Slashdot Mirror
Free Software To Save Us From Social Networks
Glyn Moody writes "Here's a problem for free software: most social networks are built using it, yet through their constant monitoring of users they do little to promote freedom. Eben Moglen, General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation for 13 years, and the legal brains behind several versions of the GNU GPL, thinks that the free software world needs to fix this with a major new hardware+software project. 'The most attractive hardware is the ultra-small, ARM-based, plug it into the wall, wall-wart server. [Such] an object can be sold to people at a very low one-time price, and brought home and plugged into an electrical outlet and plugged into a wall jack for the Ethernet, and you're done. It comes up, it gets configured through your Web browser on whatever machine you want to have in the apartment with it, and it goes and fetches all your social networking data from all the social networking applications, closing all your accounts. It backs itself up in an encrypted way to your friends' plugs, so that everybody is secure in the way that would be best for them, by having their friends holding the secure version of their data.' Could such a plan work, or is it simply too late to get people to give up their Facebook accounts for something that gives them more freedom?"
....and suggest that most people don't care.
You mean people would actually have to SPEND MONEY? And even worse, on an actual PHYSICAL OBJECT? No way, not in a million years would something like this replace a simple, free online service.
Better known as 318230.
Seriously, its a dumb plan. My girlfriend is on Facebook, and I'm pretty sure she would have the following objections:
1) New people couldn't find her.
2) This new plan is already WAY too complicated. She can't point a browser at some weird piece of hardware that she has to install herself, no matter how "easy" it is to install or point to.
3) She can't play with her facebook farm(s).
Remember that facebook is now the #1 site when it comes to traffic. You aren't going to get it's 500 million or so users to migrate to a self configurable system simply in the name of privacy. What percentage of the users on facebook actually care? On quarter of one percent? Even that would be a stretch. People aren't going to leave their hard earned farmville accounts because facebook is using their personal data to market to them. It's not a concern in this day and age.
If it's cheap, sure I'll get one, I like new obscure hardware designed to do weird things. And that's not sarcasm. But social networking sites as Twitter and Facebook are free, so the hardware would have to be extremely cheap. If it's over 75-100€, the only people buying them are people who want to hack it so they can use it for something else and paranoid people.
is it simply too late to get people to give up their Facebook accounts for something that gives them more freedom?
Yes.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It's a fabulous idea. Sign me up. However in terms of penetration, it will be the rare paranoid slashdot reader that values privacy enough to take such measures. Social networking is here to stay and is possibly the most effective tool for destroying freedom. Why should the NSA go after people when they can simply get the people to come to them?
I am getting pretty tired of other people telling me what freedom should mean to me.
What freedom means to me, what I am frightened of and / or prepared to sacrifice is not a temporally static concept. 10 years ago I wouldn't even publish my mail address online. Now I have my entire cv on xing. These are rational decisions I made according to costs I perceive (correctly or not) with publishing personal information, or not.
Sure, some people make poor choices about publishing personal information (sexting, anyone?). But some times openness is an indicator for a "safe" society.
Just my thoughts.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security - Ben Franklin
Let's just go with how the conversation with any non-geek person/friend/spouse/family member would both start and end: Wait, Facebook already is free. I don't get it.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Who the hell would use this? How many people are really that desperate to escape social networks? People who REALLY didn't want them would never have signed up in the first place. People who used to like them and don't anymore, can just spend a couple hours tracking it all down. Mightn't people who use this want to customize its exact effects? Isn't the easiest way to do that...to just close your accounts yourself?
This sounds like something a sixth-grader would come up with...
The problem is free software is used to voluntarily erode privacy rights.
Not anymore! Now we have a server that looks like a night-light, just plug it in and it will do all your social networking for you! It's magic! No longer will you have to give up your privacy rights! ...
Do I have the argument right?
Actually I think it's a fantastic idea but social networks are maybe the wrong model.
It all starts at 0
So, you've got all your personal data backed up from Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, whatever, and your accounts are closed. Now what? Does this thing actually run a usable social networking site? And, even if it does, is it one that everyone will want to use?
I don't see this happening, ever.
Could such a plan work, or is it simply too late to get people to give up their Facebook accounts for something that gives them more freedom?
This plan assumes that your average Facebook user wants freedom and/or privacy.
this is my sig
The network effect has already kicked in. If you want to replace Facebook it will have to be with a product that offers more value on an individual user basis AND can interface with Facebook so users will have access to those social networks as well as access to the additional functionality. If you start there you can wean people off of the older application. While the approach you describe may give users more freedom from corporate/government/whoever control it gives them less freedom to do the activities they now do on the social networking site.
Go ahead, do a survey on the street. See how many people are worried about this.
So what is this "your data" that he wants to fetch? I don't think most people are aware of having any "data" on social networks. Their favorite bands, their favorite movies... that's not "data," it's information about themselves that they post to social networks because they want other people to know it.
The problem with commercial social networks is their interpretation of what "your data" is. The stuff they're interested in has less to do with whether you say you like Blink 182 and more to do with who all your friends are, how often you communicate with them, what keywords show up most often in your posts, what groups you join and who else is in them, and all that other stuff that can be data-mined. In other words, it's the record of your social interactions that's the "data" -- so why would you want to preserve that in a brand-new network?
Breakfast served all day!
I have pondered the idea of a decentralized Social networking protocol, similar to email/Jabber/etc. Standard IM protocols along with standard (XML based?) data formatting for social information would be used to allow socialnetworking servers to talk to each other, and find friends.
The issue is that SOME sort of centralization is probably best for this kind of online interaction; the question is to what extent your secure content is hosted and in your own control.
Best option: Don't put private shit in a public place.
When I first looked at that, I thought we were suggesting a 'social networking console'. That would certainly be interesting. Buy a console to socialize on just like we buy a console to play games on. It might be a possible way to break into the market, but I'm sure Facebook and everyone else already have plans for social hardware. Google Wave and Android are good examples of that happening soon.
is it simply too late to get people to give up their Facebook accounts for something that gives them more freedom?
Yes.
Next thread please...
This openness is an indicator of the population perceiving it as safe. That may be due to the population's lack of education or refusal to acknowledge the associated dangers, not necessarily due to an actual safe society.
For example, everyone has had no problem filling out their SSN on employment forms, gym memberships, cable signup, phone signup, electricity forms, insurance forms, dentists or doctors forms, etc, despite that the ways to abuse of that information were obvious. The ones refusing to put their SSN were labeled troublemakers and would just slow down the process for everyone.
Now that ID theft is rampant, everyone wants to "do something about it" and are becoming more conscious of who they give personal info to.
At no point during this entire process was the society more safe in that respect. It's just that it takes a long time and many victims for people to get hammered into their head that certain things they do are dangerous.
Since that guy who proposed blinding yourself to avoid cases of pinkeye.
1. You'd have to out-Facebook Facebook. Good luck building a better social networking site. Look at the morons at Linked-In and MySpace, they can't get it right and they both had a headstart.
2. Good luck getting someone to purchase hardware.
3. Why would anyone think the NSA didn't have a backdoor built into it anyway?
4. Even most of us geeks long ago gave up caring.
----- obSig
Small, headless, set top size, external usb storage
Running:
tinc
web proxy
samba/gnutella
Myth
some other stuff maybe.
Course. I can build my own easily & as you say, I doubt anyone else needs anything similar.
Deleted
How is this categorized as news? This reads much more like an "ASK SLASHDOT" article than anything else.
To the author, social information isn't very social if its private. If you don't trust your data in a centralized place, then stop using a computer period.
Imagine, if you will, a cross between a Facebook style interface and an Apache style implementation: that is, something that will let you (as a user) connect to any other user and not give a damn about how or where, and at the same time let anyone run their own standards-compliant server with the exact settings that they prefer.
To get this right, it needs to take a long hard look at user data privacy *as the first thing*, and that's exactly what the Appleseed Project (http://appleseed.sourceforge.net) was intended to showcase.
One reason why Facebook made it big is because they got their commercial model right (don't tell anyone, but the users are actually the product, not the customers).
The trouble is not so much that an Appleseed style implementation won't work (we know it does, because that's how the whole everyman's Internet got off the ground) but that it's not a pioneering effort (citing the same example, because the crummy early-day Internet had no competition other than itself). In this day and age, such an effort needs to stack up against Facebook -- imagine Mosaic trying to get market share from Chrome!
"Good news, everyone!"
I'm not sure how Facebook takes away my freedom. I am perfectly free to not use almost any private service or good if it does not meet my needs. People don't have a "right to Facebook" and then get to decide that that right includes ironclad privacy protections (unless those protections are imposed on industry by legislation, which, in the US they really aren't in any meaningful way.) That's what consumer choice and the market are for. I personally decided that I like Facebook's features and don't really have much of any fear over its privacy implications. Unlike some, a mega-corp having transactional and or behavioral knowledge of me is not my worst nightmare, it's a mild inconvenience compared to the other risks in my life. I don't quiver over it, nor am I outraged by it, nor certainly would I engage in some sort of effort to protest, prevent, or circumvent it. If you would like to go to those lengths because of your concerns, more power to you, but I really doubt that there's a silent majority just waiting for someone to say something. Really, I couldn't care less, and most people, I think, are with me.
1)
Free Software To Save Us From Social Networks
Who said we WANT to be saved?!?
2)
and it goes and fetches all your social networking data from all the social networking applications, closing all your accounts. It backs itself up in an encrypted way to your friends' plugs, so that everybody is secure in the way that would be best for them, by having their friends holding the secure version of their data.
So basically you want facebook, but torrented?
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
I've been wondering for some time why social networking is not already a priority for the free software movement. The benefits of FOSS, open systems, and putting control in the end users' hands apply just as well to social networking as they do to any other application. It enables innovation (good luck building your own apps based on Facebook), it protects privacy (I know, it's trendy to disregard it so it must not be consequential - like housing prices and .com stocks), enables inter-operability between applications, and also long-term data integrity (good luck migrating your Facebook data to another platform).
Where are the FOSS social networking competitors? The peer-to-peer application that gives users control over their own, most personal data. The open source code and open systems that allow innovation and easy integration with new apps? The open data formats and protocols? The end-user control that allows users to do whatever they want, whenever they want, with their data and systems?
Is there still a movement? Has there been a major new project since Firefox? I wonder if the mass popularization of the web resulted in a class of users that don't understand these issues. If so, the FOSS movement has failed, so far, in its most important task, which is educating this new generation of users. There are not enough FOSS advocates to do it themselves; it needs to be a priority in the public's mind.
Perhaps my imagination is limited, but I've never thought of the wall-wart as something that might "save me from my Facebook account".
They don't make a JVM that works on top of the ARM processor, so you're stuck with python, php, and C++. (For its part, Facebook lets you run "Facebook apps".)
I mostly use it for samba and svn. I do have a webserver set up on the plug but I've never posted a link to it anywhere or I'd be uploading warez and tunez all day.
So, the people at facebook "constantly monitor users" and "do little to promote freedom"? And we wonder why the FSF is written off as a fringe organization?
Do you have ESP?
Social networks are where you go to share information, if there is information on that social network that you don't want in a public place you shouldn't have posted it in the first place.
Social networks are like public spaces, don't expect anything you do there to be private information.
The entire idea of privacy on a social network is moronic - that's not what they were designed for. The only things I've put on my FB account are things I'm fine with people knowing.
Common fucking sense people.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Speaking as one who uses Free rather than Open Source to characterize software, and admires Richard Stallman....
Why does every piece of software on the planet need to promote freedom? Isn't it enough that a whole lot of it does? And why shouldn't I feel free to put selected information about myself in the public view? (Seriously, you're all welcome to whatever is on my Facebook account. There are things I don't want the whole world to know about, and they're not on FB. I trust FB to respect my privacy in much the same sense that I trust mousetraps to catch and restrain blue whales, but I don't have to put stuff on it.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Sell an OS with a webserver already setup + a blog for every user.
Set the browser homepage to an aggregator of their favorite blogs.
Update the software for them through OS patches.
DON'T give them any options to customize the hell out of it.
I am aware of the many security reasons this is a bad idea. My point is that hardware is not needed.
but there sure is stupid ideas! Add this to the list.
One word: http://autonomo.us/
Ok, well, two: http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd/
http://wordpress.org/ http://status.net/ and http://drupalgardens.com/ are already leading by example.
Cut all the bull out and he wants to go back to homepages. Oh okay, so this homepage is in your home behind the router to your ISP and not on a server at your ISP, but that is what he is talking about.
And how would you index that? You can't. So you have freenet, the darknet version. A crypto nerds wetdream and unusable.
The problem is simple. How do I join a network from which I don't know anyone? How do I join your circle of friends, if I don't know any in the circle?
Darknet has that problem. Yes, you can exchange files but only with people you know from some other means. And then you exchange files only between that small number of nodes and no way is the secret world government that controls everything unable to just listen in on your connection that goes through your ISP who knows you address and see where the packets go. And that is not a problem even, because they can't look inside the package and that works in places like North-Korea and even China were the secret police is just going to give up if they can't read the package they don't want you to send unless they can open them and not just hit you until you confess.
Crypto nerds, they are like real nerds, but with the practical usage.
This idea of homepage servers, won't work. Facebook works because it allows you to find people that you lost contact with and even new friends.
And if he really wants to test it, go ahead. Try "Opera Unite". No need for a silly plug, your own site, right in your own browser.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Social networking sites are far more than "informatiuon about a few million people". Their value comes from the relationships between those people. This have value to the people themselves, and, fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on where one lies on the marketting/privacy divide, to others. It's restricting this access to others and controlling information about one's self, that's the appeal of this device.
However, maintaining all those relationships distributed across they myriad of individual servers in each home will prove problematic: one essentially has a distributed database. The first issues that come to mind are location services, mapping "friend" links to their wall-wart servers (yes, this is DNS, but do you want to be that visible?), as well as backups. The network traffic involved in simple "friend of friend" graphing starts to get significant.
In such an environment Facebook would likely spider all the wall-wart servers in a Googlesque manner for (a) marketting, and (b) convenience.
Still, it's a concept I've pondered for a while: I should control information about me, and who I share it with. Replication and backup becomes a separate problem: perhaps I want some storage service provider to host it... perhaps not: connections to port 25 at a server resolved from my domain name have terminated on a PC in my home for years: if my physical mailbox is outside my house, why should my electronic one not be inside (cursing static IP rental costs aside)?
In this model, "Facebook" becomes an "app", that people download to their home servers and use to establish and publish relationships between their friends.
In Liberty, Rene
How is this a problem for free software?
Um, why?
Stallman, Moglen, and others seem absolutely dead set against people using cloud services, including free-as-in-beer services (even when they are also free-as-in-GPL systems, apparently), but what they haven't done is articulated a value proposition that's going to convince the average non-geek user (or, even, the average geek user) to drop off all existing remotely-hosted social networking services in favor of buying and administering their own server.
For users that are so inclined, open protocols for federation with free software implementations already exist, as do low cost server options on which they can run. At most, you need an integration and polishing project to serve the market to which dedicated devices would appeal.
But its not that big of a market, IMO. It may grow if the FCC succeeds in its goal of making high-speed (in both directions) broadband widely affordable, but then I suspect that the applications that will make having your own server worthwhile will also be ones that demand more than a wall-wart.
he's already saying this idea is shit:
We can eat proprietary networks and excrete the public Internet.
It's called the World Wide Web. People hated it because it wasn't constrained and limited enough.
I am totally serious. It's one of those things (actually a very common phenomenon) where putting constraints on something, opens peoples' eyes as to how it can be used, and makes it seem cooler. But then they forget that they can still do those same things, even without the limitations present. Life is weird.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Freedom from who?
Spam kings, civilian police departments and credit scam goons? (Like banks.) Perhaps. But any group with real technology will be able to see through you from the top down no matter what consumer grade electronic solution you employ.
From that perspective, I don't think people really care about their freedoms. Most of the time, I don't think people realize they are being measured, categorized and manipulated accordingly. It's a fairly convincing illusion we have of freedom, in that the ones we lose we are convinced we didn't need anyway.
-FL
(Disclaimer: as soon as the word occurred to me I googled "wikisocial" and yep, it's in use. I'm not referring to any of them.)
A not-for-profit social network built with a "trustworthiness is our middle name" mindset would be appealing. Run by the sort of people who force you to keep a local backup of your data by default. Who take privacy seriously. Who encrypt all the data wherever possible. Who don't sell your profile info to advertisers and marketers. Who'd sooner throw all the hard drives and backup tapes into industrial shredders that turn them over to The Man. Who have a "do what ya like" attitude regarding content (within the expected no-kiddie-pron etc. limits.)
All it would take it volunteers and time. And a few million dollars for servers and bandwidth.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I deleted my Facebook. Everyone asks me why, here's why:
The quality of communication on Facebook is poor. The most indepth conversation you can have is what someone is doing and what they have done. You are not promoted to have an intellectual debate (Read: Why the hell am I on Slashdot then?) I much prefer to use email although If my email clients were more like how you send messages to people on Facebook it would make me very happy.
The people on Facebook for me are the wannabe trendy people. One or two years ago I tried to get my friends to join Multiply, it focused on contribution of blog postings, news, links, pictures and videos. It was difficult to get people to contribute things that were worthwhile.
All your messages and photographs are stored remotely. Facebook also converts your photographs downward in quality and makes them easier to share with people so most people only ever see the low quality pictures. In other words, it's not a lossless backup medium. At least with email, my email may be hosted but I can still download my own copies.
I may be a Windows user but I love keyboard control, I write this in VIM and my mail client is ALPINE.
On all the browsers I have used Facebook is slow. I underclock my laptop and it's annoying to have to return to normal speed just to use a website.
Mark Zuckerburg is not very nice. I do not believe in software patents but apparently he stole ideas from his fellow classmates. You can understand if you had an idea and someone stole it, without giving you credit. Zuckerberg sued by classmates. When some of the Facebook PHP code was leaked (Revealing Errors, Facebook source, it was rather disturbing what was written: 'put hotties there'. Also the news that the master password was once 'Chuck Norris' (master password) is rather disturbing. I do not think the developers are competetent. Especially something as privacy critical.
The potential for abuse in Facebook is huge. Law enforcements can request practically all data about you see this Cryptome leaked document. The amount of marketing information they can collect on you is more than anywhere else, they have your profiles, your fan pages, browsing habits and internet usage patterns.
The applications are ins
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
There is also the share Microsoft owns which is suspicious and also how it can be used within a police society (say Britain).
Another thing is how some pictures have ended up being used in marketing materials. Do you want your pictures to be just a URL away from anyone using them for their own purpose, potentially profiting from them?
I do not see how difficult it would be to write a script that:
PS: if you use this in your dissertation or thesis please at least link to me here.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Free Software had first mover advantage over the big brother social network sites but it didn't innovate fast enough. Remember blogs? What happened? The community couldn't agree on standards for providing advanced social applications that people wanted, so the walled gardens sprang up that provided them. Seriously, remember the years of dumb ass bickering over RSS or Atom?
I personally am very sad that large parts of the social experience online are now within wall gardens, I see it as AOL's revenge from the grave. It says something about the limits of open processes that hopefully the Free Software movement and others can learn from.
Even leaving the "who cares?" and "too late anyway" issues aside, this is simply technically unfeasible:
The most attractive hardware is the ultra-small, ARM-based, plug it into the wall, wall-wart server. [Such] an object can be sold to people at a very low one-time price, and brought home and plugged into an electrical outlet and plugged into a wall jack for the Ethernet, and you're done.
I mean, is Mr Moglen familar with concepts such as "NAT" and "private IP address"?
Maybe lawyers should stick to handling legalese, and techies are the one to deal with such things...
(I am aware that Moglen was involved at CS at some point, but it was a long time ago, and the world has moved on since then. The same applies to RMS himself, by the way - technology-wise, he still lives in early 90s.)
Why should they?
If you want you can include a "if you use this software you must also believe in & promote the same political/social values I do" clause in your software license. Otherwise stfu.
If the vast majority of people with FaceBook/MySpace/Whatever accounts really gave a fuck about their privacy and freedom, they wouldn't have opened accounts in the first place.
More than a few people I know are "conscientious objectors" and don't have accounts on social network sites. Everyone else knows fully well what they are sharing and don't really care (myself included)
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Alternatively you can just, y'know, log off. The websites only know so much as you let them know.
Do you see what I did there?
kdawson, you suck. seriously. stop putting this trash on the front page.
Firstly I'm market. For those people asking who would use such a service, I would, anyone who doesn't like facebook but wants to be more conected with friends will like it. I bet many people here would like it, there IS a market for this.
Ok, let me come up with some ideas.
- Give it a clear name and tag line. My book, my information, my control.
- Let me install this in my machine, the wall wart is really nice but it should be an extra.
- Integrate it with a DNS/url Hosting service!
a) Give it an option to buy your own domain (with liks to verison, godday etc)
b) Give it an option to use a free personal domain (think dyndns) then make the client responsible for keeping this DNS updated.
c) Make a deal with/create a company to host "My Personal Web" links (think http://myweb.org/Requiem)
- Make everything above multi identity friendly, one PPW for the job, one for friends.
- Make it easy to sync with other computers you host, either you desktop, or your spouse's, or your netbook, one has to be online most of the time-
- And yes, the wall wart.
- Integrate with Firefox/Flock/Chrome/ Maybe even IE.
- Integrate with Youtube/Delicious/Blogger, you get the idea.
- IMPORTANT: Make it so people can use it even if they don't have the client installed. It's a web app after all.
- Give them the option to install it from my personal web.
- Add a big "What is my personal web?" to the corner of, my personal web. Let my friends know I own my very own facebook.
I AM SOLD. I'd even buy the wall wart. You only have to implement these features.
No, I don't need it to already have critical mass. I can make my friends into visit a url, trust me.
But... the future refused to change.
The monitoring is a technical feature of the code implementation.
Freedom is a matter of configuration and usage.
Sure, you can argue some overlap in a Venn diagram sort of way, but to argue cause/effect seems likely to blow by the really important mechanism/policy distinction.
If we fret the government living in our underwear, and we should, then that also requires effort directed at the ballot box.
Source code fixes are necessary, but not sufficient.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
There's a lot of reasons for me to come here as AC -- none of them is questionable (well, perhaps the jokes...). /. has a policy of effectively burying ACs.
Sometimes this even allows for abusive moderation, because other moderators don't read ACs.
And registered dudes post BS, and if ever they get kicked from here, it seems _they_ don't care. If.
(but I don't know if this web software -- Slash? -- is still free)
Isn't that what the Unite collaboration stuff in Opera 10 was about? Sure with all the dynamic IPs you need Opera's servers to keep updating your actual location with other users (until we get to IPv6 anyway), but these tools exist and you don't need some wall wart piece of ugly hardware to do it.
Besides when was closing a MyFace account ever that easy? It doesn't eliminate the data you've put out there. Oh, he just doesn't want to loose his contact list, I see. I see the problem with this crap, but more open solutions already exist, few people know about them and even fewer use them. I hate social networking sites, the only one I ever opened was LinkedIn before I even thought about how much it resembled MySpace (don't recall Facebook even having existed back then), I wish I could undo it, but the best I can do is ignore it. I wish people cared, I care, I complain about it constantly. It will do no good, but it makes me happy to pretend to make a stand.
Without some sort of major upheaval in the social networking space, this will only
take off among the extremely tech savy among us (i dont wanna use the G word).
Its also over complicated for the average Joe.
Nice idea, way too late. One wonders if this ever would've been a viable option.
Thats my 2cents...adjusted for inflation...
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
it's about control. read the terms and conditions: whatever you post, you know longer own. Can't complain if it's lost, hijacked, un deletable, accessible by anyone even though you tried to restrict it to "friends", still there in 20 yrs, defaced, misused, resold, repurposed...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
As usual much of the Slash Dot crowd seems fixated on the negative.
I have plenty of FB friends, you know, real friends, like I actually know them, and all of us would love something like this.
What all you elitists are missing is that it could be a great nerd filter, and all those who don't care for the AOL mentality will have a network to ourselves.
http://xkcd.com/538/
I'd be for it - and be willing to spend $, as well. You get what you pay for...and if privacy costs a bit, and i have full control over it - that sounds great to me!
The article's idea sounds similar in concept with the rumored Apple iGroups, which seems to be about using the iphone as the place you store your encrypted social media/content and you share it through an Apple hub service. Apple iGroups Rumor
Add facebook-like features to XMPP, in combination with a lightweight apache (a bit like Opera Unite).
XMPP already supports user profiles, groups, etc (as far as i know).
So we’re not far away from it.
It would be free, open, decentralized (important!), still compatible with facebook itself, and you could use your own client.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I think people tends to forget when they comment this story that the FSF had its best ideas in the _80's_ and have since that refused to evolve. Its a bunch of guys hitting 50 pretty soon, way past their prime.
Sometime I just wish that guy had just given that source code to Stallman....
From: http://www.semanticdesktop.org/ ..."
"The Semantic Web holds promises for information organization and selective access, providing standards means for formulating and distributing metadata and Ontologies. Still, we miss a wide use of Semantic Web technologies on personal computers. The use of ontologies, metadata annotations, and semantic web protocols on desktop computers will allow the integration of desktop applications and the web, enabling a much more focused and integrated personal information management as well as focused information distribution and collaboration on the Web beyond sending emails. The vision of the Semantic Desktop for personal information management and collaboration has been around for a long time: visionaries like Vanevar Bush and Doug Engelbart have formulated and partially realized these ideas. However, for the largest part their ideas remained a vision for far too long since the foundational technologies necessary to render their ideas into reality were not yet invented ? these ideas were proposing jet planes, where the rest of the world had just invented the parts to build a bicycle. However, recently the computer science community has developed the means to make this vision a reality:
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
If you are concerned about security/privacy/freedom, the problem isn't facebook, the problem is cloud based computing in general. The "cloud" (i.e. big centralized proprietary vendor control of your data) needs to be usurped by a decentralized overlay network with strong security/privacy protections.
Not to support this device idea, but seriously?
Just from my own experiences, there's:
There's lots of reasons to sign up for shitty services you'll never use - all of them involve other people who have moved on from old media. Unless you never interact with people outside of IT/CS, in which case I'm sorry to pull you away from your IRC channel and Usenet reader.
Isn't it a bit early for April Fools?
I! Tego Arcana Dei.
I cannot understand why this got posted. All I see is a rambling paragraph with a rather poorly thought out concept. Seriously /., seriously?
People who are truly concerned about their freedom and privacy would not be using online services like Facebook in the first place.
It's a very dark ride.
Actually, I do care. I care that a site is vetted by some entity that is large enough to have something to loose if they host spam, spyware or viruses. Perhaps I value short term security over an unquantifiable, possible loss of privacy. I doubt that I would traverse far and wide over insecure links hosted by individuals or small enterprises. I may be in the minority here-- look at the success of various torrent sites, and the malware they can spread.
On Sunday, I'll be releasing an alpha version of a LAMP "virtual appliance" that runs a customized WordPress MU/BuddyPress install I call Foojbook. The eventual hope is to get it running on devices like this, as Eben Moglen explains in the interview.
.iso I'm releasing or run it inside a guest OS via QEMU, which I'll also bundle in a separate download targeted at thumbdrives.
It'll also include Apache Shindig and the example Partuza social networking site that goes with it. BuddyPress doesn't yet support the OpenSocial stack (although it'll potentially be in the next release), so I'm including Shindig/Partuza just in case people want to hack away at that. You will be able to either install Foojbook via the
I contacted Eben about a month ago about Foojbook, and I intend to be a part of the effort he's putting together. *However*, and I want to stress this, Foojbook is currently just an example of what's possible, and only allows you to set up a single profile for yourself...there is currently no sharing of data or any communication between separate Foojbook installs, since I don't know enough about network protocols and encryption to implement these pieces myself.
There is still a lot of work to be done and, if you're interested in helping out, please contact me.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
Hrmmm, on second thought, bring on that wall-wart thingy.... maybe I can turn it into a nice little tftp server :)
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
wall-warts can be hacked too
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
What happens when someone breaks in to your house and takes your wall wart?
Or, your pissed off ex takes it?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I've already deleted my Facebook account. Got tired of all the boringness of it all.
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
I think guys like RMS and Moglen misunderstand the appeal of "free" software and thus believe in a mandate that doesn't actually exist.
The primary reason that "free as in RMS's definition" software is popular is that it is "free as in RMS's lodging at MIT".
Nobody really cares what they think about social networking and in this case there's no answer to the question "what's in it for me?".
Sounds like a great way to network for any basement-oriented opportunities.
This could definitely work. But nix the ethernet jack, give it wifi, and a rechargeable battery. Make it the same as an ipad in form factor, but on FOSS OS.
While you're at it, I have ideas for the new FOSS OS/Social Network:
First, don't close your FB MS and other social network accounts. Leave them open, and automagically allow all of your friends updates etc. to come over as if they were native. There will always be some friend who is stuck in the dark ages on geocities that you might need to still talk to (that example was intentionally bad).
Second, we need a more intuitive interface. Clone FaceBook and MySpace exactly, and set those as options, but then also make a vastly superior interface. I would use one of the many great GPL'ed 3d engines, such as ioquake3. Then let everyone's webcam build a custom 3d avatar based on their actual face/body, and have their avatars be able to interact real time on screen, complete with real time 3d positioned VOIP. Of course this functionality could be turned on or off with a simple mouse click.
In addition, allow a 3rd party plugin system that can create whole new 3d experiences in this virtual world. Build a couple of fast easy ones right in: Chess, checkers, Cards..... And allow anyone to autmagically sign on to their FB, MS, email, IRC, AIM, hotmail, yahoo, or etc. and be able to talk with, and PLAY a card game with as many of their other friends as are currently online.
Third, make all the tools to interact very, very easy to do from an android phone. Pictures, Audio and Videos should be able to be uploaded instantly, and in open formats like .PNG and .OGG. In addition, Video and Audio should be possible to broadcast real time, to any other user with a FOSSpace account.
With this design, you could easily supplant YouTube, Picasa, MySpace, Facebook, and all other social networking sites, very quickly. In addition, as most people would only require this and a Firefox plugin, you could also supplant Mac and Windows, virtually over night.
The final part of my plan to supplant corporations with personal freedom involves replacing the ISPs. With a system of FOSS routers and repeaters, and with all devices and phones acting as potential relays for a truly open ad hoc networking system, we could easily rest control of the entire internet from corporations and governments and truly begin a world of freedom and open information for all.
Other "Plugins" that I would like to see implemented in the 3d virtual space:
Boggle
SNES emu
N64 emu
NES emu
Sega emu
Mame emu
Urban Terror Portal (just walk your avatar into a door to join a server)
Wow Portal (though I'd like to replace WoW with a FOSS clone ASAP.
GTA San Andreas Portal (this would require a whole new FOSS clone of the original game. Lots of work this bit.)
Civ 2 emu. Something you could play real time with your friends in VOIP conversation still. And a Civ 2 clone because it was more fun than later version.
Real Time Music Collaboration tools. A jack for your guitar/bass/keys/violin/drums to hook up directly and allow your instrument to be heard real time while your avatar moves real time to play exactly as you are playing. This would make rehearsal SO MUCH BETTER for me in both of my bands.
Do all of this, you could beat apple and their iphone, you could beat skype, you could beat windows, you could beat myspace, facebook, and even google.
I'm willing to beta test.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Live in country like Iran, China.... and see that there is a problem like this, even there is disaster regarding this issue !
That's a suggestion and it's clear will be discussed, but the problem is out side of USA, in countries like Iran, let me explain, now I can connect to internet and thanks to Tor network let me use Facebook or other social networks because all kind of social networking are banned and Filtered by government but with a little effort we can use this sites. But what will be happen if we need a Hardware to access this sites? oops, we can't buy that piece of hardware because government will forbid importing that hardware, so this means no more social networking for us. Yes I like the idea of having secure untraceable or distributed way to access Social Network because at least in countries like here keeping social networking secure and private is much important than any other place but being depend to hardware **at first look** is not brilliant solution. it will be like Satellite receiver, in Iran if you have a Satellite receiver you'll pay fine or even go jail, I can't think about another hardware to bring my people to jail ;)
A decentralized social networking toolkit that interoperates across sites and that any site can integrate? That would liberate us from social networking lockin to some extent.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Comment removed based on user account deletion
is something to save us from Glyn Moody. This wormy-looking prick once wrote a piece praising Stallman for giving us "magic bread". As you might of guessed, it's a modified version of Jesus's "feeding of the multitude".
Turning to a Linux advocate for thoughts on Microsoft is like asking Hitler how he felt about the Jews.
That is free (as in freedom, not as beer) software means that no conditions attached on its use (depending the exact license there are some conditions, but usually regarding redistribution or things like that). That means that if you want to use it for good or evil (under some subjective point of view and moral values) , you are not prevented by its license to do it. A tool don't need to have ethic, just need to be used and the one that should worry about ethic is the one using it.
Even creating a new kind of free software license with "ethics" attached fall into the subjectivity of whatever wrong could be doing facebook, google, or even microsoft, both by point of view, social perception of that time (in 15 years we will see privacy as we see it now? Apache have 15 years already, Linux is close to 20, and isolated events like i.e. 9/11 can change world perception on certain topics as good or evil)
CHAPEL HILL, NC–Area resident Jonathan Green does not own a television, a fact he repeatedly points out to friends, family, and coworkers–as well as to his mailman, neighborhood convenience-store clerks, and the man who cleans the hallways in his apartment building.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694
Watch the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOEMv0S8AcA
I think his main point is not about sharing information about with your friends about what you're doing on Friday night, it is about the meta-information you leave behind when using a centralized server/client model like almost everything is now on the Internet.
In the lecture he talks about how infrastructures like facebook can be used to spy on people, and he's not talking about the information that you publish, he's talking about the information that can be inferred from the analysis of your activities. (i.e facebook employees can guess with a fair degree of accuracy who has a crush on whom because they can see how many times so-and-so looked at so-and-so's page)
His problem is not that people want to have online profiles and share information with each other, his problem is that the client server model that has evolved on the Internet is inherently susceptible to misuse and the erosion of human freedom. He wants to move the Internet back to what it originally was intended to be which is a network of equal peers.
The way it works now, with big servers in the middle and all us tiny dis-empowered clients on the edge is a model that is inherently susceptible to abuse and is indeed being misused to humankind's disenfranchisement.
One step he suggests toward restoring some of our privacy is for the open/free software community to build a free software stack that will run on very small cheap hardware i.e. shevaplug that individuals will use to host their own profile in their own home. "You keep the logs" if a law enforcement agency wants to spy one you they have to get a subpoena to search your actual house (where the server actually is). With this decentralized model he suggests that it will be harder to aggregate all the data about individuals.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
This is just insane. If you write free software, you have to accept that people might want to use it for things of which you don't approve. If you can't handle that, don't write free software.
no longer working for cnet
After learning how to block apps, I have been much more content with facebook.
A study on Facebook done recently shows that people care a lot more than one thinks about privacy
http://preibusch.de/publications/Bonneau_Preibusch__Privacy_Jungle__2009-05-26.pdf
Perhaps the fact that it is difficult, that there is no simple solution, is what stops them from being
able to fulfill that desire. Perhaps there is a lot of marketing to spread the idea that they don't. I wonder in whose
interest that would be?
Now another thought. The problem with current social networks is that they are too small. On any centralised network the network operator is always listening. So the number of possible groups that could be made on a site with N users is the size of the Powerset of N. Which is a huge number. Just as a matter of interest here are some figures:
P(100) = 2^100 = 1267650600228229401496703205376
P(250) = 2^250 = 18092513943330655534932966407607485602073435104006338131165247501236\
42650624
P(1000) = 2^1000 = 10715086071862673209484250490600018105614048117055336074437503883703\
51051124936122493198378815695858127594672917553146825187145285692314\
04359845775746985748039345677748242309854210746050623711418779541821\
53046474983581941267398767559165543946077062914571196477686542167660\
429831652624386837205668069376
Now take a site with N users, remove the operator you have P(N)/2 number of groups that connot be made.
Next think of the possible groups that could be made if the whole of humanity could be linked together... The current social networks are just peanuts compared to what is possible....