Open-source Facebook rival arrives next month

Diaspora???

Can anyone tell me what the word means (diaspora) (rhetorical question) and after you tell me that, tell me why they called it so. i mean is there some kind of double meaning to it or what. Facebook have good privacy settings, its just people cannot be bothered to read through it and decide what they want since they think that it should already be set as they want it to, but hey geniuses there is no such thing as magic, facebook is there so that people from all over the world can find friends, if you do not want other people to know things about you do not put them on the internet, remember that guy who got lots of account information just by searching, well that information is available because YOU put it there and that's it. its your fault, i do not see how this new diaspora would change anything!!!

By mobilegnet on 27 Aug 2010

You my friend, are an idiot.

By MJYates on 27 Aug 2010

Agree with MJYates

mobilegent, Facebook shouldn't be used to "Find Friends" but to stay in touch with friends. I however would love a method in which I can decide who (of my friends) see which posts I add. And hosting your own data is a great idea.

By DaChimp on 27 Aug 2010

Did you even bother to think before you typed. Perhaps even used Google?
I had never heard of diaspora, but a quick Google and you'll find it's a name that is pretty much 100% bang on for what it is trying to do.
Think before you rant!

From wikipedia - "A diaspora (in Greek, διασπορά – "a scattering [of seeds]") is the movement or migration of a group of people, such as those sharing a national and/or ethnic identity, away from an established or ancestral homeland. When capitalized, the Diaspora refers to the exile of the Jewish people and Jews living outside ancient or modern day Israel."

By _delp_ on 27 Aug 2010

Did you even bother to think before you typed. Perhaps even used Google?
I had never heard of diaspora, but a quick Google and you'll find it's a name that is pretty much 100% bang on for what it is trying to do.
Think before you rant!

From wikipedia - "A diaspora (in Greek, διασπορά – "a scattering [of seeds]") is the movement or migration of a group of people, such as those sharing a national and/or ethnic identity, away from an established or ancestral homeland. When capitalized, the Diaspora refers to the exile of the Jewish people and Jews living outside ancient or modern day Israel."

By _delp_ on 27 Aug 2010

Ahh, ok

Perhaps if you read what i was trying to say, not just read the first two words and then rant themselves, what i was saying is that there is nothing wrong with facebook privacy settings, if people actually learned how to use them, they would not have any problems. also that name (diaspora) is a bit complicated, like most users of facebook are in age group between 18-25 so and the name, at least to me, does not appeal. and perhaps you do not know the meaning of rhetorical, perhaps a google search would let you know what that means.

By mobilegnet on 27 Aug 2010

4 separate places for privacy settings? Is that meant to be easy?

Mobilegnet, while I'd love to agree with you, I had to ask my daugther to re-set my Facebook account because all the variuos settings were scattered over 4 separate places on the site.

While this was going on Facebook had set my "privacy" setting as open for anyone to mine my data by default. So even though I'd call myself a very technical person, I was astounded when shown where the various profiles were hidden. And I mean well hidden.

The settings are a lot easier now, but Facebook, like Google think that your data belongs to them, and that by default it should be public, so that they can make as much money out of it as possible.

Which is why I rarely use Facebook,and I'd love to give this Disapora a try.

By Ajamu1 on 27 Aug 2010

Ajamu1

OK, perhaps some people might find it hard, but come on, all you have to do is go to account, privacy settings, customize, if that is difficult i think you will have similar problems with diaspora, but i agree maybe before it was a bit difficult, (although i had no problems) and anything you put on the internet is public anyway, accounts get hacked, doesn't matter who you are and which site you use. it happens. but i will give diaspora a challenge, to surprise me with the ease of changing settings and being discrete about user information. we shall see....

By mobilegnet on 28 Aug 2010

Would be nice if this had emerged instead of Facebook. There's a strong chance its too late now.
With some things, tech-enthusiasts are the early adopters, which creates something with enough traffic to start bringing in the masses, but Facebook didn't start that way and certainly isn't now, and this thing needs you to install/configure stuff.
My guess is the boat has sailed, and people nowadays don't care about privacy, or maybe just haven't thought of the downsides. Maybe they want to change their name (Eric Schmidt)!
It seems most companies want to hoard any information they can get about us. It's almost obsessive behaviour, but maybe people are getting used to being stalked in this way.
Good luck to them, but the good don't always win.

By davidsoap on 28 Aug 2010

Different approach

The main difference is private company vs open source community. At least, in theory, the open source mindset is mainly NOT inclined on money making (wikipedia). Development will focus on the system's performance, and not on "how to change settings to lure people to give us more private data we can make money with". So instead of struggling against facebook, I hope this will be an effort where you will feel the changes are naturally justified for the purpouse of creating an online community (not an information farm.

By Olivier on 28 Aug 2010

Shambolic Privacy

The reason I deleted my Facebook account, back in the middle of May, was the shambolic privacy settings and the constantly defaulting settings to fully open, when something new came along.

I studied the settings and I knew how they worked, but it was too much hassle to keep having to check back and close everything off, again... Let alone all my friends and relations, who had no idea that they were even there or that what they were telling their "friends" was open for all to see. Oh, and Facebook's advertising and business partners ARE NOT MY FRIENDS, so they shouldn't have automatically received access to my data, when they started sharing, it should have been closed off, until I decided that I wanted to share with them (I wouldn't).

The same with changing the profile from a list of likes to automatically putting you into groups...

Diaspora sounds like a more controlled way of doing things, but I must say, I haven't really missed Facebook, since I deleted my account, so I don't know if I will join another site anyway.

By big_D on 29 Aug 2010