Trying to wrap my head around the fediverse. Is each instance like another person with a server? Could that person just shut it down whenever they wanted to?
Are there any companies that have invested in hosting Lemmy/ other fediverse servers?
Sorry I’m sure I messed up some of the terminology, I hope my questions make sense! I love the idea of the fediverse as I understand it, but I like to dig into these details.
No, I mean companies that have only one objective - gather user data. Advertisers, marketing agencies, AI language models, corporates. If they federate with other instances, they essentially copy all posts and messages (including private messages!) over to their own server, and can then run it through data analytics software for whatever use case they have, try to match your user profile to other advertiser profiles they already have on you, etc.
And there’s nothing you can do about it, that’s simply how a decentralized network works. Every node in the system can see all the data and use it as they see fit.
I’m of the impression that only the origin and destination servers see any given private message, but I haven’t verified this. Anyway, don’t expect them to be really private. I’d worry more about reddit since pm exchanges there can be intensely private, there is a single evil corporation saving them all, and the user population is mostly oblivious to that.
When I’ve had something private to discuss with a reddit user, I’ve asked them to switch to email. They are sometimes willing but not always.
Signal messenger allows you to set up user handles since the latest beta, and they can be discarded and changed at any time, that’s great for privacy.
Could someone set up a private multi-user instance? I’m imagining like an instance with just a few friends, where you share content from other instances but noone can see what is shared there except the people invited in.
Yes, that should be fairly easy and I sometimes think of doing it.
Didn’t think about DMs. Can’t they keep a private key for you in your home instance and then encrypt all DMs to external users with their public key which the home instance makes available for that user?
I guess they might, but right now, they don’t.