[p2p-research] facebook and organizing, for and against

[Kevin Carson]

On 7/16/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm  hoping you can mention and discuss this on our blog:
>
> see
> http://cyberunions.org/2010/06/23/facebook-dangerous-for-unions/

>  For Eric, the biggest danger is that you have no control of what happens to
> your data. He compares it to Geocities, which was a free web service, until
> Yahoo shut it down, deleting 38 million pages. Who controls your data on
> Facebook? Anything you upload becomes their property, not yours – so all
> your friends and lists of activists and campaign details exist at the whim
> of a company that is there to make profit. Facebook has deactivated trade
> union accounts in the future, and will do so again.

I can certainly link to it, but there's not much constructive I can
add beyond seconding--enthusiastically--what he's already said very
well, and throwing in my own reaction that this is just another item
in an already definitively long list of reasons to avoid Facebook like
the plague.

I totally agree that most social networking sites, aside from those
dedicated to some specific purpose, are time sucks.  Having to keep up
with all the updates strikes me as a kind of full-time job that
doesn't leave any time for thoughtful writing.  That a microcephalic
cretin like Sarah Palin communicates with the world through her
Facebook page says it all IMO.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html