yeah, i;m with you, but i have a question:

if we use more open source/non corporate alternatives, wont the big service provider companies have more of a reason to fight against net nutrality. because it will be that much more necessary for them to force us into things. something like that?

[...] 4. I have a good Free/Libre/Open Source alternative, my own blog. You can read about what I’m up to at http://technotrannyslut.com , free of ads for bad movies and music, free of binary gender choices and heteronormative options for your relationships. Sites like Identi.ca provide ethical, non-corporate controlled alternatives to sites like Twitter. You can keep up with my status on Identi.ca, and sign up for your own microblog, here: http://identi.ca/djlotu5 Help create a well known list of alternatives like Identi.ca/Twitter , Opensim/Secondlife, if you now of any, by posting a comment here: [...]

ben, that’s a good point, but i think that we’l have to fight that battle when it comes. and i think that if it gets to the point where sites are being shut down because of net neutrality, that will be a whole different kind of battle.

finally!
fuck rupert murdock, fox and the hate they perpetuate and breed

am I naive to point out that sometimes even these corporate social networking sites [such as Facebook] actually serve the politics of resistance [i.e. resistance-from-within]? i personally am a member of many facebook groups that are concerned with political activism and i think that -quite ironically- what these corporations did not have in mind in their strive for control & capital was precisely this: offerring like-minded people a platform to meet and discuss anti-corporatist issues! of course, the open-source alternative still stands and i am very much FOR its use, but maybe more adherents could be recruited for the anti-corporatist cause through the use of this wide-spread mechanism that reaches the far-ends of social networking much better than the obscure (and quite elitist, i would say) alternatives! complementarity should be sought after rather than seggregationism…

Shimmo, thanks for commenting. What you describe is exactly what Facebook wants, the illusion of freedom and democracy, all within a corporate structure where the corporation defines the limits of possiblity. Of course you’re free to have your “stop the war” facebook group, as long as you’re making money for them, using their site, loading their ads, getting more of your friends who also want to “stop the war” to sign up for Facebook and also make them more money. It’s just like the US political system, the illusion of choice and democracy within a narrowly defined set of options, all corporate funded and driven by corporate interests. There’s nothing elitist about http://identi.ca, just sign up for an account for free and start filling out your profile and posting. Enjoy. As long as you keep working within the social media corporations’ websites, you’re just helping to create the illusion of diversity, choice and freedom, while paying the bills for a corporation like Facebook that is closely tied to both the CIA and the Total Information Awareness program. Who do you think wants, and has, access to updates about what so many millions of people are doing throughout their days? Thanks for reminding me that I need to hurry up and delete my facebook profile as well.

I have a couple of quick comments / questions. These are not well thought out, so please excuse the rough edges.

MySpace — makes sense, but facebook is not corporate owned… yet, and no IPO it is still owned by the founders, yes they pwn your data and yes that is a topic of discussion perhaps it will be solved.

Twitter is not the hegemony either they are a private company as well. Laconica hasn’t scaled to the level of twitter and the network just is not there… yet.

OpenSource is an evolution, as a matter of course I try to share my computing space with opensource, though not exclusively. I love and support it wholeheartedly but it will not get anywhere unless it competes on the same field ie Desktop Linux.

Finally aren’t you attending UCSD? Is defense contracting somehow okay now, isn’t the military one of the most heteronormative?

So I applaud your concern and commitment but feel that some of your fervor is misplaced as is much of the rabidness in many of these communities.

Just a few thoughts off the top, I really do want to have a conversation about this, but if you can’t hear me crying out from twitter it will have to take place elsewhere…

Thanks for commenting james. You’re right, Facebook and Twitter are not big bad corporations like Fox/Myspace is, but they are still locked down systems, for which I can’t see the source code and I can’t easily export my data from. That’s enough for me to say that I’m done using them. The Franklin Street Statement lays out a number of good requirements for what people who support Free/Libre/Open Source software should expect and demand from web services. Check it out here: http://autonomo.us/2008/07/franklin-street-statement/

So, I don’t think its misplaced or rabid to expect that I should be able to see the code for the services I use, so I know I can trust them, and be able to easily download/export my own data, because sharing with my friends is important to me, not just sharing through a corporate medium but more on my own terms.

As for attending UCSD, yes I do, but I don’t have a Free/Libre/Open Source alternative institution to attend yet. And yes, it is horribly implicated in military and corporate institutions, and incredibly heteronormative, but a discussion about how we can develop our own autonomous education structures is a little bit farther off than our own free/libre/open source/autonomous microblogging platform.

Also, here’s a great set of slides and audio on autonom.us from a talked called “With Software as a Service, Is Only the Network Luddite Free?”: http://autonomo.us/2008/12/saas-network-luddite/

And, here’s a great review of a number of different free/open alternatives for social networking sites, like http://criti.ca , http://autonomo.us/2008/11/social-networking/

(again my apologies if I ramble)
Sorry about the comment about UCSD, it was at best offtopic and at worst out of line. It did resonate with me for some reason related to the topic.

to export your data as a csv from twitter go to https://www.tweetscan.com/data.php

the data in facebook is perhaps a little more complex, what do you want your friends list? your wall? either way it is possible to scrape those, however if you want to trapse the network and say pull your friends phone numbers… that is not your data. also portions of facebook are opensourced here http://developers.facebook.com/fbopen/ using the OSI aproved license http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/socialtexts-cpal-gets-osis-blessing-001529.php And though there have been high profile cases of people using tools getting shutdown for scraping data it is possible to retrieve your data from them.

So in this case I would ask why Delete Facebook? They are private as in not corporate, they are moving towards open source and there is no reasonable OSS competitor.

I looked at the Franklin Street statement again, and it encourages developers, providers, and users to follow open principles. Bravo. Have you posted the source to your blog to comply as a service provider?

For me these networks are about the social and the new types of community that are developing, I do not think that many of these have developed to the stage that they are ready for competition (some of that is a development of audience and some of that is development of the application), but when competition arises and the market settles down and is refined somewhat there will be real opportunities to make these places more open. As it stands now we are still looking at beta services operated by founders.

I do not think there is an open source alternative to YouTube or Delicious (of the same scale or usefulness), nor do I think that there is a reasonable community site outside of Facebook and MySpace (though elgg is coming along nicely). So what does one do here? Perhaps I also need to say that I am interseted in data portability (but that creates issues) and for the most part could care less about looking at the code.

On an additional unrelated tangent, I have taken and worked with an online service that moved from closed to open source and it was a huge burdon on our development team. There were many times that we talked about how much easier it would have been to just rewrite our crappy code and apply an OSS license as the main focus was our ideas. In the end we open sourced it for our community, and for all of the reasons you mention.

I have more, and want to continure but also want to push this out : )

Not that I have been looking for it, but this is one of the few examples of ‘official’ Myspace-quitters I’ve seen, since I came out of the closet myself. About a year ago I asked Raquel Meyers to make my Myspace page completely black, with a short text on it that showed up if you highlighted it. This was at a time when I had hundreds of listeners every day and lots of meaningful communication and proposals. It lead to a lot less attention, and to be honest very few people thought it was a bad idea.

Thanks for publishing your text! It was good to read it since I have actually started considering returning to Myspace, since there is still many people visiting my page and now gets the wrong idea about me and my music (inactive, boring, blabla). Myspace of course un-blackified the page after a while, since it blocked their adds. Now, instead it contains lots of comments from my friends. Ie, advertisements. -> http://www.myspace.com/goto80

sorry, that should have been: very few people thought it was a GOOD idea.

[...] why don’t you have a look at this post: Why I Am Deleting My Myspace and Facebook Accounts, and You Should Too, from the techno tranny [...]

[...] and some discussion [...]

[...] 3. the output is supposed to be universally available but corporations impose limits and try to extend these limits, provoking open conflicts with users/producers. (See for example: “Why I’m deleting my Myspace account and you should to“) [...]

[...] home from LA today, I was thinking about how I need to continue my efforts to get off of closed, corporate social networks by getting of of flickr. but that’s a tough one, because i don’t know of a good [...]

[...] the question isn’t what we lose by leaving Facebook, but what we lose by using it.Its about the right to know everything about us. This was from [...]

[...] the question isn’t what we lose by leaving Facebook, but what we lose by using it. Its about the right to know everything about [...]

[...] home from LA today, I was thinking about how I need to continue my efforts to get off of closed, corporate social networks by getting of of flickr. but that’s a tough one, because i don’t know of a good [...]

[...] two steps closer to freedom… About this entry [...]

[...] and commented, lets keep spreading the word that a free/libre/open internet is possible today! http://bang.calit2.net/tts/2008/12/31/why-i-am-deleting-my-myspace-account-and-you-should-too/ VN:F [1.6.8_931]please wait…Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)VN:F [1.6.8_931]Rating: 0 (from 0 votes) [...]