Privacy Concerns on Lemmy: A Call for More User Control

I’ve been grappling with a concern that I believe many of us share: the lack of privacy controls on Lemmy. As it stands, our profiles are public, and all our posts and comments are visible to anyone who cares to look. I don’t even care about privacy all that much, but this level of transparency feels to me akin to sharing my browser history with the world, a discomforting thought to say the least.

While the open nature of Lemmy can foster community and transparency, it also opens the door to potential misuse. Our post history can be scrutinized by creeps or stalkers, our opinions can be nitpicked based on past statements, and we can even become targets for mass downvoting. This lack of privacy control can deter users from actively participating in discussions and sharing their thoughts freely.

Even platforms like Twitter and Facebook, often criticized for their handling of user data, provide some level of access control. Users can choose who sees their timeline: friends/followers, the public or nobody. This flexibility allows users to control their online presence and decide who gets to see their content.

The current state of affairs on Lemmy forces us into a cycle of creating new accounts or deleting old posts to maintain some semblance of privacy. This is not only time-consuming but also detracts from the user experience. It’s high time we address this issue and discuss potential solutions.

One possible solution could be the introduction of profile privacy settings, similar to those found on other social media platforms. This would give users the flexibility to choose their level of privacy and control over their content without having to resort to manual deletion or account purging.

I believe that privacy is a fundamental right, and we should have the ability to control who sees our content. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on this matter. How do you feel about the current privacy settings on Lemmy? What changes would you like to see? Let’s start a conversation and work towards making Lemmy a platform that respects and upholds our privacy.

Creddit,

When you have privacy settings, what you really have is a lie.

It starts out with good intentions, like those in this post, but eventually everyone forgets that the platform still sees your posts and does not give a shit about selling them.

I would rather acknowledge from the very beginning that this entire system is not private, so there is never such a misunderstanding.

Everyone should post and comment with caution, just like you use caution with what you say in public places.

blackbrook,

The way you use caution saying something in a public place that you don’t want everyone to hear is by keeping your voice down so that only certain people can hear it. Without privacy settings there is no equivalent to that.

Bocky,

They have protocols for this, setup and manage your own server

user224,
@user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Sup. And all this data would still be federating, it has to be. That just means that some data-collecting company could make a fake instance and get everything together. Or someone could just fork it back.

poVoq,
@poVoq@slrpnk.net avatar

Given the state Lemmy is in (barely functional with loads of papercuts) and the barebones developer funding it has (barely above minimum wage), these honestly feel like low priority “nice to have” features for a software that is meant for public forums.

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

No! How dare you suggest something so absurd!

I don’t care how little money they have and how few developers they have, they need to bring a feature-set that is on par with corporations with billions of dollars at their disposal and thousands of developers! Fuck that, they need to even do better than those companies on the privacy issue!

Big fat /S

amanneedsamaid,

The way I see it, community-based social media is a public forum, where every post / comment is public (Obviously less applicable on an individualized platform like Instagram). Everyone has an inherent right to privacy, but not when they’re using a platform like Lemmy. Twitter and Facebook are fundamentally different platforms. You can’t expect privacy while using lemmy, so use a different platform to post private content.

SnotFlickerman, (edited )
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

These people should be looking into spinning up Matrix servers if they want a private club with real privacy so bad.

It’s definitely a weird thing to constantly be upset about: “People can see what I posted in public when I post them publicly!”

It’s like complaining about people being able to take photos with you in the background in public. It’s a public space, there is no expectation of privacy.

If you want a private internet experience, you have to put some work in.

csm10495,
@csm10495@sh.itjust.works avatar

Technical question: How would posts federate if private?

TexMexBazooka,

Bruh what? If you’re repeatedly making new accounts because you don’t want people reading your post history you’re doing something wrong.

leraje,
@leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

To me, it’s an issue of personal responsibility.

Lemmy is, like a lot of Fediverse platforms, about as private as it can be. There’s no trackers, you’re not forced to use real names or any other identifying information, no adverts follow you from site to site, no browser fingerprinting and no instance owners are trying to sell your data.

Beyond that, what you choose to say on Lemmy is your responsibility and yours alone.

pl_woah,

The lemmy devs would probably take something sensible like that and flat out shoot it down because they think they know better.

Omega_Haxors, (edited )

I personally enjoy that this sort of information is public, it keeps people honest and gives a tool to use against bad faith actors. People lie. Besides, it’s not like anyone’s forcing you to post personal information online. Some level of responsibility needs to be put on the user.

the_post_of_tom_joad,

Nope, reading people’s history is the number one reason i liked Reddit and now lemmy. It’s just anonymous enough that you can keep your private life separate, and having a comment history stands in as an online barometer of who the other people your talking to are generally like

turkalino,
@turkalino@lemmy.yachts avatar

Idk, doesn’t quite seem appropriate for a federated reddit clone. I think you’re better off on a chan board

SheeEttin,

You can control who sees it by how and where you post it. If you don’t want people to see it, just don’t put it on the Internet at all. Even sites with fine-grained privacy controls can have flaws that result in information leaks.

henfredemars, (edited )

I prefer the complete lack of privacy settings because it is open and honest about the reality of what Lemmy is able to provide.

Even if you’re running your own instance, you are necessarily submitting your data to another party. I don’t have to trust the platform as much when my data isn’t private. It’s much easier to engineer a system around that assumption.

If we suppose that anything I submit to Lemmy is submitted to the public, I can’t be misled. My data cannot be leaked because I’m presenting it to the world already. Lemmy is a young social project with many problems to solve, still trying to gain traction and hold on to users and with an uncertain future. In brief: bigger fish to fry.

Maybe privacy controls could be on the list, but I don’t think it addresses the main problems or applications of the platform and creates its own set of issues. Keep it simple and stupid.

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