge markedly from your own and (b) converge to a large
degree with corporations and governments is a fundamentally bad idea.
To explain:
Twitter does not exist to support your democratic movement or your
LGBT civil rights efforts or your literacy campaign or your environmental
initiative or your labor rights campaign or anything else. Twitter exists
to make money. The same is true of Facebook and all the rest.
You're not a customer of any of these operations. You're the product.
http://computerfloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/facebook-and-you.jpg
You're thus of no more concern to them than the 8,274th can of beans
being loaded onto a truck at a warehouse. You are a non-factor.
You are irrelvant and expendable. Their concerns are directed at
(a) their customers, who make them money and (b) the governments of the
countries where they operate, who can cost them money. (Please see
links I provided for background on these two points.) Their customers
and various governments wield money, power and influence; you wield: nothing.
Why would you even *consider*, for even a moment, trying to make
them an important part (or any part) of your communication strategy?
So from my chair, that's not just a bad idea. It's a really bad idea.
Now I know some people will say "but but but...". I'm not very responsive
to that. There was a perfectly usable, fine Internet before Twitter
and Facebook and all the others. There will be one afterwards, too.
There were vastly better ways to communicate; there are and will be
those as well.
But rule #1 should be and must be: do it yourself. Don't outsource any
part of it to anyone. Because when you do, you're subjecting *your*
communications to *their* whims, necessities, business needs, profit
motives, regulations, board of directors, shareholders, security holes,
executive decisions, privacy breaches, government-mandated backdoors
and censorship, contracts, court orders, and everyone/everything else.
That might, if you're very lucky, work out okay for you anyway.
But it's not the way to bet.
---rsk
--
Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of
list guidelines will get you moderated:
https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe,
change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at
compa...@stanford.edu.
