If someone had told you 14 years ago that Facebook would have over 2 billion users and would be counted as one of the most valuable companies in the world, would you have believed them? The pace at which social media has taken the world by storm is pretty hard to comprehend, especially considering the humble origins of connecting school friends with one another. And yet, likely because of this rapid pace of growth, the majority of users have never stopped to really consider the sheer amount of private data they are giving up in the process.

Your last beach selfie is floating somewhere in Ben Franklin’s right eye…

How Did We Get Here

Facebook got its start in 2004, the product either of one Harvard student’s brilliant insight into connecting friends, or an idea stolen from two other Harvard students. Whatever the case might be, Facebook took off like a rocket ship, spreading from a few Ivy League schools, branching out to more universities shortly thereafter, and eventually opening up to the world. By 2008, Facebook would boast over 100 million users on the network.

Up until this time, Facebook was keeping the lights on mostly through venture capital investments. In March of 2008 they hired Sheryl Sandberg, and she soon held a brainstorming session to determine the long-term vision for monetization. They concluded that advertising would be the optimal path to profitability, and by September 2009, Facebook had become profitable.

Fast-forward to the present, with multiple additional acquisitions (including Instagram and Whatsapp) and well over 100 billion dollars in revenue later, it’s hard to argue that they made a good business decision. Unfortunately, this revenue has come with a hefty price for users: complete loss of privacy to advertisers (and others).

Sharing a fun moment on the beach with friends and a few thousand advertisers

Why Privacy Matters with Social Media

In order to appreciate why Facebook’s ad-monetization strategy enabled them to become one of the most valuable companies in the world, you have to understand the level of insight that Facebook was able to provide to advertisers about their users. Before companies like Facebook (and Google, Amazon, and a few other major tech players) existed, most advertising agencies would try to reach large audiences with broad messaging. They did this because the type of information necessary for deeply-targeted campaigns simply didn’t exist. Once Facebook and others came on the scene, it created a perfect storm of people detailing the smallest aspects of their lives (sometimes without even knowing it through things like location data) and advertisers looking to use that very specific information to precisely target people to sell things to.

While using this information to advertise consumer products might not seem that damaging (“it’s only money…”), this practice takes a much darker turn when you consider how targeted advertising can be used to sway public opinion. This came to a head in 2018 in the wake of the revelations about how Cambridge Analytica was using Facebook user data to allow politicians to precisely target users. Regardless of political opinion, it’s not a great feeling to know that the data one generates on social media is being used to subtly influence the information that is put in front of them.

What Alternatives Exist

While there are no social networks that are nearly as large as Facebook (or even Twitter, Instagram, etc.), the technology to replace them in a more privacy-minded way absolutely exists today. Here are a few options worth considering:

Diaspora (Facebook alternative) — Diaspora is a nonprofit, user-owned, distributed social network that is based upon the free Diaspora software. Diaspora’s network of users live on independently owned nodes (called pods) which interoperate to form the network. Users of the network can host a pod on their own server or create an account on any existing pod of their choice, and from that pod can interact with other users on all other pods.

Mastodon (Twitter alternative) — Mastodon is a distributed, federated social network that forms part of the Fediverse, an interconnected and decentralized network of independently operated servers. Mastodon has microblogging features similar to Twitter. Each user is a member of a specific Mastodon server, known as an “instance” of the software, but can connect and communicate with users on other instances as well.

Linux and Mastodon make a great combination for privacy seekers

How to Help

For a social network, the users are everything. Every user that joins and engages with the network accelerates the growth of that network (called a “network effect”). Right now, Facebook has billions of users, whereas most of the alternatives listed above have around 1 million each; clearly, there is a lot of ground to make up for these services to find mainstream acceptance. Here are a few ways to help:

Join the network! In the case of either Diaspora or Mastodon, this means choosing a node that is interesting, and then start sharing like you would on Facebook or Twitter. Host a node. If you have experience setting up a web service (and using a VPS), this is a great way to keep the network growing. The setup for each of these services is not for the faint of heart, so this is probably not the best option for readers of this article. Donate money. If you like the idea of alternative, open-platform social networks, but aren’t ready to get directly involved, passing them a few bucks to keep things going is a great way to support the cause. Remember that these are open-source, non-profit projects, so they aren’t making billions of dollars off of user data. Both Diaspora and Mastodon have donation options available.

And if none of those options appeal to you, then at least talk and spread the word about these alternatives! The more people are exposed to these ideas, the more viable they become.

Diaspora is open source, so not only is it great for privacy, users can also contribute to making it better!

Parting Thoughts

There’s no real way to sugarcoat the present situation in social media. Facebook is the dominant king, there are a few runner-ups (many also owned by Facebook…), and everything else is well-behind. If you join one of the alternatives listed above, there’s a good chance few if any of your friends and family will be there today. It’s worth remembering though that it took years for the incumbents to grow to their present size, and it is possible for social networks to die (hello, MySpace). There’s also the bigger question: do you even want to be on social media? There’s a growing trend of people simply walking away from Facebook. Perhaps when you’re thinking of posting your next selfie, stop and ask the question, “Why am I even doing this?”

Hopefully you enjoyed this article! To get some more great Practical Privacy tips, check out my other articles!