Monday, February 28, 2011

A Facebook for the Fringe

I wasn't aware of this until I just saw it on the Fossicking blog, but the wingnuttery under the aegis of, who else, Glenn Beck, are fighting back with their own version of Facebook. It's called Freedom Connector, and it says you can "use FreedomConnector to connect with Tea Party activists and other conservatives taking action for less government and more freedom".

Check it out. Know thy enemy. Here's what Melissa of Fossicking has to say about it:

The site functions as a social network for like-minded Tea Party supporters/ members. From what I can gather, the site was launched on the 14th of February and is run by FreedomWorks – a conservative Astroturf organization.
According to Glenn Beck, he wants to take the tools that the socialists and communists and radical Muslims (progressives and terrorists) have been using, and in turn use them for good. FreedomConnector is the answer.
However, a peek at the Privacy Policy or Terms of Service and you’ll see that your “private” information is not so private, but owned by the website – including photos and activity carried out on the site.
The homepage of the site gives the first and last name of its members along with their geographical location. The site goes even more in depth by allowing a search for other members by issues, congressional district, state or county. You even have the option of directly linking your FreedomConnecter profile with Facebook or Twitter.
This is no different than most online services, but for a political organization with a platform of smaller government and less control over the lives of Americans – this is just plain weird.
I promise George Soros didn’t pay me, either directly or indirectly, to post this.
Okay, there you go. You can even check out what's happening in your own county and see who is your "enemy". I checked out the Thurston County page and saw a few people who say they had been facing us across the way at the Saturday rally. The people on the opposite side, the steps across the way, that you can see in the background of the photo, were "activists" from Glennbeckistan, teabaggers who are at least consistent: They don't taxes but they want all the services, and they don't want unions but they are perfectly happy to take the benefits that unions have provided them -- a working wage, the 40-hour week, etc. Check out some of the comments on their page.

Oh, and George Soros didn't pay me, either...

3 Comments:

Anonymous said...

If Glen Beck is "good", call me pure EVIL! F@ck that psychopath, it's a shame a bullcrap-spewing sycophant like him gets paid millions of dollars a year to sow discord.

-WageslaveZ-

Marc McDonald said...

I despise Tea Baggers and Beck. But I do support the concept of multiple social networking sites. I don't want Facebook to be the only significant social networking site. Frankly, I don't trust them.
Social justice is too important to be left to the likes of giant, corporate, money-grubbing monoliths like Facebook.
Let's face it, like Microsoft before it, Facebook wants to control everything. They don't want to compete on the Web----they want to replace the Web itself.
They want to control all our personal data (and sell it off to the highest corporate bidder).
Incidentally, although the gullible MSM would have us believe that Facebook created the "social networking revolution," the reality is that the World Wide Web itself was the original social network. The problem with Facebook is that it goes against the open nature of the Web that made the latter so successful.

Farnsworth68 said...

Thanks, Marc. Excellent points, as always.
--The F Man