Dealing With the Eventual Collapse of Social Networks

taskforce writes "There are good reasons to think web services like Facebook won't be around forever. If Facebook ever were to go down there would be potentially huge costs to its users. We can all take individual steps to protect our data and social network, but is there anything we can do to our economy to mitigate the costs of the failure of these services? The Red Rock looks at the role open source, open standards, consumer cooperatives, and enterprise reform can play. The author concludes that all is not lost, and that there's a lot we can do to reduce both the cost and frequency of failure." His suggestions are pretty radical: "The first is draw up an Open Data Bill and pass it into law. This would (where applicable) mandate the use of open standards by firms, and also mandate that all data held about a user is downloadable by that user, in an open standard. ... The second is to reform the corporate structure of larger companies to include some directors elected by consumers, rather than just shareholders. Not all the directors, like in the Cooperative Group, and not even a majority, but just a small portion of the board — say one third."

Comments

wow

[the_Bionic_lemming]

I guess I am the only person on the planet who never got a facebook account, and as such will not be impacted in some way when a firm that took all of your personal information and sold it to others fails.

Yay me!

Re:Friend-face

[Viol8]

"You mean that whenever I send you an email it is "real" but if I post on your Facebook wall it is not "real"? Looks like you never tried Facebook or that you never got how it works."

Tried it, didn't see the point. If I want to communicate using text I'll send email or an SMS.

"So every time there is something going on in your life, you phone EVERY one of your friends that might be interested by it? Every time?"

Yeah , oddly enough thats what normal do with *real* friends.

"Gosh, I guess you don't keep a lot of friends then"

I have about half a dozen real friends but is a lot better than having 100 pretend ones that merely stroke your ego on facebook.

"Facebook users also meet other persons in meat space. "

Yeah , you see calling the real world meat space really does make you sound like some nerd loser who hardly ever leaves his mums basement.