Sure, but that’s not my point. Social pressures aside, there is no way for instance a to control what instance (or server, or data collector) B does with it. Unless you audit every server federated, there is no way to know if anyone is doing anything with your data.

3 letter agencies can and may even already have servers that look like ordinary fediverse servers already just happily listening and storing everything. No amount of social pressure here is going to stop that. So all users need to understand this about the fediverse, that anyone can do whatever they want with your data whenever. For privacy, go to Matrix.

Great. You show me an 10 foot fence I’ll show you an 11 foot ladder. Go ahead and audit every server that federates with you, send them a questionaire. There’s absolutely nothing stopping the next lemvotes from setting another server up, and there is nothing stopping any three letter agency from setting up their own listening server.

Of course, apologies if my comment came off as you independently are doing something crazy that we should all defederate. You absolutely are not in my book doing something outlandish.

My point only was that I don’t know why someone on piefed.social feels the need to post in lemmy.world about something that is what appears to me to be an internal instance choice.

Db0 to you directly, and for everyone reading, you have done more for the fediverse than the vast majority here and are up with the developers in my book. You have built tools for the fediverse that most will never see that keep onslaughts of abuse from hitting our servers. Personally, you have helped me with my own server helping me debug now almost three years ago. It will take much more than rimu’s personal issues with you to burn through the goodwill you’ve built up with me, and I assume the other admins.

Personally, while I am not a mod or an admin of this channel, I would argue that a personal vendetta is not relevant to the fediverse channel amd I hope these posts are both removed. I agree that they are thinly veiled attempts at trying to manipulate admins.

This is a good take, and I appreciate it.

The cold hard fact is that there are a lot of bad actors, even here on Lemmy. Most users are sheltered from it because of good mods and admins. It’s easy to shit on them, but these people sort through the absolute muck. There’s a reason we don’t have racists and gore and CP here, and it’s because they keep all of it at bay away from eyes here. I know this because I firsthand have seen some of the permanently scarring shit, and it was only a small fraction of what mods on world deal with.

Soi don’t blame moderated arching out tools that help them not see it.

However each admin and mod have to decide for themselves and their users what is best for them, and that is purely an admin level decision for their server. The fediverse is very cool that everyone can make their own rules, and I like that nuance.

You are correct, and it’s what I was suggesting op do if they don’t like what other admins do. It’s right there.

As for viewing votes there’s a whole site dedicated to showing everyone’s votes, it’s called Lemvotes. Feel free to say please, but people are still going to do it. Votes and everything elsewhere are very much public, best to get used to that now.

Absolutely it is. Grab a bucket and relax

@rimu@piefed.social is this the cause of your issue yesterday? We talked about this for hours. Just defederate.

@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com is an admin, he owns the server, he can do what he likes on that server.

As I said yesterday, and overwhelmingly everyone chimed in agreeing: This is the nature of the fediverse. You do not get to make rules for the entire fediverse.

You are on piefed.social, just block his server from your feed you dislike it so much.

Yesterday’s Post

by definition, that is adding walls and gates to the fediverse, which is why this whole thread started. The fediverse was specifically designed to oppose those features at all, specifically because of what we’re seeing now. Gates have keys and gatekeepers, and as we’ve seen in the greater world, those can change hands in the blink of an eye.

GOOD. NO ONE should be trusted here! I’m just some guy who decided to spin up a server, there should be zero trust! THIS IS MY POINT.

Don’t you think everyone deserves the information they need to choose which instances they want to interact with, according to whatever criteria is important to them? Even if your criteria are different?

This depends on the trustworthiness of the admin themselves, and even then every admin is just some person who decided to spin up a server, just like me. Trust is built and earned, it shouldn’t be implicit. The option you have is to defederate, or leave and join another server.

I’m really not trying to be an asshole here, but your post is what caused me to do this. This is not a unique post, this is a fundamental core principal of the fediverse that every user must understand. That by being here, it is not a private secure place, you are quite literally blasting every comment, post, and upvote, to whoever wants to listen. Literally everyone. Any semblance of privacy is purely a UI trait. Rules/guidance is purely 100% based on what each server owner chooses.

and it will continue to be. Again, you need to understand this. There are no rules, guidelines or anything that an instance owner needs to follow beyond whatever legal requirements they have in their specific jurisdiction.

So, I guess in your pervalence, you are correct, you do not have that freedom. Even I, as an instance owner, do not have that freedom, because everything I’m typing here is being sent out to as many servers are listening too. By being completely open so that anyone can spin up a server and listen for activity, it literally means that we are open and any server can listen for activity.

Anyone can spin up a server, create some LLM bot, and start replying to anyone they want. That instance can be defederated of course, but that is the only tool. This is what you signed up for, this is the open and free internet. We do not have any walls here.

That is quite literally my point. Everything, absolutely everything here is open and can be used however any instance owner wants. You can say “leave that shit alone”, but there is no obligation to whatsoever.

You should assume every instance owner can and is viewing all of your private data, sending it through whatever LLM/mod tools they want. Are they? Probably not. But they can, and there is no obligation not to.

What safeguards do we need?

None, defederate, switch instances if you disagree. Fediverse is open, there are no rules beyond what the instance owner puts in place.

Would asking a LLM “please evaluate this person’s political opinions” give different results than “find evidence we can use to ban them” (as used in the cases I’ve seen)?

Yes. That’s out of your control though, beyond switching instances.

What are our transparency expectations?

None, beyond what you trust of the admins in putting in their own transparency expectations. You should not expect any transparency from the admin, these are random people you are trusting with your data.

Is this acceptable and normal?

It’s their server, they can do what they like. Acceptable or normal are irrelevant.

Should this tooling be disclosed? (it was not – should it have been?)

Again, who would force it? Even if Lemmy/Piefed forced a checkbox, they could just fork it to ignore that checkbox.

Can we opt out?

If the instance owner opted for that, it’s on a server by server basis

Are there GDPR implications? Privacy implications? Should these tools be described in a privacy policy?

Probably, but everything here is open and unencrypted, see my other comments. It’s hard to argue that what you put on here in an unencrypted and open platform which is then blasted out to any other server who wants to listen had an expectation of privacy.

Are private messages being scanned and sent to OpenAI?

You should assume your unencrypted open DMs are scanned by anyone. If privacy is needed, follow the guidelines and switch to something like Matrix for DMs. ActivityPub is open.

How long should these assessments be retained and can we request to see it, or ask for it to be deleted?

Per legal requirements, or asking your instance owner.

Once the user’s comments are sent to OpenAI, is it used to train their models?

Depends on how the instance owner set up their API usage. For a user, you should assume yes.

What will the effect be on our discourse and culture if people know they are being politically profiled?

Open to wild speculation, and I assume others will do that for me.

Where are the lines between normal moderation assistance tools, political profiling and opaque 3rd-party data processing?

About the same as before. Bias in, bias out. Whatever the bias of the mods previously had, positive or negative, will continue through.

Thank you for calling this out. I think people assume that since it’s held by private instance owners that the fediverse is secure. I’ve posted this comment many times, that no, the fediverse is quite literally by design open and unencrypted.

A post is literally blasted out to anyone who listens, same with comments, upvotes, downvotes, everything can be saved, stored, and used for whatever anyone who listens wants. It should be completely assumed that nefarious agencies are currently listening and storing everything we do here. This is by design. It’s the tradeoff we have of having an open platform. Anyone can spin up a server, and that means anyone.

DMs are similar, they’re blasted out to the other server. If the server admin of the user in question wants to read them, they can. Lemmy/the fediverse is not a secure messaging platform. That’s why the Lemmy devs literally put a Matrix handle option in the profile, to encourage people to use Matrix instead. A DM on here should be simple, to the point, and if need be, inviting them to speak on something secure.

Edit - As a perfect example of the fact that there should be no expectation of privacy here on Lemmy, as an Admin myself, I can see that @A_normy_mouse has been downvoting all of my comments here. Absolutely everything here is public and visible, even if I weren’t an admin there are tools to view this, regardless of your opinions. It’s imperative that everyone understand this.

Edit 2 OP as well has downvoted me. @rimu@piefed.social I’m sorry if you disagree, but it’s irrelevant. Everything you do here can and should be assumed will be used in any way that you disagree with, that is the nature of the fediverse. Mastodon, Pixelfed, Piefed, Lemmy: ActivityPub is an open and unencrypted protocol. Even if it were encrypted, you still put 100% of your trust in your server admin, and beyond that each server admin you are blasting your messages out to.

I’d highly suggest accepting this fact before trying to push for rules. The very nature of the Fediverse is that no one can dictate rules, and to do that the tradeoff quite literally is that everything is open and unecrypted.

Another way to think of this. I run a server myself. I made my own rules and decided how to run it. Now your server starts sending activity to my server. That’s your server’s choice. I didn’t agree to your rules, I may disagree with your rules, but you’re sending your data to my server, of which I have complete and total ownership over. I didn’t click accept on a ToS, I didn’t agree to anything. Hell on my server I could literally have a “By sending me your data you accept that I can do whatever I want with your data”. You sent me your data, I quite literally can do whatever I want. (Personally I won’t, but that’s how you should think of the fediverse)

It’s very clear on signup, on the READMEs, even on the DM portal itself, that messages are unencrypted and there is no sense of privacy, and that admins have full visibility and can do what they want with them.

Agreed, but that admin is breaking his promise, duty, responsibility (call it what you will) if they then upload these messages to an LLM for evaluation.

There is no promise, duty, or responsibility that an admin has beyond legal and what they themselves promise. The fediverse is great in that if you disagree with your admin, you are free to leave and choose a different one.

As for GDPR, feel free to argue it, but when it’s claimed at every turn that messaging is unencrypted and basically open, well, I don’t think it’d hold up. It literally says to go use Matrix or something else.

I think even then that’s a solvable problem though. A unique hash of your server so if you move and start refederating the same process could happen. It’d require more work on the individual instance admin, but could be done

I think this could be solved with a migration window though, and a proper migration path in code. You spin up a new instance, clone your data. Then on old instance it sends a .well-known redirect message, or 301s for everything. Then receiving servers whenthey get that know to update all of their references. You keep it up for however long you think you should for all of the other severs to update.

That makes sense to me then. My worry as a tiny instance owner, is that I’m worried I’ll get flooded with requests, that’s a lot of traffic I’d be signing up for. Larger DBs, more ingress, any thoughts on that?

It could use a bit more explanation on what I’m registering for in the signup. Am I signing up for your instance? Do you need credentials for a bot account on my instance? If so, what exactly will it be doing?

Which is stupid by itself. It should be assumed that a TV can be burned in, with the option to disable it if they don’t like it or don’t care.

That is phenomenal. Just absolutely stunning. The sheer stupidity of how they did that as astounding.