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!

  • CifrareVerba@lemmy.world
    191·
    2 years ago

    That article is pure FUD. No new discoveries and is made to garner clicks.

    This is applicable to every community based service. Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Forums, etc.

    Like every other service, don’t post personal information about yourself online, and you won’t be doxxed.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 years 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
        1·
        2 years 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
      11·
      2 years 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.

  • Catsrules@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    2 years 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.