Prisoners on social networks

2011/02/01 Leturia Azkarate, Igor - Informatikaria eta ikertzaileaElhuyar Hizkuntza eta Teknologia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Internet
• Softwarea

(Photo: © iStockphoto.com/Andrew Johnson)

Five or six years ago, with the advent of Web 2.0, we went from being mere consumers of the Internet to being creators in many people, blogs, wiki, etc. But two or three years ago there has been a new revolution: that of social networks; Facebook, Twitter, Tuenti, etc. Neither are we passive recipients; we also create and interact, but in a more informal way and in a more closed circle, with the aim of leisure. That is why it is normal that there have been many more people who have entered them. On Facebook, for example, more than 500 million users are sharing photos, activities and findings on the network with their friends.

However, social networks, especially Facebook, have been both successful and critical since their birth. The main critique is whether they guarantee true privacy in terms of their content (even under Facebook's terms of use, there are controversial clauses that say that the property of the uploaded content passes to the company). Another critique is that by the time it occurs on social networks, there are fewer and fewer people and juicy content on blogs, etc.

Current, closed and centralized social networks

In addition to these problems, the web inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, warned of others, possibly worse, in an article published in the journal Scientific American. In it he recalls the principles of the creation of the web (universality, decentralization, open standards, net neutrality...) and highlights the regression we have made lately in these aspects. In addition, it warns about the damage that current social networks do to the basic principles of the web. Specifically, if, in a hypothetical web of the future, most of the activity focused on a single social network, it ensures that the principles of universality and decentralization would not be fulfilled.

Instead of universal, networks are totally closed: you can interact with friends who are on that network, but not with those who are on other networks. In this way, people sign up for the network that more friends have and in the end everyone concentrates on a few networks and everything is totally centralized. In addition, the monopoly or oligopoly of one or more companies is produced, which only involves damage.

The reasons against closure are not only ethical or philosophical, but also practical. Currently, the distribution of interviews is frequent, for example. It is very common for articles to appear on a blog, magazine or other type, and to be allowed to leave answers and create a conversation, but then people share this article with their friends on their social network, on Facebook, on Twitter or another, where people also leave answers. In the end, the dialogue that can be enriched with the contributions of a lot of people is dispersed in different places.

In addition, all the content we are creating on a social network (comments, photos, links...) is imprisoned in it. They have content there and at any given time we cannot export everything to a standard format and take it to another network. Would we accept something like this from an email service provider or a blog hostel service?

New model of social networks

To have open and decentralized social networks, a standard would be necessary to share friends, comments, photos, etc. Then anyone can develop software that conforms to this standard to create the server of their social network, and probably free software would also be created. Then, anyone can install this software on their server and the service providers that use it will appear. And we, with our server or with a provider, could share things with friends who are in any other. That's what email does and what Google Wave proposed. It would not make sense that by e-mail you can only communicate with those who have the same provider (Gmail among them, Euskaltel only with Euskaltel...). Why is it accepted then on social networks?

Fortunately, initiatives of this type have begun to be developed. On Twitter, there has been since 2008 a free software EstadNet that anyone can install to offer a similar service. This software is used by the service provider Identi.ca and uses the open stand OStatus to share the status between different servers. And in 2010 Diaspora free software was created to offer a similar service to Facebook, which can be installed by anyone. The creators of the project offer it as a service provider, through which different servers exchange information. Therefore, GenderNet and Diaspora work on an open and decentralized model. In addition, the photos that are shared and others are stored on our server, and the property remains ours. On the other hand, with these open protocols, the dispersion of the conversations can be avoided if all use them.

It must be seen if these new social networks are capable of attracting people and if in the future this type of networks predominate. For this, it is a great obstacle that most of the population is in closed networks. And it's logical that people sign up on social networks with more friends (Facebook, Twitter...), but don't get into these news where there are very few people... Such obstacles would not be possible if the main social networks implemented open standards of the Diaspora and SspaceNet and users of one and the other could communicate with each other. But they will not. They prefer a closed model to maintain superiority...

There are, therefore, alternatives and in our hands is the most open, decentralized and non-monopolized panorama of the social networks of the future. We must see if we achieve that goal or if we choose to continue living in our golden beauties.