The surveillance state of social networking

Social networking sites and tools, are above all, surveillance tools.

You use them to surveille your friends, and in exchange you agree to be surveilled by them and the service provider, and whomever that they share your data with.

This has changed the social landscape from a world of closed doors and drawn curtains, into an age of glass houses, and transparent thoughts. This unprecedented, pervasive surveillance is proving to be a boon to corporate america and government, and has the potential to both increase and undermine our freedoms. the question is, who is driving this train, anyway?

Barring a satisfactory, reassuring answer, I would encourage my readers to look carefully at their social networking decisions. We now have the tools to own our social networking existence, as well as our data. Check out http://diasporaproject.org/ .... they even have Facebook integration, to ease you into self ownership until you can decide to throw away the chains for good.

With Diaspora, you own your profile. You choose where to host it (for free) or you can host it yourself even! You own your data. You can download, store, archive and delete your data, and it is actually gone if you delete it. You can move it to another country (mine is in the Netherlands on http://pod.orkz.net , check them out) , but it doesn't matter where it is at, all the "pods" act as a single social network.

Diaspora is alpha, so there are bugs....but this is our best shot at taking back our privacy, and we need to vote with our feet, so to speak - the more users they have, the more strength they will carry forward.

Join me in instantiating social self ownership, and vote against pervasive surveillance - Join Diaspora, and if you are a Facebook addict, use diaspora's Facebook integration to access your Facebook friends.