this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
11 points (100.0% liked)
Fediverse
19 readers
2 users here now
This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.
founded 2 years ago
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
@TiffyBelle
@Bloonface
Maybe you didn’t read where it says even DIRECT MESSAGES aka private messages you send to people, and don’t choose to post in public, is easily and easily available.
This place is already an echo chamber. Jesus that’s bad. Everyone is on a new team and now we love this team and this team is never wrong and all criticisms are invalid. Even the really bad ones.
I don’t really care. I’m old enough to have never trusted the internet. But let’s not pretend this isn’t a huge fucking deal, and isn’t completely fucked just because Reddit bad and fediverse good
Of course you can have encrypted group chats on Signal, if you're not concerned about meta data. Or xmpp group chats with encryption if you want decentralization. You can keep your secret stuff secret and your public stuff public simply by using different apps.
@TiffyBelle
@Bloonface
And if other instance owners have access to the private messages of people on every instance, that is a shockingly large flaw. I’m not exactly sure how insecure private messaging would be here. Not that I have people to message. But it being centralized would be more secure if decentralization would allow a much larger number of people to have access to something that, really, should be private.
There are an overwhelming number of people I don’t think are savvy or cynical enough, call it what you will, to understand that just because they call something a private message - or just because it’s supposed to be a one to one interaction - doesn’t mean no one else can see it. I would think, if anything, an overwhelming majority of people who send a private message/DM on a social media assume that no one else at ALL has access to that information.
Direct messages, private messages, whatever you want to call them... have ALWAYS been available to your social media hosts. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Discord... they can all read your private communications if they choose to do so. While I'd support E2EE for private messages for kBin etc, pretending that this is some sort of flaw inherent to the fediverse is inaccurate. It's fair to want the fediverse to be better. It is not fair to hold it to a standard no one has ever applied to other social media.
Huh funny how a direct message is not a private message, almost like they’re even called completely different things.
Everything is public here, some stupid Euro anti-user ideals on privacy aren’t the be all and end all .
Things put in public are public. There is no privacy concern because there has never any privacy, nor will there ever be any privacy to be concerned about in a non-private platform such as this.
@Deceptichum
@Bloonface @TiffyBelle
What do they call “private messages” on Twitter? What do you think DMs means on social media? Drivate Messages?
Does Twitter have private messages? I'd have assumed they have access to everything you've posted.
IMs, PMs, and DMs are all pretty different things.
@Deceptichum
Yes. DMs on Twitter are Direct Messages and are supposed to be private messages send to someone else that no one else can see (except server admins, et al, as we are talking about here). If you send a DM to someone on Twitter or whatever social media (they use DMs to mean private messages on Instagram as well) it’s not on the public feed, no one can search it. Like having a text message conversation
"Direct Message" and "Private Message" indeed mean different things. In practice, because both involve messaging one individual user, a good deal of people (including myself) still expect them to be functionally the same. Part of this functionality we expect is that there is an attempt to make these messages less visible and easy to access than the reply I just sent to you right now. This expectation is validated on Twitter:
on Instagram:
by Cambridge Dictionary:
and by the fact that if you go on anyone's profile, you can see post history, comment history, and boosts, but not a list of who they tried to send an individual message to or what those messages were. I believe that more technical people could retrieve such messages, that the messages are not totally secure, but to my layman eyes, I do still expect that there was at least an attempt to make these messages private.