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Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

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Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#34
post #31

Listened to a talk given by one of the Firefox guys a while back and in their vision social networking would be aggregated into the browser. Seems like a good start for this open alternative.

I've noticed a trend recently whereby social networking sites on the internet are becoming integrated into desktop applications, panel applets, and now you suggest integrating it into my browser?

Personally, I like keeping my online social identity sandboxed away in my browser, in a tab. If it's integrated into my browser's code, then it's harder to understand how my privacy works.

In the current situation, I just have to clear my cookies to ensure my privacy is secure.

I'm _not_ enthusiastic about a future where my browser has the functionality of specific web services built into it.

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#35
"... It’s time for the best of the tech community to find a way to let people control what and how they’d like to share. Facebook’s basic functions can be turned into protocols, and a whole set of interoperating software and services can flourish ..."

That is an interesting thought. Eben Moglin, "Freedom vs. The Cloud Log" ~ http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Interview-Eben-Moglen-... has a solution. A small web server where you control the logs and content, "do-able".

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#38

I've been thinking about doing some kind of distributed/open social network thing what with all the Facebook scandals cropping up, but it's pretty hard to do. The fact is for something like Facebook to function smoothly, it has to be centralized. There has to be a server somewhere out there that can be queried reliably for this data and that's the bottom line, even if you have something API-based like OpenSocial. It'…

At first glance it seems nontrivial. As with most problems like this that can be decomposed into algorithms and datastructures, technology provides a solution. OpenID, OAuth, and Open Social were all developed to solve similar problems.

My guess is that there will be half a dozen competing protocols within a year.

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#39
What I'd like is distributed p2p linking. No personal data on a server that isn't yours. Any of your data hosted on a third party site if you choose so, is encrypted to within an inch of its life: they can't do ANYTHING with it except forward it to whoever you designate.

Venn diagrams for your social graph. Or trees. Preferably both. If Yelp/Microsoft/whoever wants my data, they become a member of my social graph, not some all-seeing entity that hovers above me recording every comment I make. Data that goes to them is encrypted as well of course.

Make it distributed, because no company hosting user data will be able to resist the temptation to use it to make money. Or build it on top of Dropbox, and have Dropbox serve as the backup for your online social life, encrypted, of course. 2GB will eventually fill up, and hopefully people will be happy to pay for extra storage, especially if you make it easy.

Re: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

#40
post #2

Can someone show evidence of this statement? "Now, say you you write a public update, saying, “My boss had a crazy great idea for a new product!” Now, you might not know it, but there is a Facebook page for “My Crazy Boss” and because your post had all the right words, your post now shows up on that page. Include the words “FBI” or “CIA,” and you show up on the FBI or CIA page." That is scary.

here you go:

http://graph.facebook.com/search?q=my+crazy+boss

http://graph.facebook.com/search?q=FBI

http://graph.facebook.com/search?q=CIA

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