Privacy and Control in Social Networks (a.k.a, Why Andover would be smart to adopt DIASPORA*)

DIASPORA* is a distributed social network built on Free/Open Source Software. (Image by Flickr user horiavarlan.)

For a week, I was away from Facebook, voluntarily deactivating my account. Did I miss it? I can say I missed a few contacts. Overall, though, not at all.

What's wrong with Facebook? Socially, I mean, most everyone is on it. But behold the Facebook terms of service (TOS). My favorite telling quote:

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

To paraphrase, you are granting to Facebook the right to use (in any manner they desire) any data to which you have legal rights (in the United States and Europe, this means all data, because text is covered by copyright) without compensating you and to sell or give away the right to use your data to any third-party they desire in any manner they desire without copyrighting you. Are you writing a story, and did you post a chapter to Facebook? Well, Facebook has a license to use that chapter outside of your control. Did you post a video of your indie postrock band's song to Facebook? They don't have to pay you to use it if you happen to start selling albums. Due to the admittedly clever wording of this license, this isn't just exclusive to copyrighted data, such as the text, images, and videos you post to Facebook—it goes for the ideas within your posts, too. For any idea to which you hold a patent, were you to post it on Facebook, you are giving the Facebook corporation a free license to your patent, which they can then license to any third-party they want. The same goes for trademarks and trade secrets. If someone posted the recipe for Coca-Cola, even in a private message, Facebook has the right to use it without a fee. Do I mean to say that you could find a new brand of soda in your stores called Facebook Cola? Well, no, funny as that may be. But nothing could stop them from striking a deal with a large food corporation that was seeking to expand into the carbonated beverage industry.

Well, could nothing stop them? What about that last sentence? Sounds like you still maintain control over the license, right? Perhaps. If you have a post, and you delete it, the license does end. But what about private messages? A copy of the private message is available to both users. If you delete your copy, the other user still has it. As the license states, unless they delete it, the license is not terminated. And that person deleting it could be out of your control.

I'm not a lawyer, but those terms scare me.

Enter DIASPORA*. Created to counter these outrageous privacy and control issues. While this isn't the place to discuss its exact benefits (you can read up on them here and here), I do want to discuss a plan relating to DIASPORA*.

I'm a student at Phillips Academy, Andover, and head of the student-run Techmasters organization, a group that aims both to aid other students in diagnosing and fixing technology related problems, and to promote a greater usage and enjoyment of technologies.

At least, that's what I wrote on our mission statement this past year.

In an effort to revitalize the organization, I'm trying various plans to bring the organization back to prominence. One, which I will talk about in a later post, is to introduce the GameMaker software for easy game development. But the focus of this post (or perhaps, the rest of this post), will be on building a DIASPORA* pod at Andover. I still need permission from the administration, but here is the idea:

We have a nice, pretty, powerful, shiny server that currently sees very little usage. While I plan to revamp the website, it doesn't have much use yet. Basically, the server eats up power. Not the best thing it could be doing. So why not install DIASPORA* on it A DIASPORA* pod for students.

Most people aren't concerned with the privacy and control issues I mentioned above. Rather sad, but true. That said, why would anyone switch from Facebook? I mean, their contacts are more than just Andover students.

One of the greatest benefits comes from the idea of aspects. Do you have a picture that you want to share with your boy-/girlfriend but not with everyone else? Don't feel comfortable talking about the death of your grandmother with anyone but your closest friends? Do you absolutely despise this one creep you know, but don't want to reject the friend request? Well, you can just create aspects for all these people. You get to control to whom your posts are sent. Create an aspect for a school project. Separate messages in Esperanto that maybe two people can read from those in English. This not only gives you the benefit of being able to choose who you share things with, but also allows others to do so, as well, cutting down on the amount of worthless spam in your feed. You probably don't care about my choice of music, so I wouldn't put you in the Music aspect. It's that simple.

Want it put another way? If I have an embarrassing photo of Spongebob at the Christmas Party, I can post it to an aspect that doesn't contain Spongebob (the "Secret Box" aspect), and he'll never know.

With DIASPORA* being Free/Open Source Software, and with an API on the way, we have support for richer content streams than Facebook does. The Phillipian, the school newspaper, could send updates and polls to DIASPORA* through RSS or their website. Clubs could have pages with meeting updates. Dates for events could be scheduled right in the post, with times available for selection. With DIASPORA* applications, these would be simple and transparent to the user. And one doesn't have to leave Facebook to use it. Already here are connections with Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter (does anyone actually use Twitter?), so your posts get sent off to these sites at the click of a button.

These ideas are still preliminary. I still need permission. But I'm hoping this may be beneficial to the students and the Academy at large.