Corporate Social Networking
This is a page about corporations, capitalism, advertising, privacy, and surveillance - but sadly it is still under construction. For the time being it's a resource with links to where you can find out more. If you don't want more than a few words we could go with: "Facebook, Google et al are corporations. Corporations are evil. Don't use corporate services." Also, everything you say online is monitored by spooks. And it is not anonymous, you can be identified through your IP, basically a phone number or address used by computers on the internet. But, of course, the topic is a bit more complex than that. What would happen to your life if suddenly your facebook and email was gone? If that thought is a bit scary, you should definitely invest a couple of hours and read up on the tactical site of having a gmail account. Their business and ours is a good place to start your research.
In the meantime you can check out the speech Eben Moglen, lawyer at the Software Freedom Law Centre, gave about why facebook is evil (did you know that its founder called Facebook users dumbfucks?), and the interview Schnews did with Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, and Gnu Public License, a software license that prohibits making code private and keeps it free and happy. You can also listen to the keynote speech from our recent hyperactive summit (hyperactive is the site you are looking at), and check out what riseup has to say.
Also check out the recent editorials by Imcist@s Ionnek, Maqui and Yossarian.
On a practical note, for online security advice, read the "Tech Tools for Activists" online book from the lovely Hacktionlab geeks.
Oh, and of course, xkcd always makes the point in cartoon form and don't forget the awesomeness that is A Softer World.
Yeah, so breaking news: google, facebook, hotmail et al are evil. If you want to get rid of their control over your life, we suggest you get rid of your gmail account in favour of riseup.net or aktivix.org, and check out the social and political organising tool Crabgrass. Oh and keep an eye open for the coming social networking platform Diaspora!
P.s. If your browser returns confusing security warnings, when trying to check out some of the links aboce, don't worry too much about it. Click "Add Security Exception" to go on.
Certificates are the digital equivalent of a government issued identification card. Certificates, however, are usually issued by private corporations called certificate authorities (CA) and cost money. A lot of free projects instead choose to use CA Cert, a free and non-profit certificate authority. Sadly browsers don't automatically accept these certificates. Find out how to install CaCert and get rid of those annoying warnings.
