I’m a programmer. If someone had an interest they could preserve all of your self-hosted data without your permission. I think it is worth considering tho, if all of this is valuable then it would be ideal if we could get that value into the accounts of people in need rather than the alternative.

Agreed that instance admins might not be expected to handle this sort of thing.

Agreed that it is easy to get a copy of the content.

I think we might handle this best as a cumulative platform and community.

Oddly enough, my understanding is that in many jurisdictions it is a matter explicitly asserting these rights. Aside from that, requesting that they be enforced when they are violated.

Interesting take. I like the light philosophical bend there with the mental value. I think you’re right about that. I have been more considering whether the cumulative data of a platform like Lemmy as a whole is something that we as the users/server should be asserting our ownership of. Or, whether it is effectively worthless.

Agreed it would be trivial for Meta to obtain the posts. But I think the concern of most people here isn’t Meta obtaining the posts, it’s Meta monetizing them through ads and training. Would it not be in our best interest to try to prevent this?

Interesting perspective. Yet, server admins actually do have control over who they federate with. People do have control over what servers they use. Why not exercise this control?

My understanding is that one can post things publicly online but still retain rights, including distribution rights in certain jurisdictions.

I don’t think it is out of the question that the fediverse as a whole could make some decisions going forward that would make it more difficult for Meta (or other official corporations) to monetize the things we post with ads in their clients or through training of predictive models.

I feel your frustration. Hang in there though. Perhaps there is a way to combat it.

An interesting thought. I’m not sure this is entirely true though in many jurisdictions. It is clearly possible to post something on someone else’s server and still maintain ownership of it. Platforms like SoundCloud have you specify a license in the ui client at the time of upload. While this might seem performative, it is explicit.

Thanks for sharing. I honestly was wondering how people were thinking about this. I was wondering why not include a license specified per post in the client UI as that seemed quite explicit. Yet, I was wondering how this might prohibit federation from being controlled at the server level.

I had considered ads in clients and llm training. Both of which, people in need should be paid for if it is using content they generated if at all possible.

Might we easily make it more clear that the poster or the server owns them outright?

Hypothetically, a corporation federates and wants to monetize my posts. Can they do this? I’m not personally fixated on ownership (which could easily be viewed as my systemic privilege), but the pathway out of this type of thought in general doesn’t seem to be yielding all power to already powerful growth-based corporations. I didn’t create the current systems, but I do acknowledge their existence.

Agreed. Always a good thought to have when one is considering going down that road. Is the future predictable enough to really expect that particular end?

I think you’re onto something saying toxic is a pretty unspecific term to use when talking about such things. Maybe it would be a better conversation to ask: when do the ends justify the means?

I think you’re right that there are people out there trying to manipulate and influence social media - I mean even that platforms themselves do this to a certain extent.

The idea that they purposely try to make it toxic to push the more intellectually-honest, emotionally-controlled people out of the conversation is the interesting part to me.

This particular facet feels less like intentional manipulation and more like a side-effect of our platforms and how they function.

Intriguing. I don’t totally know what I think about this argument. A purposeful initiative to make politics toxic to get people to stop paying attention. It’s not one I had totally considered before. You think that’s really going on?

I have had many experiences with real people not on the internet that seem to fixate largely on politics and believe so fervently that they are right that they allow themselves to become toxic. I always thought it was a kind of inconsistent latent belief in utilitarianism combined with overconfidence.

It seems like you could so long as this instance federated with any other instance without implementing any type of whitelisting or vetting. I’m just guessing based off various things I’ve read.

I hear you. There is a lot of premature celebration. But, developers need to see the excitement about this type of platform if they are going to spend time working on it. There’s a lot of us out there who can contribute more if this type of fervor and excitement can be sustained. It’s tough working on things that it feels like no one will ever use. We’re fighting against major corporations here with some of the deepest pockets in the world.