@freemo
> is it something you'd personally like or benefit from.

Well yes, but actually yes.
After doing a quick look on the qoto user graph on @users . I see a steady raise of registered user.
And seeing this instance were meant to be a place for "stem" oriented people (at least that's my thought on of the "about page" of this instance).
Having legal protection might seems nice.

> Just really curious why it would be something you desire. I find most people never care nor notice it when there is one. My concern is legal jargon might scare users away and give a negative impression, but i think it does serve a purpose.

I mean. Most of us who ditch tw**ter for mastodon were concern about our privacy and them cencoring people.
And seeing qoto.org federates with all instance warms my heart. (No cencoring )
Maybe it's time to put a privacy policy since the "about this instance" seems clear about it's terms of service.

@ravenclaw

I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of emphasizing our privacy policy. I do mention it briefly as a one liner in the ToS we have, though the ToS is in no way legally worded.

I think we are somewhat talking about two different but closely related things... There is the plain english promises of moderations and administration. In this sense we simply state our promise to your privacy. While the moderation part is covered well in this sense in our current about page we can of course (and should) elaborate on privacy protections int he about page as well in far more detail. So this half the request is the most important.

The other thing is a more official legalese set of documents talking about privacy and ToS that codify those principles in a more official way.. you originally stated "generic" though, and I'd say a generic one would probably hurt more than help as it isnt likely to align with our promises and may even contradict them (which people will use as fodder against us).. While I do support a legalese written version of each I think it would have to be written custom to our policies and not generic at all. We would also have to be very careful to protect everyones interest while not giving rise to language that may be misconstrued against us. The concern here is the second it sounds like legal writing people will become far more critical and use it to attack us, and sadly legal writing tends to be really tricky to do right. Promise too much and our hands our tied in addressing edge cases, promise too little and people will take it as a license for abuse from mods.

@users

@freemo @users
> you originally stated "generic" though, and I'd say a generic one would probably hurt more than help as it isnt likely to align with our promises and may even contradict them (which people will use as fodder against us).. While I do support a legalese written version of each I think it would have to be written custom to our policies and not generic at all. We would also have to be very careful to protect everyones interest while not giving rise to language that may be misconstrued against us. The concern here is the second it sounds like legal writing people will become far more critical and use it to attack us, and sadly legal writing tends to be really tricky to do right. Promise too much and our hands our tied in addressing edge cases, promise too little and people will take it as a license for abuse from mods.

Sorry for that
By "generic" i mean that.
It should notice whats logged on user-instance related activity like logins and any other activity that's could classified as "instance" related.
And for the other thing.
Since Mastodon use activitypub. Instance owner can't be hold accountable for something that's been posted and shared on activitypub.
Any information related like post, profile pict can that's deleted can only be "invisible" and not gone (does profile pict also shared on activitypub networks? This also apply to qoto.org service that relies on that too).
Since (god forbid) in theory, someone could make an instance who federates just to mine peoples data.

@ravenclaw

You dont need an instance to mine peoples data. Peoples data is already in the open and a crawler can mind peoples data as effectively as an instance could.

But yea I can dig it.

@users

@freemo @users
> you don't need an instance to mine peoples data

ikr! I totally forgot that too
But crawlers only able to get undeleted post.
An instance-based loggers could do better job at logging peoples post.

@ravenclaw

somewhat true. A crawler wont see a post you deleted it is true, they will only see or know about posts you made after the crawler began crawling. But since a crawler checks every time you update your page (or at a minimum periodically, but since there is an RSS feed it would likely be automatic), once the crawler is online it would capture ands tore a post and retain it even after deleted.

The same is true for an instance right, they only retain deleted posts and can be aware of them if the post was deleted after the instance came online. Only reason it continues to know about the post is because it saw it before it was deleted and decided to retain a copy, so it really isnt any different than a crawler in that sense.

The only advantage an instance has is that a crawler would need to use pull-paradigm where it polls the RSS feed periodically to decide when to re-crawl a site. So if a post is created and then redeleted before the polling period of the RSS feed is hit (as in, you create it and delete it seconds or minutes later) then a crawler would miss it. An instance however has push-paradigm where it doesnt need to poll and instead if your following someone and they post the post is pushed to your server. so even if they delete it moments later your server already has a copy. So the instance would capture some posts which are created and deleted moments later that a crawler wouldnt. Otherwise they would be about the same.

@users

@freemo @users
It surprises me that me as an absolute "average joe" could get the basic of this discussion.
I don't even code
i need to learn how to code

@ravenclaw

Well i did try to frame it in a way that would be easier to follow, but yea not everyone could get it either. But yea you should learn to code if it interests you, for sure.

@users

@freemo
should we delete this discussion sir (jk )
This literal goldmine for some people who knew their stuff.

@users

@ravenclaw

this is nothing anyone hasnt already considered if they want to setup a crawler.

@users

@freemo btw Mr. Freemo, does any changes you made on the qoto.org mastodon frontends viewable on qoto.org source on git.qoto.org ?

@ravenclaw @freemo
In the legal sense where ever his servers are located that country's laws apply, I think

@mur2501

Agreed that is important too.. Part of the problem though is that we are a load balanced system with servers in multiple regions to provide the best connection and latency speeds. So we dont actually have servers in any one location. In all liklihood you are connecting to the server that is phsyically closest to you (though that may not actually be in your country).

@ravenclaw

@freemo @ravenclaw
Also the country you are yourself in is the first legal jurisdiction for you.
Anyway legality is a complex matter.

@mur2501

By "you" I presume you mean whoever the user happens to be, and not me?

@ravenclaw

@freemo @ravenclaw
Yeah, "you" is general there, refers to everyone