Oh, we haven’t been speculating about moderation because that’s a known quantity. A major driver of defederarion discussion on the microblogging side of the fedi has been about the moderation issues that people would have to deal with if federated with Threads. And especially about bad actors on Threads getting posts from users on defederated instances via intermediary sites, and then spotlighting vulnerable people to trolls on other instances.
It’s why many niche Mastodon instances are talking about defederating from any other site not blocking Threads. It’s a significant mental safety risk for vulnerable people in the alt-right’s sights.
I’m not an “early adopter” of the Fediverse per se, but I came over on the reddit migration on June 11. I feel like I’ve been an information sponge trying to wrap my head around the organization of the Fediverse and seeing the benefits. I think I’m pretty up to speed, at least enough to discuss it with people offline and explain it in a way that does it some justice.
But I don’t think I’ve seen a lot of discussion about the drawbacks of the Fediverse. 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.
Seeing a possible larger issue here regarding the moderation issues, I can’t see anything other than a total containment of Threads away from other instances. Like, great - use ActivityPub, but don’t talk to me (kbin.social) or my child (literally everything else that wants to interact together in the Fediverse with kbin) again. Lol
The thing is, because minority-targeting trolls aren’t taken seriously by any corporate social media platform, there’s no big downside compared to them. It’s just that them showing up here is effectively taking the safer space these communities they’ve built away from them, returning things to basically how they were just before they fled those other spaces.
They were made safe not due to the tools, but due to obscurity, and they’re about to lose that obscurity.
This is… I don’t want to call it a “good thing”, because people who have suffered many assholes suffering them all over again is in no way, shape, or form good, but it’s highlighting an issue that’s been clear to these communities, but not to developers on the Fediverse: The moderation tools here are hot, sweaty garbage.
Hopefully we can see serious movement on making useful tools now.
I don’t know if you have history on reddit, but the “safety because of obscurity” and having that taken away by increased visibility is absolutely what I lived through as a member of a subreddit called TwoXChromosomes. TwoX was a really welcoming space for women-identifying people to get a breath of fresh air from the constant “equal rights means equal lefts” kind of casual misogyny on the rest of reddit. And then corporate created the “default sub” designation and put TwoX on the list.
I remember the moderators at the time making it very clear to the community that they voiced their dissent but it was happening anyway (wow, what does that sound like?) and now a lot of the posts there get inundated with “not all men” apologists and all the OPs have reddit cares alerts filed on them.
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.
Oh, we haven’t been speculating about moderation because that’s a known quantity. A major driver of defederarion discussion on the microblogging side of the fedi has been about the moderation issues that people would have to deal with if federated with Threads. And especially about bad actors on Threads getting posts from users on defederated instances via intermediary sites, and then spotlighting vulnerable people to trolls on other instances.
It’s why many niche Mastodon instances are talking about defederating from any other site not blocking Threads. It’s a significant mental safety risk for vulnerable people in the alt-right’s sights.
I’m not an “early adopter” of the Fediverse per se, but I came over on the reddit migration on June 11. I feel like I’ve been an information sponge trying to wrap my head around the organization of the Fediverse and seeing the benefits. I think I’m pretty up to speed, at least enough to discuss it with people offline and explain it in a way that does it some justice.
But I don’t think I’ve seen a lot of discussion about the drawbacks of the Fediverse. 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.
Seeing a possible larger issue here regarding the moderation issues, I can’t see anything other than a total containment of Threads away from other instances. Like, great - use ActivityPub, but don’t talk to me (kbin.social) or my child (literally everything else that wants to interact together in the Fediverse with kbin) again. Lol
The thing is, because minority-targeting trolls aren’t taken seriously by any corporate social media platform, there’s no big downside compared to them. It’s just that them showing up here is effectively taking the safer space these communities they’ve built away from them, returning things to basically how they were just before they fled those other spaces.
They were made safe not due to the tools, but due to obscurity, and they’re about to lose that obscurity.
This is… I don’t want to call it a “good thing”, because people who have suffered many assholes suffering them all over again is in no way, shape, or form good, but it’s highlighting an issue that’s been clear to these communities, but not to developers on the Fediverse: The moderation tools here are hot, sweaty garbage.
Hopefully we can see serious movement on making useful tools now.
I don’t know if you have history on reddit, but the “safety because of obscurity” and having that taken away by increased visibility is absolutely what I lived through as a member of a subreddit called TwoXChromosomes. TwoX was a really welcoming space for women-identifying people to get a breath of fresh air from the constant “equal rights means equal lefts” kind of casual misogyny on the rest of reddit. And then corporate created the “default sub” designation and put TwoX on the list.
I remember the moderators at the time making it very clear to the community that they voiced their dissent but it was happening anyway (wow, what does that sound like?) and now a lot of the posts there get inundated with “not all men” apologists and all the OPs have reddit cares alerts filed on them.
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.