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0 pointsnobody99992y ago0 comments

>Yeah I stopped reading the article once it mentioned people getting annoyed and wanting to control who sees their public content. You don't get to make that call.

A fair point, and one that's not really new either.

Don't want something to be public? Don't post it publicly. As I recall, when my employer at the time (mid 1990s) "federated" their email with the rest of the world, they sent out a memo which stated, in part, "don't put anything in an email that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of your local newspaper."

That was back when local newspapers were a thing, but I imagine you can see the parallels.

That said, I do get to control who sees my content -- by not making it public (i.e., I don't federate my AP instances and curate who can create accounts on them).

If you want something to be private, don't post it publicly. I'm not sure why that's such a foreign idea to some folks since, as I mentioned, it's not even close to being a new idea.

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jdp232y ago· 2 in thread

The article explicitly says that talking only about public posts ignores other privacy risks, and has an example related to a followers-only post. Knowing that, do you really think his point is fair?

nobody9999OP2y ago

>he article explicitly says that talking only about public posts ignores other privacy risks, and has an example related to a followers-only post. Knowing that, do you really think his point is fair?

I was responding to the idea that if you post something publicly, whether that's on a Mastodon instance, a bulletin board at the library, in a Craigslist ad or any other public forum, it's unreasonable to attempt to limit access to the information contained therein. That's intuitively obvious, no?

If you only want specific people to see that information, only give it to those folks. And if they're trustworthy, they won't share it with others but that's not guaranteed.`

How does the old saw go? "Three can keep a secret, if two are dead."

Don't want something to be public? Don't post it in a public forum. Full stop.

I am unfamiliar with the example you mention and its potential privacy impacts. But even if (and maybe especially if) there are the risks/issues you allude to, that doesn't obviate (and perhaps even strengthens) my point.

jdp232y ago

I wasn't objecting to your point so much as you calling their summary a fair point. They stopped reading the article before they got to the example of non-public information in it, so mischaracteried it, which doesn't seem fair to me.

Agreed that if something's available encrypted on the web with no login required then usually the only protections you can put on it is security-through-obscurity like hard-to-guess links that don't show up on profiles (YouTube's "unlisted videos") or advisory like "noindex". But, although it's not something I talked about in this article, there are design choices. Mastodon (etc) could evolve so that a lot of what's currently "public" isn't available on the web with no login required.

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