Diaspora (software)

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Diaspora *

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Screenshot
Screenshot of version 0.6.7.0
Basic data

developer Diaspora project
Publishing year 2010
Current  version 0.7.14.0
( June 14, 2020 )
operating system Platform independence
programming language Ruby
category social network
License AGPL ( Free Software )
German speaking Yes
diasporafoundation.org

Diaspora (also Diaspora * , where the star is supposed to symbolize a dandelion ) is free software for creating the social network of the same name , whose pods (decentralized nodes) currently (as of March 7, 2018) have around 665,000 registered users. In contrast to centralized social networks such as Facebook or Google+ , diaspora is designed as a distributed system .

Scope of services

Diaspora is programmed in the Ruby programming language. The project aims to offer the same scope of services as Facebook: notice boards for time-shifted and a chat window for real-time communication as well as interfaces for applications programmed by third parties (plug-ins). In contrast to Facebook, however, the decentralized structure ensures that the user stores his data on personal servers (pods) and thus retains control over them. If you don't want to operate your own pod on your own server, you can open an account on one of the public pods that are operated by other users for this purpose.

Since this is a decentralized network, there is no uniform URL under which users can be reached. Other users can be found using the search function, which provides cross-pod results. With Diaspora there are also no global user names like with central web offers, but (like with e-mail addresses or Jabber IDs ) each a user name, which is composed of an @ sign and the pod address, for example: example @ pod-name.tld .

history

Zhitomirskiy and Grippi in July 2011 at the Campus Party Festival in Mexico City

The project goes back to four mathematics students at New York University : Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy (1989–2011). It was announced on the Kickstarter platform on April 24, 2010 and achieved its first fundraising goal of $ 10,000 in 12 days. In the weeks that followed, a total of $ 200,642 was raised from 6,479 donors. This made Diaspora the most successful Kickstarter project to date. According to his own statements, one donor was the founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg , who called the Diaspora a “cool idea” . The impetus for founding the Diaspora project came from a speech that Eben Moglen from Columbia Law School gave to the Internet Society on February 5, 2010 . Under the title Freedom in the Cloud , Moglen described how centralized social networks spy on their users.

With starting capital of $ 200,000, the students developed a prototype and released it as an alpha version on November 23, 2010 . The software's source code was originally scheduled to be released on September 15, 2010. The first release was initially delayed to October 2010. An alpha version of the social network was finally released on November 24, 2010. Invitations have been sent out on the project's mailing list since November 23, 2010. The approval of new invitations on the joindiaspora.com pod was initially discontinued on November 27, 2010. A note on this can be found in an updated blog entry. Since the beginning of January 2011, a number of pods for testing diaspora have been publicly available. Since September 2011 it is again possible to receive new invitations. In mid-November 2011, a new version with an extended range of functions was published, including the “ hashtag follow function, direct messages, like buttons for status updates and a notification system”.

The project has been supported by the Diaspora Foundation since September 2011, which launched a large fundraising campaign the following month. Shortly afterwards, it was announced that the company PayPal , through which the donation transfer could be made, froze the project's account after donating $ 45,000 in donations within a few days. A precise explanation was not given, but further documents were requested by the US group. After massive protests by diaspora supporters, the account was released again shortly afterwards. Ilya Zhitomirskiy , one of the co-founders of the project, passed away on November 12, 2011 , at the age of 22, shortly before the start of the public beta phase of the social network.

Most users of the network come from the USA, followed by Germany. There are mainly “technically interested” members, as well as creative people and supporters of the Occupy movement and the Pirate Party . The largest pod currently in Germany is Geraspora.

In May 2012 it was announced that Diaspora would from now on be further developed as part of the Y Combinator startup program. This gave rise to the concern that the project could be commercialized so that it would lose its current free character and thereby possibly lose its attractiveness for its current users. At the end of August 2012, the developers announced that Diaspora would become a community project. Discussions and decisions on the development of diaspora took place on the Loomio platform until March 2017, and since then on a separate discourse instance. All previous discussions on Loomio have been imported into Discourse. The previous mailing lists were also replaced by corresponding categories in Discourse.

safety

Diaspora is a decentralized, distributed system and is intended to enable secure, controlled and simple exchange of data on the Internet, because each user can operate a server himself and can fully control the software on this server. However, because only very few users operate their server themselves, the problem arises that attackers can integrate their own, reprogrammed servers into the network, which misuse the data that users of that server share or receive.

Further development

Diaspora is to be built up modularly with the help of add-ons to enable every conceivable type of communication between users. In addition, plug-ins should be possible that expand the range of functions. The developers also plan to offer a paid web hosting service for Diaspora pods.

Several apps are available for Android smartphones

criticism

In February 2012, the computer magazine c't criticized that the original promise to offer a peer-to-peer network had not yet been kept by the diaspora because most users would not be able to install it on their own PC or on their own web host are extensive and too complicated. On a Linux or Mac OS X server, Ruby, SQLite 3, OpenSSL , cURL , ImageMagick , Git and Redis would have to be set up before Diaspora could be installed. That is why most Diaspora users continue to rely on the pod that manages their account to handle their data with confidence. In terms of simple installation, the alternative friendica is further than Diaspora.

literature

  • Simon Hurtz: A platform for paranoiacs . In: Berliner Zeitung. October 27, 2011. Retrieved October 27, 2011.
  • Erika Jonietz: Bye-bye Facebook . Technology Review. December 31, 2010, accessed on January 5, 2011 (experience report from the alpha test).
  • Jakob Lochner: Diaspora is dead, long live diaspora! . In: Heise Online. News ticker. August 27, 2013. Retrieved August 27, 2013.
  • Kurt Sagatz: The Anti-Facebook . In: Der Tagesspiegel. November 13, 2011. Retrieved November 14, 2011.

Web links

Commons : Diaspora  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ github.com .
  2. ↑ a b c d Decentralize the web with Diaspora - Kickstarter , Maxwell Salzberg, Daniel Grippi, Raphael Sofaer, and Ilya Zhitomirskiy, Kickstarter, accessed May 13, 2010.
  3. ↑ User numbers: diaspora * statistics hub , accessed on March 7, 2018
  4. ↑ a b Striking back at Facebook, the open-source way , Amy Vernon, May 12, 2010, Network World, International Data Group, accessed May 12, 2010.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Four Nerds and a Cry to Arms Against Facebook , Jim Dwyer, May 11, 2010, New York Times, accessed May 12, 2010
  6. ↑ Epicenter: Mark Zuckerberg: I ​​Donated to Open Source, Facebook Competitor Ryan Singel, Wired News, May 28, 2010, accessed May 29, 2010.
  7. ↑ Internet Society - Eben Moglen - Freedom in The Cloud, Software Freedom, Privacy and Security for Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing , February 5, 2010, accessed July 3, 2010.
  8. ^ Diaspora Project: An Overdue Update ( Memento of January 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). August 26, 2010 (accessed August 27, 2010).
  9. ↑ a b Diaspora founder sets & Co. on long-term strategy against Facebook . In: Technology Review of August 19, 2011.
  10. ^ Diaspora Project: An Overdue Update ( Memento of January 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). August 26, 2010 with an addendum on August 30, 2010 (accessed on September 15, 2010): “Addendum (8/30): To clarify, September 15 will be our open-source developer release. At that time, we will open up our github repository, publish our roadmap, and shift our development style to be more community oriented. We intend on launching a consumer facing alpha in October. Join our mailing list to get an invite. ".
  11. ^ Diaspora Project: Developer Release ( Memento of December 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). September 15, 2010 (accessed September 16, 2010).
  12. ^ Diaspora Project: Private Alpha Invites Going Out Today ( Memento of November 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). November 23, 2010 (accessed November 24, 2010).
  13. ^ Diaspora Project: Invite Update ( Memento of July 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). November 27, 2010 (accessed November 27, 2010).
  14. ↑ There are several directories of pods, for example Diaspora * Pod uptime , accessed on November 19, 2011.
  15. ↑ Diaspora * is making a difference. In: blog.diasporafoundation.org. Archived from the original on November 30, 2012 ; Retrieved September 23, 2011 .
  16. ↑ Diaspora invites you to a revised alpha version on the website of the newspaper Der Standard from November 14, 2011
  17. ↑ Blog entry of the project about the fundraising campaign ( memento of January 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on October 20, 2011
  18. ↑ Blog entry of the project about the blocking of the account ( memento of July 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on October 20, 2011
  19. ↑ PayPal acts like a “pal,” unfreezes the Diaspora * community's donations ( memento of November 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Entry in the project's blog on October 20, 2011 (accessed on November 14, 2011)
  20. ↑ Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 22 . Message on TechCrunch .
  21. ↑ a b Kurt Sagatz: Diaspora starts beta phase open to everyone . The decentralized social network Diaspora will soon be open to everyone. However, this long-awaited move is overshadowed by the death of one of the founders. In: zeit.de. November 14, 2011. Retrieved November 15, 2011.
  22. ↑ Martin Weigert: A new era begins: Diaspora is planning a big restart with Y Combinator. In: netzwertig.com. May 14, 2012. Retrieved July 29, 2012 .
  23. ^ Gil: Social Network Diaspora becomes a community project . In: Heise Newsticker . August 28, 2012, accessed September 1, 2012.
  24. ↑ outgrowing Loomio. March 21, 2017. Retrieved May 19, 2017 .
  25. ^ Discourse instance of the diaspora * project
  26. ↑ Erika Jonietz Bye-bye Facebook on heise.de from December 31, 2010
  27. ↑ Android app Diaspora *
  28. ↑ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miga.pusteblume
  29. ↑ dandelion * in the F-Droid App Store. Retrieved August 10, 2016 .
  30. ↑ Jo Bager: Private meeting places. Diaspora and other Facebook alternatives . In: c't . No. 5/2012. Pp. 136-139 (here: p. 137). ( paid online version )