dayon

One benefit is not having all of your online purchases tracked by your credit card company, which can produce further benefit for you down the road when insurance companies and whoever else is unable to purchase meaningful data about you to exploit you.

Instead of rules, look at what's being censored and tell us if you agree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Twitter

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/censoring-...

And so on.

I was about to post this. My project received a DDOS, and I could not access my droplet for over 12 hours.

How does Craigslist handle reputation? And yet, I'm sure you'd rather use Craigslist for certain purchases than eBay.

Just to clarify, if you use Signal, there is no meta-data. Who you called, who called you, the call times, and so on are hidden. It's like with Tor and how your browsing history isn't saved. All the WIFI network operator can know is that you accessed Signal to make a call / text.

Regarding #3, what about putting the phone into airplane mode and keeping WIFI on? Wouldn't airplane mode disable the baseband?

I forget the term for this, but you've poisoned the discussion by leading it to a dead end with an impossible goal: ridding humanity of prejudice and assumption. Since that isn't remotely possible, we might as well throw our hands up in the air. And forget about data, it's not at fault here.

Like you, Snowden's freedom of speech line never impacted me... until I read this article. It suddenly hit me. The reason I was missing his point is because I was framing it in terms of what's in it for me rather than looking at it as what's in it for us. Someone who doesn't care about freedom of speech doesn't care because he doesn't see what's in it for him. But I doubt you'd argue the benefits of the first amendment.

Similarly, privacy is very important. You might not care (even though you really do), but defending privacy is about ensuring security. Privacy is important for all of us, just like freedom of speech is.

As for what the actual problem is, the problem for the most part is ignorance and a failure to quench it. We need more privacy / cyber-security advocates who can educate people on why they ought to care. It's like teaching people why it's important to lock their doors at night or why they should put their letters into envelopes instead of just using post cards. It's why my mom had to drill into my brain the importance of not giving out my social security number willy nilly. Are you so liberal with your SSN? You don't care about privacy, so would it bother you if Facebook or Google asked for it. After all, they just want to make sure you are who you say you are.

Things aren't obvious to us until they're obvious, and then it feels like common sense. DUH, lock your door! DUH, encrypt your messages!

This is very conspiratorial, but it'd be interesting if Facebook intentionally shut this down to show its new user base how vital it is to their lives. By giving new users a service and then taking it away, it could drum up support for reinstatement. Wouldn't put it past Mark to pull something like that.

Would be awesome to see a mass exodus from Facebook. It's already passed its peak anyway, with many US teenagers using different, non-Facebook-owned networks and apps.

I'm against Free Basics and am boycotting Facebook, but playing devils advocate...

They're called "public" libraries; not every library is free. I remember once trying to enter Stanford's library (Green?), and they refused to let me in without a Stanford ID.

Zuckerberg is referring to public libraries, not paid ones. The public library offers a set of books that, while not comprehensive, provide at least some free knowledge. Free Basics is analogous in that it offers some free services. Could Zuckerberg do more? Yes. Could public libraries have more books? Yes.

In America?!? Hell no. You have emergency room care, and it is NOT free. Medical bills are the #1 cause of bankruptcies in America.

This isn't what he's saying. Some places around the world do offer free basic healthcare. And he's talking conceptually, not concretely. If Zuckerberg ran a healthcare startup and offered free basic healthcare to a region, would they complain that it doesn't offer all possible services? Would they rather have no healthcare than some?

Agreed. I sometimes click, but for the most part, I usually shake my head and leave the site entirely in annoyance.

I'm curious to know: why don't published books use click bait titles? Or do they? And where's the line that separates click bait from non click bait? Lastly, have any studies shown that people are more likely to click on click bait than non click bait versions of the same articles?

Thanks for writing this.

Wow. That's one of the most eye-opening articles I've read. I admit to having no idea how difficult it is, at least for some social media stars, to get by on e-fame.

The take-aways for me are:

1. If you become famous on social media, understand that it might not make you enough money to survive, paradoxically with more fame leading to possibly less income.

2. If you must make videos, vlogs, blogs, or whatever else online, do something that you want to do for its own sake. Make something that in itself is valuable. Don't make a song because you think it'll make you money or a branded informative video because you think it'll net you an audience and therefore income. Create something great for the sake of the greatness. That way, you can't really lose either way. Because, it seems, either way, you're going to lose.

Surowiecki did a horrible job of making a case for his conclusion. After reading that, I'm left wondering why his critics are wrong. Perhaps he should have avoided the click-bait title and tried to actually explain something reasonably rather than arguing from the position of "Zuckerberg and I are right, and you're wrong. Now I'm going to write some paragraphs".

This will lead to a lot of carbs, some protein, and not enough fat. Consider looking into the Keto Diet. Lots of people are restricting carbs while being liberal with fat, successfully lowering their weight and having more energy. I'm one of those people. The trick is that fat consumption doesn't lead to weight gain. It's glucose production from carbs and sugars that leads to weight gain.

You're right, and I expected some of this since I knew I was severing some connections.

For many of the connections I refer to, Facebook was my only way of contacting them. You're right, I could return. It still makes me think that this implicit claim that leaving Facebook improves our mood is faulty. Rarely or never do I see disclaimers about possibly increasing depression by quitting.

I've been depressed since I quit Facebook. I no longer have access to the groups I used for countless purposes. Yea, there's alternatives, but I'm starting to see how many bridges I burned deleting a useful tool.

Out of society since 1975 and landing in Times Square... that's gotta be like stepping out into an alien world.

Spoke in person with Stallman. I asked him why he doesn't complain about server side code. His beef is with software we "own" being proprietary, so apparently server-side code isn't a big deal to him. It puts a huge dent in his logic, though, because if you follow his concerns to the end, then the internet in general is malware. Even if a site claims to be open-source, posting its code online, you can't know what version of the code it's running unless you're given access to the server. So, even if we use all open-source, free hardware, firmware, and local software, as soon as we connect to a remote site, it goes out the window.

While I appreciate your story, have you considered that you misread my post? It's the only way I can explain the myriad straw-men in yours.

Completely misleading title. I'm so sick of click-bait.

I don't see it as people wanting to be listened to and watched. I see it as people automatically accepting new technology if it provides a novelty and / or a real benefit without considering consequences. It's also a status symbol to have the newest and coolest tech. Smart homes will simply be the new social status indicator. Technology is way too liberal, and it's leading us in a direction that we might not be able to revert back from.

As a certified psychologist with the authority to diagnose autism in one of my practicing states, I'd be highly interested in meeting with this woman. I find it very unlikely that she could make it through 46 years, marrying, having children, working jobs, generally getting by with high functioning autism.

Having worked with countless children and adults who have / had Aspergers (no longer exists as of DSM-V) and other degrees of autism, stories like hers don't add up. There's a good chance that her psychologist did what many psychologists do today: misdiagnose. Her story does not include one piece of solid evidence that something is seriously abnormal.

That's not to say she does not have autism, but there would have to be a glaring issue with her social, behavioral, or mental functioning, which likely would've prevented her from living a relatively normal life for so many years.

Just because we fit criteria or because we have problems in our lives, it does not mean that we have to give our issues a name. If there's a particular problem, then seek help to alleviate it and stop boxing ourselves into these qualifications and descriptors that essentially mark as fixedly abnormal.

Then asking me to read an entire document of guidelines was unnecessary. You simply could've cited "be civil" with a link to the guidelines.

What you've ultimately confirmed is that HN's guidelines are so broad and brief that arbitration is in the eye of the moderator to such an extent to that its directives can be applied to almost any situation.

As such, I'm requesting you read the guidelines and please be civil. Your personal attacks are unacceptable. Thank you.

Great point, e_proxus. Seems to be a double standard here. Now I want to upvote your post...

The guidelines don't refer to civility beyond "Be Civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity."

I already said I would say these things to his face, so we're left with "gratuitous negativity". Gratuitous means "without apparent reason, cause, or justification". There's enough tangible evidence in the article and others related to the topic, namely from the creator of the World Wide Web, to suggest that my negativity is with reason, cause, and justification. Perhaps you disagree with that.

This seems like someone telling me to read guidelines for a second time and then chastising me when it's pointed out that the guidelines don't provide enough explicit justification for his or her accusations and statements. Either you're intentionally wasting my time or unintentionally wasting it as a result of presuming ignorance or failure to read. Again, this borders on a veiled, passive-aggressive personal attack, which you seem to be fine with.

If this is about being "cartoonishly simplistic", that's fine. I can censor my comments if that makes HN happy. In return for my willingness to censor myself, I request that HN raise the quality of its guidelines up from what many might consider cartoonishly simplistic to a level that is more robust and explicit. It's not a matter of making them exhaustive. It's a matter of them currently being ridiculously vague and thin. Some evidence for such a claim is in this thread of comments.

When explaining why heroin is bad and should remain illegal, how often do critics point out the drug's pros? Are critics not being objective or honest when they adamantly condemn it? Or, what about when assessing the results of Hitler's reign in Germany? Are historians being dishonest and subjective when they don't bring up the positive consequences of his actions?

There are countless other examples. If someone feels very negatively about "Free Basics", I'm not sure why they're not being objective or honest by leaving out potential pros.

1. My post is not unsubstantive because I am providing my #1 reason for why I'm boycotting Facebook. My post isn't anything like "Facebook is retarded" or "Fuck Facebook".

2. The guidelines essentially define uncivil as something you wouldn't say to someone's face. I would tell Zuckerberg to his face that I'm boycotting Facebook products over Internet.org and that he is a very bad man. That you consider my comment to be a personal attack - which I also disagree with - clashes with the definition stated in the guidelines.

I disagree emphatically with your claims and consider it a slight personal attack to suggest that I haven't read the guidelines.

Which razor is the one where you automatically presume I think the person is intentionally malicious? The black guy in Terminator 2 wasn't being malicious, but he was a very bad man in regards to what he was bringing to the human race.

Also, it's impossible to provide tangible proof for any opinion. My opinion is that Zuckerberg is a very bad person, and that is not a personal attack. A personal attack is never an opinion. Rather, personal attacks are when people have the intent of attacking to insult, to hurt, to throw wrenches into arguments, and so on.

Hacker News might disagree and appeal to their arbitrary rules about what's right and wrong, but to call my comment that "Zuckerberg is a very bad man" an assumption of malice, an unproven claim, or a personal attack is more of all three against myself than anything.