Technology

Use a pseudonym that you don’t use anywhere else and don’t dox yourself in your posts or comments

After reading some more comments, I think I came up with a good analogy to explain this issue, and I wanted to share.

Think of websites like a bar that also has an open mic.

Now, when I go to a bar, I don't want to have to give the bouncers and staff my full name as well as my address. I also wouldn't want them to know that I just came, for example, from a store where I was looking for a vacuum, and then have them warn a vacuum seller about it. A vacuum seller who is then going to sit next to me, while I'm trying to have a drink, and show me a pamphlet regarding the "amazing vacuum" he has for sale.

Ideally, I can also look for a bar that will allow me to come in costumed and not show my face. Or I could ask the bar to delete footage of me at some point, and to not store my ID if I do have to show it to a bouncer at the entrance.

All of that is relatively feasible and within the realm of reason; and all of that are things that privacy advocates might advocate for.

However, what is not feasible, or within the realm of reason, or what privacy advocates tend to advocate for, is the ability for me to willingly go up on stage, say something on the mic which I immediately regret, and then ask everyone present to forget it ever happened and delete any footage they might have of it. No reasonable person would ask for something like that, because it is not a reasonable request.

That is how regular websites work. With federated websites, that becomes enhanced; it's like if the bar you're in has a camera pointed at the microphone, and transmits both video and audio directly into several other bars. So when you go up to that mic, you better make sure you're okay with what you are saying being made public and available to anyone.

If you think anything on the Internet can ever be forgotten... Your going to have a bad time. Passwords, one of the most protected data types, are compiled from beaches into huge databases so that hackers can use them to try to log into website. There are literally dozens of not hundreds of those password databases on the public Internet to be downloaded, not to mention private or dark web collections. If passwords are not safe, what makes you think publicly available social media would be any different?

Even if somehow the whole federation agreed to purge all post every year, things like the Internet archive and Google cache of pages would retain the data.

This is a big issue because in the EU you have the right to remove your data. It could make Lemmy illegal in the EU

Not sure what the point of "Mastodon's" opinion is? Firstly, Mastodon is pretty big and decentralised, and it has no-one who really speaks on behalf of all its users. Lemmy is not a privacy central network like a direct messenger service. It never claimed to be privacy centric as far as I know. The point is to share posts in communities, and the more that see them, the better.

But it is federated which means posts do get shared to other servers everywhere, and deleting those is not as easy as for a centralised server. Whatever I post on any sharing type service, I consider to be public.

In order for me to be offended, I'd first have to care about that opinion. I don't.

I wasn't planning on doing any banking through Lemmy.

I think an option for full data deletion would be nice for those who want it, otherwise people should also expect others recording their data, which can be published later on.

In both services you are basically shouting into a giant megaphone. What’s so private about it? If you don’t want say it in public, don’t say it there.

If you need privacy there are much better tools available such as pgp encrypted email or encrypted Matrix DMs (a nonfederated Matrix sever would be even more secure but rather overkill).

Edit: specified encrypting Matrix DMs. I forgot for a moment that you can send unencrypted DMs over Matrix.

I don't think much of Mastodon as it is, so they're free to rag on Lemmy all they want.

I'm not sure what this has to do with mastodon all I see are some salty idiots on raddle moaning.

If I wanted privacy, I wouldn't be browsing online.

This is a link to Raddle.me, what does this have to do with Mastodon?

Eww. Well, there is a reason why I try and be extremely careful about what I post nowadays. Don't want to regret dumb shit I said in the future.