Challenging Duelism

Dearest challengingduelism,

In response to the tons of annoying Apple product related spam recently cluttering your dashboard, we have teamed up with Apple’s development team to ACTUALLY GIVE AWAY APPLE PRODUCTS! Under the condition that you agree to “test” the product, by allowing basic debug data to be automatically sent to Apple’s dev and diagnostics teams.

So, in a nutshell..
CLICK HERE TO RECEIVE YOUR FREE IPHONE OR IPAD!

God that seems so phony, darn you spammers!

Note: only the first 1,000 users may take part in this promotion, which is on a first come first serve basis.

Oh, and don’t be greedy. “Publish” and reblog away! Share the loot with your loyal followers! :)

I am only reblogging this to point out that if it is in fact from the Tumblr staff blog (rather than some kind of spam or phishing exercise) that I am in no way interested in promotions, including ones offering Apple products.  Promotions I am uninterested in generally because it’s one of the variables turning the internet into yet another consumerist wasteland.  Apple products because:

1. Value for money (even if free to me) is highly questionable. As a regretful iPod owner, I can tell you that there are much better quality MP3 devices for cheaper, that don’t suffer from the same irritating software issues.
2. More importantly, although I don’t have reason to trust pretty much any mass manufacturing firms these days, Apple is currently implicated in some serious human/worker’s rights breaches associated with the sub-contractor Foxconn in China.  The level of seriousness is so extreme it makes me want to vomit.  It’s pretty much slavery.  So fuck that.  I recommend if you can boycott Apple, do it.  Same with any Foxconn manufactured goods.
3. Oh yay, everyone has iPods and iPhones, I’m totally going to jump on that  bandwagon and even sleep over on the streets to get in on the new model. NOT.  Are you kidding????  Fuck that.  It’s as stupid as going shopping just because something is on sale.  Don’t need it, don’t want it, think it’s a symptom of our current global disease.

OCCUPY REAL BLOG POSTS, comrades.

Facebook has a controversial and concerning history of censoring links, activists and accounts as well as having a terms of service that are convoluted and not user-friendly.  Additionally, the concerns over privacy and the sharing of user information with government authorities and private companies are yet to be adequately addressed.

However, like Twitter, it is also a place where increasing numbers of people are becoming friends around the world, and discussing the issues that effect us.  Facebook is also used by several activist groups Challenging Duelism has connected with on Twitter, and those groups have requested Challenging Duelism to share the links on Facebook that reflect their goals.  Given that Challenging Duelism had boycotted Facebook at the time (after having been kicked off for other reasons nearly a year ago) it was not possible for this to occur.

I am not retracting my concerns about Facebook.  These concerns are real, and the people of the world need to be aware of these. I am also not going to cease my activities in exploring Facebook alternatives that the open source community are developing, and will post information about these as this comes to hand.

But I have joined Facebook in order to spread the word as far as possible, it is a strategic tool, and it’s time for me to use it.

You need to be aware of this, because if you are a Facebook user, you can now like the Challenging Duelism page and share it with your friends:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Challenging-Duelism/264438870276596?sk=info

And if you are not a Facebook user, and share my concerns about privacy and politics, I am at least letting you know that this connection has been made, so that you can make the decisions appropriate for you.

I have no intention of using the profile or page as anything other than an auto-feed type system where people on Facebook and Twitter, as well as this blog, can cross-link articles, network and share ideas.  If you would like to use the Facebook wall or page to post images and discussions, you are more than welcome to, it will be self moderated - I have no intention on moderating the discussions there.  My primary tool is this blog, followed by Twitter.  I see Twitter and Facebook as social networking tools, not the hosting space.

Good luck and feel free to voice your thoughts on this matter.

P.S. I just learned too that if I put a question mark at the end of the page title, Tumblr enables the ‘let people answer this feature’ so when I get a chance, I’ll update the older posts to enable the feature there too!  (yay!)