this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
84 points (85.6% liked)
Asklemmy
43835 readers
781 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Twitter used Direct Message instead of Private Message because they needed to establish that there is legally no understanding of privacy for DMs, because Twitter will surrender the contents of DMs to law enforcement / government / data collection. Fediverse should also use DM because there is again no guarantee of privacy (and you do not expect there to be).
As if admins of the older forum softwares couldn't just query the database for anyone's private messages.
Didn’t they also switch the wording from “data protection” to “data usage”?
Still, the conversation is private, as in not public. Even if it is surrendered to the authorities, the'll probably never be released publicly (unless leaked).
I think I was clear, private as in not public. As in it's not public domain.
"Public domain" is a copyright term which isn't really relevant here. The point the other user is trying to make is that, legally speaking, calling something "private" when it very well may be not private is at best disingenuous and at worst a lawsuit waiting to happen.
You don't understand what he is saying.
When I speak in front of an audience, I'm speaking publicly. When I take someone into a private room, I'm speaking privately. Whether or not that room is wiretapped doesn't change the verbiage.
And it doesn't change the fact that only you, the other person and the wiretapper know about that conversation ever happening... well also whoever they might have shared that with as well, but that's still not public as in someone reading this comment. Everyone can read and confirm that this is what I wrote.
I agree partly with you but...
If the wiretapper releases that conversation and it appears on every TV in the World then it is public and the first thing you are going to say is "but that was a private conversation in a private room and was not meant to be public". There is expectation of privacy. There is none in a DM. It is a direct message/contact between you, other person and potentially 99999 auditors, and the rest of the world. This is by design, not an exceptional situation.
Yeah, perhaps you're right... maybe we should just drop the whole PM thing, cuz it makes less sense that calling them DMs.
Yeah, I know, I was just trying to clarify and couldn't think of another term 🤷.
The truth is, if you share something online, whether it be in a PM or publicly, it can never ever be considered private. However, a PM's content is harder to get to than reading this comment for example, that was my point.
No you were clear. You are just incorrect. Your “private messages” can be accessed by anyone who works at the site, and are typically scanned for analysis and that data about what you discuss is sold to market researchers.
So they named them direct messages so they couldn’t be accused of false advertisement.
Just because they’re not “public” doesn’t mean they’re “private”.
That is clear... well, at least regarding corporate social media. Admins in the fediverse can read PMs, but why would they, they have no insentive to do that. Hell, I'm still an admin of a forum and I can read all PMs but I have no incentive to do so, I couldn't care less what people talk about in private.
Still, that doesn't mean that the content of the conversation is of any interest of the company. The monetization of the converstaion, yes, but the actual converstaion, no.
I agree kind of. You say something in private, it can still be blabbed about town. It's a violation of whatever relationship you had but is what it is. You dm someone same deal, but companies want to distance themselves from any avenue of attack, so dm is better. Also we 100% should count on instances to fold to legal pressure, they are people running it and probably don't have big bank rolls.
That's why I prefer pirate/NSFW instances. This account isn't on that kind of instance, but my other accounts are. Pirate instances are preffered, since not many defederate from them because they're not NSFW. They tend to pick their server's locations very carefully, usually in countries that just don't give AF about western law and policy (they call it "offshore hosting", but in reality, they're countries like Russia or China), so it's really really hard to actually pressure them and even harder to get to the data. And even if they succseed, it'll be after years, at which point, the trace will be cold and probably not worth persuing anyway.
This is one of the methods tycoons use to launder money, by doing bank transfers to banks in countries that don't care about western policies and laws. And by doing a few back and forths, you're essentially delaying the whole thing. Hell, some of these guys died waiting to be put on trial, lol 😂.
I think we'll need to distinguish between deep web and encrypted, deep web but unencrypted, and clearnet.
While deep but unencrypted is not apparent to the unobservant, it is in no way private, as everyone who deigns to look will see it.
Kinda like talking while walking on a busy street, most people will be busy or not pay attention, but nothing much is hindering others from listening in if they really want. Using that analogy, clearnet would be more like a forum or conference, or perhaps a party or meet'n'greet.
If you want to actually be private, you'll need to at least be encrypted (pure https won't do, unless it's between two peers only).
You thought you were clear, but they're saying companies didn't believe it was clear.
I suppose it's a slightly more accurate term. The messages here are not truly private since they are not encrypted, but since they are sent directly no one should read them in the normal course of using the platform. Calling them private might imply to people that other people cannot read them, rather than the reality that it is just very unlikely anyone will. I would also argue that if something is released to an authority it is not "private" even if it is not publicly available.
Honestly, it doesn't really matter which you use. People will generally understand either way, so you can go ahead and keep saying PM and others will say DM and we can all just understand that they mean the same thing.
I ran into a person the other day, I wrote "I'll PM you" and he replied "What is PM 🤨" 🤷. They may be young or just a late internet adopter, but still, that was just a sign for me that I should probably adopt the new DM lingo, as some people just don't understand what I'm talking about.
Matrix is the fediverse's messaging platform. It has end-to-end encryption, so you do actually have a guarantee of privacy.
There are DMs on lemmy and they are not using Matrix. Matrix's security doesn't matter if you are not actually using Matrix
Why would lemmy not have E2EE for person to person messages?
It's quite a lot of work to implement. Maybe one day. Same problem on Mastodon
why bother? if you need actual private messaging, you can just use matrix
Privacy is improved when it is there by default
Yes, but when you click the DM button on lemmy.world there's a big red warning telling you to use matrix (element.io) instead.
Matrix is not part of the Fediverse