FBI Seizure of Mastodon Server Data is a Wakeup Call to Fediverse Users and Hosts to Protect their Users (www.eff.org)

submitted 1 year ago by mike@postit.quantentoast.de to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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cross-posted from: https://postit.quantentoast.de/post/18942

I thought this might be of interest to other users as well as admins.

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[+] lengsel@latte.isnot.coffee -20 points 1 year ago

You lying to yourself or have unfounded expectations. Everything on Mastodon is in plain text, there is no encryption, and servers get mirrored. It's only the login info that stays with the instance, and they all say that each instance server keeps logs for a year.

It has never been any priacy at all. The entire point of why Mastodon was ever started was censor evertbody that has the wrong opinion. Twitter wouldn't delete people because of what they believe, so Mastodon was developed to ban IP address so only approved speech could exist on the internet as far as they are concerned and can avoid ackniwledging the real world. A high number of people on there, especially the admins, live in cult

[-] mike@postit.quantentoast.de 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

> You lying to yourself or have unfounded expectations.

Nobody mentioned any expectations hm...

> Everything on Mastodon is in plain text, there is no encryption, and servers get mirrored.

That's 100% correct, and I think it's important to explain that to non-techy users.

> It’s only the login info that stays with the instance [...]

Technically yes, but I'd cut the "only" because login info includes the users email. So in case of a raid or data breach, I'd like to know about it.

> The entire point of why Mastodon was ever started was censor evertbody that has the wrong opinion. Twitter wouldn’t delete people because of what they believe, so Mastodon was developed to ban IP address so only approved speech could exist on the internet as far as they are concerned and can avoid ackniwledging the real world. A high number of people on there, especially the admins, live in cult

I don't know what places on Mastodon you've visited, but that's not the point of Mastodon or the Fediverse in general at all. But we don't have to start a discussion about that since you seem to already have made up your mind about it.

[+] lengsel@latte.isnot.coffee -14 points 1 year ago

One of the main or even first rules for a lot of Mastodon is nobody is allowed say anything bad about tansgender or homosexuality an will result in account delete or ban, that much censorship is a cult.

Not allowed to criticize vaccines. I'm not talking about messaging individual users, simply a public posting criticizing trans ideology or injections, banned.

If someone reads the rules across a long list of Mastodon instances, a picture becomes clear about conformity to acceptable speech. Functional healthy adults are mature enough to ignore it or they themself choose to ban a user from messaging them, not an admin who had no part in a conversation. If one person creates multiple account and targets individuals, then yes the admin gets involed.

To prove my point, do a search for a Mastodon instance that allows obnoxious or unpleasant statements, that is still allowed to communicate with more populated instances.

[-] mike@postit.quantentoast.de 8 points 1 year ago

I get your point. Then, why not start your own instance with rules that you approve? I know, easier said than done, but that's the nice thing about the Fediverse. Next to the general purpose instances, there are many "themed" ones with focus groups such as musicians, journalists and so on.

[+] lengsel@latte.isnot.coffee -7 points 1 year ago

I view the repeated reply of "start your own server" as a cop out to not address what is fundimentally broken about a service, plus it doesn't acknowedge that starting a new instance requires taking on a daily obligation of attending and checking that the service is running and immediately addressing in as short time as possible.

Look at the rules of a instance that focuses on a particular topic or industry, they still have rules for public postings or acceptable speech.

Since Mastodon has the capabilty to ban IP addresses and for one instance to ban another instance from communicating with it, that's using a deny-all rule due to specfic individuals, so everybody on the internet who uses one server do not exist online for people on another server.

[-] Certainly_No_Brit@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 year ago

I recommend viewing an instance as someone's house/home. If you create an account on someone's instance, you need to abide by their rules, because you are their guest. You can't go to someone and expect them to tolerate everything you say/do.

If you can't find an instance that tolerates your views, you should create one which does. That is the great thing about decentralization. If you don't want to create a home for your views or don't like decentralization, you should stay on corporate social media, which you can see as a public square. Everyone can join and say what thay want and they only get banned if they get too loud.

The "official" Fediverse is mainly used by a certain type of individuals who hold specific views about love, life and politics. It is not designed to be a public square and it is made easy to filter out opinions you don't like.

By your other comments I think that you hold conservative values about the world. There are/were instances for conservative opinions, but they don't/didn't federate at all. Maybe that's the reason you can't find any people supporting your views. Parler.com for example used a Mastodon server as a base for their social media network, but they never enabled federation.

Another example might be gab.com, which is still active and used by many conservative people.

[-] KLISHDFSDF@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

One of the main or even first rules for a lot of Mastodon is nobody is allowed say anything bad about tansgender or homosexuality an will result in account delete or ban, that much censorship is a cult.

Lets rephrase that:

One of the main or even first rules for a lot of Mastodon is nobody is allowed say anything bad about mexicans or blacks an will result in account delete or ban, that much censorship is a cult.

If you'd have said that in the 50's (had mastodon been around), it would have been clear to anyone that you're a racist. Read the room. The LGBTQ community is under attack for absolutely no reason other than ignorant people have drunk the kool-aide and think "the gays" have it out for them and their kids. Boo-hoo, so you can't be a jerk towards the current minorities, if you have something bad to say about someone's character, say it, don't be afraid, but why would you seek to speak bad about an entire group of people? Sounds sketch AF.

this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023

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