Get large enough and they will begin to block you as violating their ToS (á lá Power.com)

I am looking at Diaspora as well, but got about as far as you it looks like.

When it comes to running your own node… yes, that’s the ultimate level of control over your data. But I’d submit that there’s a middle ground. Think of e-mail – most people don’t run their own mail servers, but they can choose which mail provider to rely on instead. It may be that in a few years there are several large “Facebooks” alongside many individual servers, all interacting with each other.

Your points about the challenges of decentralization are valid, but if you don’t decentralize you are forever depending on whoever operates the central server to behave themselves (Facebook being a prime example of why this might not be a good idea). If protecting privacy is among the key goals, you have to build a decentralized ecosystem.

You are also correct that most people won’t bother running their own node. However, I can’t see how one gets real privacy and real control over one’s data without doing that.

@Arjan and Karel: Thanks for the tip on Clique. I’d worked with elgg some in the past, but hadn’t been too impressed with it. I’ll check out Clique.

But I’d also reiterate what I just said to Jason about Diaspora. The current frustration with Facebook is an opportunity to build something revolutionary instead of just something “more private”.

One possible point of departure is that I feel that any future open Facebook should be focused on helping people work together to create a better quality of life offline. Now more than ever, people need help. And less and less business and government is there to help. We need to rely on each other more. Here’s my take:

http://shareable.net/blog/facebooks-gone-rogue-the-network-we-need-now

“One other note on this point: I would love to see a service try and tackle the issue of multiple identities with a more elegant solution than letting users create multiple accounts.”

This is exactly what Clique (http://clique.primelife.eu/) does; having multiple ‘faces’ within one account. Warning: this is research, so don’t expect commercial-grade support. Feel free to play around with it.

Plans for the coming year:
- Add time dimension: content expiry, fading relations
- enrolment wizard
- encrypted posts (server-side and/or client-side)
- …

The project’s name is PrimeLife, website:
http://www.primelife.eu/

Karel.

Build more or less as a research example on open-source software (elgg) as part of an EU project on privacy management. While currently development is somewhat halted they are looking for someone and/or the elgg community to take this further.

- Arjan