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@ericbuijs We have to be very careful about setting privacy expectations: there is no #privacy in the #ActivityPub protocol/#mastodon/the #fediverse.
@aral @ericbuijs Maybe see it this way: it is as private as any Activity in a Pub.
@aral Your point is taken. To clarify my remark a bit. In the Fediverse is no Big Tech lurking on your data to create a profile and sell that as many times as possible. However if your on someone else's instance a rogue admin can still gather all the data on that instance (even the DM's I suppose).
@ericbuijs @aral Could we say its as private as email? Meaning it's sitting on someone's server unencrypted and can be read there, but it's encrypted in transit and not sent to anyone else.
I've seen people raising this on twitter like its "a bad thing". When in reality it's no different to any of the "town hall" social media platforms. Posts and DMs aren't encrypted. They're not losing anything they already have.
@aral @ericbuijs I've come to think that it's actually a good thing if social media sites don't have end-to-end encryption. Otherwise, you're providing an organizing tool for bad actors.
@mathew @ericbuijs Can you please unset your password and mail me your phone? I’d like to have a look through it to ensure you’re not a bad actor.
@aral @ericbuijs Ah, but my phone isn't the same thing as a public social network.
Just as the rules for flying a plane full of passengers are different from the rules for riding a bike, so what's reasonable for a social network that can reach (or harm) millions might be quite different from what's reasonable for 1:1 messaging with friends.
@mathew @ericbuijs But we’re talking about end-to-end encryption and private messaging. Removing the ability for people to communicate privately wouldn’t do anything to stop bad actors, it would just make private communication illegal. And guess who are great at doing illegal things… that’s right, bad actors :)
What it would also do, of course, is allow corporations and governments to further skew the power dynamic in their favour and, eventually, to erode the very concept of personhood.
@aral @ericbuijs I have no problem with end-to-end encrypted messaging for 1-on-1 communication, or 1-to-small-group.
Where it becomes problematic is if you imagine K*w*farms or 8k*n, but decentralized enough to be unstoppable, and with everything encrypted so that nobody would know what was going on until it was far too late.
I think people building social networks need to put more effort into making sure they're not building or enabling a more effective K*w*farms.
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