The troubled history behind Diaspora, the $200,000 ‘Facebook killer’ launched on Kickstarter

The original Kickstarter darling Diaspora was born out of people’s frustration with Facebook’s privacy policies. But the creators of the decentralized social network quickly discovered the problems with bringing their creation to fruition. Motherboard delves into the troubled history of the Facebook challenger, detailing how the team ran into problems with impossible expectations, funding, and ideas being used in competing services like Google+. Diaspora failed to deliver on its promises and was handed off to its community in August, but the troubled project ultimately helped to bring social network privacy issues into the spotlight.