this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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I agree that a large number of instances all setting behind CloudFlare centralizes those instances and adds a centralized point of failure. But that's where my agreement stops.
Single point of failure just scratches the surface. It’s also a single point of access control, and a single point of surveillance.
Full stop-- Not in the slightest. If that were true there would be no reason for web-facing publication by lemmy world to logged-out users. Having local copies of lemmy world content is an interaction convenience (and necessary for some ops) but it does not encapsulate the full UX. The discussion is openly visible to different extents from different platforms and angles. This is purposeful. And it’s important. It’s how you validate that you’re not in a malicious or oppressive bubble. You step outside of your instance to see what others see.
You’re conflating power with ethics. Sure, fedi nodes have power to pawn users to tech giants & push ads, sell data to Google & Facebook, surreptitiously share all traffic with Cloudflare Inc. without so much as even telling their users that their usernames, passwords, and DMs are visible to CF, etc. The fedi is designed to allow this. That does mean it’s just to do so. Evil nodes can and should be called out, exposed, and outcast, which the fedi is also designed to accommodate.
I am. And I pointed this out already in another post in this thread. I deliberately join small instances.
Yes, but this only scratches the surface. Putting huge numbers of users behind Cloudflare on a single giant node is the most antithetical action a fedi node can do -- and this is what Lemmy World has done.