Facebook is the sender

TLDR; Without the control and true freedom of speech we should regard Facebook as nothing but a attention draining casino made for people with fear of missing out. Equally so, we should consider it as an active sender as it actively modifies what is being said and consumed. And hold it responsible as such.

Probably most of us have felt fear of missing out. So we try too keep up with too many sources of information and entertainment. Facebook et al. promise to help us by filtering information. It is well described in for example the Facebook guidelines of how their newsfeed algorithm is supposed to function.

The filtering one gets is based on the behaviours of others. It is based on the often correct premise that the more people agree that something is 'worth sharing' or ‘worth interacting with’ makes it more 'worth showing’. Especially amongst ‘like-minded’ (actually: l…

Wat is privacy eigenlijk?

De afgelopen tijd is privacy redelijk vaak in het nieuws geweest. Maar wat is het eigenlijk? Ook ikzelf, al bekommer ik me er regelmatig over, heb soms wel wat moeite met het uitleggen van wat het is en het belang ervan.

Illustratie van: Deian Sedlarsk, uit: They will speak in my stead - virtual exhibition (licentie: creative commons non-commercial no derivatives)

Wat anderen zeggen dat privacy is

Volledige overeenstemming over wat privacy nu eigenlijk is, is er niet echt. Een ruime definitie komt van de verenigde naties, uit de rechten van de mens (artikel 12):

> No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or…

Viral software

When you are in the business of creating software you'll have to know that not all software and business models allow for what you've probably done before you were making money in this field, basically copy & pasting & reusing software from all over the web. When you're working professionally you might be confronted with the fact that not all open-source libraries are as free, as in libre (or as in anarchy) as you would like them to be.

(btw I'm not a lawyer, but I do understand language and code)

The famous GPL requires you to license your derivative works with the same GPL as well. Not only your modifications to the library you are using need to be open-sourced, but also the code that you wrote using that other project as a library without which your project wouldn't work. …