TLDR: While Fediverse won’t directly serve you ads, anonymous bad actors other than Meta can save, redistribute, and even dox you for any information you post here. Anything you post here can/will remain forever on some malicious instance that doesn’t honor deletion requests. So be careful!

    • dhork@lemmy.world
      7·
      1 year ago

      So, the article isn’t exactly FUD, all the things they say about how posts migrate are true. Once I hit “post” here, these words get sucked into this server, and then get sucked into other Fediverse servers. If you believe in the “right to be forgotten”, then this is indeed a nightmare, since you don’t really know all the places your post goes and can never really be certain you’ve deleted it everywhere, should you want to. And they are right that there is no real “vetting” of any entity here. Anyone can make a server for any reason. In fact, there is no reason to believe that Threads is Meta’s first Fediverse service, they may have been running others to learn about the protocol, hoovering up the data, and we would never know.

      But where the article misleads is that the devs understood this, and have structured federation to leak as little information as possible. Your post is public, of course, as is your username. But when your post gets copied to other federated servers, it is not tracking you at all. As I understand it, all the assets of your post get physically copied to the federation server, so key Metadata for tracking (like IP address) stay on the source server.

      The insidious thing about Facebook isn’t that they let people post publically, it’s all the tracking that is built in, that sucks in information from your phone or browser that you don’t know you are leaking. The Fediverse is much more transparent about this. It is oversharing precisely the things that participants want to share, and nothing more.

      • whiskers@lemmy.worldOP
        2·
        1 year ago

        Yep, I just wish atleast the major instances outline this clearly to the users. Fediverse definitely has its merits that outweigh these pitfalls. Everyone should still be aware of this in as transparent way as possible

    • whiskers@lemmy.worldOP
      14·
      1 year ago

      Ofcourse, you can dox yourself in other text based sites like Twitter, Reddit.

      But, ActivityPub has other applications like PixelFed. If someone doesn’t know about these privacy implications there private pictures can be exposed to even malicious accounts/instances that are not on theit followers list. It’s best for everyone to be aware of what they are getting into here.

      • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
        92·
        1 year ago

        You should probably stop considering anything you put online to be private…it’s not, ever.

        • whiskers@lemmy.worldOP
          22·
          1 year ago

          Yes, but there is a reasonable assumption that your pictures will only be viewed by your followers on Instagram. I can’t see myself switching to PixelFed. I’ve completely switched from Reddit and Twitter to Mastodon, Lemmy, as I don’t tend to share my personal information there anyways.

          • axum@kbin.social
            31·
            1 year ago

            reasonable assumption that your pictures will only be viewed by your followers on Instagram.

            It’s not reasonable, as it’s both public and said followers can just re-up the content elsewhere out of your control. Look at any popular account on any platform, and see how often it gets copied/reuploaded elsewhere

            • whiskers@lemmy.worldOP
              21·
              1 year ago

              It is reasonable because I can have a trust basis with my followers who are my friends/family. If a malicious instance host can just use a plugin to view follower only post, that’s not going to be expected by an average user. That’s why I posted in YSK.

  • coremeltfx@kbin.social
    6·
    1 year ago

    Anything you post on the internet is public and you should stand behind it. If you want to be anonymous on the fediverse there’s steps you can take to make sure you aren’t easily doxed. use a unique username and email thats not used anywhere else. don’t post photos that can possibly be geo located. Don’t mention who you work for, don’t mention places you visit. Pretty basic stuff.

    • CeruleanRuin@lemmy.one
      2·
      1 year ago

      Treating any online interaction as a public forum is best practice. I wouldnt say anything online I wouldn’t say in public.

  • Catsrules@lemmy.mlEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    Do people not understand social media is the 2023 version of a community public square?

    I see posting a comment or voting like shouting your comments and votes in a public square. I see no reason to expect privacy in this settings.

    Your shouting in a public square and then upset that people heard you and potentially recorded you?

    Sure I would agree deleting something on Lemmy has a higher risk of not actually being deleted everywhere. But again it is a public forum. Nothing is stopping anyone from keeping a record of what you said. How many people have deleted a controversial/drama filled post only to have screenshots of it posted later by third-partys?

    As long as you can delete the original it is basically like any other public forum. The original is deleted any other copies are kind of out of your control. Yeah it sucks but such is life anything digital can be copied so be careful what you create.

  • gzrrt@kbin.social
    5·
    1 year ago

    There’s no expectation of privacy when you’re posting things in a public forum. Seems like common sense

  • Rottcodd@kbin.social
    4·
    1 year ago

    Yes - of necessity and by design, there is and can be no central authority in the fediverse that can be meaningfully expected to promise to protect blithering morons from the consequences of their own actions.

    Whether or not people face the fact that posting publicly things they want to keep private is bash-yourself-in-the-face stupid
    and make the plainly obvious sound choice to simply not do it in the first place is entirely, as it should be, their concern and their responsibility.

  • Larvitar@kbin.social
    3·
    1 year ago

    Same as reddit, same as Facebook, same and Twitter. It’s the same as any website. Anything you post is most certainly getting scraped to create a profile on you. Whether that is for nefarious purposes for just to better serve you ads is irrelevant.

    There is no privacy to anything you post on the internet to public forums.

    Just look at the effort that went into making “work from home” viable back in 2020. The fediverse is not a unique case of being a “privacy nightmare”.

    For fun, try to “dox yourself” by searching on Google from a different IP and computer from what you normally use for your name, usernames, etc. to see what information is freely available to the public.

    tldr: practice good opsec!

  • july@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    Well things that you post on a public social media site… Are public.

    If you don’t want your info to be public, don’t post it. Also be aware that people can also archive posts before you delete them. Common sense stuff

  • Willie@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    You should really just assume that anything you post to the internet has the chance to someday be public, even if it is currently private, and here’s the important part. Anything you post that is public, has the chance to be on the internet forever.

    Even on Reddit there were bots constantly collecting logs of every single post ever made to the website. Some people would use it to spot bot accounts and create reports, or see what kind of posts a user they were looking to ban from their sub had made and then deleted; but you could totally use it to look at comments a user had deleted for more nefarious means.

    Unfortunately, the way I find the internet works for most folks. Is that the things you want to last forever go away, and the things you want to go away last forever. ):