FBI Seizure of Mastodon Server is a Wakeup Call to Fediverse Users and Hosts to Protect their Users

https://sh.itjust.works/post/1722848

FBI Seizure of Mastodon Server is a Wakeup Call to Fediverse Users and Hosts to Protect their Users - sh.itjust.works

  • Step 1: Don’t host in the USA
  • Step 2: Don’t host in a USA puppet ally
Probably good advice but not exactly relevant. The person was hosting a server in their house and got raided for unrelated reasons and all their electronics were seized. Had they hosted in a data center or at least had off premises back ups, this wouldn’t have happened.
I thought one of the points of the fediverse was to not be centralized in data centers that are more easily controlled. It’s supposedly supposed to be easy and relatively cheap to spin up your own instance on your own hardware. Just outsourcing to a data center I think goes against what the fediverse promised.

I disagree.

It’s about control of the platform. A datacenter isn’t going to start making administrative decisions about the “business direction” of your instance. They can shut the server down, but so could a thunderstorm on a home server.

Even if the data center did (for whatever reason) administrate an instance, the idea of federation still holds because users get to decide if they like the decisions being made - regardless of who is making them.