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.
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.