President Barack Obama lifts threat to veto NDAA

[DrRumack]

guys the telephone makes people lazy now they won't meet in real life cuz they can just do voice talking

[Gladius]

not ALL internet communications need to be wiped out, just facebook. it's little more than a glitchy datamine for big business and the sooner it's gone the sooner the masses will snap out of this ridiculous mass autism fad being foisted on them.

how lame is it for every single trite little product and ad to have a facebook page anyway? talk about time sinks!

[trent bortknob]

eeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhh i don't think i'm as extreme and fanatical about this as you are gladius

i don't particularly like facebook, and i think that all though the internet has the potential to do a lot of good, humanity just isn't ready for it. it's still mainly used for porn and "funny pictures". and regardless of anything, i think almost anything is more valuable to me than a facebook message or comment. people say and do things on facebook that they don't ever do in real life. i have some friends who will talk to me a lot on facebook but in real life they barely speak or never can/want to hang out. etc etc. some of these people i've only seen at shows or parties. we've never actually hung out!

however, though i think to an extent some of these issues are experienced by everyone who uses facebook, i realize that they're specifically my own issues. i'm not trying to say "we need to destroy facebook", i'm saying "i need to change the way i use facebook" or "i need to hang out with people who don't use facebook". taking my own problems with the site and turning that into a militant agenda to take it away from everyone seems like a large and unsupported leap to me.

i was only backing the sopa bill as a half joke, saying "hmm maybe now everyone will have to stop being obsessed with the internet". i don't actually think that enforcing a law that regulates or limits people's internet activity would be a good thing.

and as a side note; i didn't have a facebook for a while, like 6 months. right after i got back on, i started talking to a friend and i joined a new band within a week. without facebook, that wouldn't have happened. i admit that. however, what would have happened if facebook never existed at all?

all i can say that aligns with what gladius is talking about is that my social life was way better before facebook and before myspace as well actually.

[trent bortknob]

guys the telephone makes people lazy now they won't meet in real life cuz they can just do voice talking

i think that's sort of an off analogy to make. i understand the message, but really. there is a difference between hearing someone's voice and seeing a bunch of text on a screen. for the record i think video chatting is a plus for the internet.

[Gladius]

eeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhh i don't think i'm as extreme and fanatical about this as you are gladius

fanaticism owns

[Gladius]

guys the telephone makes people lazy now they won't meet in real life cuz they can just do voice talking

yeah man i loved phone pages, phone games and phone communities so much

why'd they ever invent the internet, who needs it when phones had such a vast range of content and were so cheap and totally anonymous to boot

[sev]

i think hes' full of it! it's thanks to the internet that i've been able to keep in great touch with all my friends across the country/world. be it through social networking, skype, games, w/e. i can't visit them all the time, it's just impossible as you grow up and have to deal with reality.

^

all i can say that aligns with what gladius is talking about is that my social life was way better before facebook and before myspace as well actually.

cool don't use facebook to socialize with people

i think that all though the internet has the potential to do a lot of good, humanity just isn't ready for it. it's still mainly used for porn and "funny pictures".

i still don't get the argument that the internet has any negative impacts on socialization because of how "the majority of people" act on it. why does it matter if the majority of the population uses the internet for things that aren't of critical importance? the majority of the american population put bush into office -- it's blatantly clear that our country is full of morons -- but things would still be seriously fucked up and even more corrupt than it is now if voting was kept out of the hands of the american public because we weren't "ready" for it.

and on that note, what's the deal with you and porn and "funny pictures"? who cares if the vast majority of people on the internet are using it for those things? they're harmless and plenty of people consider them useful and/or entertaining. just because you don't like porn and "funny pictures" doesn't mean humanity isn't ready for the internet.

[naturally]

humanity just isn't ready for it.

i think you're going a bit overboard

[W.A.C.]

I think Facebook has done a lot of good and bad. Some of the best aspects are that it makes it much easier to keep in touch with people, much easier to spread certain news around, and it's really helpful for getting in contact with people in general. Some of the worst aspects are that IM programs are no where as popular anymore because of the shitty Facebook chat and that it has not been good to internet privacy in general. As for the internet as a whole, I've benefited a lot from it. I made a ton of friends online and even met some of them in person, I discovered a lot of artists I would have never heard of otherwise, it caused me to stop using TV, and I feel it made me smarter as a person because of all the resources online.

[redmongoose]

I'm ready for people to stop using facebook but sopa is not the way to achieve that

[rtil]

when people stop using facebook they will just move on to the next popular social media platform

[Gladius]

i'd miss torrents but i already have all the classic music, movies, games and newspaper clippings so i'm kind of through with those

[rtil]

i'm not sure the government or isp's could do anything to completely shut down torrent traffic. you'd just have to cut off internet access completely, but even then there is an "underground" internet made up of independent dns

[naturally]

WTF is SOPA ? aka The American Government trying to ruin the internet

[Gladius]

my gaming... my reddit...

n-no...

[trent bortknob]

all i can say that aligns with what gladius is talking about is that my social life was way better before facebook and before myspace as well actually.

cool don't use facebook to socialize with people

well everyone else uses it and it seems a lot of people now use it exclusively, hence the problem. the problem is not that people embellish their social lives with facebook, it's that they rely on it for almost all social interaction.

[trent bortknob]

i'm basically being given two choices: use facebook or don't have any contact with humanity. i don't think that is fair.

[redmongoose]

whitewine.com

[rtil]

i'm basically being given two choices: use facebook or don't have any contact with humanity. i don't think that is fair.

i'd say it's more like these: use the internet and expand your ability to socially interact with people, or don't use the internet and miss out on being able to socially interact with people who you couldn't talk to otherwise (except on the phone i guess)

it might not be fair, but life isn't fair anyway

[redmongoose]

this article details a number of twitter accounts that were suspended for speaking too much about the recent passage of the NDAA
http://www.businessinsider.com/welcome-to-the-united-police-states-of-america-sponsored-by-twitter-2011-12