Re: [Social-discuss] What I think GNU Social's structure should be

[Carlo von Loesch]

Citing <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html>:
> Some sites whose main service is publication and communication extend
> it with "ccontact management": keeping track of people you have
> relationships with. Sending mail to those people for you is not SaaS,
> but keeping track of your dealings with them, if substantial, is SaaS.

Maintainance of a structured list of all of your friends and
contacts as a pervasive social network represents, and keeping
track of your dealings with them, makes social networks a prime
example of SaaS in my point of view. That document needs to be
reconsidered in that sense.

I live in Berlin and I find it scary that it is easier to snoop
on people's social networks and political views today than
before the wall came down in 1989. And from that experience
we know that knowing the social structure and opinions of your
populace is the key for maintaining totalitarian control.

Keeping your social network to yourself is important in order
to maintain a healthy democracy! It is only a question of time
until data retention laws are extended into the domain of
virtual machine hosting: ISPs are required to run certain
secret automated scans on all virtual machines and report
data back to the government. Additionally the government can
access any virtual machine to look for further data.
Do we honestly want to build a software that would serve this
scenario diligently?

Also in today's world where encrypted private communications
are feasible, why are we still sending private messages via
Facebook and expect them to stay private? I would consider
viewing many cases of communication as SaaS whenever they
would not have had to happen on that specific server like
a deletion discussion on Wikipedia has to.

So if RMS is in support of GNU Social, I would really know for
sure if he really supports a devil-may-care cloud computing approach
to social networking - the only difference to other platforms being,
you can run it on commodity web hosting yourself. Big win.


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