Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Diaspora On Schedule, One Month In

Posted by timothy on from the repatriate-repatriate dept.

schlick writes with word that the Diaspora project (last mentioned here several weeks back) has an update with a demo and some screen shots. Diaspora's goal: to provide social networking without the privacy invasion possibilities inherent in sites like Facebook.

13 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. I don't understand by deathtopaulw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How can you have a website where you broadcast your most intimate thoughts and personality traits to hundreds of people willingly at the same time and still retain privacy? Or are they just vowing to not sell our info to advertisers? This would be stupid if they wanted the website to last more than a few seconds without a subscription service.

    1. Re:I don't understand by alangerow · · Score: 5, Informative

      Because the system will be decentralized. You can control your own seed, meaning your own data, and who it gets shared with. They aren't making a Facebook clone. Actually, there will be Facebook interaction, so you can host your own profile and connect with Facebook users ... it's listed in their timeline if you actually read their update.

    2. Re:I don't understand by SilverHatHacker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's GPG encrypted, for one thing. Also, the info-sharing settings actually work, and don't get changed by default every couple months. As far as funding goes, so far the plan is to offer a paid hosting service, or let you run your own server.

      --
      Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
    3. Re:I don't understand by T+Murphy · · Score: 5, Informative

      The same way you control what people do with data you put anywhere else on the internet: you don't. The point is you get to pick who does get to see your data, unlike on Facebook where you unwittingly share all your data whenever you play a game, or visit a partner website, or they change their policies and make previously private data public. If you could have 100% complete control it would be called anti-social networking, I suppose.

      The big deal isn't that your data is magically safe, but that all sharing of that data is entirely on your terms.

      --
      My webcomic
  2. Meanwhile... by dominion · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Work on Appleseed has also been progressing rapidly. In the past month, we've added internationalization, theming, and an MVC+plugin framework. You can see our revised roadmap in the svn:

    http://svn.appleseedproject.org/trunk/_documentation/ROADMAP.TXT

    Here's my public Appleseed profile using an early version of the new theme:

    http://developer.appleseedproject.org/profile/michael.chisari

    Remote logins, remote friends connections, remote messaging, journals, photos, discussion groups, sophisticated node control, ACL and privacy controls and more are all working, and will be refined in the coming releases, along with all new features like one-click server upgrades, search, micro-blogging, and more.

    Michael Chisari
    Appleseed - http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/

  3. Personal web server? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The wiki article describes Diaspora as an open source personal web server, but for a lot of people their home machine, if they have one, is about the most insecure place to put things. For a lot of other people they have a work machine they never install stuff on, and an iphone, on which the userland belongs to Steve Jobs.

    I have a personal web server. It serves http and rss. But I am not normal and I can't see myself installing this thing.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
    1. Re:Personal web server? by Rotworm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've always imagined it would roll out in a manner similar to Wordpress. You can host your own by installing from either source or package (if offered by your distribution). Or you can sign-up for an account at their hosted service. IANAC (I am not a cryptographer) but I guess the hosted service is still secure due to the GPG implementation.

    2. Re:Personal web server? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've spoken to the devs, there will be hubs. Think wordpress.com vs wordpress. You can host it yourself, or at one of many locations. So they cater to both audiences, and you can always move your stuff off the hub onto your own box, or a server you have, whenever. Contrast with Facebook :)

    3. Re:Personal web server? by EdIII · · Score: 4, Funny

      Contrast with Facebook :)

      Sure.

      1) Can I farm till 3am?
      2) What about all them chickens that need feeding?
      3) Treasure on Treasure Island does NOT find itself
      4) Will I be able to fight and rob other people into submission while building a mafia empire?
      5) Can I farm till 3am?

  4. Re:good luck by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the vast majority of facebook users are not concerned with privacy

    This is a point that seems lost on most Slashdotters: Most of the people that use Facebook are quite happy with its "privacy" rules. They willingly supply personal information, and have the expectation that it will be spread about. Thus, Facebook is mostly a problem for those that don't use it.

    --
    "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
  5. Re:Privacy is dead. by biryokumaru · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's 547-55-5462.

    --
    When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
  6. Re:This is the future. by fat_mike · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Your signature alone tells me about your grasp of things that the majority of people don't care about.

    Asterisk is a joke in the home. The last time I checked I could get phone service for $9.95 a month and buy a cheap analog phone for $15.00. Do you really expect people to pay $830 for a 24 station analog card along with the computer and other crap they'll need to run Asterisk?

    This Diaspora is nothing more than playing catch-up. Remember when you HAD to be on AOL then Craigslists was the poop, then MySpace, then Facebook and now Twitter? Its the idea and correct implementation and marketing that made those successful for the given period of time they were.

    This is another project trying to collect the scraps from the tables of the big boys that will eventually be noted as, "Whatever happened to Diaspora? They haven't updated their logo contest in eight months!"

  7. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion