On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 5:29 PM, Melvin Carvalho <[email protected]>wrote:
> > > 2010/3/22 Henry Litwhiler <[email protected]> > > I am new to the GNU Social project, and I just thought that I'd add my two >> cents. >> >> While it is certainly important for people to maintain their privacy, most >> people are unwilling to sacrifice convenience for privacy, something that is >> made evident by the success of centralized social networking sites such as >> Facebook and MySpace. Most people aren't concerned about privacy, and most >> people aren't concerned about how free their software is. Of course, there >> are those who *do* care about these things, and this tool *would*certainly >> be attractive to them, but this tool will not be very successful >> both in the sense of popularity and in the sense of the protection of >> others' privacy if it is not also *better* than nonfree, >> privacy-threatening services like Facebook. >> > > Yes and no, there is some great research on privacy in social networks from > the University of Cambridge, which shows that the desire for privacy may be > a generally underestimated. Here are some excepts: > > > http://preibusch.de/publications/Bonneau_Preibusch__Privacy_Jungle__2009-05-26.pdf > > "There is also a common misconception that privacy violations occur > routinely because the gener- > ation of (mostly younger) social networking users fundamentally do not care > about privacy. This is > *contradicted by studies where most social network users do express an > interest in privacy* [8, 31, 26, 42]. > Given the plethora of competing sites, the functional similarity of most > social networks, and users’ stated > concern for privacy, market conditions appear prime for sites to compete on > the basis of privacy. This > was our overarching research question as we conducted—to the best of our > knowledge—the largest and > most comprehensive field study in the academic literature of the global > social network market." > > ... > > "Previous research has provided evidence > that Web users can be divided into three groups based on privacy concerns: > the marginally concerned, > the pragmatic majority, and the privacy fundamentalists [6], a taxonomy > originally due to Westin. The > predominant group of users, the pragmatic *majority claims when asked to > be interested in privacy* but has > been shown in previous studies to forget about privacy when given an > attractive service [6] or monetary > rewards such as discounts [79]." > > ... > > "[Privacy] Fundamentalists make up a small portion of the market (*estimated > between 17% [6, 25] and 30%* [79]), > thus their participation may not be crucial for a social network’s success" > Again, I'm not saying that privacy would be lost on the mass market - even if tons of people don't go out looking for social networking tools specifically for privacy, it is certainly a big feature we can really push. In the end, though, it really doesn't matter - the goal is to create the best tool possible while still keeping privacy and freedom in mind. > > > >> >> In short, it isn't going to be successful if it is not also better, in >> addition to being free (as in speech) and private. It will be almost >> impossible for us to make this more convenient to set up than centralized >> alternatives (it's easier to just create an account on a web site than it is >> to setup a home social networking server) - that is something we will have >> to accept. The only way that we can bring high usership despite that >> drawback is if the product defeats centralized alternatives in most of the >> remaining categories (features, ease-of-use, etc.). While this may be >> something of a daunting task, I have no doubt that we are capable of >> overcoming it. >> >> That said, this project will not (regardless of design or intentions) be >> just an alternative to preexisting social networking sites - it will be a >> solid foundation for the decentralization of the internet as we know it. >> >> At it's inception, the internet was meant as nothing more than a way for a >> few key government facilities to quickly transmit large amounts of >> information between one another. Businesses soon got involved with the same >> intentions, and, finally, so did individuals. The internet was designed so >> that any "node" could interact with any other node, directly. For a time, >> many people with internet access would run their own servers, hosting web >> pages about themselves and things they were interested in. ISPs, however, >> soon learned that they could make more money by forcing people to *pay*to >> run their own web servers properly, and thus came this idea of dynamic IP >> addresses, which will be a serious but certainly solvable roadblock to any >> project (including this one) that seeks to move the internet towards >> decentralization. >> >> From there, personal web servers died out, to the point where only >> commercial enterprises actually ran their own servers, which brings us to >> today. Now, we almost never directly connect from computer to computer. >> People now use social networking sites to communicate, multiplayer video >> games are hosted on remote servers, and email is entirely handled by massive >> datacenters in the middle of nowhere. The internet's capability for users to >> directly connect to one another is left underutilized. >> >> By utilizing a variety of decentralization peer discovery and >> authentication techniques, we can override any attempts by ISPs to prevent >> direct user-to-user communication, and allow any and all users to host their >> own data on their own servers. >> >> Another (perhaps underrepresented) advantage to the usage of such an open, >> decentralized system is the idea of data preservation. Websites come and go >> (both in the sense of losing popularity, and in the related sense of >> shutting down completely), often leaving users lacking all their old social >> interactions and personal data. I'm not talking about the related privacy >> concerns (though those are certainly relevant) but instead of the >> preservation and continuity of data. By standardizing a certain (open) >> format for private data of many types, we can ensure that the private data >> and, ultimately, the entirety of internet culture, is never lost to the >> changing of technology. >> >> >> A bit long winded, perhaps, but valid points, I think. >> >> Thoughts? Reactions? >> >> -- >> >> Henry L. >> > >
