HN user
You could try email, xmpp instant messaging, self-hosting your website, and so on. Maybe a secure p2p tool such as waste.
But one way or another the problem is usually the same, your friends are locked in by facebook and don't want to use something else to see what you want to show them.
In a democracy one person, one vote do mean equal influence per citizen, as in a democracy people decides policy.
The USA is not a democracy, it is a republic, a system where people vote for a small number of representatives who then decides policy in the name of the people.
Nowadays these two words have shifted in meaning in popular usage, what used to be democracy is now called direct democracy and what used to be a distinct republic is now indirect democracy or representative democracy a.k.a. democracy. This kind of slippery semantics is most probably a consequence of years of propaganda to persuade people they live in a democracy so they won't ask for one.
Then again, in the USA as many other places around the world, this small number of elected representatives holding the power of policy are subjected to the oligarchic / plutocratic power and influence of a few wealthy entities.
Or as better said in this quote:
«the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.»
I remember skype being known for making it possible to spy on user conversations, text and audio/video, way before microsoft bought it.
With microsoft moving skype back from p2p to centralized server architecture doesn't hints at making spying on users more difficult.
It's not really news that in the USA, corporations claim for themselves rights attributed to a person while at the same denying the same rights to the actual persons.
Not really no. Facebook has been known for a while for building profiles of unregistered people and tracking them around. Then people you know offline who are on facebook will rat tons of information about you all the time. People are just submitting personal information without a second thought.
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks.
As usual, facebook PR is fallacious. Naively pretending they don't know governments are historically often engaging in criminal activities to draw attention away from the fact facebook is a massive surveillance too, one that past political regimes could only dream about, which by some kind of magic should be acceptable on grounds that it is done by a private corporation for commercial profit.
I feel it's worth pointing that facebook makes it easier to identify and locate people who end up in prison without trial and so on.
For a little while I've wandered into the business of finding the identity behind an online account and finding the physical whereabouts of said person for private companies and state police. It was in the pre- and early facebook era and it was sort of detective work, picking up details and clues, cross-referencing data, some wild guess and luck. Then facebook grew to the monstrous thing it has become, and now these past employers do not require external contractors to do this kind of job, they just go to facebook and do the job themselves in little time.
Privacy issue is not about what you want, it's about what can be done (and often is without you knowing).
Automated facial recognition is a serious privacy concern, it's not just about the slimy despicable thing facebook is. For example, in the uk where there are more cctv video feed than people to watch them, an automated facial recognition can track you around constantly. Their current automatic number plate recognition is already a serious privacy concern.
Remember 7th cube's voyeur's dream[1] released in 2005? the same but with more camera now being able to identify you based on your facial features. [1]: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=16410