XMPP :)

Fully realtime, can handle huge load, several serious servers out there, interesting clients. XMPP can do IM, but it can also do social networking (https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0060.html XEP-0060: Publish-Subscribe, https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0277.html XEP-0277: Microblogging over XMPP) for many years now.

I'm working on Movim a social network fully relying on the XMPP protocol http://movim.eu/, we already have many nice features social and IM wise.

These open protocols seem pretty cool, but I'm curious what sort of improvements for privacy people expect them to offer? Federating with other servers just means you're trusting each server operator with your (semi?)-public data. Additionally most people don't have the technical know-how to run their own servers, so users will most likely concentrate on a few large servers anyway, defeating the decentralized advantages...

federation allows different servers. Some might be more private than others, and federation allows people to choose the flavor they want.

Remember it is not just public posts which you should be concerned about...but it is your interaction with the sever as well, as well as your semi-private communication.

Do you really have meaningful control though? If I trust server A and my friend trusts server B and I publish posts for my friend to see, now I just also trust server B, right?

You can block abusive servers from federating with you.

Ideally we could also encrypt all our posts and whatnot so the server operators can't snoop as easily.

Because you don't have to join coolsocial.fake to view my social media posts, it's a lot less likely folks will concentrate on one platform and it will make ditching that platform a whole lot easier.

Making it easy for people to leave also forces server operators to avoid doing/not doing things that would cause people to leave.

Couldn't your own chosen social network "access point" just create a bunch of HTML elements with source URL attributes that point to other servers (those of your friends) with a unique ID that, along with a cookie you send that server, validates that you are in fact that friend's friend and can view whatever content is present at that URL? Then you wouldn't be handing your own server access to your friends' content.

ActivityPub has been more popular than diasporas and applied towards several services (GNU Social, Mastadon, PeerTube, for example)

If you consider the Cambridge Analytica stuff a privacy problem, then open protocols are absolutely the worst possible thing for privacy.

How so?

It's the decentralised/distributed bit rather than the protocol.

That way Ted Cruz and even Bernie Sanders would have an equal access to materials, and individuals would more informed that everything they type on their keyboard is there to stay.