[alexandercrohde]

Exactly. I think there are two types of social network users

1. People who want to consensually maintain two-way contact with people they talk to in normal life.

2. People who want to anonymously get life details of classmates they have a crush on, ex's, etc

Building a network to support #1 while maintaining true anonymity and privacy is much more doable. Not being in group #2, I don't worry about it.

[amelius]

3. People who want to share messages/data in groups (e.g. a local acting class)

4. People who want to follow events, share events, and follow which friends are going to what events.

Anyway, still horribly incomplete. Somebody should have put this list in the requirements, and put it up for discussion. System design starts with requirements!

[jancsika]

Being in group #1 is great.

Denying that there is profound value in digital communication between two consenting adults who have never met in normal life is a Luddite position.

[alexandercrohde]

Nobody is saying that, you're making a straw-man argument.

People are just saying that they have no interest in being part of a network that tracks their videos, location, actual name, phone number, text messages, behavior across the whole internet, email address, and builds a psychological profile on them in exchange to look up college buddies (and therefore have deleted their accounts).

Many of us want a network that errs to the side of too private, and it's okay if not everybody is on that network. Many of us would rather have no network as compared to one that's too public.