

Four Nerds and a Cry to Arms Against Facebook - edw519
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

======
dpcan
Right now, these guys are thinking about development, but they should already
be thinking about "adoption".

If it's too geeky, it will never take off. It needs to be trendy and sassy,
whether you like it or not. The "if we build it they will come" approach may
shoot this thing in the foot.

On another note, are we putting data in control of the "user" or their "isp"?

This feels like the Kazaa or Napster of social networking, which can so easily
be shut down by ISPs.

Lastly, people use Facebook at work and at home, and they log onto it from
their friend's houses, their phones, etc. If it's all on my "node" at home, do
I have to leave my stuff running all the time? That's not very convenient or
green. And I don't want my bandwidth at home being eaten up every time my
friends want to look at my vacation photos.

Anyway, kudos for the ambition, but the idea needs more time.

~~~
philk
_Lastly, people use Facebook at work and at home, and they log onto it from
their friend's houses, their phones, etc. If it's all on my "node" at home, do
I have to leave my stuff running all the time? That's not very convenient or
green. And I don't want my bandwidth at home being eaten up every time my
friends want to look at my vacation photos._

What you really want is a central repository where your encrypted data can be
uploaded to and only decrypted by those you choose (not the host itself).

~~~
eli
Honestly, I think I would be fine with a unencrypted central repository that
just isn't evil. Something with a very clear policy on what data is stored and
what is done with.

I assure you the mechanics of how the data is stored is not of interest to 99%
of people. Nobody really understands encryption anyway. Or is this site
exclusively for geeks?

~~~
swernli
Whether or not people understand encryption doesn't change how well it
projects them. The difference between "encrypted" and "unencrypted and not
evil" is like the difference between a car with airbags and a car that has a
little sticker on the dash that says "Try not to crash."

Obviously, no security is perfect, and given sufficiently evil central
repository you'd still end up a situation of mistrust. But rather than take a
chance with my private information simply because the people holding it tell
me they aren't evil, I'll take responsibility for my own data and do my best
as a user to make the right choices about how to treat that which I desire to
keep private. If that means being picky about what I share/post, that's fine.
If that means I need to run my own host and control access myself, well that's
the burden I can choose to take to give me the peace of mind I'm looking for.

~~~
jacquesm
I think you meant 'protects' ?

~~~
swernli
Yep. I can't seem to edit it now, but the first sentence definitely meant have
"protects" not "projects."

------
thaumaturgy
I love how there's the classic old Unix-commandline-sex-joke on the chalkboard
in the background of the image.

~~~
alanh
It appears the NYT has cropped the joke out of their photo. (Cached:
<http://www.geekosystem.com/dirty-unix-joke-nyt-facebook-nyu/>)

~~~
alexyim
Thanks. I thought I was about to lose my geek cred for not seeing it

------
jacquesm
Great advertising for kickstarter!

I'll bet you they will get more out of this than diaspora in the long run.

There is an interesting Jewish sub-theme to all this, Diaspora being obviously
a term with a strong connection to the Jewish faith, most or all of these four
are from Jewish heritage and Zuckerberg himself is too.

~~~
sdfx
It's an odd choice to use a name with such strong historic connotations as
opposed to something generic like Yahoo or Google. This might create
expectations or alienate some users. And the asterisk is just annoying. But on
the other hand, if they are successful the name won't matter one iota.

~~~
Raphael
Iota, now there's a name!

~~~
jacquesm
How about 'stampede' ?

------
jgrahamc
It'll fail because the average person does not care about their privacy that
much. What'll happen is Facebook will continually adjust their privacy
policies watching the non-reaction and reaction from the public adding and
deleting as necessary. They'll simple evolve to stay relevant.

What the average person wants is functionality, not some enhanced privacy. To
succeed they'll need to offer enhanced functionality.

~~~
orblivion
If it doesn't take off as a service but stays as a looming threat to Facebook,
especially being open source and impossible to entirely kill, it'll still be
worth it, though granted still a disappointment.

~~~
hpvic03
You could get a basic, working social network built for a few hundred bucks,
but that wouldn't make it a threat to Facebook. And Diaspora won't be one
either, unless they've got a trick up their sleeve.

The only thing that is a threat to Facebook is something that causes them to
start hemorrhaging users. But face it, when the average person logs in to
Facebook they have new stuff to look at it and people to communicate with. But
if they signup and login to Diaspora, there just won't be as much activity, if
any. So the average person will go back to Facebook, and stay there, until all
of his/her friends move to Diaspora. But they won't, for the same reason. It's
just not going to happen unless there is some fundamental change.

The reason Facebook gained users so fast was because they generated incredible
amount of buzz by making it exclusive and lauching it at Harvard. If I were
diaspora, I would follow the exact same launch plan. However, from what
they're saying it sounds like this won't be the plan.

So when they launch they'll have a bunch of hacker types come signup and check
it out, and they'll possibly even invite their friends. And a few friends may
even join. But those friends (normals) will go back to Facebook simply because
there's more stuff to look at and more people to talk with. And that will be
the end.

~~~
ebiester
However, that doesn't mean people won't end up using both. Free software types
will gravitate to something like Diaspora and so will their community friends.
You may not get every community off of facebook, but you may get a few.

I can see political communities moving to Diaspora, I can see technical
communities gravitating/dual use with twitter... No, it will probably never be
as big as either, but that doesn't mean it won't fill a niche.

~~~
orblivion
The sad thing is that full-time individual adoption of a social network
requires mass adoption the social network. That is to say, not having
everybody and their grandma on Diaspora will be a fairly big downside compared
to Facebook.

As for having both, personally, I'm looking for a way to not use Facebook at
all and still get the benefits. Right now I just don't use my Facebook
account. Having Diaspora would be a small improvement, but if it's a lukewarm
thing, my friends will be more active on Facebook, and won't be that active on
Diaspora.

Maybe there'll be a Diaspora app for Facebook, ha. I'm not familiar with
Facebook, is there a way to do this without giving Facebook all the data you
were trying to hide from it in the first place?

Actually, another thing I just thought of. If we could get people to just
_create_ the Diaspora accounts, and just connect it to their Twitter, Flickr,
and so on, it may be enough. The updates will happen automatically. I'll still
be able to browse my friends' pages, which will be updated without them
thinking about it.

~~~
Pistos2
There are already aggregation sites, such as FriendFeed.

------
petercooper
When a project gets a lot of press and back-slapping up front, I feel a little
concerned. We've seen this happen to a lot of projects that didn't pan out.
The best things seem to have "crept up" on us gradually over time (e.g. Skype,
Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google, PayPal, Hacker News, Reddit, Wordpress,
Stack Overflow, Gary Vaynerchuk) rather than have had a lot of hype before
launch (as with Hunch, Cuil, Wolfram Alpha, Squidoo).

I hope these guys make it, but the smell of hype needs to dissipate quickly.

~~~
percept
Maybe they'll all get hired.

------
natfriedman
If identica is a relevant comparable, it will be tough for them to get
mainstream momentum, but their site will be useful for a certain type of
person, which could actually give it an 'identity' and make it at least useful
in the nerd niche.

Cute that they got the touch / grep / mount / fsck fsck fsck joke in there on
the chalk board.

~~~
dminor
I think the difference is that Identica hasn't found any terribly rich veins
of Twitter discontent to tap into, whereas Diaspora is getting NY Times
publicity just because Facebook has pissed so many people off with their
privacy issues. And this despite the fact that Diaspora doesn't even exist
yet.

~~~
wingo
It's very remarkable, that; rock-band-like publicity for something that does
not yet exist.

------
jseliger
I followed this link to the NYT article and the NYT article to the Diaspora
website, where I a) can't sign up and b) can't even leave my email in the
hopes that one day I'll be able to. This doesn't seem very smart to me: they
ought to at least have a box that says, "leave us your e-mail!", especially if
they have publicity from the NYT.

~~~
sp332
You can sign up for a newsletter, but the link seems to have dropped off the
face of the internet:
[http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=0AoQmncVLKXRBdFo...](http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=0AoQmncVLKXRBdFo1N3o4R3lrWkszX0dIQm9vemp5TWc&hl=en)

------
hassenben
“So many people think it needs to exist,” Mr. Salzberg said. “We’re making it
because we want to use it.”

Selfish motives provide the greatest motivation. At least, they are working on
it for the right reasons.

------
brandnewlow
Where's the fun in what they're building? No one wants a "privacy app." People
want stuff that makes their mundane lives a little more enjoyable.

~~~
jcl
There might be no fun, but there's definitely fear, which is also a valid
motivator -- though more stick than carrot.

There's no fun in a "relatively secure, virus-free platform", but that doesn't
stop Apple from billing their OS as such.

~~~
dfj225
I've been wondering how much fear over privacy issues the normal Facebook user
has.

My guess is that most Facebook users aren't aware of, or perhaps not
interested in, the privacy issues that discussed by people like the ones here
at HN.

I don't think the average person will care unless there is some widely
publicized abuse of private information by Facebook. Until then, everyone
probably will just see these issues as hypothetical.

------
raheemm
They don't have a product. Their product idea sounds revolutionary but its
kinda far-fetched. However the press they have received is astounding. So I
wonder what is the sequence of events that lead to them being featured on
nytimes, HN, etc.

------
kevintwohy
Hate to be the downer, but the problem with this is that people don't really
care about privacy. The NYTimes and every other mainstream news publication
has been running this exact same story for five years: "New edgy upstart
______ is aiming to be the antidote to FB/Twitter oversharing by introducing
innovative privacy controls..."

Most, if not all, of those services have seen a brief flurry of activity
before eventually withering and dying. People don't truly care about privacy
-- they like the idea of their privacy being important, in theory. No
combination of new features, openness, or distributed systems is going to be
able to overcome the fact that people largely only care about two things when
it comes to social networking: being on the network that the most of their
friends are on, and having their stuff seen by the most amount of people
possible.

If you ask, people will tell you until they're breathless that privacy is
important to them -- but almost no one will ever touch the robust privacy
controls they asked for.

~~~
sp332
Rasing >$20,000 in 2 weeks says someone cares about privacy.

------
orblivion
Wow, they were at double their goal yesterday, today they're at triple:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-
the-p...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-
personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr#name)

And 20 days left to go. What are these nerds going to do with all this money?
Deluxe Ramen I suppose.

~~~
jacquesm
Pizza is my guess. They're doing really great. It's close to 40K now. The
great thing here is that it won't cost them a single point in equity.

Let's hope they don't screw up, if they do this right then it just might be
that start-ups have a viable new route to find funding very quickly.

If they do mess up this high profile case will ruin the future for a lot of
others, everybody will point to them and say 'remember diaspora'.

------
ralphc
I can't honestly accept the terms of submission, but this picture definitely
belongs on <http://devteamorindieband.tumblr.com/>

------
jschuur
Personally, I don't have a huge beef with Facebook at this time, and I'm
staying put there, but that's not to say other people shouldn't be thinking
out loud, playing with and launching alternatives for how people stay in touch
and collaborate online. Right now I'm not too concerned with these specific
four's coding abilities or whether or not Diaspora stands a chance to attract
a wide audience. What's important is that different groups of people try
different things.

Having said that, now that they're raised a lot of cash in a short period of
time, they have a responsibility to account for how it's being spent. What are
the project milestones? What are they committing to release, based on their
current budget? Where is the money going? What kind of availability do they
have to work on this beyond the summer? What is their plan for when they run
out of money?

They've attracted a lot of eyeballs and dollars because people decided to vote
out of spite against Facebook with their wallets, and not because of careful
due diligence of Diaspora's plan. The stakes are high and a lot of people will
expect to see results before the year is over. These four are going to have a
lot of Google juice associated with their names for years to come, so they
better know what they're getting themselves into.

------
cyanbane
HN Commenters: what do you feel is the moral responsibility of a social site
in an instance where someone has the ability to post something at large vs a
group of 'friends'? Do you think the site should notify a person at a per post
level/status entry (some type of warning... 'this will be posted to ALL site X
users, etc') or just a one time warning at the personal configuration level?

------
yellowbkpk
Isn't this all going in the opposite direction of the rest of the industry? I
see lots of people touting the "cloud" and other forms of centralized
computing where scalability matters. Asking each person to carry around their
own personal data as a diaspora node might be swinging the pendulum back a
little too far from the other Facebook extreme.

I don't think people are upset that there is a single entity holding
everyone's data (I mean look at Google and Yahoo, they certainly have a
similar amount of information if not more) -- they're upset about the way the
data is handled. Slowly eroding privacy standards, weirdly-automatic linking
with external sites.

I bet 90% of Facebook's troubles would go away if they came up with an elegant
way for a normal person to set privacy settings and then promise to not change
them while at the same time offering opt-in on all future changes rather than
opt-out. It's probably too late for Facebook, but maybe not for a clone.

~~~
tumland
I agree with opt-in rather than opt-out. default into a safe/secure state is a
basic principle of computer security. This is why Google Buzz's automatically
adding followers was an awful idea, no matter how convenient it seems for
users.

------
percept
Much like politicians work a fringe issue and then gradually move to the
center, I think this group will need to focus on building a (brand-) friendly
and usable alternative to Facebook in order to have any chance of competing.

Then privacy can be a feature and not their raison d'être.

It also isn't too late to change the name.

------
SpacemanSpiff
At this point, they seem to be raising about $50/min through kickstarter. I'd
say there is interest in this idea..

------
manish
Too much exaggeration. PR style article

------
chegra
Just have one question: Who is going to pay for the nodes?

~~~
jacquesm
I'll put up for at least one, but I want them to get to the point where I
believe they'll actually complete this.

For now they're kids with good intentions that have landed a 'live one', let's
see if they can run with it and have the stamina required for something like
this.

10 years ago I would have been much quicker to jump in but I've learned the
hard way to be a bit more wary.

~~~
chegra
I wish a few more people would start something so I could rest my weight
against something.

------
malditogeek
The idea is good, but isn't anything new. And right now Diaspora looks like
vaporware...

Instead, the One Social Web guys [<http://onesocialweb.org>] are developing an
open source decentralized XMPP based social network that works and is based on
solid standards. And you can go, grab the code and try it right now. But they
don't appear in the mainstream media...

IMHO, instead of raise money and start looking at their own bellybutton they
should join efforts with other initiatives and go for something bigger.

------
orblivion
One thing I look forward to is being able to do whatever I want with my page.
It being open source, there's no way they could stop that from happening, even
if it wasn't in their design. From the beginning of social networks, part of
me always figured, what's the point? You want pictures of me, list of my
interests? I can put that on my website. You want to know who my friends are?
Is that so important? But ultimately I do understand the benefit of
connectedness. But with Diaspora, I figure I could just make my personal
website into a Diaspora site.

------
paulnelligan
Can anyone please explain to me what exactly a 'node' entails ... how is it
any different from a 'profile'

you can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig

all the same, I wish them luck, why?, because it's not facebook...

~~~
cellshade
a node is like an email server. your 'profile' lives in a node the way your
email address lives at an email server.

------
jasonwilk
Sweet beanie...wait

------
c00p3r
Good, free PR. Want free publicity? Setup a web site which locks like
"innovative" project and attack flash and facebook.

