[smky80]

I really would like to see Facebook broken up via the Sherman Antitrust Act, or some such legislation.

As I see it, the "network externality effect" which keeps such monopolies in business could perhaps be mitigated by creating a sort of social network "DNS", which could be created by the government or a private corporation. Facebook/Google+/etc would be clients that would make requests for someone's data via the DNS. So it would basically serve as a "Bridge" or "Facade" to use a design pattern.

Example if Suzy is on Facebook, and Lucy is on Google+, when Suzy rquests Lucy's photos, Facebook sends an API request to the DNS "request_photos('Lucy', 'Suzy')", the DNS sees Lucy is on Google+ and forwards the request there.

The purpose of the bridge/facade then is to make it not really matter where a person stores their data or what client they use to view others. You just need some sort agreed upon API for determining where the data for each person is, an for sharing data between services.

For someone with more strict privacy concerns, the DNS for such a person could simply record that the person uses this social networking service, which doesn't allow requests from outside. Again the benefit here of the API would be that to add yourself to that service would be as simple as "upload_photos(serverX, request_photos('Suzy', 'Suzy'))", etc.

I'm sure there's a million things wrong with the above, but just a random thought.

[daveid]

I'm not so sure about government-controlled DNS... But what you are describing is "federation" and that's what Diaspora and identi.ca are built around. Everyone can run their own server, and every server can talk to each other, allowing users from different servers to interact seamlessly.

[smky80]

Ah, that makes a lot of sense, thanks for that. I guess what I would like to see is some kind of government mandate to force social networks and the like to follow this model.

[crystaln]

Right... the solution to Stallman's concerns about government surveillance of social networks is definitely a government shutdown of Facebook and the development of a centralized social DNS created by the government.

[smky80]

The point was really just to push for decentralization of social networks, through some kind of mandated data-sharing interface. The "DNS" thing is probably actually unnecessary I guess, it was just a random thought.

We don't let utilities just get a monopoly in an area and then just gouge everyone, and we shouldn't allow a social network to do so either.

The NSA spying, by itself, is just a symptom of larger problem, which is the ability of a smaller, more cohesive group of people to leverage larger institutions like massive governments and corporations to control and extract rents out of the less cohesive masses. I doubt there is a technological solution to this, especially with so many engineers working for the bad side as Useful Idiots or straight up Defectors.