There's very little privacy on the fediverse today. Mastodon and other fediverse software wasn't designed and implemented with privacy in mind. Even the underlying #ActivityPub protocol that powers the fediverse has major limitations. But it doesn't have to be that way!
Meta's new #Threads product means that it's critical for the fediverse to start focusing more on privacy. Of course, #Meta's a threat in many other ways as well; that said, the privacy aspects are important too.
For one thing, if Meta does indeed follow through on its plans to work with #Mastodon instance admins and others "partners" who to monetize their users (and their data), people in the region of the fediverse that's not Meta-friendly will need stronger privacy protections to protect their data. And Meta's far from the only threat to privacy out there; changes that reduce the amount of data Meta can gather without consent will also help with other bad actors.
More positively, there's also a huge opportunity here. Privacy's even worse on Facebook and Instagram than it is in the fediverse. So If the fediverse can provide a more private alternative, that will be hugely appealing to a lot of people.
Any way you look at it, now's a good time for the fediverse to take privacy more seriously.
The bulk of the article focuses on threat modeling, a useful technique for identifying opportunities for improvement. It's a long article, though, so if you don't want to wallow in the details, feel free to skip ahead to the section at the end on the path forward and the specific recommendations.
And if you're already bought in to the idea that the #fediverse
should focus more on privacy, and just want to know how you can help make it happen, it also suggests specific actions you can take -- and there's a section with some thoughts for #MastoAdmin
Here's the table of contents:
There's very little privacy on the fediverse today. But it doesn't have to be that way!
Today's fediverse is prototyping at scale
Threat modeling 101
They can't scrape it if they can't fetch it
Different kinds of mitigations
Attack surface reduction and privacy by default
Scraping's far from the only attack to consider
Win/win "monetization" partnerships, threat or menace?
A quick note to instance admins
Charting a path forward
Recommendations
This is still a draft, so as always feedback is welcome. And thanks to everybody for the feedback on previous drafts!
@sabret00the Yup. #ActivityPub is not enough for video distribution. PeerTube is interesting indeed but the storage/bandwidth issue represents a challenge in terms of business model. You need to have a HUGE infrastructure to deal with volumes of video distribution. And that's costly. Not sure it's a business model that can work only through donation/subscription.
Someone should start like a service or non profit or organization or you know whatever you want to call it to help public services, non profits, and emergency services start up there own instances on the fediverse to help solve the communication issue they were left with when Twitter went to shit.
Maybe an organization with chapters in different regions/states that helps set up a server or multiple servers that are dedicated to that areas emergency services and things.
Get them either set up self hosting if they have the ability or get them connected and setup with a hosting provider.
They would be verified by domain name, in person in the community, and this new organization.
This would help solve future issues from big social media breaking their communication and would get more people onto the fediverse.
I guess I have a warning for would-be social media influencers checking out the #fediverse. The warning is that while the fediverse may appear to be similar to #twitter, the similarities remain superficial. If you've come here in the hopes of some algorithm to assist, you will be sorely disappointed. Furthermore, most participants in the #ActivityPub realm have chosen to be here precisely because they found attempts to be influenced or manipulated tiresome and annoying.
Social media influencers will probably find more traction at Bluesky. The fediverse world is independent-minded and less likely to be swayed by an individual opinion, even regardless of celebrity status. We are more apt to question the influencer's point of view than to take it in faith.
In short, the fediverse isn't a popularity contest. It's merely a platform for exchanging ideas and learning from other people.
Head twist: How do #ActivityPub server implementations like Mastodon not understand that account transfer means the whole digital content related to an account, not just selected pieces.
Analogy: This is operating like old school bank accounts where followers are direct debits and who you follow are standing orders. Your content (transactions) don’t move to your new bank but you have statements (export of data).
It’s digital and data plus 2023. We can do so much better. Wander pondering.
Since the lemmy issue is getting overrun with people talking about other proposals, I'm thinking about submitting this as a #FEP. Is that still a useful process? I don't know how many projects look to FEPs for implementation guidance.
We really should consider services that are not #ActivityPub based but still a federated to be part of the #Fediverse and promote them accordingly. Self-hosting is a plus.
#Usenet is also federated and has been since 1979! There are free providers: https://www.big-8.org/wiki/News_service_providers. If one excludes binaries groups, it's possible to peer with other providers via #NNTP. Posts and groups are linkable in HTML.
I still haven't made up my mind about blocking Meta's #Threads, codenamed #Project92 or #P92, supposedly supporting #ActivityPub, should it actually launch. As far as I can see, it's basically "keeping the evil surveillance corp. out" vs "avoiding nerdy self-marginalization".
Both are fair points. I guess, it depends. But on what? For me, the key point is if Threads (or whatever its name) supports easy migration (as Mastodon does). If that's the case, I would prefer not to block it, as it could be an offramp from the walled garden. If this feature is omitted, then I would be much more open to blocking.
But in the end, this should not be a decision by the admins, but a collective one by the users of the instance. #fedipact#Project92
Does anybody really implement pure #ActivityPub (and ActivityStreams 2)? Looking at the actor (and/or attributedTo) fields, for example. There can be multiple of each. The JSON representing them could have a string/URI, a mapping, a Link, or a list of a combination of those types. Assuming a server handles all those variations (I doubt any server does), how does it interpret it in a context where a specific inbox/outbox POST is authenticated using HTTP signatures (single actor)?
although this is unlikely to substantially and directly impact us and is a more immediate concern for Mastodon and similar fediverse software, we've signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact as a matter of principle. that pact pledges the following:...
John Gruber describes the Anti-Meta Pact as "petty and deliberately insular" and suggests that the whole point of ActivityPub is to turn social networking into something more akin to email, which he describes as "truly open."1
Tristan Louis says "The anti-Meta #Fedipact can only achieve one thing: make sure that #ActivityPub loses to the Bluesky protocol."2
Dan Gillmor suggests that "preemptively blocking them -- and the people already using them -- from your instance guarantees less relevance for the fediverse."
Really excited for the #activityPub developer tools I’ve been working on lately, there are a few different tools that will aid in debugging and development of your AP projects!
Eventually I’d like to build a test suite using a corpus of community contributed projects to test compatibility with various projects
It will be open source, and you’ll be able to download single file scripts that you can run locally to test without requiring a prod/tls stack
“Fediverse can only win by keeping its ground, by speaking about freedom, morals, ethics, values. By starting open, non-commercial and non-spied discussions. By acknowledging that the goal is not to win. Not to embrace. The goal is to stay a tool. A tool dedicated to offer a place of freedom for connected human beings. Something that no commercial entity will ever offer.”
@activitypubtestsuite - question for the group: even if we were not to use it’s codebase, is there value in getting the old ActivityPub.rocks test suite live again? Just to see the old test in action?
It'd be cool if #ActivityPub had a way to log in with your accpunt on another AP server. Like, if I wanted to check out kbin it'd be nice if I could reuse my mastodon account.
#Facebook actually has a lot of fake accounts for investment/romance scams.
Scammers take advantage of the propensity of people to blindly trust Facebook's capital power. #Fediverse instances might keep distance from Facebook to avoid scamming incidents even if Facebook adopts #ActivityPub.
All this conversation about #Meta on #Fedi feels like the worst parts of geek culture. So technical, without understanding context or what strikes can actually do. My thoughts:
Meta will make a great app for Fedi because it has more money to throw at the task. People will start using that because it's better. It will have QTs and an algorithm. People they want to follow will be there.
A #strike / #FediPact doesn't let them do this. It prevents #Meta from entering the existing conversation with interesting content and dynamic developments. It makes it harder and more expensive for them to develop their own ActivityPub software, makes #EEE slightly more expensive.
Whoever thinks that we have somehow "won" by having them adopt #ActivityPub is deeply ignoring reality and history. We have opposing interests. They are capitalists, we are a commons. They want to eat us.
Now, consider these two items in combination. A lot of athletes are sharing their training and competition diaries with fans in apps like Strava as well as Instagram. AP could link them together.
One of the small things I managed to do while sick this week was to add support for <link rel=alternate type="application/activity+json"> for all the pages where this makes sense.
So now the instance and the individual users are directly discoverable on Mastodon instances by entering the URL in the search box. (Accepting the follows is not functional at the moment... oops)
non-stickied PSA: Beehaw has signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact
although this is unlikely to substantially and directly impact us and is a more immediate concern for Mastodon and similar fediverse software, we've signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact as a matter of principle. that pact pledges the following:...