Rhett C Thanks JP, that does clarfiy the Diaspora idea. I also had high expectations for Google+, and I’m curious to see if they can reclaim their momentum or we are just seeing Orkut v3 in the making.
Lacey, consider yourself fortunate for having legit choices when it comes to an ISP. Outside of major markets, though, there is often one gig in town.
I”m a little confused that your seemingly against net neutraility because the ISPs are ‘dishonoring’ the spirit the of the subsidies. So because of this they should be allowed to censor the Internet?
Lacey Underall Heh. Is it my turn to play devil’s advocate? Because honestly, I’m not that concerned about net neutrality.
If I use ESPN a lot, then it seems like me having to pay to access the site is a fair and open exchange. If I feel like my ISP is trying to skim too much off the top, I can find a different ISP. There’s plenty of them. And people will not hesitate to shop ISP’s because the price they pay is real money and that’s easier to understand. You are (for now) a client of your ISP and not the product.
The major reason I’m against net neutrality is that the government gave companies major subsidies to hook everyone up and get the backbone set up. And they got these subsidies and local monopolies because they told the government how great the internet was and how it was going to be this big global village. Now they’re trying to say it’s NOT a big global village, it’s *their* property and they’re using the power they got through unfair competition to turn the screws. That bothers me.
@Rhett I’m trying to keep up with your impressive understanding of how all this stuff works. My own interest in Diaspora and open source is probably more idiosyncratic. I’m as of yet not all that concerned about privacy where social networks are concerned. I’m a data packrat. I’ve paid for my own hosting for a decade and I feel a compulsive need to keep these online records of myself.
I think there’s a misunderstanding about the mission of something like Diaspora. Because the idea came out strong and tapped into privacy fears about Facebook the impression is that it’s a replacement for Facebook. It can be that but it’s really intended as the space between all social networks. The promise is that it can be a connector/pipeline and archiver of all your networks on the web. The bonus is that it’s something you can install yourself on your own server where you’re responsible for all your social data (if you want it to be, i understand hosting your own pod is not easy).