That is an interesting point of view. My friends often send me links to articles, without writing summaries and for me, the recommendation alone is enough to get me to at least glance at the article. I know that they would not send me the link if the article was not interesting and well reasoned. I guess it all depends on how much you respect your friends.
> This wasn't a recommendation to a specific friend with a track record, but thousands of random people.
Really? None of my Facebook friends are random people to me. Nor did I have thousands of people on my Facebook account. Please quote the exact number of friends I had on my profile, as well as the full-text of my sign-off message. I'll wait patiently.
> I linked my friends to his paper "I’ve Got Nothing To Hide’ and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy" [1] when I was closing down my Facebook and other social network sites;
Weird how my HN account is not closed and I never told anyone on HN that they should read it.
It's almost like I made a comment that was relevant to the author of the linked article (a paper by the same author that expands upon the limited scope of the article) that concerned something between my friends and I and included the link to the paper that I had also mentioned.
But thank you for being so invested and concerned about what happens between my friends and I. Have a good day :-)
Slow down. I was talking about your implicit recommendation of the article here. And yes, what you said counts as such. (Of course, if never tell my friends to read 30 pages without some idea of what they'd be getting but whatever.)
If you really understand the core argument, what is so hard about giving a short summary?
> If you really understand the core argument, what is so hard about giving a short summary?
Because this was never about me wanting or offering to give a summary, just an anecdote that the author of the article had also written something I had linked my friends to, nothing more. It was the responses that made me dig my heels in and be stubborn/pedantic.
