@mathias @jupiter_rowland “Unlisted” posts are a lot less useful than I initially thought. In fact I can’t see any real use for them at all. They don’t do what I naïvely thought they did.
They still appear on your timeline and the timeline of everyone that follows you. They just don’t appear on the Local and Federated timelines, but as they are just impossible to use on larger instances anyway I doubt anyone would notice.
@MetalSamurai @mathias @jupiter_rowland
I thought it was just me! I also it was supposed to be hidden until you go down the tree of a post, but it really doesn't.
We are reaching points with the #fediverse similar to #blockchain. You need to decide whether it is better to implement something at a protocol level or application level?
Unlisted and public posts play a role in the federation and social graph of #Mastodon. Should we mess with it, or should apps adapt and filter unlisted posts from our timelines if we turn the feature on? Similar to how apps allow us to hide boosts from certain timelines?
A drum I beat as often as I can, because I think it’s very important for people to realize, is that under #ActivityPub ALL privacy or audience restrictions are only suggestions.
Effectively, ALL bits of content are public, just with notations asking instances politely to only share them with certain audiences.
People writing content into #Fediverse need to be aware that what they’re putting out there isn’t as private as they might be expecting.
So if you write a private post to a certain group, it’s entirely possible for some instance to ignore your privacy setting and blab the post to the whole world, or in other ways not act as expected with that.
Just be aware.
@volkris are you
beating the same drum about email?
Yep!
One difference, though, is that people coming from traditional social media platforms are used to having more of an expectation of privacy control than they have in Fediverse. No, not absolute expectation, but more.
Email has always been decentralized with the same lack of expectation of privacy. Social media has tended to be reliant on expectations of privacy from single, professionally run systems.
So in this system people have been surprised when their posts wind up in places they don’t expect. That highlights the disconnect between understandings of privacy around here.
Well not quite since most people have NO understanding of ActivityPub at all, much less a misunderstanding :)
For so many people, all they know is that they set their post to have a limited audience, and then magic happens, and then Wait, what? What do you mean people outside of the audience I set can see my post?
Anyway, my point is only to raise awareness of this issue as so many have said they’ve been caught off-guard by that lack of privacy here.
The source of that mis-expectation of privacy is a bit of a side topic, I suppose.
@volkris I think that's more about how people misunderstand who the recipients of activities are (including what Public is :D), than about misbehaving servers.
@Stark9837 @MetalSamurai @mathias @jupiter_rowland