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The domi­nance of Face­book is a democra­tic pro­blem. Our only hope is to use the same tac­tic the inter­net used to win against the networks of the time: Open up for col­la­bo­ra­tion between networks. This is done through federa­tion. Here is how and why it will work, and how you can help.

At a recent con­fe­rence in Nor­way, Clay Shirky was asked what he thinks of the domi­na­tion of Face­book. His answer is dis­coura­ging. You can see it below, but in short he says that Face­book might now be so big that it’s impos­sible to chal­lenge its dominance.

Face­book has 800 mil­lion active users around the world. In some countries its grasp on the popu­la­tion is stag­gering. In the US, 41.6% of the popu­la­tion has an account. In Nor­way, 73% of the popu­la­tion uses Face­book every month, and young people spend 40% of their online time there. You can see why Clay has a nega­tive outlook.

So, is the fight lost? Will Face­book rule for all fore­se­ea­ble future?

Yes. It might do just that, if we don’t have a radi­cal shift in our thin­king. We need to start thin­king like the inter­net. We can not follow the old pat­tern of one com­pany replacing anot­her (6 degrees -> Fri­end­ster -> Mys­pace -> Face­book) any more. Here I think Clay might be right.

What can replace Face­book then is not anot­her social network, where all your fri­ends have to agree to join the same new place, but somet­hing more akin to the inter­net itself: A network of social networks.

How is this done?

Through decen­tra­liza­tion with federa­tion. Federa­tion means that two people with pro­fi­les on two dif­fe­rent social networks can do all the things toget­her that they would nor­mally need to be on the same network to do: Follow, @reply/comment, self orga­nize trough hashtags/groups, etc. Social networks using federa­tion is cal­led dis­tri­buted social networks.

Take a look at this fan­ta­s­tic walk-through expla­i­ning what distributed/federated social networks are, how they work, and more, pre­sented as an old school point-and-click game.

A sys­tem for federa­tion, OSta­tus, is being built by Sta­tus­Net by bund­ling many alre­ady highly regar­ded Open protocols. This is in use today. If you have a micro­blog on Identi.ca or any ser­ver with the Sta­tus­Net soft­ware you can follow any Tum­blr and Fri­en­dica account from there. In addition to any other account on any other Sta­tus­Net ser­ver. Google Buzz and Cliq­set was also a part of this.

I install it on my ser­ver, you use Brain­bird, our mutual fri­end use Identi.ca, but we can all com­mu­ni­cate and col­la­bo­rate just as easily as if we were all on Twitter.

The beaut­i­ful thing with this federa­tion is that no deals have to be made, no con­tracts sig­ned. One player doesn’t even have to know that the others exist. It is orga­nic like the kind of spon­tane­ous col­la­bo­ra­tion that hap­pens online when people inde­pen­dent of one anot­her starts labe­ling their pho­tos with the same tag, which Clay him­self talks about in his book Here comes eve­rybody. Anyone is free to imple­ment the OSta­tus protocols and get federated.

Why is it needed?

There will always be people who create new social networks to cater to a spec­i­fic social or tech­ni­cal niche. But, as Clay says, these mom-and-pop com­pa­nies stands no chance against the Face­book mall. With its groups and apps, Face­book can encom­pass the need of any niche, and be the gene­ral pur­pose store at the same time. The Face­book chat is not bet­ter than MSN, ICQ or Jab­ber, but because you can do eve­rything on Face­book, and because of the network effect, it is still taking over.

Why will it work?

Because of the same network effect that keeps eve­ryone locked in to Face­book. Every extra node on a network makes the whole network expo­nenti­ally more use­ful for all the exis­ting nodes. Few nodes, that is if none of your fri­ends are there, makes the network close to use­less; no mat­ter how inno­va­tive the tech­no­logy or how great the Terms of Service.

Even though most new networks will be able to recruit at least a few people for all kinds of dif­fe­rent rea­sons, they are more likely to lose those users after a while than to recruit more. Few users is, iro­ni­cally, the main hind­ran­ces for get­ting more users. When new star­tups begin to see this dilemma, they will hope­fully come to the rea­liza­tion that it is suicide to try to go the same route as Face­book and lock their users into a walled gar­den.

Federa­tion means ope­ning yours­elf up the scary pos­si­bi­lity that those who want to talk to some of your users choo­ses to do so from anot­her network, instead of joi­ning yours. But it also goes the other way around. Get­ting one new per­son (node) to regis­ter is hard when you’re a small player and all the fri­ends of this poten­tial new user is on Face­book. But by federa­ting your network it gains thou­sands of new nodes instantly, making your network end­les­sly more use­ful for all your users. In addition your users don’t have to con­vince all their fri­ends that they should join your par­ti­cu­lar network, only that they should join one of the (hope­fully soon) thou­sands of federa­ted networks to choose from.

Every time a new network starts federa­ting, the rew­ard for joi­ning the network of network grows big­ger for the next player out, who will enjoy the bene­fits of the network effect wit­hout having to build the user base for it first. This will have a snow­ball effect.

Why will it work? Because it’s the only alternative.

Why is it bet­ter for everyone?

Face­book is a threat, but not because it is Face­book. If his­tory repeats itself and anot­her network replaces Face­book, not­hing will be gai­ned. It will grow as large or lar­ger than its pre­de­ces­sor, just like before, and the democra­tic pro­blem Clay warns about will be just as bad. The pub­lic space will be replaced by a com­mer­cial space, where pub­lic speech is allowed when the com­pany deems it advan­tage­ous for them.

But with a federa­ted network of networks the oppo­site will be the case. Is the network you chose for spre­ad­ing your mes­sage censoring you? If that network is Face­book, there’s little to not­hing you can do, as thou­sands of unhappy users, from people expres­sing sym­pathy towards the family of Anders Behring Brei­vik to acti­vists and anti-monarchists in the UK can tell you. If the network is a federa­ted network, you can just move to anot­her federa­ted network, or install one on your own ser­ver, and keep all your follow­ers. Of course this also points to chal­len­ges we need to face regar­ding bully­ing, child porn, and other heinous cri­mes, but we will be able to find solu­tions to those pro­blems. Trough free and uncen­so­red dis­course and innovation.

We can not have a real democracy if every pub­lic meatspace is con­verted into malls and pri­vat­ely owned parks, where the wish of the owners are the security guards demand, and every pub­lic cyber­space is con­verted into Face­book, with one ToS to rule them all. Our free society is depen­dent on the free­dom to debate any issue and pur­sue any know­ledge, no mat­ter how dama­ging it might be to the ad reve­nues. We live in a society, not a cor­po­ra­tion. We must keep it that way.

How can I try it?

There are many ways to try federa­tion today. The most com­mon way is to create an account on Identi.ca, which is based on Sta­tus­Net. From there you can follow users on Mozil­laCa or Brain­bird or any of the other Sta­tus­Net ser­vers. Or you can install Sta­tus­Net on your own ser­ver. Other networks who are federa­ting inclu­des Mediagob­lin and Fri­en­dica. Dia­spora is federa­ted among itself. That is you can com­mu­ni­cate between dif­fe­rent Dia­spora instal­la­tions. But it is unfor­tu­nately not con­nected to the wider network of networks yet. Others wor­king on federa­tion inclu­des bud­dy­cloud, Apple­seed, Ampify, Open­Photo and many, many more.

How can I contribute?

Spread the word and talk about why this is impor­tant. Tell your favo­rite tiny social network about the advan­ta­ges of adop­ting federa­tion. Con­tri­bute code to the OSta­tus or Unhosted effort. Read up on the Free­dom­Box and donate eit­her your money or your time as a coder or trans­la­tor. And maybe most impor­tantly: Be active on those social networks that alre­ady are federated.

Anyone who’s read Jonat­han Zittrains excel­lent book The Future of the Inter­net — And How to Stop It, or stu­died the his­tory of the inter­net will rec­og­nize that we’ve been here before. AOL, Com­pu­Serve, and others ope­ra­ted pri­vat­ely con­trolled networks with a great network effect making it impos­sible for newco­mers to com­pete. They where just as invin­cible as Face­book. Then came the internet.

Open up or die

My pre­dic­tion is this: Clay is right. We will not see anot­her turn of the wheel with anot­her social network dethro­ning Face­book. But at some point the federa­ted network of networks, with it’s thou­sands of laug­hably small social networks which Face­book can safely ignore on their own, will grow into an ulti­ma­tum: Open up and join somet­hing big­ger than yours­elf, like AOL joined the inter­net, or die.

This might seem like the end, but if we start thin­king like the inter­net it is only the begin­ning. That is, unless the Protect-IP Act is passed and bre­aks the inter­net. Please sign the petition against Protect-IP over at Demand Pro­gress!

Update: Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is Protect-IP, only worse. It will break the inter­net for the whole world, not only USA: And it’s about to become law. Please find out more and sign this petition, in addition to the one lin­ked to above.

What do you think? Is this the solu­tion? Is this a pro­blem that needs a solu­tion at all? Am I too opti­mi­s­tic or too pes­si­mi­s­tic? And do you know of any other ways to be a part of the federa­tion revo­lu­tion? Please tell me in the com­ments below!

Update: Others tal­king about this blogpost:

• Com­ments on Red­dit r/opensource
• Paul Booker from Mozilla
• James Tait from Canonical

Let me know if you’ve writ­ten about this, and I’ll add you to the list!

Update 19.12: Fan­ta­s­tic talk about Why Poli­ti­cal Liberty Depends on Soft­ware Free­dom More Than Ever, by Eben Mog­len, foun­der of The Free­dom­Box Foundation

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