Two recent reminders why the fediverse is very vulnerable to state surveillance.
First a new article from @404mediaco about surveillance contractors monitoring social media for #ICE https://www.404media.co/the-200-sites-an-ice-surveillance-contractor-is-monitoring/
Second a research article on how fediverse presents both challenges and opportunities for state surveillance through an analysis of #BlueLeaks by @Fassbender
Keeping Watch Over the Fediverse: Mass Surveillance in Non-Centralized Social Media
"Non-centralized social media appears to be undergoing a “Killer Hype Cycle”, where many users dissatisfied with centralized corporate platforms are identifying Mastodon as an alternative. With the influx of users there has been an increase in available data for researchers of social media and communication. Much of this work has focused on the everyday end user: someone who is using the platform to share personal information or consume media. However, these platforms have other uses. Corporations seek to mine federated media for their own endeavors, and state agents catalog the information for various
uses."
@rra @404mediaco @Fassbender sounds like the #fediverse has some work to do to defend the privacy of it's users.
@eluxzen I'd say fediverse (well, ActivityPub) is open and non-private by its core design.
If a user wants privacy, this is the wrong tool for the job, and bolting on privacy protection would basically make it a different system.
@volkris @eluxzen @rra @404mediaco I think it's an important conversation to have. In my paper I was getting at inconsistencies in communication I was seeing from and to newcomers in the large user spikes.
Some of the technologies not in the AP scope (like relays or Mastodon's API) have their unique advantages for visibility and drawbacks for privacy. I'm not a dev but I'd be interested to see what services there are that can address privacy more but still work with AP, if it's possible
@Fassbender yes, definitely, and it's a drum I bang as much as I can because it's so important.
So many users on this platform don't realize how public everything is, and that's a big problem as they post content expecting it to be secure when it's not.
I always try to raise awareness of that so people can make informed choices, and also, I really wish UIs could make that more clear to users.
I don't expect that it will be possible to make this very privacy-protecting, but at least users need to know what they're getting into.
@volkris @eluxzen @rra @404mediaco completely agreed!