@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

SnotFlickerman

@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone

Our News Team @ 11 with host Snot Flickerman

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Privacy Concerns on Lemmy: A Call for More User Control (github.com)

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...

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

If you’re not running your own server privacy policies are not even worth the pixels they’re presented on.

Literally, you’re just taking a random person’s word for it (whoever the admin is). A website is a black box, you have no idea what’s going on on the back-end.

The only way to be in complete control of your user data is to run your own server and be literally the only user on it.

Even then, any public comments you make are, you know… public.

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.

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

True! All your data will pass over other hardware owned by other people.

The only real online privacy is not connecting to the internet to begin with.

The whole system is based on trust.

Which is why I think some of these privacy demands are straight silly.

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

I don’t disagree on those points, but I think it’s the nature of Lemmy being decentralized that makes all those things necessary.

server should discard voting info after a brief interval for abuse detection

What if the server has not federated out the votes yet? Some of that stuff can get backed up in a queue. There’s definitely a possibility that votes could get “lost” on the way. Hell, that already happens, and that’s with a system that tracks them.

Servers have to keep a lot of this info to pass to other servers. If I upvote something on Lemmy.blahaj.zone, it doesn’t mean that upvote has been federated outward to hundreds of other servers yet. I would assume this is part of how Lemmy is able to keep things “organized” between all servers.

In other words, a lot of the privacy complaints come from technical limitations of how Lemmy works. Lemmy, by it’s decentralized nature, has to transfer tons of data back and forth between all Lemmy instances.

However, there are technologies that are trying to work around this kind of technical limitation. You might be interested in something like Veilid. I’m not sure about the details of putting together a Veilid-based social-network, but I’m willing to believe it’s possible.

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

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

I think that’s worth considering: an open-source volunteer project requires and leaks way more data than a private corporation it’s mimicking.

It couldn’t be that one has had loads of VC funding for *checks notes… 15 years. Whereas one has been barely funded for five years and has more people complaining than adding code.

Actually, it makes perfect sense that an open source project that doesn’t have a big organization behind it isn’t going to have the same capability anywhere near as quickly. Reddit also makes money from advertising. The money for Lemmy is from donations and an abysmally small set of grants.

Hell, Matrix, an actual open source communications protocol is 9 years old and they still haven’t gotten encrypted video group chats working properly and if I recall correctly still offload a lot of that to JitsiMeet. I was using Matrix/Riot.IM (now Element) in 2016 and it was garbage that barely worked, and updates constantly broke what previously worked, etc. It took time to become better and Matrix does have a whole ass organization backing it.

For comparison, Lemmy has been around for about five years and they’ve had far less financial backing and developers contributing to the project. Matrix has governments like France and Germany lining up for services for private communications, which means they’ve literally got people paying them for the service of helping manage their Matrix servers. Lemmy doesn’t have the same advantages. They don’t have a service or ads to sell (no ads is part of the appeal.).

For what its worth, Veilid exists, if you’re looking for a better framework to start with than ActivityPub.

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

If all the people complaining would just contribute to the codebase this wouldn’t even be an issue.

Often, you even see the devs coming into threads like this and making suggestions, like “make a pull request.” They want more people contributing.

It’s tons of people whining, very few people contributing. Guess what? While at a certain point, adding developers stops increasing productivity, there’s a small window where adding developers does increase productivity.

If I am correct, Lemmy only has four main developers. That’s well within the range to add more developers and increase the productivity, making new features and security come faster.

So I get it, but things take time, and are complicated, which you thankfully can see.

People whinging about it in threads does nothing to change it. Donating to Lemmy’s development costs or contributing code does.

So much of it sounds like it sounds like its from less-technically-inclined people (some of its valid critique from experts, but they generally… write bug reports and do pull requests…) who just want it to be better but the only way they know how is to “bring awareness.” Well, all that “awareness-bringing” just amounts to spreading FUD.

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I have found My People.

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

I’m not Scott Aukerman, I’m just one of his many names…

TrickShotterman, AfterShockerman, ShockJockerman, YachtRockerman, Blog Gawkerman, Stop Clockerman, Flip Flopperman, Crop Circleman, Flash Backerman, Bob Johnson… Oh wait.

I like to think of Snot Flickerman as one of those newscasters played by Tom Kenny.

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Nerds have always been easy to please.

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

Pootie’s Dad is still the Philosopher of Our Time:

You gotta have respect to get respect

They really needed to do something about that gorilla problem at the warehouse. Gone too soon.

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Once is an accident, twice is a pattern, three times is just straight negligence from management!

SnotFlickerman,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

It’s also punishing the citizens of Russia for the crimes of its government.

Denying their participation in culture is a plan doomed to fail, much like prohibition.

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

If Donald Trump wins the Presidency illegitimately, will you say the same of US citizens?

So, in a country where the elections are clearly a sham, and have been for decades, it’s the people’s fault, is that what you’re saying?

I couldn’t roll my eyes at this bullshit any harder.

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

That is very easy to say when you are not a dissident living in one of these countries.

Literally why I used the US as an example.

EDIT: Also, you’re literally reducing their access to non-Propaganda media sources.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • localhost
  • All magazines
    •
    Loading…
    Loading the web debug toolbar…
    Attempt #