Fediverse

I think both things are valid points, but it's worded in a weird way

A more explicit pro/con would have been better

No big corporation that controls everything

• Pro:
• Con:

It's actually not wrong if you look at it in another way.

• Big tech will abuse your data, but it will do within legal constraints, and there is actuall (though weak) accountability of these companies due to the legal system.
• On federated services like Lemmy, instances are hosted by anonymous individuals. Most social media laws don't apply to them, and their legal accountability is basically zero.
• Lemmy, for example, does not comply with GDPR. There is no legal notice, no privacy contact person, no banner asking whether you are ok with the fact that your data is sent to unknown servers in random nations, no nothing. Private messages aren't even encrypted, so any admin can read them without issues.
• There is no way to actually delete your data, as the GDPR requires. Deleted posts are only marked as deleted and you can see their plain text content by just pressing the "reply" button in any of the apps. There isn't any kind of guarantee, that your post will be deleted on other instances. If federation has problems, the post will remain on other instances and is now permanently undeletable by the user.
• There are no moderation standards. Some instances will delete nazi content, some basically require nazi content. And some instance admin might even edit your posts to say something completely different. It's all possible and in the hands of random people on the internet.
• Hobbyist-run services are much worse when it comes to availability and reliability. If something happens while the admin is on holiday, nothing will get fixed. If the admin runs out of money, doesn't care anymore or even dies, the instance with all it's content and users is just gone.

So there are very real risks attached to a hobbyist-run service with no legal accountability and no transparency at all.

We all know the downsides of Big Tech though, so it's everyone's personal choice to figure out which disadvantages hurt them personally more.

It's kind of fair, to be honest, and the "no big corporation" seems more like a pro than a con

I think it is a valid point, though. How do GDPRs even work on Lemmy? Do you need to submit one to every instance that your instance is federated with? What about transitively federated instances? Sometimes when you delete something, the delete action doesn't get federated. That's kind of terrifying. If you post something personally identifying without realizing it, then try to delete it, you might not be able to.

Imo, it's something to keep on mind when posting on Lemmy, but not a reason to not use it.

there isn’t a single accountable entity behind the network

Yeah, Instead of a single entity i know will never be held accountable for selling my data and storing my information in an unencrypted txt file, there are unknown entities! Like the ~~Simpsons~~ (d'oh) quote says, "It could even be a boat!"

The illogic reminds me a bit of Google's new targeted ad privacy settings where your "privacy" is google's pinky swear that they alone are profiting from you.

When you see takes this weird do you wonder as i do whether it is intentionally worded to push some kind of narrative (though i don't really know what that would even be in this case), or is it written by someone so deeply in the tech bubble world that they are wildly out of touch? I don't know.