[yosefk]

I think grandparent's point was that the first cause you mention - reducing FB's power over users - does nothing for the users if this power instead goes to other 3rd parties, and perhaps even grows.

GP points out that in a distributed social network, 3rd parties can still mine your data, you still have trouble permanently erasing information, and in fact these problems grow instead of shrink. From a user's POV, what matters is the total amount of 3rd parties over them and the leverage they have against these 3rd parties as a whole. GP's point is that shrinking FB's power by going to a distributed social network might actually increase the total power 3rd parties have over users.

[vlehto]

I'm in the "facebook should have less power" - camp and I'm not worried about those 3rd parties if they are not unified. The amount of 3rd parties does not matter at all.

I'm not afraid that I do something stupid and people find out. I'm afraid that I don't do anything stupid, but facebook makes it look like I did. They have authority a distributed system could never have.

Also I'm not worried about someone who sells pruning shears could mine my data and find out that I like pruning shears. I'm worried that facebook only shows me adds of shitty pruning shears of certain companies. Who happen to be drinking buddies with facebook executives.

You can say that these are delusional things to worry about. But how do you draw the line when concentration of power is OK and when it's not?

[strypey]

Those who are concerned about this have three options:

* make the effort to learn how to set up and maintain your own instance of your chosen federated social app. You get to decide exactly what data is and isn't shared with the network. You don't depend on the goodwill of any third party , or their security competence (just your own).

* find a geek you know, and get them to host an instance for you. There is a third party, but it's someone you personally know and presumably trust.

* find a public instance run by a collective or organisation you trust to care about your privacy and know how to protect it, eg some people might trust the motives and competence of EFF, or their country's civil liberties organisation (eg ACLU in the US), or a collective like RiseUp.net or Disroot.org.

While export/ import of accounts between instances is an unsolved problem at present (Hubzilla can do it using Nomadic Identity but only between Hubzilla instances), the devs of all the federated apps are aware of it as a major pain point, and work is underway to implement it. In the meantime, if you're willing to go to the trouble of re-following and nagging all your followers to re-follow, you can move between the 3 options above at will. FB and other datafarms offer you none of these options.

EDIT: formatting