Agreed that people who need strong privacy should use something like Signal (or maybe Matrix or XMPP). And also agreed that RSS feeds are a privacy hole on most of the fediverse; Hometown and GoToSocial both disable them by default, Mastodon should do the same.
Nothing prevents malicious actors who want to make enough of an effort from creating accounts on instances (or for that matter Matrix chat rooms). But that’s not feasible for broad data harvesting by Meta.
Your whole wordlview is hinging on two conflicting realities:
social networking is an inherently public activity, and this is the way that the majority of people want it to be.
the only way to be free from surveillance capitalism is by having private communications, and while this is something that affects everyone, only a minority of people seem to be actively opposed to it.
The “consent-based” social media does not work well for a small business owner who wants to promote their place to their local community, or the artisan that wants to put up a gallery with their work online. They want to be found.
If you tell them that they have to choose between (a) a social network that makes it easier for them to reach their communities or (b) a niche network that is only used by a handful of people who keeps putting barriers for any kind of contact; which one do you think they will choose?
What your recent articles are trying to do is (basically) try to shove the idea that the majority should change their behavior and completely reject a public internet. You are basically saying that the “social” networks should be "anti-"social in nature. This is, quite honestly, borderline totalitarian.
But that’s not feasible for broad data harvesting by Meta.
Why? You keep writing about how evil Meta is and their infinite amount of resources. If you really believe that, why do you think they would stop at the mere wall of “federation consent”?
I totally agree that there isn’t a lot of privacy on the fediverse today – in fact I even say that in the article and link off to recommendations for how to improve things. But also I think there’s a huge difference between the situation on the fediverse where there’s no privacy because developers haven’t prioritize it and with Meta, where their model is focused on exploiting data that they’ve acquired without consent and they’ve repeatedly broken privacy laws (although to be fair they break other laws too, not just privacy).
And it’s true, many people don’t care about privacy, and many more care some but it’s not important eough to them to make it their primary reason for choosing a social network. But a lot of people do care, at least to some extent, so the free fediverses will be a lot more appealing to them if they improve privacy. And even though I think privacy by itself won’t the major driver for most people who choose the free fediverses, improving privacy also works well with that I think will be the major drivers – like safety, pro-LGBTQIA2S+ focus, and (for people who want nothing to do with Meta) highlighting the core differences from Meta.
Circles’ approach is certainly interesting, I remember looking at it when they did their kickstarter. Did it go forward? It looks like their blog hasn’t been updated since 2021.
Agreed that people who need strong privacy should use something like Signal (or maybe Matrix or XMPP). And also agreed that RSS feeds are a privacy hole on most of the fediverse; Hometown and GoToSocial both disable them by default, Mastodon should do the same.
Nothing prevents malicious actors who want to make enough of an effort from creating accounts on instances (or for that matter Matrix chat rooms). But that’s not feasible for broad data harvesting by Meta.
Your whole wordlview is hinging on two conflicting realities:
The “consent-based” social media does not work well for a small business owner who wants to promote their place to their local community, or the artisan that wants to put up a gallery with their work online. They want to be found.
If you tell them that they have to choose between (a) a social network that makes it easier for them to reach their communities or (b) a niche network that is only used by a handful of people who keeps putting barriers for any kind of contact; which one do you think they will choose?
What your recent articles are trying to do is (basically) try to shove the idea that the majority should change their behavior and completely reject a public internet. You are basically saying that the “social” networks should be "anti-"social in nature. This is, quite honestly, borderline totalitarian.
Why? You keep writing about how evil Meta is and their infinite amount of resources. If you really believe that, why do you think they would stop at the mere wall of “federation consent”?
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I totally agree that there isn’t a lot of privacy on the fediverse today – in fact I even say that in the article and link off to recommendations for how to improve things. But also I think there’s a huge difference between the situation on the fediverse where there’s no privacy because developers haven’t prioritize it and with Meta, where their model is focused on exploiting data that they’ve acquired without consent and they’ve repeatedly broken privacy laws (although to be fair they break other laws too, not just privacy).
And it’s true, many people don’t care about privacy, and many more care some but it’s not important eough to them to make it their primary reason for choosing a social network. But a lot of people do care, at least to some extent, so the free fediverses will be a lot more appealing to them if they improve privacy. And even though I think privacy by itself won’t the major driver for most people who choose the free fediverses, improving privacy also works well with that I think will be the major drivers – like safety, pro-LGBTQIA2S+ focus, and (for people who want nothing to do with Meta) highlighting the core differences from Meta.
Circles’ approach is certainly interesting, I remember looking at it when they did their kickstarter. Did it go forward? It looks like their blog hasn’t been updated since 2021.
deleted by creator