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How do kbin instances (and all aggregator protocols) work to maintain privacy and safety? What can we put up on the roadmap (when there is one)? (Instance members at least; ppl posting on fedi in gene (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by cendawanita@kbin.social to c/kbinMeta@kbin.social

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This is going to be kbin focused because that's the infra I'm most familiar with, but if any part of this is relevant to Lemmy and other upcoming aggregators it's worth a think too:

in the more microblogging part of fedi, it's been about week and some of active discussions because of the reveal that FBMeta is developing its own Project 92, or Barcelona, a competing service to Twitter (called Threads) that supposedly will be using ActivityPub
it's followed up by confirmation that there's been overtures to those running big (in size) instances esp on the Masto protocol to meet (Eugen never confirmed but in deleted posts talked about the idea of a meeting even with NDA positively; Universeodon definitely confirmed taking a meeting. Universeodon admin also runs a threadiverse instance (kbin). No one else, and in fact more confirmed they didn't: Dan who does Pixelfed and runs the Fedi database; Chris who's one of the admins of calckey.social; Jerry who does infosec.exchange and also runs a kbin instance)
the big discussion is if then Fedi instances should federate with Threads. There's a Fedipact now of those who won't and will outright block. There's more who's being cautious and have decided on preemptively silencing (so conditional following). There's those who wants to wait and see.
I'm bringing this over to the kbin side because of the three concerns: political (extend, embrace, extinguish playbook means standards-setting work will be under threat of an eventual oligopoly); privacy (data scraping and surveillance capitalism is a known thing, legal or otherwise); and infrastructure (the full blast of new Threads accounts and the way AP and esp Masto does JSON will mean the perpetual fetching will overwhelm smaller instances) - the most particular for threadiverse is on technical capacity.
most instances are still finding their feet. What measures are already in place short of defed to help admins not get overwhelmed? What measures are being worked on?
kbin does scraping posts very well. Even untagged posts end up here on kbin.social because the 'random' magazine was created. What can instances do to not become a risk vector for at-risk persons who probably didn't realize this protocol (that's not even a year old) has been quietly slurping their posts in machine-readable forms all this time?

I've been super enjoying my time here, and if i know where we can collectively stand on this, it will take a load off of my mind.

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[–] cendawanita@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@NotTheOnlyGamer that is definitely a good practice as an individual user. At instance-level, do you share my concerns tho?

[–] NotTheOnlyGamer@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, no. I get where you're coming from, but I have no concerns.

I expect the E^3 mindset nowadays and I've come to accept the fact that the users don't own the Web. When Facebook launches Threads, I'll decide at that point whether or not to join, based on whether my friends do or not, and whether my local groups can be contacted more easily there than Meetup. As far as privacy, I expect that post-2001, if I touch a computer that's connected to the internet, someone knows, and someone has figured out how to monetize that fact. As far as the stability of fediverse sites when the Fb traffic hits, I guess my feeling is basically the same as I had about websites when Prodigy & AOL got the open Web. If you can't take it, stop hosting yourself and move to a cheaper, more robust, and more centralized host.

None of these things bother me anymore; I've given up. This is what the Internet is, this is what it was always going to be. Accept it or disconnect. Companies win.

I've commented already that I expect the monetization and corporatization of the fediverse within two years. This just confirms I was right. People generally want monolithic platforms, they want to join already strong communities. If Facebook can offer that, you're going to see many new users. I've just learned to give up, and look forward to talking to local people again. I'm a user, not a customer. I'll use whatever the best website or software is for a purpose I choose. I'm not invested in KBin, or Lemmy, or Mastodon, or Pixabay, or PeerTube. I'm interested in being able to read interesting content and talk to people. Wherever the Web takes me on that journey is fine.

[–] cendawanita@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

@NotTheOnlyGamer ah okay, i see where you're coming from. I'm still quite strident about it only because AP being open source, the current Fedi discourse is as much political as well as technical - and you're right, the era of corporate internet is not winding down just yet. But it's also not a given i can't advocate for better controls especially because fediverse means i have more control than a user of corporate socmed over which server to go and what software to use. It's slightly easier to feel that there is something that i can do because i think there is. We wouldn't be here otherwise (instead we'll tolerate what Twitter has become, what reddit continues to become). I come from the livejournal era, and that code was forked many which ways and the various journal clones became where the migration headed to when sixapart bought it (then later Russia via corporate proxy). But it was slightly too early in tech and user quality - but I feel like I'm reliving the days I'm on dreamwidth, still in touch with ppl who moved to insanejournal etc.

Because it's possible, I'm still motivated enough to talk about it. And you know, thank you. Despite posting it in the meta community for this instance, barely anyone engaged in these concerns, not even those otherwise active. Ernest I'm sure is busy, but now I'm concerned not even those who'd sum up what's going on here would talk about this. So I really appreciate the exchange.