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this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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Ok ... so I think false preconceptions are polluting this topic. Apart from the passwords, nothing serious has happened here for your data. As for the DMs ... yea there aren't DMs with any real privacy on the fediverse, they don't exist ... you should presume DMs are public.
Because the fediverse is not in any way private. See for a good treatment of this: https://blog.bloonface.com/2023/07/04/the-fediverse-is-a-privacy-nightmare/
The basic story is that the fediverse is all about duplicating what we post all over the place ... essentially to anyone who decides to run a server on the fediverse. The FBI could (and probably do?) have a server scooping up all sorts of stuff onto their server and you wouldn't know about and probably couldn't do much about it. Google is scraping mastodon (and probably lemmy?) ... try a google search for mastoodn content.
This is all public internet stuff, you're basically running a public blog that happens to be well connected to lots of other public blogs.
As nice as the fediverse is as a nice anti-capitalist-big-corp monopolisation of our social online lives ... it is very much born out of the web2.0 era and doesn't have any of the privacy concerns many of us would now hope for from technologies.
I've argued this elsewhere ... I like the fediverse and am here out of principle ... but in many ways it highlights some of the failings of our world at this time ... because it's about 10 years too late and the future is coming in hot and fast ... in retrospect I wouldn't be surprised if it will make a lot of sense to look back on the fediverse and think that it was effectively redundant at just about the time it gained popularity. An AI dominated internet with massive privacy concerns is here very soon, and the fediverse isn't ready IMO, it's still trying to catch up to web2.0 big social circa 2010.
If the fediverse represents the soon-to-be-replaced web 2.0 of the past, what do you see replacing it and why do you think that will be incompatible with the fediverse apps?
I could see some block chain security/authentication features added to federated apps, and hopefully end-to-end encrypted DMs will be enabled by that same technology too. I'm just having a hard time imagining something "new" that will replace this completely.
There will probably be several TikTok-like entertainment platforms, likely filled with ad-friendly AI generated content that is 100% under corporate control and costs almost nothing to produce, but that type of platform attracts a different audience than what we have here.
The blockchain's use of decentralization is pretty much a security measure. If you want to rule out the blockchain entirely, you'd still need to address the immutable and transpartent components. Only using one block once published moving forward is quite different than the fediverse. Then there's smart contracts too. It's a massive improvement to various current online platforms, to say it's merely decentralization is highly misleading.
Edit: So far, web 3.0 has yet to impress me and I'd be surprised if it does anytime soon. But blockchain tech is not simplistic and can be setup for anonymity as well.
It was known before Blockchain that you could do it too. Ancaps just got horny over it and pushed it as the next thing to replace the USD.
I don't think the fediverse necessarily needs to be replaced. We still have, afterall, Twitter going hard and strong after nearly 20 years! THe fediverse may very well go strong for many years to come, and that'd be a good thing ... it's nice!!
In an ideal world ... what would replace this? IMO, technology that basically gives every person a secure home on the internet in the same way that (most of us) can have a secure home in real life. Control, ownership and privacy over what you consume and publish and how. That technology would need to involve a number of things on a number of levels, but I'd bet it's quite viable today, it just needs buy-in and people to have the time and resources to build it.