otter

Which is great to do, we can like something and want it to improve at the same time.

Better blocking feels like a priority for me because it would quell most of the defederation issues.

• instance only defederates from illegal content / scams
• users block instances, communities, and users they don't want
• recommended block lists that users can import (from the instance, from somewhere else, etc.)

Which ones are those? Maybe I can't even see them

You can encourage a parallel/sister community setup :)

Some of these communities won't move over completely, but over time you can grow the more open & accessible choice

My hope is that dumb responses like that will increase the chance of an unfavorable decision for them

There was a case in Canada a few years ago

Report from the privacy commissioner: https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/opc-news/news-and-announcements/2020/nr-c_201029/

Customers not aware that their sensitive biometrics information was gathered

October 29, 2020 – Cadillac Fairview – one of North America’s largest commercial real estate companies – embedded cameras inside their digital information kiosks at 12 shopping malls across Canada and used facial recognition technology without their customers’ knowledge or consent, an investigation by the federal, Alberta and BC Privacy Commissioners has found.

The goal, the company said, was to analyze the age and gender of shoppers and not to identify individuals. Cadillac Fairview also asserted that shoppers were made aware of the activity via decals it had placed on shopping mall entry doors that referred to their privacy policy – a measure the Commissioners determined was insufficient.

Cadillac Fairview also asserted that it was not collecting personal information, since the images taken by camera were briefly analyzed then deleted. However, the Commissioners found that Cadillac Fairview did collect personal information, and contravened privacy laws by failing to obtain meaningful consent as they collected the 5 million images with small, inconspicuous cameras. Cadillac Fairview also used video analytics to collect and analyze sensitive biometric information of customers.

Added this on the post in [email protected], and it's a bit specific to our university, but it might help others too:

https://ubcwiki.ca/academics/classes/textbooks.html

This is very comprehensive, thank you! Going to save this for later reference

Yep

The one useful feature here might be automatic backups. Losing chat data is the biggest downside for the friends who didn't like signal. It's not worth the risk for them.

I have automatic backups set up with foldersync, and it works pretty well but feels janky to set up. I also have to periodically clear the files from my Google Drive trash folder else it eats up my storage.

I install ublock origin on my parents' device mainly for this reason. It cuts down on a most of the scams and other bullshit that they might encounter.

Ooh thank you! It's great that it's being worked on.

I'm having issues getting it to load completely. Is there a section on who is in charge of it? Location/financials/etc.

Things like a charity rating website

So as for who is in charge / can clear disputes:

• if it's community specific, you can report content to the mods

• if it's instance specific, like some bad user or community showing up in the feed, or wanting to replace a moderator, you can ask an instance admin

How do you know an instance or admin is trustworthy?

There's no consistent answer to this one yet. There's no centralized place to find that info. Some instances are run by non profits and organizations, which is a good sign. If they are open and transparent about their financials (ex. OpenCollective) that's a good sign. If the admin is YOU (ex. Some people self host an instance just for themselves), then you can be 100% confident since it's just yourself.

For myself, I picked lemmy.ca because I'm in Canada and the instance seems pretty open. Last I heard they were filing for their official nonprofit status in Canada so I'm pretty happy with my choice.

Reddit is owned and operated by a for profit company, and order goes something like

User -> subreddit moderator -> Reddit admin -> Reddit executives / investors

With the fediverse, there is usually an open source software that anyone can download and run on their server. That software is free, and the server costs are usually paid for through donations or grants from non profits. The order there goes:

User -> community moderator -> instance admin

The instance admin may need to follow the laws of the country they're living in, but usually there isn't a financial incentive to make decisions. That's one of the key differences.

So you could think of Lemmy as a collection of different Reddits that can all communicate with eachother. They all behave similar because they're all running the same software (Lemmy), and they can all cross communicate because they all speak the same language (ActivityPub). That's the other key difference, being decentralized. If one instance goes crazy and decides to ban third party apps, or monetize, or sell user data, it doesn't bring everything down.