I’ve seen a few threads about major privacy concerns related to the Fediverse, but most of the comments responding just kind of hand wave the issue.
I think maybe I’m one of the handwavers, but I don’t mean to be one.
I figure, and have always figured, that anything I post online can likely be (and will be) read/harvested by someone if they want. Either directly, or by scripted scraping, or by a site admin, or whatever. I have no expectation than any private messages on any platform are truly private, nor that my deleted comments on Reddit aren’t sitting on a hdd someplace, and probably also backed up in the wayback machine. It’s possible not all that is true all of the time, and zero-knowledge encryption exists, so I know there are likely exceptions, but I don’t think it’s an uncommon viewpoint, and I don’t think it’s one that’s hard for a non-techie to grasp. Anything that goes online should be assumed to be slurped up by someone, either by design, by design flaw, by legal demand, or etc.
Knowing that - I don’t have a real issue with the current state of privacy in the fediverse. I know my likes and boosts are public. I know my profile and all its comments can be scraped. It’s part of the deal. I even know that Meta can and is scraping it whether we federate with them or not - but that doesn’t mean we should make it easier for them, nor that we should welcome all the other impacts of inviting an 800lb gorilla into your living room.
I think there should be broader awareness of the privacy concerns and that it should be emphasized front and center at account creation time. Informed consent is always a plus. Voluntary efforts to work on the privacy issues by the relevant devs would be great, too.
Anyhow after all this rambling - unless someone has come to the platform with expectations of privacy far beyond what were ever promised (or what most other platforms realistically provide), I don’t see that there’s a lot to grumble about privacy-wise, even as I’ll also say there is room for improvement.
Not disagreeing with your perspective at all, but there at least have been hidden enclaves on platforms like reddit that are not achievable on platforms like Twitter, in which consenting adults could find each other for consenting activities.
You can’t do that stuff on Twitter or IG because everything is too out in the open. You can do it on some other websites but they don’t have the userbase and broader appeal and legitimacy like reddit had.
Just not sure that there’s a way to achieve it in the Fediverse because we’re not just talking about the fact that there’s a small but hopefully trustworthy group of admins who could wade through everyone’s posts and DMs, or surely Google is indexing your comment and post submissions… We’re talking about a solicitation of a sensitive nature goes out so much further than you can imagine.
Please know this is not about finding new channels to conduct illegal activity!
I think maybe I’m one of the handwavers, but I don’t mean to be one.
I figure, and have always figured, that anything I post online can likely be (and will be) read/harvested by someone if they want. Either directly, or by scripted scraping, or by a site admin, or whatever. I have no expectation than any private messages on any platform are truly private, nor that my deleted comments on Reddit aren’t sitting on a hdd someplace, and probably also backed up in the wayback machine. It’s possible not all that is true all of the time, and zero-knowledge encryption exists, so I know there are likely exceptions, but I don’t think it’s an uncommon viewpoint, and I don’t think it’s one that’s hard for a non-techie to grasp. Anything that goes online should be assumed to be slurped up by someone, either by design, by design flaw, by legal demand, or etc.
Knowing that - I don’t have a real issue with the current state of privacy in the fediverse. I know my likes and boosts are public. I know my profile and all its comments can be scraped. It’s part of the deal. I even know that Meta can and is scraping it whether we federate with them or not - but that doesn’t mean we should make it easier for them, nor that we should welcome all the other impacts of inviting an 800lb gorilla into your living room.
I think there should be broader awareness of the privacy concerns and that it should be emphasized front and center at account creation time. Informed consent is always a plus. Voluntary efforts to work on the privacy issues by the relevant devs would be great, too.
Anyhow after all this rambling - unless someone has come to the platform with expectations of privacy far beyond what were ever promised (or what most other platforms realistically provide), I don’t see that there’s a lot to grumble about privacy-wise, even as I’ll also say there is room for improvement.
Not disagreeing with your perspective at all, but there at least have been hidden enclaves on platforms like reddit that are not achievable on platforms like Twitter, in which consenting adults could find each other for consenting activities.
You can’t do that stuff on Twitter or IG because everything is too out in the open. You can do it on some other websites but they don’t have the userbase and broader appeal and legitimacy like reddit had.
Just not sure that there’s a way to achieve it in the Fediverse because we’re not just talking about the fact that there’s a small but hopefully trustworthy group of admins who could wade through everyone’s posts and DMs, or surely Google is indexing your comment and post submissions… We’re talking about a solicitation of a sensitive nature goes out so much further than you can imagine.
Please know this is not about finding new channels to conduct illegal activity!