Grappling on Facebook

As my family, friends and regular blog reader's know, I'm not a fan of Facebook and do not have a Facebook account. It is not because I'm trying to hide information from the public, as this blog, which is overly candid, can attest. In the terms of service of Facebook they claim ownership of everything on Facebook and I can just not, on principle, go along with it. This is just one of a number of issues I have with Facebook. It is not even that I'm afraid of someone using "my stuff" -- most of this blog is licenced under a Creative Commons licence. It is the principle of the matter.

Nonetheless, even though I avoid Facebook, I continuously find myself featuring on it. Every so often I hear of photos of me posted and that I have been tagged on photos. Most recently I found out that there is a video of my practising grappling drills available on Facebook. If you have access to Facebook you can see it here. I was reviewing some options from the closed guard position.

I'm looking forward to the new Facebook alternative, Diaspora, to start up in about two months or so. I will be one of the first people to sign up for this -- just to show that I'm not scared of social networking. It is just that I'm not settling for something that goes against my principles just because the whole world has jumped on the bandwagon. Diaspora describes itself as "The privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network." Unlike Facebook where one has to constantly fight for your privacy and where personal control over your information is at Facebook's discretion, Diaspora gives power and responsibility back to where it belongs -- in the hands of the user. Now that is a social network I can associate myself with. I'm looking forward to networking with all the other anti-Facebook users.