Facebook has far better security, far better privacy controls, and absurdly better UI/UX, and after a few releases I have lost my faith in the Diaspora core team to ever close the gap on any of these areas.

Diaspora was a nice thought experiment, but there is simply no reason to switch and will never be. Your data is going to be much more exposed on some rando's hobby Diaspora server than it will be on Facebook's.

Also, social networks are not tech problems; they're interface problems, even for a subproblem like privacy. And the UI/UX of Diaspora is pretty poor.

A real, viable Facebook alternative would focus much more on a novel interface that makes sharing and privacy more intuitive, not some technical solution that will be less secure than Facebook anyways.

I have a ton of respect for them throwing themselves out there, but i think they should hire a designer or two and refocus their efforts on interface rather than features.