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[–] 2 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

So a couple things here.

But everything is open, and everything is indexed.

Even who you block, who blocks you, when you usually use an app, your daily time, what your previous usernames were, etc... and more are all recorded.

You really can’t have an open, decentralized social media system without things like this. Privacy was never a promise of the decentralized web because privacy is more or less a result of there being fewer people with keys to the kingdom and you trusting those people not to share your data. But by its very design federation and decentralization protocols need there to be more than one entity with the keys to the kingdom because all the kingdoms have to interact with each other. The only alternative here would be running your own social media service that doesn’t federate with any other à la Truth Social, so you can have total control, but then that wouldn’t be very social or decentralized.

However, actually understanding it and managing it is far from easy for most ordinary users who know little or nothing about programming or technical systems.

Does this mean that Bluesky and the entire AT Protocol community are ultimately designed only for programmers, developers, engineers, digital experts, and people with technical expertise?

No, the opposite. The AT protocol was designed specifically to combat this issue because ActivityPub is so unintuitive and complicated for less technical users. A standard user will pick a PDS service hosted by someone else and unlike with ActivityPub, they really only need the one and can switch between them without losing all their followers and follows with ease.

If I were to sum up your grievances, I would say that your issue is that you don’t like social media and don’t appreciate how social ATproto is, but that’s what it’s designed for. And in fact that’s what Lemmy and Mastodon and all these ActivityPub apps are designed for. It sounds to me like what you want is to just not use social media. Or at the very least, you want a centralized private platform where you can be in total control. Those exist, but ActivityPub and ATproto are antithetical to that goal.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Privacy was never a promise of the decentralized web

    I agree with that. I am not looking for privacy on Lemmy. I'm looking for anonymity. I can use a pseudonym which is not publicly tied to me. Could the NSA figure it out? Ofc! But my threat model is big tech automated surveilence. And a little bit too, doxing by unhinged randos. So I want to break that link.

    because ActivityPub is so unintuitive and complicated for less technical users.

    That, I don't get tho. I signed up a few months ago. Literally all I had to do was pick a handle & pw, and fill a box asking why I signed up. I think that was to weed out bots. How successfully, IDK. Then I could post to this very group, a few hours later after I got approved.

    Reddit was like 1000X harder! I tried and gave up. Got shadow-banned instantly, on my first post. A post to help someone with a computer prob. I posted in good faith! Tried to contribute positively. There are endless stories of ppl signing up and insta shadow ban, or they can't post without karma, and can't get karma without posting, and all their posts are hidden. That's harder to explain to less technical ppl, than, fill out this form, and wait a little bit.

    For the mo, lemmy seems nice enough, and was easy to sign up and use. Almost too easy, I'd say. B/c I think it'll get overrun by bots and info warfare agents eventually.

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