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Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook

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Re: Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook

#81

Post by gaius »

anthonyb wrote: post #58
viraptor wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNS, routing and TCP/IP are things you never see. They're technically decentralised and they stay like that in practice. Email and web? Not so much really. Everyone serves their little page from their own site. But as soon as you want to interact / share, you're back to hubs like dropbox, facebook, twitter, etc. The data may flow through decentralised links, but it's still coming from FB.

If I want to view a web page that you've created, I go to a server which you control (or your ISP controls). I don't have to go to web.com and click through to an account that you've created on the web.com service. If I want to send you an email, I talk to my server, my server talks to your server, and you get an email in your inbox. Maybe I use GMail and you use Yahoo, but the underlying protocol is the same, so it…

Right, but you're forgetting one thing. Decentralized works for technical problems, not social problems. People fled from the decentralized alt.* on Usenet to centralized Lifejournal where they had more control over their experience. A decentralized social network would be a sewer.

Re: Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook

#82

Post by loup-vaillant »

DrSprout wrote: post #20
eavc wrote: post #16

If loads are distributed across a network, how secure would your information be? I guess you could get around that by being explicit about how open your data is and discourage people to post sensitive info. Also, by re-federating the service of Facebook with partner companies (push pics back to flickr, status back to twitter, etc.), they could get some nice allies, reduce the bandwidth requirements dramatically, and…

The biggest sticking point is going to be the web of trust. Facebook's walled garden is excellent at managing identity, and this would be very difficult if any random 419 scammer can set up a Diaspora server and plug into the network. Really, it seems like turn-key services are the primary solution, though the important thing is to get a competitive marketplace where some are ad-supported, some aren't, but all of the…

How many e-mail do you receive that appear to come from your friends, but don't? For me, that's none.

Diaspora server will be the same. Your random 419 scammer won't be able to make a lot of friends if people are a little careful. Add PGP keys and a proper web of trust, and the scammer won't be able to spoof any identity at all.

Re: Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook

#83

Post by motters »

Finally! I've been waiting for someone to do something like this, and was even thinking about trying to make something similar myself recently. How hard can it be? Probably not very, compared to other projects I'm working on.

I'm sure that it's not just tech geeks who would like to have some modest amount of privacy online. Just declaring that "Privacy is dead. Get over it" may be ok for a few exhibitionists and philosophers, but in the real world people do want and expect some level of privacy - especially when it comes to things like medical conditions or relationships.

Re: Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook

#84

Post by plq »

diaspora is used for people who live outside of the traditional land of their nation of origin.

from my understanding, the name implies that people who don't have a social networking account from some service provider are expatriates. i think this gives too much importance to such services.

nice idea, i definitely would like to see how it goes. but the name should be changed, so that it is in line with the political view it is the brainchild of.

Re: Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook

#85

Post by mseebach »

Uhh, four guys and an idea for a website. You know they'll definitely succeed because they're totally willing to sacrifice their summer internships to build it in three months and release it, scouts-honor!

Sorry for the sarcasm & general negativity - but they have nothing. As someone else said, just build it. The concept of replacing Facebook with something open, private and distributed is not at all new - many have tried and failed before them. "We have the chops" and $10k isn't some kind of magic potion. And their biggest challenge isn't building it, it's getting people to leave Facebook for it.

Re: Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook

#86

Post by ctd »

plq wrote: post #84

diaspora is used for people who live outside of the traditional land of their nation of origin. from my understanding, the name implies that people who don't have a social networking account from some service provider are expatriates. i think this gives too much importance to such services. nice idea, i definitely would like to see how it goes. but the name should be changed, so that it is in line with the political…

Political views aside, I agree that they'd benefit from a different name. Choose something more accessible, something like "Facebook" but not a derivative.

Re: Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook

#87

Post by mseebach »

fab13n wrote: post #71

Decentralized = much harder to police by governments, authorities, big corps. This can unlock radically new usages. For instance, in a fully decentralized system, you can get rid of storage limitations by storing stuff on your computer (or on the cloud in a private form). So you can share not only pics of your pets, but also your music and movies collection. If this results in something as easy to use as Facebook, bu…

> Whether it's a good or a bad thing is debatable

Not, not really. It's a very good thing, and similar to what the web did in the first place.

Re: Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook

#88

Post by aquinn »

viraptor wrote: post #4

I see they were trying really hard, but... the movie was a torture. Or maybe it was just my impression. Also, it was funny that youtube included onesocialweb.org in the related videos at the end - it seems to be a similar concept, but I've never heard about it before.

wow http://onesocialweb.org actually has working code. doesnt seem to be any demo offering public registration yet though. might try and install it myself later.

Re: Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook

#89

Post by rue »

runevault wrote: post #18
wmf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the ability to easily move your identity and inform people you have moved so they can update. I think DNS is the key here; it lets you move a server while keeping the same name.

That works if you have a domain name just for your "identity", but if you are hosting on someone else's then it gets interesting. Of course I may be stuck on the way I was looking at it of a fully qualified URL (say http://runevault.com/runevault for my id, and I don't think DNS currently goes farther then domains).

Being that it is the Domain Name System...:)

Re: Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook

#90

Post by sireat »

runevault wrote: post #3

I wonder how many people have considered building something along these lines. I know I did when I started hearing about what came out of f8, and I don't even use Facebook currently.

I have considered it, ok scratch that, dreamed about something like this around the time Friendster craze started.

Even for a decentralized project you still need the big "seeders", that is the problem.

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