*32C3 preroll music*
Herald: I’m happy to introduce Katharina Nocun. She is a…
*applause*
She’s a privacy activist and
she worked for the Federation of German consumer organisations;
and also for the German working group on Data Retention.
She was on the board of the German Pirate Party
and nowadays she’s working for Campact
as a campaigner for digital rights.
Campact is an online petition platform here in Germany.
But also she’s an economist.
And she did some research on why it is so difficult
for decentralized social networks
to compete with Facebook. So it’s the perfect talk
for the mission statement of this Congress – Katharina Nocun!
*applause*
Katharina Nocun: Yeah, thank you very much for this awesome introduction.
And first of all I need to excuse myself: I catched a cold, so
just imagine that I’m shouting at you all the time. Because I can’t.
Yeah, why did I do some research on the topic of Facebook and Diaspora?
You know I really hate Facebook. During my time
at the Federal consumer organization of Germany
we sued Facebook a lot. We also sued Google a lot.
And when I studied economics friends of me asked me:
“Yeah, let’s found a Facebook Group and there we can exchange exams and…
that’s so cool, that’s so awesome” and I said: “Yeah, well, no,
I don’t have a Facebook account and I don’t want to”.
*applause*
And then I asked… I mean it worked out fine,
we opened a group on weriseup.net,
so we exchanged our exams there. But still I asked myself
why can’t I convince more people to join Diaspora or other networks.
And that’s why I did this research project.
So let’s talk about gated communities and the internet.
The internet is based at large parts on free protocols,
so everything is okay, isn’t it?
Okay, everything is okay?
*mumble and laughter from audience*
Yeah, in the beginning of the internet there were many many nodes
and they were connected to one another as equals. And today
the internet is a giant web which is interconnected
with more and more aspects of all-eyes (?). But what started
as a playground for nerds and scientists is not only today
a powerful economic driving force but changes a lot of aspects of
how economics work, how politics work and how public debates work.
But it also changed in a way I really dislike.
The main topic of this Congress is ‘Gated Communities’
and I think it’s a very important issue to address
that above this open layer of the Internet, above this open protocol
gated, closed islands of gated communities emerged
and we see clear that those are trends for concentration
in the hands of just a few platform owners.
So what can we do about it? I think social networks are an important benchmark
for these trends and, as an economist, I have a clear word for what is happening
right now on many areas on the web:
it’s market failure. Because there is no real competition
possible with Facebook. There is no real competition possible
with other large platforms. And that’s why this talk
will try to explain why we should care that Facebook has become
the de facto social network provider for large parts of the world
and how this came about. And, most importantly,
what lessons we can draw from certain dynamics on the market,
for market entry options for decentralized social networks.
So, first of all, why should we care?
Some numbers: if Facebook was a state,
it would have more inhabitants than Europe, China or the Americas.
And every fifth human being on this planet
logs in on Facebook at least once per month.
That’s an incredible number. And the reason for the success
of social networks as an idea is because it connects
to a very basic human need for us. Because we are social creatures.
So, I think, addressing this human need,
that we are social, that we want to exchange, to share with one another,
is an incredible, cool, powerful idea. And
social networks most importantly add context to content.
It makes a difference if a friend of mine shares an article about Star Wars,
how stupid the new Star Wars movie is than some journalist just writes
an article about it. And social networks are so important for us
because the web is filled with information about everything.
And social networks allow us to filter this information through social ties.
And it’s not only the place where we can spread birthday messages,
“Happy Birthday, I thought about you because Facebook reminded me
I should do so”. But Facebook is also the place
where we can found groups, where we can not only exchange maybe exams
for economics classes, but where we can call for action and organize protest.
And, back then, when I studied in Hamburg,
there was a point where I registered on Facebook
under a fake name. I was called ‘Maria Musterfrau’.
And this Maria Musterfrau founded different events
on Facebook, for demonstration against the ACTA treaty.
ACTA, it was a treaty…
it had a lot to do with copyrights, and
also in some areas with privacy issues. And we called for action
on the web, and 15,000 people came to our demonstration in Hamburg.
So basically I think social networks are a very, very powerful idea
to enhance democracy, freedom of speech.
But, unfortunately, I don’t think that the structure of Facebook
as the de facto social network provider of the world
is the best way to provide this idea to the people.
So we heard a lot on TV, on the newspapers,
about the Facebook revolution; how the Facebook revolution would
empower democracy etc., and freedom of speech.
And, in fact, for generations, media institutions such as
TV channels or newspapers were the gatekeepers for public debates.
If you wanted to influence public debates
you needed to get past these gatekeepers. And it is true
that the internet or social media allowed
to implement setting a topic from bottom-up.
And that is a very powerful idea. But this tale of the power of Facebook
as an enabler or catalyst for freedom of speech,
I think it’s really a tale, it’s a very simplified story. Because
the inconvenient truth is that today, if you
want to influence public debates, you have new gatekeepers.
And Facebook is one of the most important gatekeepers of our time.
Take e.g. secret algorithms, which filter information
that is revealed to us, not on the basis which information we want to see,
but on assumed click-and-interaction rates. Based on economic incentives,
because they want to make money out of this interaction.
Facebook thereby creates virtual filter bubbles around us.
It’s not only that we can filter information through our social ties,
but Facebook sits in the middle, as bottleneck for information
and control. Whether or not this is really provided to us.
And, most importantly, Facebook decides which content is allowed
on its network and which content is banned. Take e.g. the case of nudity;
or the example of violence.
Facebook is much, much more liberal to depict violence on its network
than nudity. E.g. when you have a mother feeding a child,
Facebook is more likely [for you] to be banned than someone
beating someone else up. And if you ask Kurdish activists
on the topic of what they think about freedom of speech on Facebook
they will tell you a pretty different tale than we see on the media
when they talk about the Facebook revolution.
Because during the last years there were several cases where president Erdoğan,
the Turkish Prime Minister, addressed Facebook,
because he wanted to have some profiles of activists or parties banned.
And Facebook complied.
And talking about social network is not only about freedom of speech.
One of the most important topics, I think, is also the issue of privacy.
And for me, the decisive privacy struggles are not whether or not
someone sees our selfies on Facebook. Because I guess most people want
that other people see their selfies on Facebook. For me the decisive struggles
are rather about our browser history that Facebook collects through Like buttons.
It’s about connection information. It’s about our Search queries and
the right to register under a fake name. Because what I did back then,
when I organized demonstration in Hamburg, that was clearly illegal.
You are not allowed to register under a fake name. And what would have happened
if Facebook decided one day, or 2 days before the demonstration was launched,
or maybe before that: “let’s delete this account, let’s delete this event”.
We would have a problem.
And based on the information on which profiles we click
our provider knows with whom we are in love and whether or not we moved on
after a break-up. That are pretty important information about us;
and we should never forget that the information that is stored
in order to sell us cars, and diamonds and fancy stuff
can also be used in order to target activists. And in the wrong hands
this data on activists is pretty dangerous.
So as we see there is a clear conflict between shareholder value
and public interest. And I do not have a problem with social network.
As I told you, I love the idea. But I do have a problem when we put corporations
in a position to exploit this very sensitive part of our lives.
But fortunately there is an alternative.
In 2010 four young students from the US
launched a crowdfunding project on kickstarter. And they asked
for 10,000 US$ in order to change their internships and summer jobs
for the opportunity to work full time on a decentralized open source
alternative social network. And the reaction was really stunning.
Because they asked for 10,000 $ and what they got in the end,
after 39 days, was 20 times more than they asked for.
It was 200,000 $. And what was the goal of Diaspora?
The founders wanted to give the users first of all a better bargaining position
against the dominant social network provider.
They wanted to give users more control over their data
and they wanted to implement a structure for social networks
that provides a better control against censorship
and control of governments.
So what does it mean, ‘a decentralized social network’?
To talk about the issue of centralization or decentralization is important because
a lot of the power structure between users and the platform owners can be foreseen
somehow through the technical infrastructure that is implemented. And
you can say that there are 3 basic kinds of different network structures,
which be ‘centralized’, ‘decentralized’ and ‘distributed’.
In the centralized design which is represented e.g. by Facebook
there is one network platform owner in the middle like a spider in the web
collecting all the data. He’s the bottleneck. You can’t go besides
this bottleneck in order to communicate with other members of the platform.
In contrast to that a fully distributed system would be like…
or is a peer-to-peer system where every user is at the same time
a node of the network. So, again, it’s a network of equals.
But unfortunately it’s a bit tricky to provide a distributed social network
on large scale because as you can imagine you would need encryption,
on a large scale because otherwise every other member of the network would have
the potential to access your private data. And there are some projects
researching on that. But in 2010 when Diaspora was founded
the idea was to start with a decentralized structure.
And the most important feature of such a decentralized structure
is that you don’t have one server where every…
like every interaction is going through but you have different servers.
And because it’s open source everyone is free to set up their own server;
or you as a user can maybe chose “I trust person X,
and she’s running a Diaspora pod, and I join”; or I don’t trust anyone
and I set up my own pod.
And talking about freedom of speech or government pressure:
One interesting feature is that it’s much, much more difficult
to censor or to control data flows from government level
in a decentralized or distributed system because if there is a server
under pressure you just can move to another server.
This slide shows what’s the state of Diaspora
right now. We have now… well we live in the year 2015. Some years passed
since this idea was announced. And
here you see the Top 10 active Diaspora servers. Or they’re also called pods.
And first of all we see that in the last years
there was a development or a trend that more and more servers
are located in Germany. The biggest server once… or the most active server
once was joindiaspora.com which was the first server
that called for like registration for anyone.
And today most servers are in Germany.
And looking at the number of registered users
you see that the Top 10 Diaspora pods together
have roundabout half a Million users.
So anyone who’s telling you “Diaspora is dead!”, you can tell:
“Diaspora is not dead!”. It’s pretty alive. And
there are roundabout between 20.000 and 30.000 people
who log in to the Diaspora network, or connected networks
at least once per month. And this number is rather increasing…
…over the last years. So we see that Diaspora has a relatively small
but stable user base. But in the end when we look at the…
what was announced we see that it’s clearly failed its goal
to overcome Facebook or to overthrow Facebook as the de facto social network
of the world. So we need to ask ourselves:
“Why didn’t this happen?”
And in IT it’s said that ‘Code is Law’. And in economics it’s said
that the market structures are telling you a lot
about which outcome is most likely to come out of a situation on the market.
That means that market structure are a powerful tool that can provide
some explanations why we live in such a decade of gated communities
and why decentralized alternatives struggle so hard to overcome Facebook
and others. And talking about
market structures or features of certain markets:
the most important feature on the market for social networks
is of course the ‘network effect’. So: what’s the network effect?
Imagine you get a very tempting offer for a mobile contract.
And it offers really everything you were craving for: different features,
a new mobile for free, and very very low, competitive prize.
But there’s just one twist with this offer: the operator tells you:
“Well, you can accept this offer, but the problem is you can only communicate
with other members of our network. Everyone else will be banned
from calling you or being called.”
Would you accept such an offer? Would you join a gated community?
I don’t think so. I wouldn’t. And this example
shows really what the network effect is all about.
The ‘global network effect’ means simply that
the more users join a network the more connections are available
and therefor the more attractive it becomes for other people to join.
The more people join – more people join etc.
And therefor it’s a structure that really empowers the growth of monopolies
or big platforms. And
through this Bandwagon effect with positive feedback loops
you can clearly see that monopolies are enforced.
But talking about social networks: the global effect is really not so important,
I think. Because when I think about social networks or communication platforms
I really don’t care about the market share in China, or in Brazil,
or in the US. I care about the market share among my friends,
I care about on which platform I can reach my family, or my business contacts.
And that’s true for a lot of people. I mean, most people communicate intensely
always with a very small subset of people. And that is how the ‘local network effect’
works. If everyone here in this room… or if everyone I’m friends with
– rather to say – would switch to an alternative platform I would follow.
Always. Because I want to reach these people.
And interestingly the success of Facebook was not so much
about the global network effect. This effect came later.
First of all it was about the local network effect.
Because when Facebook emerged they had a certain strategy for growth.
And first of all Facebook was in the first month or year
only available for Harvard students.
You even needed a valid Harvard University address in order to register.
Everyone else was banned from the network.
So imagine the situation: you are new at the university and most likely
you moved to Harvard. You don’t know anyone there.
But you make new friends and all these new friends are on this platform.
So you know you will meet people you want to meet there.
So you join. And only after having reached
a critical mass in Harvard Facebook expanded
to other Ivy League colleges. These are very prestigious colleges
in the US and you can be really lucky if you are accepted at one of these colleges.
And again, you needed a valid university address in order to register.
And everyone else was banned.
And only after they reached a critical mass there they expanded.
And allowed any university student to log in.
Then they expanded again. And allowed any school…
or any member of a school to join. Then they chose several institutions,
which were also allowed to join. And only after they reached a critical mass
in every of these communities they opened for the general public.
And that is how social networks – or also different kinds of networks
which are based on communication – how they grow.
And this strategy is successful because people who joined early
on Facebook knew that they would find meaningful connections there,
not anyone. As I told you: you don’t care about the market share in China.
You care about the market share maybe on the CCC congress, or maybe
at your local hackerspace, or maybe at your school or university, or at work,
or at your sucker clob… soccer club. *laughs*
*laughter, relenting applause*
Well, and... *laughs again*
Facebook was not the only network that understood how important
these local network effects are in order to grow.
You often find invite-only structures, searchable friends-of-friends lists,
or invite applications, or… These fancy upload functions
for your address book… yeah, it’s all about the local network effect,
it’s all about local growth.
But unfortunately it’s not only the global and the local network effect
that benefits Facebook. It’s also the indirect network effect,
or also called ‘cross sided network effect’.
And one example, what does it mean, ‘indirect network effect’,
one network effect again? Facebook opens its platform
for app developers. Any app developer is free to join Facebook
– of course you have some restrictions – but you don’t need to pay money
in order to place your app on Facebook. And why does Facebook act in such a way?
Because the more apps you have, the more interaction you have
the more people are likely to join. And the more people join
the more apps you have. Then more people will join. So you have
a likelihood that more apps can contribute to growth.
And maybe you don’t care about apps.
I know pretty much people from my time at university
that were so addicted to Farmville.
Or CandyCrush, or whatever. But this Farmville thing really
ruled at university when you looked at the laptops.
Another interesting cross sided network effect is
e.g. an example where you tried…
when you succeed to attract more advertisers,
and these more advertisers pay you more money, you use this money
in order to provide better services to your users and
maybe more users join because of this. This attracts more advertisers etc.
So this is another effect that
leads to an increase in growth – for the largest platform!
Or for large platforms. And on top of that you still of course have
economies of scale, like in many different other markets.
Economies of scale basically means the marginal costs
for every additional user just decreases.
And of course this doesn’t make competition any easier.
And at this point it is to understand – talking about Facebook
as a gated community – how it came about that
it is in fact today a gated community. Because
it wouldn’t if Facebook would provide e.g. open standards
and the ability to interconnect between different networks.
Imagine a situation where you just could join Diaspora
and you still could contact all your contacts from Facebook.
How much more people would then switch from Facebook to Diaspora?
I think this number would be pretty high. And…
maybe some of you may think this is like a total[ly] naive dream
of open standards in social networks. But I guess everyone of you
has an email address. And do you care
which provider your communication partner chooses?
I mean you don’t need to care because it’s an open protocol.
As long as this person uses the email technology
you can communicate with [it].
And the issues of whether or not a communication platform
shuts down and uses proprietary standards,
and maybe implements incompatibility on purpose
is because that standards have the power
to change the reference point for the network effect.
As I told you with the example of email:
the relevant number concerning the local and the global network effect
with email is not the number who’s on Gmail or the number of people who use GMX
or T-Online, whatever there is. But the relevant number is really
who uses this technology.
And that is why there are very high incentives:
once you became a big player because of the global network effect,
the local network effect, the indirect network effect,
just to close your gates and shut your competitors out.
And it won’t get better. In fact it will get worse.
E.g. we see a lot of companies that in the beginning provide pretty
open standards, or invite application writers to write mobile applications,
such as Twitter, but at some point they always close down.
Once Facebook chat was compatible with Jabber.
And the Google chat was compatible with Jabber, with XMPP, too.
But at some point they just decided to close down.
And if you compete with a gated community
this means also something else. It means that a new feature
won’t help you that much. When you try to get users
to switch. Because maybe e.g. there will…
imagine a new social network with a fancy feature and everyone says:
“Oh, I like this feature but at the same point at the same time
a lot of people will say: “Yeah, I like this feature but still it’s more important
to communicate with all of my friends.” This gives you time.
Of course people are more likely to switch but you have time to adapt
as a monopolist, as a big platform in order to copy these features.
Or maybe to buy the whole company like Facebook does frequently.
And it becomes more likely – with the possibility just to close up
your community and make a gated community out of it –
that the first mover on the market will take it all. The first company,
or the first platform that manages to get a critical mass
and shuts down is most likely to become the de facto [standard] platform provider
for all of the users.
But unfortunately these are not all the economic effects
that make it less likely that people leave Facebook.
There are still the ‘switching cause’ and the ‘lock-in’ effect.
Imagine you want to leave from Facebook, you have
all your photos there, you have all your contacts there, you have interaction data.
And maybe you can move some of your photos; but it’s incredibly annoying
when you don’t have data portability in place. And there are some data
which are really lost. You can’t take them with you.
And that is why switching is so hard. And the longer you are member
of such are platform which doesn’t allow you just to take your stuff
when you move out the more you become locked in.
And the problem about the situation is: once the operator knows
that you won’t be very likely someone who just switches
he will care less. He will care less when you complain about
the new ‘Terms of Services’, he will care less when you complain about
privacy issues, or the advertising policy or whatever. He will just
don’t give a shit.
And the problem is: once you have a gated community, of course
[you] want to monetize it. And the less likely users can make
a credible threat to leave in case they don’t like the business model
or the way how their data or they themselves are treated
the more you can just take out of this network. Because people will start
to tolerate things they would never tolerate under other conditions.
In the case of email I would just switch my email provider. In the case of Facebook
most people won’t switch the social network.
In the business model of Facebook we are not the consumers. That’s very important
to keep in mind. We are the product being sold. And advertisers pay
for the really really scarce resource on the internet:
It’s access to the users! It’s our attention.
And this here is some data on how much worth…
or how much revenue is generated per user.
And you see that when you’re from the US or Canada
your data per year is worth ca. 8 Dollars.
So you pay such an amount of money for getting a service
that costs the provider approx. some pennies, because of economies of scale.
So that’s why gated communities are everywhere. It’s a gold mine.
And the problem is, talking about platforms such as Facebook…
We are not talking anymore about just social networks.
Because it’s a platform.
And platforms that have the network effects and ‘lock-in’ on their side
try often to transfer their dominant market position
from one market to another market. And one common strategy is bundling.
Bundling appears when you only can get a certain service
as a bundle of services, and you can’t just get a single service
without the whole bundle. Some examples concerning Facebook:
Why do you need Jabber when you have a Facebook chat that can’t even
communicate with Jabber. Or do you really need Skype when you have Google Hangouts
on your Google+ account? Or e.g. would you still
upload videos on Youtube or Vimeo when you want to spread them
via Facebook, and you know that Facebook systematically downgrades every video
that isn’t uploaded on their servers?
And this strategy has devastating results.
It’s causing that the gates, or the borders
of a gated community are constantly expanding. That means larger
and larger parts of the internet are becoming parts of some gated community.
And Facebook and others even have managed to kill net neutrality
in various countries in order to expand their borders
to the level of internet access.
The fight about net neutrality is nothing else; the fight about net neutrality
is about gated communities that try to expand their borders
to a level where they don’t belong. And they had no powers
until now. And it is sad to see
but for many people, like for many people I met on university,
back then when I studied here, Facebook is the Internet!
Because Facebook provides everything they basically need.
Everything but freedom, and privacy, and choice.
I admit this was a pretty depressing overview
over market structures. So let’s see what do we do
with this knowledge and what has it to do with Diaspora,
the alternative social network? First of all
let me say one thing: I know it is a convenient dream
that one day the next big social network, or
the next big free software project will come and rescue us all from
the dominance of platform owners.
But competing with such giant platforms like Google,
Facebook or Apple, or Microsoft:
it’s not very likely that this will happen overnight.
And I love heroes… I love super heroes, I love comics, but
unfortunately this is not realistic in such a situation.
We need to work hard in order to accomplish that.
And a cool feature will not change this. Because the history showed that
every time Diaspora tried to implement a new feature
in order to compete with Facebook we had
the situation that other social networks instantly
copied this feature. E.g. how many of you…
I don’t know how many of you are on Facebook… but…
but you know today you can differentiate on Facebook between friends,
close friends, business contacts etc.
This is a relatively new feature. And first, interestingly,
Diaspora implemented such a differentiation
of contact levels, and called it ‘aspects’.
And then Google+ came and announced:
“Yeah, we have something better, we have ‘circles’!”
And it was basically the same principle. And then Facebook of course copied it.
So we need to face this inconvenient truth: Facebook and others will
always have a bigger staff, more money, and a larger user base.
And they will use it against us. So if you’re dreaming that
maybe there will come a new feature, or a new tool;
and all the teens are like: “Hell yeah, I want to use this!
Fuck Facebook, my parents are on Facebook!” *laughter*
This happened before. Do you know Instagram? Do you know Whatsapp?
Do you know who bought it? Facebook!
So we need to really think, in order to win this fight.
Or at least to keep struggling. What are killer features?
What are the killer features of open source decentralized social networks?
I just told you: open source, decentralized, non-corporate,
privacy-aware,… Facebook will not copy that!
*laughter and applause*
*applause*
So, you know, I got really curious – because I knew that my colleagues
from university are not on Diaspora – so I really got curious:
who is on Diaspora? Who are these 20..30.000 users
who log in per month? And this is an analysis
of the most used hashtags on Geraspora. Geraspora is right now
the most active Diaspora pod.
What kind of community do you think is on Diaspora?
Top hashtags such as: Linux, Gnu, Hackernews, ja?
From my point of view this is very awesome, and I think: “Yeah, this is
a community I would like to join!”.
So in fact, when we remember what is important
for social networks in order to grow? It’s the local network effect.
And in fact we already managed to attract a very, very specific group.
And this group is not very likely to switch. Because:
do you think your local hackerspace would maybe switch from Diaspora to Facebook,
because Facebook is so awesome? I don’t think so.
And there will be also some new features –
I can proudly announce because some of the developers
just told me I should do – *laughs*
which can even make the network more attractive
for groups like hackerspaces or whatever. *singular dull laughter from audience*
There will be... *laughs in reaction* there will be
chat extensions soon which is compatible with XMPP,
or based on XMPP so that you can add all your Jabber contacts in there.
And for me it’s pretty convenient because I use Jabber over time-at-work.
So guess what will be open all the time at work!
Diaspora… ooh, here is sitting someone from my work!
*laughter*
Because it’s so super efficient. And… *laughter*
other features are planned as well!
*applause*
There are other features planned as well. There shall be
a group feature soon which is not very easy to implement
because in a decentralized network it’s a bit tricky.
But they’re planning to do it. And they’re also thinking about
adding ‘events’ which is pretty awesome e.g. when you want
to coordinate in your local hackerspace, in your group, and
you have on your chat an idea for an event – bang! – you can set it up
on Diaspora. So is this a gated community for hackers?
I don’t think so because it’s open, it uses open protocols,
and I am sure, or I know there are a lot of other groups
we can address with such a network in order to join.
Because this is how social networks expand.
Group by group – by group. So what other groups could like these features?
What groups could e.g. dislike corporate power?
What kind of activists could dislike NSA backdoors?
Or what kind of public institution or even companies
could feel a bit uncomfortable to put all their data
on an US server? And there are some companies or institutions
who really are craving for a social solution on servers
they can host by themselves. So I think it’s a winning strategy
to address this group, also to ask: “What kind of features do you want?”
and this is what the Diaspora community did. They asked their users:
“What do you want?” and they said: “Jabber, we want Jabber!”.
So they implemented Jabber. And this is how we really can grow.
Step by step through local network effect. And
there have been interesting cooperations with the Diaspora networks,
or other networks that have a decentralized nature already,
e.g. the most active German Diaspora pod
Geraspora is right now funded in some part by a German newspaper,
the Donaukurier. And the Donaukurier interestingly… *sudden laughter*
the Donaukurier one day asked… they had this idea:
“Yeah we want maybe to experiment a bit with decentralized alternatives;
we like this idea… but they didn’t want to set up a server on their own.
So they decided to give regular funding. And they are still giving regular funding.
Or there are requests of different groups or even…
there was a request from youth workers which were interested to use
such a network for communication with their clients.
Because obviously you don’t want any data concerning youth work
hosted on Facebook. And these requests, they are happening,
and I think this is very promising to work on this basic
in order to expand group by group.
And we should not forget: there are certain windows of opportunity
which might convince more people
that Diaspora is really an awesome idea
and the killer features are really worth trying it.
There have been such windows of opportunity, e.g.
there was a time… or there was a constant time of the…
Mr. Erdoğan who is banning various social media platforms in Turkey.
And every time he does the Geraspora pod
sees an increased traffic from Turkish subnets.
And another interesting effect is that
every time Facebook announces changes in the Terms of Service,
again there is a peak. And
these windows of opportunity – unfortunately I have to say this –
they will be more frequent in the future.
Unfortunately it happened before and it will happen again. And once you will have
a big leak of data from Facebook. And
this can happen anytime; maybe more people will be convinced
to try a decentralized alternative.
And it is also important, as these examples showed,
e.g. from Turkey, that we need these alternatives right now.
There are right now people who need such an alternative, not only hackerspaces.
And therefor I’m very, very happy that we are trying to provide
such an alternative right now.
But competing with a large platform, as Facebook is right now,
we need also to see that this is a task we never can manage alone.
We can’t compete with such a network without allies at our side
which have also super powers like we have. And
one of the most interesting developments of the last year is that
Diaspora is in fact not alone any more. Diaspora is part
of the so called ‘Federation’. And the Federation consists of
different decentralized social networks such as Diaspora, friendica or Redmatrix.
And they are interconnected, they speak the same protocol.
So it doesn’t matter whether my friends are on friendica, on Redmatrix
or on Diaspora. I can communicate with them.
And therefor by pooling their users together they change
the reference point of the network effect. And if you are considering
to launch a new social network on your own
you’re free to do. And if you join the Federation you already have a user base.
And this is a very, very exciting and powerful idea.
Because the networks inside the Federation are quite different.
Diaspora e.g. has a very clean, easy design for users.
And some people really like that.
The other networks have other strengths. E.g. friendica
is really an interconnection machine. One of the guys who’s
working on the development team, he’s really looking for any loop hole
he can get into other networks in order to establish an interconnection
even if the operator doesn’t want to. And that’s awesome.
And e.g. friendica already speaks email protocol
and Jabber. And Redmatrix on the other hand:
it is a fork, Redmatric and friendica
share large parts of the same code.
But Redmatrix has a very, very strong emphasis
on privacy. And they’re experimenting with apps,
and OpenID and different features
which the other networks don’t provide. So I think
such a federation or such a bundling of your powers, such a looking for allies
is a very powerful thing to do, not only for you as a network.
But also for your users. As a user I can vote by feet just –
if I don’t like Diaspora then I just join friendica. But I still have
all my contacts from my local hackerspace and that’s awesome.
And in the long run when we look at how this works:
this is really a small version of how the concept of social networks
could look like if we just had open protocols. And that’s also very important,
also for the political struggle, for open protocols to provide
that such a thing works.
But competing with large platforms like Facebook
you’re not only competing with a social network,
you’re competing with an alternative eco system. So we need really to think
how to build an eco system on our own. And
every time there is a new idea or a new feature
Facebook would like to implement they just copy it,
or they buy it. And the big strength
of the Free Software movement is that we don’t nee monetary incentives
to work together. Because we share similar goals.
So instead of trying to provide all the features by yourself
the really winning strategy is just to stay open.
Just to talk to other projects in order to find maybe shared protocols,
or maybe find ways how you can integrate your work into another work,
and how you can benefit from one another.
One example: When I bought this crappy Android phone
there was a pre-installed Google+ app on it.
It’s disgusting, I know, but… *laughter*
*applause* I really…
But I really like the idea of… maybe one day
I will be able to buy a free operating system
without any connections to Google. And I would really love
to have my Diaspora or friendica, whatever app, pre-installed. Or maybe an app
to connect anything inside the Federation.
So we need also to bundle. I mean Facebook does it, we also need to do it.
And some first steps are made. E.g. there are some projects
for home-made clouds where you just can buy your plug-and-play device
and you would be able to get it soon with pre-installed version
of a Diaspora pod. So it won’t be the hackers any more
who have their own pod but maybe the left activists
who’s protesting against neo-liberal politics.
And that’s cool. And there’s another example
that cooperation really can work.
When you take e.g. Firefox. Firefox is the most used browser,
at least in Germany. And Firefox has a feature:
you can have included share buttons inside Firefox.
And you can not only choose between Facebook and Twitter,
and others, but you can also choose to use Diaspora.
And this kind of cooperation is something we clearly need more
in order to overcome gated communities such as Facebook.
So you know I’m an economist.
So I was trained to believe in the idea of free markets
and fair competition etc. It’s a bit like studying Dark Magic.
But in fact really I believe that competition is at least in some areas
something that makes sense. But at some points you need to see
when a market just fails so hard that it doesn’t deliver
the best possible solution. And I don’t think it’s the best possible solution
if you can’t really choose. If there’s no competition. And there is no competition
with Facebook. So the reason why Diaspora and the others
struggle so hard is not because their idea isn’t great, or their technology
is not the better one, maybe. But it is the openness of the web
that is threatened systematically when monopolies use the network effect
in order to create more and more gated communities and expand the borders
of these gated communities more and more. And
the inconvenient truth is also… I mean I presented some ideas
how we can overcome this. But it will remain hard
as long as the structures are like they are right now.
And I read one very interesting article
where the journalist asked the inventor of the protocol for email attachments:
“What would happen if this idea of email
was invented today?” and he replied:
“In this environment, if somebody invented email, whoever managed
to get critical mass first would become the world’s de facto email provider”.
Imagine such a world! I mean it’s disgusting!
But right now we have such a situation in the area of social network.
Here we are! Facebook has become the world’s de facto social network provider
in large parts of the world. Every fifth human being on this planet
logs in on Facebook at least once per month.
And it has this position not because it’s better than others but only
because of market dynamics and because it was lucky.
There is no real competition, and this is market failure. And
when Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet protocol that freed us
from the gated communities of Compuserve and others
he gave it just away. He didn’t say: “Yeah, I want to…
I have this business model, it’s super cool, it’s based on targeted advertisement
and I will build a gated community around my internet”.
He gave it away for free. And because people like him
gave protocols or new ideas away for free and opened it
we had this incredible development, where we had so much innovation,
so much creativity through these open structures. But this is not
how market regulation should work. I mean market regulation should not
rely upon that someone who has the next cool, big idea
that can change the world for better would just be a cool person.
So, finally… *applause*
Some people argue when we talk about social networks
and the dominance of Facebook that this is only a trend.
It would go away one day all the teens switch to another network.
Facebook will be gone.
And I remember hearing similar things about the internet as such. *laughter*
“It’s only a trend. It will go away.” But I don't think so.
And I also don’t think so about social networks
because social networks are a very, very powerful idea.
They are super awesome. And maybe Facebook declines one day
because all the teens realize that their parents are on Facebook as well.
But what will be next? If the next big thing
is also a gated community nothing has changed.
So in order to change things we not only need to provide alternatives
such as the Federation: Diaspora, friendica, etc.
We need to support them, because
maybe you are looking for friends: where should you go?
*laughs* Maybe you find interesting people on Diaspora.
And they really deserve our support. As users, as donators,
as developers or as allies. And you should never forget
that programming free software and building alternative eco systems
to what we see outside in this gated community world (?)
is also a political act. It’s not only writing software.
It’s writing an alternative code for how we want the world to be!
And there is an alternative to patent wars.
There is an alternative to gated communities and business models
that only are based on exploiting our privacy.
And such projects represent the visions of a better world
and that’s why I would like to support them.
But we also need to address, in order to win this fight,
that these alternatives don’t face fair competition.
This is market failure on a large scale.
And that is why we need to fight for open standards; and in order to change
the market structures that will create gated communities over and over again
we need to force Facebook… we need to force them and not just kindly ask:
“Mr. Zuckerberg, would you please be so kind to consider
to tear down this wall?”. This will not work!
We need to talk about political solutions. And we need to address this
as a need for market regulation in order that the better solution can win.
Thank you. *applause*
Herald: Yeah, tear down this wall. Ronald Reagan at its best,
at least Mr. Zuckeberg is watching the stream or
Oettinger is watching the steam. You know what to do!
So come we now to the Questions and Answers.
Microphones on the left, on the right, and also:
are there any questions from the internet?
Signal Angel: Yes, I have 2 questions from the internet.
Herald: Okay, we will start with the internet because I’m sure you are here
after the talk that people can ask you. So, okay, dear internet!
Question: What is the relation of Diaspora and GNU-social or Pump.io
Are there plans to merge the protocols?
Katharina: I think for this question you would really need
to ask the developers. But I can ask this room:
hey, Diaspora developers: are you here? *points into audience*
Yeah, there! Do you want to say something about this?
Herald: Please just when you’ll go to the microphone,
otherwise it’s not hear in this steam.
Katharina: Yeah, a worm applaus to Dennis Schubert
*applause*
Dennis: So no, there are no actual plans to merge protocols
but there are discussions on defining a new protocol.
That supports all social networks together. So, yeah.
Herald: Is there another question on… *applause*
Is there another question from the internet?
Question: Yes: is there a way to import from Facebook to Diaspora?
Katharina: To import data… Yeah this is a interesting thing
e.g. … yeah, I had this in my presentation,
but because of out-of-time reasons I deleted it.
There is fortunately this new EU Privacy Law,
the Privacy Regulation, which will also force platforms
such as Facebook to provide like a data dump of your data
– you can take with you. But I’m still a bit not very convinced
how this will work out, whether or not ALL the data is included.
It would be very convenient if you just had one like…
one data dump and you could just download it and upload it.
But we need to wait and see how this will develop.
Herald: Okay, I’m sorry to hear but at least we are out of time now.
All [remaining] questions afterwards with Katharina.
Give her another warm applaus! For the federous (?) talk!
*postroll music*
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