I think most of us are aware of the shady history of Reddit when it comes to respecting privacy (and if not, here is but one example: https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/28/reddit-is-removing-ability-to-opt-out-of-ad-personalization-based-on-your-activity-on-the-platform/)
I’m wondering what you feel are the pros and cons of Lemmy in this regard?
On the one hand, Lemmy is structurally very different. There’s no single corporate entity building detailed behavioural ad profiles, most instances run minimal (or no) tracking, and you can choose an operator whose logging, retention, and analytics policies align with your risk tolerance.
Hell you can roll your own (yes, with black jack and hookers).
In theory, that alone removes a huge chunk of the surveillance-capitalism model that platforms like Reddit depend on.
On the other hand, your posts, comments, and votes are not confined to one database - they propagate across multiple servers, each with their own admins, logs, and retention practices.
Deletion is best-effort, not guaranteed. You’re effectively trusting a network of operators, not just one. I dunno whether that makes it better or worse.
Any deep thoughts on this conundrum?
PS: I’m leaning towards “don’t say anything you wouldn’t in a court of law” model these days. If its online - and you don’t own the infra - there’s always a risk.
Even if no trackers (which there are) Lemmy is federated so you cannot just delete your stuff and sleep over it. However if you need to be careful, you can solely use Lemmy over Tor. It’s not private but can be anonymous.
I think I recently read that Lemmy devs are working on private upvotes / downvotes (yes even they can be tracked) but it seems it’s tricky with federation.
So, generally Fediverse is not private and cannot be private due to its nature. If you have a threat model, you should use it with Tor.
It’s not private? Does that mean it’s the same as reddit??