It’s worth noting that many of the claims there are critiques against social media in general (e.g. reading headlines only). But a few great points in there as well. Article feels more like “the Fediverse isn’t much better than the platforms it’s being deployed to replace.”
FTA: Search engines like Google can discover and index all of your public posts in the Fediverse. By default, you can see the social graphs of all accounts, as followers are public. Especially Mastodon servers come with privacy policies that don’t meet the European GDPR requirements. Many (Mastodon) servers seem to run an outdated version, indicating inadequate security practices.
You will get doxed.
You will if you use your real name and your normal email. If you take appropriate cautions (as you always should when signing up for a social service) then you're fine.
You are not fine, you are fooling yourself unless you have a dedicated computer on a VPN for anonymous use only. If you use your computer for real activity in addition to anonymous activity, big tech can dox you. https://www.dignited.com/34146/heres-what-your-browser-knows-about-you/ That is enough information to uniquely identify your computer. Your anonymous metadata is matched to your real metadata, logged in a database, and sold.
Appropriate cautions for social media include using a VPN or Tor. Or you could just run your own federated server if you don't trust any of the hundreds of fediverse servers out there.
Why the hate for federated solutions? It's one of the best paths away from big tech, though not as good as full decentralization.
6 comments
7 u/None 25 Jan 2021 11:50
3 u/MudBoy 25 Jan 2021 14:56
0 u/SEELE 25 Jan 2021 15:33
2 u/MudBoy 25 Jan 2021 16:26
2 u/SEELE 25 Jan 2021 16:32
2 u/MudBoy 25 Jan 2021 18:48