You may be interested in more privacy oriented social networks, because the Fediverse just isn’t. Even on privacy focused communities, the general consensus seems to be “yeah we don’t do privacy here, oh well”.
Almost all Fediverse software places the burden of information protection on the user (“don’t DM anyone unless you want that message to be shared with the world, it’s your fault for using the internet in the first place”). Mastodon is particularly bad about this, because it doesn’t have DMs (it just pretends to); rather, it has toots that aren’t published to any list. If you know the right IDs, you can pretty much read them. In fact, if you tag someone in a Mastodon DM, they’ll be notified and added to the conversation, so make sure not to tag anyone when gossiping on the Fediverse!
I think it’s pretty funny that the Fediverse is so mad at Facebook for its many privacy violations while maintaining that you should never expect any privacy on social media when it comes to their preferred medium.
If you care about privacy: Circles is a federated social media platform using Matrix as a backing protocol which uses encryption to control who can or can’t read your messages. You can use it to message and follow people on other servers just like on the Fediverse, but messages aren’t inherently public on it. I haven’t tried the app myself, because I don’t need yet another app in my life, but it’s underlying concept is a much better solution to personal social networking than the Fediverse will ever be. Unfortunately, I don’t think many people use it, but if you’re setting up an environment for people who may want privacy, you should consider it.
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.
I think Circles gets semi regular updates, but I think they’re quite active on the Matrix community and not so much online. They regularly have a section in the this week in Matrix blog posts. They seem to have released a big update last month.
You may be interested in more privacy oriented social networks, because the Fediverse just isn’t. Even on privacy focused communities, the general consensus seems to be “yeah we don’t do privacy here, oh well”.
Almost all Fediverse software places the burden of information protection on the user (“don’t DM anyone unless you want that message to be shared with the world, it’s your fault for using the internet in the first place”). Mastodon is particularly bad about this, because it doesn’t have DMs (it just pretends to); rather, it has toots that aren’t published to any list. If you know the right IDs, you can pretty much read them. In fact, if you tag someone in a Mastodon DM, they’ll be notified and added to the conversation, so make sure not to tag anyone when gossiping on the Fediverse!
I think it’s pretty funny that the Fediverse is so mad at Facebook for its many privacy violations while maintaining that you should never expect any privacy on social media when it comes to their preferred medium.
If you care about privacy: Circles is a federated social media platform using Matrix as a backing protocol which uses encryption to control who can or can’t read your messages. You can use it to message and follow people on other servers just like on the Fediverse, but messages aren’t inherently public on it. I haven’t tried the app myself, because I don’t need yet another app in my life, but it’s underlying concept is a much better solution to personal social networking than the Fediverse will ever be. Unfortunately, I don’t think many people use it, but if you’re setting up an environment for people who may want privacy, you should consider it.
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.
I think Circles gets semi regular updates, but I think they’re quite active on the Matrix community and not so much online. They regularly have a section in the this week in Matrix blog posts. They seem to have released a big update last month.
That’s good to see – seems like they’ve made a lot of progress. I’ll check it out!