mhoye
Your privacy is not a thing in and of itself, that you either have or don't. Privacy is your ability, and capacity, to choose for yourself what you share about yourself, and when, and with who. And the other word we have for that is "dignity".
Privacy is the agency you have over your dignity.
"A private social network" only makes sense in through this lens, of people wanting a social environment where they have agency over what they share, when, and with who.
It's a reasonable thing to want.
Evan Prodromou
@mhoye Hey, so, wonderful stuff. I appreciate the notes. I'm going to address them separately.
mhoye
But independent agency is not enough, and will never be enough. "Block and move on" is not enough and will never be enough. Without collective action rooted in trust it will always be easier to automate bad acts than it will be to defend against them, or foster the common good.
Every time a human types out "#fediblock" they are creating evidence that the common good is losing.
Shared blocklists, both individual and instance wide should be automatic and instant.
mhoye
"Another way to say that is: among people or communities who trust each other in these decisions, an act of self-defense becomes, seamlessly and invisibly, an act of collective defense. [...] shields-up means shields-up for everyone. Effective, practical defensive solidarity; it’s the most important new idea I’ve seen in social software in years."
I wrote this in 2020, and all the time I've spent since watching admins burn out and shutter instances saddens me.
It doesn't need to be like this.
mhoye
I mean no disrespect to the social web foundation, but the list of projects they're listed as tackling (End to end encryption? Long form text?) are... look, they don't matter. The things that are burning out admins and driving minorities - notably black communities - away from "the fedi" isn't the wire protocols. It's the fact that the Fediverse has a big fucking racism problem and there's no real way to protect yourself or your friends from it.
Mutualism and solidarity have no verbs here.
Evan Prodromou
@mhoye First, you say that E2EE doesn't matter to anyone. However, my user experience research shows that secure DMs are extremely important to people, and they're one of the main reasons people feel they can't build up real social connections on the Fediverse.
Evan Prodromou
@mhoye Second, the projects we have on the site right now are for our immediate execution. They're also there to show the kind of thing we can do in the future.
Evan Prodromou
@mhoye I find the point you're making important. I'm going to add it to our discussion for future projects.
Pleroma-tan
Evan Prodromou
@mhoye I am not a lawyer, but I believe your responsibility for content on your server goes way down if you cannot access it.
That said, we will include mechanisms so that people will be able to report messages they receive and they will be non-repudiable.
mhoye
@evan Please understand that from the perspective of a site owner or administrator, E2EE messaging functionally means "my server might be hosting and redistributing things that I might go to prison for and I have no way of knowing or checking."
I realize that I am only speaking for myself in this, but there is _no way in hell_ that I would ever choose to self-host infrastructure that put me in that position, and I can't imagine anyone knowingly choosing to do that.
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