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Comment on Eight tips about consent for fediverse developers

ericjmorey@discuss.online ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

They all seem reasonable suggestions:

Consent matters, even for public posts

Get broad feedback before launching – and listen to it

Honor existing opt-in and opt-out mechanisms

Include an additional opt-in mechanism for your service if it’s not just a search engine or profile discovery (or something very close to them)

Make sure to communicate that you’re taking an opt-in approach and honoring existing mechanisms

DON’T say the things that developers who ignore consent typically say

Be extra careful if you’re a cis guy

Look at opt-in as an opportunity for a potential competitive advantage

I’m conflicted over the fact that using ActivitiyPub necessarily implies consent for other people to collect the data you send through it. It seems that many people using ActivitiyPub connected services want something different than ActivitiyPub or different default settings on many ActivityPub services.

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thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Thanks, glad you think they’re reasonable. I don’t see it as using ActivitiyPub implying consent; it’s more that ActivityPub doesn’t provide any mechanisms to enforce consent. So mechanisms like domain blocking, “authorized fetch”, and local-only posts are all built on top of ActivityPub. I agree that many people want something different than ActivityPub currently provides, it’ll be interesting to see how much the protocol evolves, how far people can go with the approach of building on top of the protocol, or whether there’s shift over time to a different protocol which has more to say about safety, security, privacy, and consent.

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GlitterInfection@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
That’s similar to the “you’re being inconsistent” thing that the article says not to say, kind of.

Consent isn’t really built into ActivityPub and it’s inherently the opposite of how I understand it to work (copying your content all over the place regardless of your desires).

But their argument is kind of reasonable.

Who cares?

We can change ActivityPub, but we couldn’t change Twitter. People were tolerating worse just for the sake of having a community before they moved to the fediverse. They had no say before and they’re asking for better from it now that they can have their voices heard at all.

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- ericjmorey@discuss.online ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Consent isn’t really built into ActivityPub and it’s inherently the opposite of how I understand it to work (copying your content all over the place regardless of your desires).
  
  ActivityPub is a means of sharing information in a way that the information can easily be collected and reshared. By using it, you should expect that people will collect and reshare information you send via the ActivityPub protocol.
  
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  - GlitterInfection@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The article addresses this directly in the section on things to not say, though:
    
    ActivityPub does indeed “makes assumptions that are fundamentally opposed to the kinds of protections that people seem to be seeking.” But in a discussion about whether or not to get consent, even the ones that are true the miss the point – just because ActivityPub leaves open possibilities for you to do something without getting consent, that’s not the only option.
    
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    ericjmorey@discuss.online ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That addressing is insufficient because it begs the question of consent being withheld. But the consent is implicitly given by the sending of information via the protocol, otherwise a service like Mastodon can’t exist. The question of asking for consent after it is given is the part that I’m conflicted about.
    
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