Richard Stallman: “We must eliminate Facebook to protect the privacy!” – The Express

Facebook harms the health of democracy. This is what think Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement. “We must eliminate Facebook to protect the privacy!” Said he launched on the sidelines of a conference in Montreal newspaper Le Devoir . The famous American programmer, inventor of the free operating system GNU, the origin of Linux advocates long for a free and open computing. Because “without this privacy, without the ability to communicate and exchange without supervision, democracy can not endure.” Facebook builds a world where communications are monitored. These exchanges monitored induce a loss of power for ordinary people the power to report abuse, the power to control what the State.

“The proprietary software monitors users’

Regarding Facebook, Richard Stallman does not mince words. “It’s a perfectly calculated service to retrieve and collect lots of data on people’s lives. It is a space constraint profile and profile individuals, which hinders their freedom, which inevitably causes a loss of control over aspects of daily life that is expressed in this location. ” Eventually, social and political consequences of such power for a company can only be harmful. Richard Stallman also warned governments against the power of these companies. “The proprietary software monitors users, decides what is possible with or not, contains universal backdoors that allow remote changes by the owner, impose censorship. When used, it is necessarily up under the influence of the company that sells it. ”

“Governments have an important role to play”

The free software, which it launched the movement of the same name in 1983, the workhorse of the activist programmer. A philosophy that Richard Stallman opposes that of IT companies, Microsoft and Apple in the lead. At conferences, this is the same message it carries, calling on governments to respond: “Governments have an important role to play in combating these injustices escaping privateurs of settings in which they are placed.” The school is also known to use free software “is the only way to collectively regain lost freedom and regain control over activities that we have now and already escaped.”