The anti-Facebook update
A couple of months ago Facebook was up to its ears in trouble over the way it was treating users' information and privacy. It led to a crisis meeting at the company's California HQ.
Politicians in Washington even got wind of the stramash (good Scottish word for uproar) and told the company get its act together.
Europe weighed in. So did privacy officials in Canada. Advocacy groups had a field day as Facebook seemed to get it so wrong as it made its play to rule the web as it becomes more social.
There was even a kind of Facebook revolt with plenty of people talking about quitting the world's biggest social network. That clearly didn't come to pass given that since the April/May debacle, Facebook has announced it has over 500 million users.
Of course, it wasn't Facebook's first tangle with privacy problems. And it probably won't be its last.
But back in April/May it seemed there was a kind of perfect storm around the issue and four enterprising students saw their moment and grabbed the spotlight.
Maxwell Salzberg, Daniel Grippi, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirski got together to create an alternative to Facebook that would be a "privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network".
At the time they told the BBC "this is not just about Facebook. Facebook is not what we are going after.
"We are going after the idea there are all these centralised services where people are giving up their personal information. We want to put users back in control of what they share. "
But the Facebook backlash helped the enterprising students raise over $200,000 on Kickstarter, the highest amount ever raised on the site. And get this - they were originally only after $10,000. Such was the furore over Facebook's missteps that the money just poured in.
Over the last few months, the boys have been coding like mad. In an update on their blog, the team announced when they will roll out their product.
"We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th.
"We are spending a good chunk of time concentrating on building clear, contextual sharing. That means an intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their coworkers and what goes to their drinking buddies."
So what kind of web world will greet Diaspora when it is launched next month?
The fevered atmosphere towards Facebook has eased somewhat after the company made some adjustments to its privacy policy.
While privacy remains a serious issue that users care about, people have not fled the site as many threatened back then. It is just too useful to their lives.
All this will affect Diaspora to some degree but I don't think these changes will sideline interest. I do think Diaspora will be more than just a passing curiosity. The four students just have to deliver on their promises and come up with some ideas that will challenge the space.
Sure, as the New York Times notes, Diaspora became something of a media darling at the time, but I think there will be a lot of people watching to see just what the team come up with. Not least from Facebook founder and ceo Mark Zuckerberg who did express support for what the boys where doing at the time. Perhaps he might even offer them a job.
It's a big test for the foursome but Maxwell, Daniel, Raphael and Ilya will clearly worry about all of that later as they prepare to kick up their heels for a hedonistic getaway at the world famous Burning Man Festival in California.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~49~RS~)
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I've already found a solution to facebook's privacy issues. I have my non work friends on facebook, and my work friends on linked.in - it's best to keep them separated. That said, I will be watching diaspora very carefully, if only to find an environment where I don't get updated with stupid farmville messages constantly. Keeping up to date with groups is also not as user friendly as it could be on facebook.
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It seems to have been resolved for me, by being now well over 40.
Inspired to revisit, I had near zero clue what was going on with the text and pictorial zoo that confronted me.
Sadly, LinkedIn also seems to be getting a wee bit more busy, too.
That this is my fault and not that of those designing the interface marks an interesting twist in customer service attitudes.
Maybe I am destined for a very private dotage. Here's hoping.
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Oh dear Maggie. After an interesting article last time you're back to the same old rubbish.
Why not try to post something which is actually about technology? Do you actually know anything about technology?
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Personally, I think it's an interesting article.
Metcalfe's law suggests that the value of a network is equal to the square of the number of users on it. Facebook is relying on those numbers to build their business.
If the community of the Internet could be harnessed to promote similar interests and share information, but without the oversight from a business whose economic interests are often at odds with the best interest of users, then it could become ubiquitous. The power of crowd-sourcing would hopefully see spam and virus and malware sites relegated to the abyss while useful websites and services are promoted and become more visible.
Do I think that will happen? Sadly...
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I think facebook's influence is massively over-hyped. 500 million users sure, but I am one of them and I use it only to vaguely keep in touch with people whom I'd otherwise forget.
I don't use it's apps, have ad-blocker enabled in my firefox browser so that I don't read it's ads, I block messages from friend's apps, and choose to hide the status updates of anybody whose self-absorbed thoughts appear often enough to irritate me. I prefer to use Google's Picasa and or Flickr to share photos, don't use it's live chat except through a chat program called Pidgin, which logs in to facebook, msn, x-fire etc in one small window.
I also set all it's privacy settings appropriately leaving only the website address of my blog public. I further delete all old posts from my home-page leaving only a single page of links etc worth sharing long-term.
I'm sure that other tech-savvy users take similar steps.
I therefore suspect that a large proportion of that 500 million will either be infrequent users, users who have abandoned their accounts and left them dormant, or protecting personal data and blocking adverts for all their worth.
On the other hand, I use Google's Picasa, Gmail, Talk, Blogger, Youtube, Buzz and heaven knows what else. Without all the big numbers and fanfare, Google probably know me better than my own family.
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I second Alex, the best thing you can do is simply used Linked-In for official and Facebook for non-official ones.
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Sorry to be a pedant but "... It is just to useful to their lives." Shouldn't one of those to's be a too?
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The respondents relying on linkedin for professional matters are naive. This is still a technology in its infancy. But think how much easier it will be in the future once people with an interest in doing so have connected up all the sub-networks efficiently.
As an employer, it's already trivially easy to google or follow clues to find anyone's personal information. And yes, if I see someone on their own (or their friends') facebook pages or blogs etc behaving in a way I consider inappropriate, that will definitely be 'taken into account' when considering their application, for example.
The only solution is NEVER to put any image or personal information online that you would care about anyone in the world seeing, at any time now or in the future. And if you really feel you need to have a presence on facebook or similar, police the information that (so-called?) friends are putting up about you too.
Me? No way I'm having a facebook page thanks.
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Why on earth would the Diaspora guys want a job with the arrogant, obnoxious Zuckerberg?
I hope Diaspora stays true to its intentions of being open and secure, and as such deserves to be successful. This would be a triumph for open-source and the consumer. A true 'social' network, for the public by the public.
As for Zuckerberg, I hope he'll be happy with his ill-gotten gains when the consumers he showed contempt for leave F***book in droves.
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Obviously I'm not a "tech-type" but it seems to me that the goals of being "open" and "secure" are mutually exclusive.
Can someone shed some light on that?
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Don't nit-pick BK, you know what I mean.
Open, as in using open standards and open-source, like Ruby. And, secure as in the developers have indicated that users data privacy will be respected.
There, that enough light?
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Whilst I hope Diaspora does well I would like to point people at pidder - not sure if I'm allowed to put a link here but a Google search will find as a top hit. Shame it doesn't have the recognition in the UK that it deserves,
I've been using this for a while now - it really is good.
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I recently requested my Facebook account be deleted. After I did it I got an email from a friend of mine saying she'd noticed and invited me to dinner to catch up. Now that's truly social.
Although I had 100 'friends' on Facebook I can't remember social networks every bringing me any joy and are merely a distraction. Whereas the early internet, particularly chat, encouraged you to get to know complete strangers and was genuinely compelling.
As FB has tried to integrate other areas of the web more and more (a version of email, a version of chat), and the fact all your preferences, books, dvds, music tastes and that of all your friends and their friends probably makes it a marketing goldmine. I just couldn't bring myself to submitting to that kind of set up for a 'free' service or actually becoming dependent on it.
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Some people have suggesting keeping colleagues on a different network, and for me that is not the answer - why go to the trouble of maintaining two accounts? And if work colleagues request you on FB, do you just reject them? And what about distant family, family friends, parents, all of whom you might not want to know your every move. Although they claim they have improved it, the basic design of FB doesn't really allow for different categories of contacts.
I would like to see FB or a FB-integrated site that allowed you to keep these things separate, to make a very simple, user-friendly way to share some info with some people & some with others, to the extent of having different tabs e.g. work, family, friends or anything else you pick, all of which could (if you choose) have different profile pics, info, status updates.
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@Lord Spring Onion[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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@10.
Since no one else is going to answer, this is an ironic paradox, n'est pas?
The best security software in the world is open source. AES Encryption, for example, is completely open. Cracking an AES message on the other hand is a whole different ball game!
Open is good - the more people trying to find (and fix) holes in a piece of software the better it becomes. Most of the Internet is based on open software (GNU/Linux) and it runs so well (for the most part) that we take it for granted.
The problem with closed source is this: if someone outside your organisation finds a security hole (and software exists to do just this) they are actually in a position to gain from that. That could be stealing your user's data or just shutting you down.
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"As for Zuckerberg, I hope he'll be happy with his ill-gotten gains when the consumers he showed contempt for leave F***book in droves."
As will I and I'll be even happier when OUR BBC shows some backbone and stops relying so heavily on it too.
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Here's another interesting thing.
People do the dumbest things on Facebook without realising the world and his wife might be watching.
I just snapped a conversation between two of my daughter's friends which reveals some rather embarrassing facts. They may not be worried now - but what about in 5 or 10 years time when such comments come back to haunt them?
Even with Disapora there's nothing to say that people cannot (and will not) copy incriminating remarks for later blackmail...
Another reason not to use your real identity on the Internet - ever.
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I think it’s admirable what these four kids from NYU have done. But what the heck do they mean when they say they’re developing a "privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network”?
First, if they’re tying to push privacy on their way to mass appeal, the’ve another thing coming. How can anything based on Linux — by definition an “open source” operating system that’s a work in progress among not only the Diaspora guys but any other programmer who wants to weigh in — be secure? Furthermore, one “feature” of Diaspora reportedly will be scraping, or importing, information from other social-networking sites? How is that protecting privacy?
Furthermore, Diaspora would require users to download and install a veritable Web server on their computer, meaning only us, uh, computer geeks will ever understand — or care enough — to even try to use this new “service.”
There is another new social-networking site in the works, however — beyond Diaspora, Ning, Buddypress and others — will provide a social-networking option that’s more private and secure. zeldaB will require no downloads or installs; will be simple to understand and use while setting new standards for privacy protection and security; will never allow third-party applications to invade its users privacy; and will offer users the ability to keep different circles of friends, family members, business associates, teammates, whatever, all with complete privacy and security. Check it out at zeldab.com.
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Finally, here (at the BBC site) is an actual, relevant, technology story that IS worth blogging about:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11117587
and while Facebook is mentioned, it's along with some issues that actually matter to the technology world.
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Of course, it wasn't Facebook's first stramash with privacy problems. And it probably won't be its last.
BBC caught this issue dead-on: "… all these centralised services where people are giving up their personal information."
The default Facebook Places privacy settings let advertisers and partners know way too much information about where you've been; in fact, Facebook is geolocated = they know where you ARE. The Electronic Pirvacy Information Center (Epic.org) posted a warning that Facebook Places makes user location routinely available to others, including Facebook business partners, regardless of whether users wish to disclose their location.
Epic notes that there is no single opt-out to avoid location tracking; users must change several different privacy settings to restore their privacy status quo.
Recommendations of EPIC:
1. disable "Friends can check me in to Places"
2. customize "Places I Check In"
3. disable "People Here Now" and
4. uncheck "Places I've Visited."
That's not the end. I'm just getting tired. I’ve heard that adequate privacy settings = 50 in number.
Get this: Facebook Places is also a great way for less savory members of our society to know when you away from home to vandalize your nest. It's a great way for your boss to know where you really are when you call in sick.
When you use Facebook, Big Brother is truly watching you.
As for Diaspora spending a good chunk of time concentrating on building clear, contextual sharing, I have only this to ask: “What exactly is clear, contextural sharing”? Dispora's answer: "That means an intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their coworkers and what goes to their drinking buddies."
I can't wait to see how that works!
Diaspora has taken on a huge mouthful. Not only is the service expected to be an alternative to Facebook, but also Twitter and other such services. This cannot happen overnight; in fact, it may never happen.
The name “Diaspora” is intersting onto itself. In this particular case, it could very well mean catching those persons indigenous to Facebook into an alternative, but no less dangerous site called Dispora, as in "The Dispora from Facebook".
The bottom line:
No social network site is seriously private. Personally, I have concerns. I do not belong to any social network.
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@Blueberry: some very salient points made there - and well made too.
To your last though:
"No social network site is seriously private."
Surely that's an expanded oxymoron - it's like saying "socially private" or "social privacy". You can't have a social network of any sort (e.g. sans technology) and still expect even a modicum of privacy.
The only way to be private is to live as a hermit.
The trouble with computer-based networks is that they amplify the problem many thousands of times and have permanent memories to boot. Libel, for instance, has a very long memory...
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Facebook is awesome I met my boyfriend on facebook.
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We need to be more careful of what we store on-line and privacy is a big concern for most people. Don't store anything on-line you wouldn't want a stranger to know.
Personally, I like to keep my personal friends and work colleagues separate on my Facebook account. So you should create two lists of what your personal and work colleagues can see.
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For some time now i am only lurking on my facebook account. sucking in information from my friends/colleagues/aquaintances. I turned all privacy settings on and disabled various games messages to get it all more clear. Every now and then i will ask something or comment. Mostly out of curiousity. So far i have uncovered 2 cheaters. I am not sure their wives know. They probably don't and I surely won't tell them.
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What's really missing from Social Networking isn't another Social Networking site, but a commitment to a proper 'Open Standard' for Social Networking so that different Social Networking sites can interoperate. In the same way I can e-mail someone who uses a different ISP, I should be able to send a message from Facebook to someone on MySpace or Diaspora, should be able to view parts of their profile, comment on their pictures and news, and join in with groups on other systems too.
When I say 'proper' I don't mean Google's OpenSocial offering.
Until this happens, I don't think there will be much of a revolution in the Social Networking space.
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Dear Mom and Dad,
I regret to inform you (but not really) that I'm leaving Facebook for Diaspora. While I had a great time on Facebook in the beginning, the fun and social aspects of Facebook have waned since you and other family members have joined. There are fun comments and topics to share with friends, but they’re not necessarily appropriate for family member viewing. I guess I just never had the heart to reject friend requests from family.
However, don’t look at this as the end to your stalking and prying into my personal life. If you choose to join Diaspora, I will gladly accept your friend request. But, just don’t expect to see as many postings on my page. Please, don’t take this letter and social network move the wrong way; I still love you very much. I just have a need for independence, and therefore, a need for my own online social space.
Best Regards,
Your Loving Son or Daughter
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@marcdraco - I agree with you about the incriminating remarks. Those are going to come back to haunt the "ID10T" in a rather nasty way. Seen it happen to some friends.
Facebook has been successful, without a doubt. But then again a lot of those who now use facebook are actually there because they don't want to be left out.
Ladies and Germs, the bandwagon has arrived - please jump on now.
A pack of lemmings are probably more individual than facebooking humans.
I admit, i do have a facebook account but im from the old facebook days when it was for universities/colleges.
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