Diaspora – “Private by Default”
On September 15, Diaspora, will release it’s open source code, inviting discussion, development and evaulation from the developer community.
Diaspora was developed by 4 students from New York in response to Facebook’s privacy debarcle earlier in the year. With an emphasis on privacy and user ownership of content, it is tipped to revolutionise social networking as we know it.
Diaspora, “aims to be a distributed network, where totally separate computers,(seeds) connect to each other directly”, without compromising privacy. The seed is owned by the user and hosted via web host, a cloud-based host, an ISP etc., cutting out the use of “hubs” where information is stored centrally, such as with Facebook. This then gives the user complete ownership of their content and information.
Now while, I am very supportive of anyone attempting to help people communicate online in a safe and “private by default” manner, my only concern is, will people, who souly wish to communicate with their friends and family, also then take the time to create and set up something which is automatically determined for them already in an online social network, such as Facebook? (albeit, in an entirely anti-privacy manner.)
Will people actually be bothered take the opportunity to exert some agency over who can and can’t see their personal information or will Diaspora only attract a Geek niche market who already understand how to use this social medium effectively?
Will Diaspora just be too complicated for the “Average Joe” internet user to understand and implement effectively?
I personally, am very excited by the prospect of creating my own “node” and will definitely be watching this one closely on September 15!
Listen to what Dan, Max, Ilya and Raphael have to say and make up your own mind… Is Diaspora really the next generation of social networking or will it be just another niche communication tool to add to the ever growing list?
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