Some thoughts regarding the recent controversies about Facebook, Ello, etc. 1 :: Privacy ~ Whether we like it or not, at this point we should consider everything we post on the internet as more or less public information. Security on the internet is horrible, governments around the world actively undermine security-standards leaving everyone at risk and also actively attempt to record all data transmitted on the internet, and the fact that these social networks are run by unaccountable corporations that only use closed-source platforms mean that we can only trust what they say publicly about their privacy policies, which is more often than not untrue. The amount of precautions one has to go through and technical expertise one has to have to truly protect information from unwanted 3rd parties on the internet is non-trivial. While it would be nice to have secure/safe spaces for conversations online, it too often is an unsafe practice and not a good idea unless it is truly the only method of having those conversations. 2 :: Funding ~ Ello will sooner or later have to find a way to monetize you as a user either through data mining, subscription costs, or advertising, as running servers for large amounts of people is prohibitively expensive. In a capitalist society, we will never have a social network that is centralized that also doesnt find a way to raise significant amounts of money at the expense of users. 3 :: Decision Making Power ~ If we have disagreements with the way social networks are organized and run, we have no decision making power to enact changes for users. Reflecting on point 1 and 2, governments often (secretly) make demands about how online services should be structured in order to make them accessible to intelligence agencies and majority stakeholders often force companies to enact changes to increase profits for shareholders, again always at the cost of users. Privacy is bad business, which means it usually is actively undermined, and we have no leverage to counteract these forces. All of that being said, diversifying across different social networks is probably beneficial for everyone, especially if it means pressuring these companies using market forces to fix the above issues and be more responsive, and also making information less centralized, but in the end this is also a very weak form of consumer activism that usually doesnt amount to much. Anyway, see you all on Ello @ianalanpaul! (Endnote: Points 1, 2 & 3 are why Diaspora was so exciting initially, because it was an open-source and decentralized project, but there never was a significant enough of a migration for it to be useful as a social network)
Posted on: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 20:14:40 +0000