[kedean]

As much as people say they hate how much social networks track them, it's really the thing that makes them work so well. The more info Facebook has on you, the better it can work for you. A privacy-oriented social network isn't social at all, it's...4chan. It would basically just be a forum, and we have plenty of those already. You could go minimal privacy, but then where is the line drawn?

People want to be able to find their friends, so you need some way for discovery to happen. If there's no tracking locations and relationships, then how do you do it? Usernames are the only privacy-concious way to accomplish that, and then you've just described MySpace. Facebook works because when you drunkenly befriend someone at a party, you can find them the next day online. It's bootstrapped discovery. Like it or not, that's what most of the world likes about Facebook.

Google almost solved this problem with G+, but they did it by scanning your email contacts. Is that still a privacy breach?