Apparently, MoveOn.Org has a new enemy: Facebook's ad campaign (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook21nov21,1,2142037.story?co...).
There are a lot of things about this that seem inherently weird to me. For one: Moveon's
main issue doesn't seem to be the questionable legality of the Beacon advertising campaign (under some New York law), nor the switched labor structure it implies (my thoughts on this in an essay to come later) whereby people market stuff for free to make money for corporations. No, their problem seems to be "privacy."
Unfortunately, as we've seen in the abortion debates since the 1970s, privacy is a fairly subjective term. And to be really honest about it, I kind of don't think that whether or not I can accidently find out what my girlfriend's Hannukkah gift to me is going to be is just cause for action, even of the easy, Moveon.org style.
Of course, they're also popularizing the campaign through ads, and planning on bolstering it, I'm sure, through their own social networking site, as is only right as innovators in that field. But doesn't it also start to seem like in-world sniping?
Anyway, my thoughts on this are scattered and incoherent, but if this is what activism is about, man. I want out.
You know, if you check out freelancer.com, the going rate for creating a fully functional Facebook clone is between 1200 and 3000 bucks. For a group with over 3 million members, that's chump change. If they have a problem with facebook, they can start there own social networking site. Seriously, there are more important things that I thought moveon.org was working on. As for me, I have developed an elaborate strategy for keeping my personal information safe from those evil facebook people: I don't use the thing.