Personally, that crosses my mind. But I came over in the reddit revolt and saw lemmy as a fresh start. Privacy isn’t easy, but at least make them work for it.
Also, I figure (if it hasn’t happened already) some federated instances out there are nefarious, set up to harvest data.
We just had a helicopter doing low passed over our house and watching the flight on a tracker, it was clear it was casing chosen neighborhoods. The lengths someone went to sell whatever info they grabbed means it’s highly valuable. The fediverse is open and waiting for it to be datamined.
An instance is not even required to access our posts and some user information. Most pages are just public.
Yeah but instances are supposed to e.g. delete posts when the user deletes them. A malicious instance might not do that. Even without malice, I know this doesn’t always work because some weeks ago, I deleted a comment almost immediately after saving it, then kept getting upvotes for it; I found out this was because (at least) one very popular instance hadn’t deleted that comment, its users were still seeing it and upvoting it.
Yeah but instances are supposed to e.g. delete posts when the user deletes them. A malicious instance might not do that.
The Internet Archive or archive.today might keep them as well.
Also, I figure (if it hasn’t happened already) some federated instances out there are nefarious, set up to harvest data.
[Citations needed] or it didn’t happen. There’s precious little extra information that a “nefarious” instance can harvest that any basic web scrapper can’t.
Can’t an instance also collect IP-addreses and device info, if its owner adds some scripts to its web version?
Credit where due, it is just my best guess. I have no evidence.
I simply think if you have custom code on a machine to ingest data, creating a federation interface may be more suitable and stable in the long run than a scraper. The extra server load may draw attention or run amuck with security policies designed to obscure scrapers.
But that is certainly an option.
[Citations needed] or it didn’t happen.
I think this mindset is naïve and unrealistic.
People were saying the same thing for decades in response to a small minority warning about government surveillance, often dismissing them with labels like “paranoid”. Eventually, Snowden came along and produced the citations, at extreme risk to himself and his loved ones. It’s an anomaly that they were ever revealed at all.
History is replete with examples of bad stuff going on for ages before irrefutable evidence of it became widely known. In general, if something can be abused to someone’s advantage, it will be, and likely already is.
There’s precious little extra information that a “nefarious” instance can harvest that any basic web scrapper can’t.
You have a point there, but consider also that effective web scraping uses significantly more resources than having the data you want handed to you. Monitoring Lemmy through federation would be much more efficient.
[Citations needed] or it didn’t happen.
This is such a bullshit challenge. I often see it used to essentially bully someone into a side issue about citations. It’s a great way to avoid discussing the original issue.
I have knowledge (that I rarely share) that I am absolutely not going to cite, because I’m not jeopardising sources, or clearances, or violating my obligations to the official secrets act just to play someone’s status games.
If someone makes a claim, I am perfectly able to go find the relevant citations myself, if there are any. I am more interested in the structure and content of what they’re adding to the discussion.
I often see it used to essentially bully someone into a side issue about citations. It’s a great way to avoid discussing the original issue.
You may well have, but that’s not what I’m doing. I’m familiar with ActivityPub’s & Lemmy’s APIs, and I’m calling bullshit on OP’s hyperbolic claim without evidence or elaboration.
We are neighbors! I’m at 1342!!! (jk)
(does anyone remember the subr*ddit where everyone pretends to be in the same town?)
I’d say more likely just:
- Not enough users to see that many stories being posted
- Not that many users to make it worth sharing detailled stories
- Lack of communities for that kind of content
You’re just not gonna see a lot of tales from retail in a place dominated by chronically online people, engineers, nerds and somewhat older userbase.
For people unaware, there is !casualconversation@lemm.ee
I’m aware of that one but it’s not that active especially compared to the big reddit communities like TalesFromRetail, AITAH, MaliciousCompliance, TalesFromTechSupport, etc which is where all the good stories come out of on Reddit.
Reddit didn’t used to be that way. Slowly over time it devolved into the same self-flagellation that happens more on “share my thought” type platforms like Twitter. I hope we are better able to manage our federations to keep that type of content at bay while remaining open enough to let people speak their truth in the face of oppression.
We haven’t been infested by the vain Facebook crowd yet.
