joindiaspora crisis
Flaburgan
Public
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We are facing a lot of problems with joindiaspora and I think it's time to change our strategy about it.
At the moment, we simply don't deal with joindiaspora. But there are many downsides. They almost all come from one point: people don't make any difference between "diaspora*" and "joindiaspora". Result: when "joindiaspora" is slow / buggy / down, it's "diaspora*" which slow / buggy / down. When "joindiaspora" doesn't respect privacy (Amazon, Google analytics which has now be removed), it's "diaspora*" which doesn't respect privacy.
We have to make it damn clear that diaspora* is a project to build a free social web, diaspora* is a software when joindiaspora is an installation of this software.
You don't have to use joindiaspora to use diaspora. You shouldn't use it (we arrive to another bad point: joindiaspora is overloaded).
The approach to use diaspora* should be the following, I want to use diaspora*:
I set up my own pod
I can't set up, no time|money|knowledge => I find a friend of mine who has a pod / is able to set up one.
I know nobody who has a pod => I go to poduptime and choose a pod which respect the criteria I have (privacy, hosted country, etc).
Guys, I listen to you, what can we do to make that every diaspora user will know that?
Jason Robinson Thu 15 Aug 2013 9:12AM
@rogerbraun kinda like that idea - but first we need an actual pod list. I would prefer some app installed on a foundation server and opt-in configuration for open pods to "report home". Then we would have a reliable foundation controlled pod list that could be used for this kind of "load balance" purpose and in the future for other things.
goob Thu 15 Aug 2013 9:21AM
One thing to do would be to contact all the sources online which talk about Diaspora and give the joindiaspora.com address, and ask them to change their link to diasporafoundtation.org. I saw another one last night.
Roger Braun Thu 15 Aug 2013 9:23AM
Also, just as an anectote, I already had my own pod set up and still switched to joindiaspora.org. The reasons:
No tag following on other pods, which makes the ability to follow tags pretty useless on small, private-ish pods.
The impossibility to set up a free ssl cert for a subdomain. I already have my own domain and do not want to keep another one around just for my diaspora installation. Also, SSL certs are just an enourmous hassle to manage and keep up to date.
Jason Robinson Thu 15 Aug 2013 9:27AM
I do some monitoring of #diaspora tags on Twitter, G+ and Facebook :) Mostly it's not relating to our platform but the "other diaspora", but there is the occasional post about someone talking about Diaspora. I've been replying to quite a few correcting misunderstandings etc. It is quite obvious that many still think joindiaspora is the "official" Diaspora thing - though the changes on joindiaspora themselves should help with that since now it clearly mentions that it is only one pod. Some people still think Diaspora needs an invitation ;)
In the future it would be nice to somehow build up "pod neutral" social media accounts - for example the Twitter account used as the official one is actually the joindiaspora.com account which is confusing. But as it has tens of thousands of followers I don't think it's worth the hassle of changing accounts - and certainly we have better things to do..
Jason Robinson Thu 15 Aug 2013 9:28AM
Maybe Maxwell will get fed up with joindiaspora.com one day and he will sell it to a possible foundation ;) Then it could actually be an official foundation pod :P
goob Thu 15 Aug 2013 12:16PM
In the future it would be nice to somehow build up “pod neutral” social media accounts - for example the Twitter account used as the official one is actually the joindiaspora.com account which is confusing. But as it has tens of thousands of followers I don't think it's worth the hassle of changing accounts - and certainly we have better things to do..
You can change a Twitter account name very easily and maintain all the followers - so it could be changed from @joindiaspora to @diasporafoundation or whatever.
Sean Tilley Thu 15 Aug 2013 7:46PM
@goob That's actually a really cool idea. I'd be all for giving it a name change in the future.
goob Thu 15 Aug 2013 9:16PM
Should we start a new discussion to decide on a new name for the Twitter account? Hmmm..... scratches head for inspiration....
OpenLifeChallenge Thu 15 Aug 2013 9:30PM
It's only a small minority that have the Amazon scare
thing.
@jasonrobinson I have noticed the Amazon scare thing but it touches on credibility for the Diaspora* values. There should be (are already?) certain guidelines for podmins that they then are recommended to follow. podupti.me monitors some of those possible recommendations such as SSL certificate status etc. However the transparency of hosting solution should be obvious for each and every podmin, especially since Diaspora* is listed on the User Data Manifesto:
- Invulnerability of data
Everybody should be able to protect their own data
against surveillance and to federate their own data for
backups to prevent data loss or for any other reason. "
The joindiaspora.com pod does not follow that principle then if I have understood the surveillance of Amazon solutions. Ironically, Loom.io seems to be using Amazon in some way too.
Maybe I'm totally tired and off-track right now...
Roger Braun · Thu 15 Aug 2013 8:46AM
I read somewhere (can't find it now) that pump.io redirect to a random installation when you click on the "try it" button, so registrations should be spread out over all installations. They do this because they had the same problem with identi.ca. Something like this might be a solution.