My point was demonstrated most elegantly at the Facebook Farewell Party June 2015 in Amsterdam, organized by fellow Internet pioneer @marleenstikker. Great alternative for Facebook is open source “Heartbeat”, developed by design pioneer Aral Balkan @aral. Check out & support! PS strange though – as Internet pioneers back then (1990) we pioneered the world to go online – now we pioneer to go offline…

Contribution to a survey by PEW Internet Research about The Future of Privacy by futurist Marcel Bullinga. Together with global experts like Vint Cerf, Jeff Jarvis, Howard Rheingold and Paul Saffo.

‘In 2025, we will have a post-Facebook and post-Google world’

Marcel Bullinga, a technology futures speaker, trend watcher, and futurist, wrote, “A trusted infrastructure needs to be created in order to prevent massive fraud and massive public distrust in online transactions, and in online life, in general. We have to reinvent the entire Internet as we know it, shifting power from a few American tech companies to the individual who creates, and therefore owns, the data. We need to create a personal dashboard, a safe haven, for every individual’s dossiers, transactions, money, and profiles. In this dashboard, you could set your privacy and communications settings (from 0 to 100%).

All of this will create a big struggle about the question: Who owns (my) data? My 2025 statement: In 2025, we will have a post-Facebook and post-Google world. We will have new business models in which facilitating data is more lucrative than owning data. Providers who refrain from owning their customers’ data and stick to facilitating the owner in handling their data in a trusted way will win. This means Google and Facebook will lose. If we do not make this transition, we face a privacy and fraud nightmare in which our lives are dominated by a few global tech companies…

There are two opposite trends: first, we will adapt to 100% transparency and the utter loss of privacy, accepting that secrets no longer exist. The societal impact of scandals (exposed secrets) will diminish because it is impossible to react with constant indignation when secrets are revealed all the time.

Second, we will adapt to 100% privacy. Counter technologies will give us huge amounts of privacy protection, allowing us to pick our own desired level of privacy. Privacy will cost money and will be a paid service.”