every new user being shocked that DMs aren’t actually private is kinda scary because it means that everybody just assumes DMs on other platforms are private
because they aren’t. the only difference between fedi and other social media is that fedi admins don’t have a vested interest in making you think DMs are private
@starshine yeah considering Tumblr DMs were being used against trans women on Tumblr and that's a part of this whole thing... Our DMs here are no less private than any social media site. In fact, I'd say they're better because only our 1-10 admins can see them, instead of a whole company's worth of moderation people and whatever corporations they sell our data to
@starshine I think that after the whole crypto boom web3 craze people's monkey brains goes "decentralized = encrypted" and then get unreasonable technical expectations about how the ActivityPub protocol works like posts on the fediverse are like exchanging Monero coins or something.
@starshine i think this is sadly just a common fallacy and a sort of cognitive dissonance that many people fall into.. there's (seemingly) a big difference between "a company might read my messages" and "these few admins whose names i know can read the messages"
i think this is also a common problem when arguing about privacy in general "idc what google knows about me", but then (understandably ofc) not wanting to show e.g. ur search history to random strangers on the street, even though one is arguably worse due to capital forces and general horribleness that companies love engaging in that a random stranger probably wont and cant.
@mel personally, I do find there's a big difference between "this faceless corporate money machine, which I don't trust at all, have access to my private messages¹" versus "My instance admins, who I've actually chatted to and seen like good people, have access to my private messages²"
1: and WILL access them, just as soon as they even think they know how to monetize them, if they haven't already
2: but why would they access them? There's no motive here
@starshine There's a reason why these websites call them "direct" messages instead of the old nomenclature of "private messages". They're not private at all.
@guigui@starshine not exactly. There's a HEFTY chunk of Fedi admins that make their users think that Fedi content 100% isn't being datamined in someway for AI or other purposes.
The reality is, there's no way to guarantee that. All a corporation has to do is make their own instance and have someone from the corporation make an account on .social and follow the corporation account. Boom. Corporation is federated and able to see public posts.
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