Submitted 10 months ago by thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.blahaj.zone to fediverse@lemmy.world
https://privacy.thenexus.today/free-fediverses-and-consent/
this seems like nonsense. as if youre going to limit who can see your public posts... the fediverse is opt-out not opt-in. you opted-in when you signed up with an AP federating platform.
if you dont want to federate, dont use a federating platform. if you want privacy, dont use a platform designed for public distribution.
It’s not as much about seeing, it’s about using, and profiting from.
This post under CC-BY-NC-SA.
U know activpub supports adding licences to things but lemmy doesnt want it. Pixelfed and peertube already have it but lemmy told me i was an idiot for wanting to licence my content.
If something is on a public unencrypted website, it isn’t private.
Unfortunately certain people have chosen to mislead users about this.
Fediverse software has followers-only posts, direct messages, local-only posts … Mobilizon and Streams even have private groups.
None of that is private. It’s all readable by anyone with an admin account.
As a general rule. If it’s not end to end encrypted, assume it’s public.
Might spund a little conspiratorial but this fubdamentally breaks what federation means and specificly gives enormaus power to larger instances. Also the language of it by calling it consent feels like its meant to evoke a certain emotional reaction almost like its part of a larger phyop.
Also there is no such thing as privacy on the fediverse. There is anonymity if ur carefull.
I don’t expect anything I post here to be private.
On Lemmy? Certainly not. But on other fediverse software, there are followers-only posts, direct messages, local-only posts … none of it’s encrypted, but still it’s not public.
It’s fine if single instances do consent-based federation that prioritize safety over openess, but why should it become the default for all instances? It will result in instance protectionism and an overall decline in discussion quality. Making it opt-in means people will connect less likely with folks from other instances, meaning people will mainly stay on their instances, meaning it supports tribalism in the Fediverse. More safety usually comes at a cost, too. In this case: less interaction with other instances.
But if you federate with instances that you trust good enough in the first place, constent-based federation is not necessary imo.
No wait, I was wrong Its not necessarily instance protectionism. For especially vulnarable groups consens-oriented federation might make sense.
The question is whether this is the desired state for all instances and I would disagree here. I think this falls under a bigger societal debate: should the fediverse become a place were all potentials of harm are completely erased? In other words: should the Fediverse become a safer space?
First of all, minorities should be protected as by the laws of many countries. However, what harm looks like beyond that should be dynamically defined in social debate. Now you want to skip that and erase all potential out of the stand.
This ignores that these societal norms change over time and that a certain risk is part of the human condition. There always needs to be a balance between freedom and protection for the whole society. But as said before, safer place are also needed, but they dont work as blueprint for the whole society.
Early christian groups can also considered safe places. You are aligned here with what to me are totalitarian argumentation patterns that thrive for a garden eden that will never exist.
I agree that different instances will make different choices based on their priorities, but follow this through. Take trans people as an example of an especially vulnerable group that consent-oriented federation makes sense for – so trans people will be be less safe on instances that don’t take a consent-based approach. What instances do you think trans people will prefer to be on?
And there must be something I’m issing, because I don’t understand how you got from consent-based federation to “giving up free will”. Consent is literally about having the ability to choose, so exercising your free will.
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
prioritize safety over openess
Tbh I’m struggling to imagine what this would look like in something like Lemmy. It seems to be describing an extreme form of setting your account to private, but this only really makes sense in a situation where you have followers who are friends and family. How would I decide who to “allow list”
Great point, I should be more explicit in the article. On Lemmy, it would look like a couple of things:
today, another instance’s request to federate is accepted unless it’s explicitly blocked. This means that bad actors can get away with stuff until they’re discovered and blocked (although it makes it easier for good actors to federate). Consent-based federation turns that around: a request to federate isn’t accepted unless it’s approved. One way an instance admin could decide whether or not to approve a request is to look at FediSeer to see what other instances are saying about the requestor.
at the individual level, it would mean that people would start out by participating in local communities (and maybe even just seeing posts from their instance, not sure about that), and could then choose to have their posts federated out
That sounds like it punishes small instances… a lot. What would starting an instance look like? Do you start with a huge list of servers to inspect and approve?
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 10 months ago
Privacy is a reverse idea on the Fediverse. I know it’s a hot take, but by design the Fediverse is never going to be private and people should stop assuming it is.
When you send out a comment/like/post/whatever, you are literally broadcasting a message to any other instance listening. It essentially just says
and if you want to delete that message it’s essentially
While Lemmy and Mastodon respect that, anyone can build any fediverse app and simply choose not to use it. Anyone can build a search engine and can choose to respect the delete or not. Any instance could defederate from them if they don’t like that, or they may not care. The point however is that ActivityPub is designed this way, and there really isn’t a better way.
If your comment has been sent out to other instances - well then it’s there already. You can’t delete it without some form of just asking politely that they delete it. They have it already, it could be stored in their DB, duplicated in other DBs, aggregated and sent to AI, searchable, whatever. They have it. There is no concept of “delete” on the fediverse. It’s asking nicely for them to delete it.
thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
As you say though it’s only shared to any other instance listening. The point of consent-based federation is that you get to choose which instances do and don’t get to listen. So if your comment hasn’t been sent out out to other instances, they don’t have it.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 10 months ago
and I would agree with them. Consent based federation would fundamentally change the fediverse and create large tenants overnight. Small instances like mine would be at the mercy of large instances to be federated with them. It relies on people being kind and open, something we have already seen that some instance owners can be, others are not. I would even argue that that isn’t even federation anymore, it’s just slightly more open walled gardens
rglullis@communick.news 10 months ago
What’s stopping malicious actors to create an account on the same instance as you and follow you (or your RSS feed) exclusively to pull your data?
Remember “information wants to be free”? That adage works both ways. If people want (or need) real privacy, they need to be equipped with tools that actually guarantee that their communication is only accessible to those intended to. The “ActivityPub” Fediverse is not it. They will be better off by using private Matrix (or XMPP rooms) with actual end-to-end encryption.