The services/platforms/networks on ActivityPub, for the most part, serve as a public forum. I don't expect privacy in that context and others shouldn't either.
I personally believe we shouldn't conflate the two (private/public spaces) and have private End-to-end encrypted messaging via an alternate platform/service to ensure people don't mix them up - maybe something like Matrix, since that's also federated and self-hostable. But that's just my opinion.
Only your instance host could monitor your personal metrics and fingerprinting. These are what are so invasive with big tech.
Everything you post here as content is public and can be scraped you should assume everything will be mined for data.
They can't see your IP, dwell time, votes, what you read, what you didn't read, and most importantly they can't inject content into a structured echo chamber and observe how you react.
If you host a federated instance you can see all votes. Some platforms display votes in the UI (kbin I thought? by hovering over the vote button or score). I figure it's only a matter of time before someone puts up a website to just see people's votes.
16 replies
Your instance knows
Everyone in public knows
How is session type made available in the federation? I wasn't aware that was shared on the protocol.
Im not sure, but on mastodon for example you will often see tusky, or web, etc at the bottom of post details. https://digitaldarkage.cc/@shortwavesurfer2009/110691099097120908
You can disable it, in the settings. Still a feature which shouldn't be there in my opinion.
Hmm good point. I guess it is optional though so on the client end you can probably avoid sending anything (or just spoof as "web" at worst).
I know mastodon has a checkbox to disable it from the server end.
Nope. It's public. Assume everybody has a copy of everything sent over ActivityPub.
I concur.
The services/platforms/networks on ActivityPub, for the most part, serve as a public forum. I don't expect privacy in that context and others shouldn't either.
I personally believe we shouldn't conflate the two (private/public spaces) and have private End-to-end encrypted messaging via an alternate platform/service to ensure people don't mix them up - maybe something like Matrix, since that's also federated and self-hostable. But that's just my opinion.
Only your instance host could monitor your personal metrics and fingerprinting. These are what are so invasive with big tech.
Everything you post here as content is public and can be scraped you should assume everything will be mined for data.
They can't see your IP, dwell time, votes, what you read, what you didn't read, and most importantly they can't inject content into a structured echo chamber and observe how you react.
Only your instance knows your IP and what links you visited. But everyone can see your votes.
How does everyone see votes? I looked in the page source and could find comments but not votes
If you host a federated instance you can see all votes. Some platforms display votes in the UI (kbin I thought? by hovering over the vote button or score). I figure it's only a matter of time before someone puts up a website to just see people's votes.