Occupy Nerds Building Their Own Facebook Alternative

[beer]

A group of tech-savvy activists involved with Occupy Wall Street (OWS) are building their own version of Facebook. They're just a bit wary of the comparison.

"I don't want to say we're making our own Facebook. But we're making our own Facebook," Ed Knutson, a developer who teamed up with a group of activists to build a protester-friendly social network, told Wired.

"We don't trust Facebook with private messages among activists," he added.

As most of the Occupy encampments have been broken up around the country, the group hopes the platform they're building can be a tool for protesters, both domestically and abroad. And it's not open to just anyone—to join the network, you must be invited by an existing member.

"You have to know someone in real life who sponsors you," Knutson said.

Considering that a Massachusetts district attorney subpoenaed Twitter last week for information from the @OccupyBoston account, a more secure network is especially important to these activists.

"These networks will be perfectly fine—until they are not," Sam Boyer, a developer and activist involved with the New York City OWS tech team, told Wired. "And it will be a one-day-to-the-next thing."

Rather than use networks populated by the masses, developers like Knutson want to build and run their own online communication platform, in an open-source format, along the lines of Diaspora, a distributed social network started by four NYU students in 2010.

Here's what the OWS platform most assuredly won't be, its developers say—another Facebook competitor (think Google+) concerned with eating away at the top social network's 800 million-strong user base.

Time this month named "The Protester" as its Person of the Year for 2011, and it was certainly a year rife with protests. Popular movements took to the streets everywhere from the Middle East to Middle America. Social networks quickly became an integral part of the organization and mobilization of these protests, and the team behind "Occupy Facebook" thinks their project has the potential to make a huge impact among protesters worldwide.

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Lets hope they don't get too big too fast, or else they might have to start to occupy protest themselves.

:lol:

[Alanon]

I like the red star on the fist there. ^_^

Anyway, the American corrupt legislature will eat them up. I'm surprised they let them go this far. They will wage a war, and at some point probably call them terrorists. -.-

[beer]

I like the red star on the fist there. ^_^

Anyway, the American corrupt legislature will eat them up. I'm surprised they let them go this far. They will wage a war, and at some point probably call them terrorists. -.-

I am guessing the reason they haven't shutdown the the protests through force is due to the advent of social networks/youtube. They can't go around wiping out protestors without it being exposed in the social networks/youtube(we know the gov't would love to control those media channels like the news). Which is probably why they granted the US President the power to shutdown the internet for "national security" reasons.

[Alanon]

Yeah, it could be the new wiki-leaks, as far as incriminating intel goes.