Fediverse
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.
Mfs when they realize that a public social media is public (shocking relevation):
😱
Wait until you find out about e-mail!
That depends entirely on which country you are in and where the mailservers that your email passes through is located.
e-mail is protected by law.
Hilarious
Go troll somewhere else.
Cite and quote the specific laws that actually prevent anyone but the recipent from reading an email. If you can't or won't, you are the troll.
No. I leave you this burden. It's too easy to type "Hilarious" and let the other party do the research.
I can't find things that don't exist.
You are the one saying it does, so the burden of proof is on you, troll.
Hilarious
edit: lol, you downvoted me like kids do.
You were downed for failing to grasp very simple concepts of logic.
And pulling out is an effective form of birth control
Email is only protected under certain circumstances, and the law does not contemplate protection against the provider... only the provider's disclosure of your email to third parties. However, internal disclosure is, as far as I know, not prohibited.
Refer to the Email Privacy Act (USA) and the GDPR for more info.
Note: Best to consult a privacy lawyer versus a Melpomene if you have questions. @RoboRay
Sure, but that's not the broad and obviously false claim made.
Agree, which is why I shared. Just looping you in as a courtesy!
“The Internet is a privacy nightmare” (Fixed it.)
"Posting things publically is a privacy nightmare"
All very true, basically the same deal as with any 90/early 00's forum.
It seems a lot worse than that... At least somebody would have to hack a 90s forum to see your DMs.
No, you'd only have to be the admin. Which is the same at the Fediverse - DMs between two servers can in be seen by the admins of the two servers, should they so desire.
That's not really so different from mainstream social media, the difference here is that the admin is some normal person, not Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or something.
It's absolutely important that people understand this - if you intend for anything to be private, use Matrix or Signal or something. Anything online that is not encrypted is just not truly private. Simple as that.
However, this is also true for any other social media people use. The fediverse is actually kind of neat in that the data is spread out across a bunch of servers, rather than at one central server where the same admins has access to everything.
I'm able to see the purchase history of everything that's bought at my company, be it online or in store. I don't do it, because I don't give a fuck and I've signed several agreements to be a good boy.
Data has to be validated, verified, checked, processed etc. Someone will have a possibility to view it if it's not an end to end encryption, and then you won't be able to easily report abuse. That's just how things work.
There's no stronger privacy protection than yourself.
By being in the open, you learn how to talk online without oversharing, or being an asshole, which I think is beneficial for mental health, but also for the platform as it reduces toxicity.
DMs being open I can see being a problem, but it could be fixed with end-to-end encryption.
It's a very good, well articulated post that anyone new to fedi should read and be aware of and try to internalize.
I like the fediverse because it builds on the idea of small communities exchanging information, but I do agree that the protocol is somewhat lacking when it comes to data integrity and confidentiality - it's too easy to act in bad faith and there's very little we users can do to protect us from it. The protocol does excel in availability though, your posts are everywhere! So yay?
This behavior, may, or may not be suitable for your personal threat model. You have to make that call, but I from what I've seen, it's one of those "oh this is too complicated"-things that surround fediverse adaption. Spreading awareness around this is hard. Your blog was well written and full of facts, but I doubt many got through the whole thing. It's more fun to discuss if we should call ourselves kbinners or kedditors.
I've been debating this back and worth in my head ever since I joined - right now I'm still posting under my real name and try to post my content with that in mind. That means I have to moderate my posting. I think I might be too old school to not to, but who knows, at some point, I might run into that RaspberryPi armed nazi and that will probably change things.
Ideally, I'd like to see some W3C activity around this. I was hopeful that perhaps one of the big tech players would throw money and resources to update the spec, but now that it's apparent Meta took that spot, I'm not very hopeful we'll ever see significant protocol improvements on that field.
I'm interested in finding out how Meta is going to deal with federation - they do have to worry about regulators and privacy watchdogs after all - I'd imagine they won't enable their outgoing federation at all, because at that point they lose control over the data - or - maybe they'll just federate with couple of "big instances" (even though, that will be dodgy enough, as you point out in your post).
The GDPR angle is interesting. I'd imagine someone will try to enforce it, sooner or later, but I doubt you'll find much interest from the law enforcement to go and bust someones lonely RaspberryPi, just because it isn't in compliance with GDPR. If you admin a large instance though... thoughts and prayers..
Anyway - good info and well written. Worth a read if you're new to fedi!
The Internet is inherently a privacy nightmare. The Fediverse, unlike other services, just doesn't pretend there is privacy.
If you want privacy, you should be using end to end encryption rather than trusting a service provider to protect you. This is as true for every other service as it is for federated ones.
Thanks @Bloonface for writing and sharing this. I think that it's fundamental to analyse what's happening with ActivityPub and the Fediverse. It's good to be here, it feels good to be freed of any disgusting CEO. But still I find it sane to ask ourselves about the quirks that should be addressed with the fediverse?
I have a few on the top of my mind:
- instance ownership - admin labour and mental charge, moderation, cost of the server and financing transparency
- privacy
- activityPub energy efficiency - is it efficient or should I refrain from posting?
Not all instances are run as co-op. We rely on people who are doing a lot of work and paying server cost from their own pocket. Maybe they got funded by users, maybe not. It's not that transparent. And admin have some issues with each other, defederating, blocking instance for personal or non so personal reason. So at the end it's not a really sustainable way of building things in my opinion. Some instances are funded as co-op, but most are not. We are relying on individuals to keep things running. The mental charge is big.
We need transparency about instance ownership to be able to choose what model we want to support.
I'm also really interested on how the GDPR compliance will be enforced. Meta's threads couldn't launch in the EU, so I wonder about the status of Mastodon. Is it a work in progress situation or did the EU not reach out mastodon.social yet and wait for a bigger user base?
Regarding the efficiency of the protocol, I couldn't find any discussion about it. I was wondering if the cost of being federated, posts and media being pushed from server to sever will have a negative impact regarding energetic consumption. I've read that mastodon was quite "hungry". So I asked one of ActivityPub co author about it, if they accounted energetic consumption when designing the protocol. The answer was "No." And they blocked me.
Maybe it's not a big deal and the impact is not bad. But right now if have no idea. So I'm using a service without knowing the cost of it, the consequence, and this is not ok. And I find it really annoying that this topics is not being covered more and the discussion censored in a way.
It's not a matter of ruining the nice thing we have. It's more about transparency, let users know where we are now, so we can all decide where we would go next.
Chat rooms and forums persisted for decades being run by small groups of users or individuals.
This is completely sustainable and a return to what the Internet used to be before the sanitised corporate owned version you seem to think is important.
Also do you know the cost and consequences of your ISPs internet connection you are using?
Frankly your post sounds like some astroturfed concern-troll shit.
Well I'm sorry that you read it this way. I was not my intention.
You didn't address any of my points and you just unequivocally judged it and dismissed it.
I addressed your point of sustainability through examples of this being sustainable in the past and queried the validity of your concerns about “using a service without knowing the cost of it, the consequence” by questioning if you ever bothered with this in any other aspect of your life up until now (e.x. the very Internet you would use to access such a service in the first place).
Im sorry your reading comprehension wasn’t able to see that.
and for you throwing an example is enough to make a point? how do you know that I don't bother about it on other places on the web? do you know about whataboutism? do you think that the old "it was always like this so it's ok" is a relevant position?
please keep your condescending tone to you. if you don't want to have a real discussion about this and just want to get upvotes, go for it. I don't care and leave me alone please
Mhmm because it’s so probable that any individual has actually gone to the length of questioning every ISP and only selecting the most ethical one, assuming you’re even in a location with multiple providers. Let alone every other aspect of their life. It’s far more likely concern trolling, especially coupled with this constant victimhood response you keep deflecting with.
This is a real discussion, but you’re free to not respond … and let’s be honest you’ve addressed zero of my response so far so it’s not like anything would change.
Even if fediverse is a nightmare, SNS owned by big tech would be more worse than it.
Anyone can sync 100% of the fediverse on private servers for AI training, true. Do not get doxxed.
If you go do microblogging with your own name it's on you.
What the fediverse protects you from (in theory) is from getting your ip, email or browser id stolen and matched with your comments.