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?"

Comments

I'm going to go out on a limb here....

[Anonymous Coward]

....and suggest that most people don't care.

Re:I'm going to go out on a limb here....

[calibre-not-output]

More than that, they don't care about their online privacy either.

Re:I'm going to go out on a limb here....

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Not only do most users not care- but the few who do aren't going to want an either-or system that blocks out their friends who are less technically adept.

" and it goes and fetches all your social networking data from all the social networking applications, closing all your accounts."

Is not a reasonable way to go about it.

Replace that line with "and it goes and fetches all your social networking data from all the social networking applications, and syncs it daily, giving you an always-on local server *combining* updates from several social networking sites" and I'd consider paying up to $500 for such a device.

Re:I'm going to go out on a limb here....

[Dishevel]

What people do care about is letting me know they have acquired a purple pony. They care ALOT about that.

Re:I'm going to go out on a limb here....

[spazdor]

More than that, they are endeavouring specifically against their online privacy.

Grandparent comment said "still haven't figured out the point, if there is one", and you have indirectly advanced it.

Facebook exists for the express purpose of escaping anonymity and privacy. That is just what personal publishing is.

Uhh...

[Dan East]

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.

No.

[snarfies]

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).

Too little too late

[pwnies]

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.

"freedom"

[Sub Zero 992]

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.

what on earth are you talking about?

[Trailer Trash]

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.

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?

Why?

[david_thornley]

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.)

The Free social network already exists

[Sloppy]

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.