What’s the (my) problem with established platforms?
- Censorship Shadow Regulations, Upload Filters, Autocratic Regimes
- Privacy (sale of private data e.g. Cambridge Analytica)
- Data security
- Non-free software
Which alternatives exist?
The most popular distributed social networks based on Free Software are GNU Social, Diaspora, Friendica and Mastodon.
What's the main problem with Free Software alternatives?
The main problem of the Free Software alternatives is the user base. The most well-known social networks are operated by major capitalist companies which can invest millions in advertisement to obtain their user base. Free Software projects can’t.
Is there a solution to the problem?
The technical best solution would be that all people just use Free Software and say goodbye to proprietary software and monopolistic companies.
But that's utopia, because hardly anyone will log out of Twitter and Facebook overnight and use a free alternative if he doesn't find all his friends there.
But there could be a solution to this problem. Many distributed social networks based on Free Software implement the OStatus protocol for federation.
Through this standard, various social media platforms and microblogging services can communicate to each other.
Of course, many major platforms such as Twitter or Facebook refuse to implement this standard because they believe that it could reduce their user base.
Do you think it would be useful and possible to demand such a standard by law or do you have other ideas or different approaches?
Recently a first step in this direction was made with the right of data portability which is provided by Article 20 of the GDPR law, which gives each user the right to receive the data stored about him in digital form. But of course this law could only simplify the move to another network.