SuspciousCarrot78

Lemmy vs Reddit

https://lemmy.world/post/43310865

Lemmy vs Reddit - Lemmy.World

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/ [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.

Feb 19 at 1:38amWeb
Show threadoriginaluciferFeb 19

reddit is having a conversation is some dudes house. lots of rooms. his house.

lemmy is having a conversation in a large public space where anyone could be listening in. your words are no more retractable than the sound of your voice over an open field or street corner.

Show threadSuspciousCarrot78Feb 19

Good analogy.

Yeah, I wonder that too. I think the mindshare Lemmy has (such as it is) comes from being seen as a sort of middle-finger, privacy-respecting, libre alternative.

That positioning clearly attracts a lot of people (myself included). But at the same time, it’s occurred to me that the nature of the Fediverse means you can’t really have true “privacy.”

I can’t speak to what each instance retains (IP logs? metadata?) or how long for - and I assume it varies widely from place to place.

“Bad guy Reddit, good guy Lemmy” may be an oversimplification…or just wishful thinking.

Show threadLfrithFeb 19

I use lemmy not because of privacy since public forums aren’t private, but to move away from corporate social spaces profiting off their user base. And also getting back third party apps.

Lemmy feels more like old school Internet of people discussing and talking because they want to as opposed to the whole spaces end goal being to figure out how to IPO.

Show threadshortwavesurferFeb 20
This is exactly my reason for using it. I love the third-party apps, and I love that it’s not owned by some corporation. Another thing I like is the resilience. Your particular instance may be down, or if cloud flare is down, several instances could be down, but the entire network is not going to be down.
Show threadshortwavesurferFeb 20
There is absolutely no such thing as a private social media. Even if you weren’t able to make social media private from a network and technology standpoint, the users would dock themselves unless they immediately generated new accounts for every single post, basically.
Show threadCameronDevFeb 19
Different bits of data have different levels of privacy. My comments here, public, I have explicitly shouted them out to the world. My home address, private to friends and family. My pornhub history, private to me exclusively.
Show threadtraileeFeb 19

Even Reddit had third parties tracking everything, with some of them republishing data. There was a long era where sites like Removeddit let you read deleted and removed posts.

In Lemmy it’s structurally different, but there are still plenty of third parties doing similar stuff. For instance, LemVotes is tracking and republishing everyone’s votes (looks like you’ve recently been on a downvote tear, OP).

I have to assume that by now all of the major and aspiring LLM companies are quietly drinking the full firehose of posts and comments (and ignoring delete messages), and will use the data however they want, indefinitely. That probably includes at least one entity happy to give it to law enforcement.

In other words, it’s all public, deletes are only best effort, and the policies of your instance are mostly irrelevant with respect to other parties retaining your data. There are a few things that only your instance knows, such as your IP addresses, but that’s relatively little comfort.

Don’t be dumb.

[email protected] - Lemvotes

Get a list of votes for any post, comment or user on Lemmy

Show threadYliasterFeb 19
Wait, so is Lemmy no better than Reddit?? Not OP but would like to know.
Show threadtraileeFeb 19

Lemmy is way better than Reddit on several fronts. Reddit is a profit-motivated corporation domiciled in a fascist country and their administrative actions reflect that.

“Don’t be dumb” can be interpreted in many ways.

You can accidentally dox yourself anywhere, especially as you build up a large comment history for a person (or LLM) to analyze. You can deduce my age to a pretty narrow range because I’ve written about growing up with modems calling local BBSes. I’ve tried not to write much about my location, but there are probably many clues out there. The totality of my comments may be very good at filtering down who I could possibly be. Similar for anyone else.

One nice thing about Lemmy is that you can make alt accounts on different instances and then limit your community participation accordingly, to choose your own self-doxxing exposure. One account could be great for location-divulging commentary, such as regional politics or the weather involved in your gardening. Another could be great for your porn habits, although lemmynsfw recently went dark.

Reddit has spent a lot of effort building internal tools to correlate your access habits and such so that they can group all of your alts together to try to prevent ban evasion. The Fediverse design makes that much more difficult unless you get colluding instance operators.

Instead of ads here (and their associated surveillance), we have occasional pleas from instance admins to kick in some donations. It’s too bad that we don’t have good anonymous micro transactions yet, but maybe a cryptobro will tell me how easy that is if I would just use their preferred tech. At least you can donate to an instance without disclosing your account (although lemmynsfw was obvious in its purpose).

Lemmy is better, but it’s still public. Don’t be dumb.

Show threadshortwavesurferFeb 20
Unsensurable donations is one thing Monero is incredibly good at. Since, while it is a cryptocurrency, you can’t tell who sent it, how much was sent, or who received it.
Show threadZiggyTheZygoteFeb 19
Can people actually be held accountable to what they write as thoughts and opinions, anonymously? Are you talking about online surveillance in the US?
Show threadramble81Feb 19

I say a lot of things here that I don’t want tied to my name. However, if confronted with them I would not deny a single thing I’ve said.

Taking that approach I’m fine with where my message goes and I’ve learned from day 1 on the internet (back in the 90s), that anything you say is permanently out there with your knowledge or not.

Show threadDessalinesFeb 19

Lemmy lets you sign up and use it without a lot of the linked identifiers that reddit requires, that can be tied to your real identity (so they can serve you targeted ads). These include things like IP addresses, your email address, browser or device fingerprint, phone number, etc.

The other privacy concern I can think of, is middle-men capturing passwords and text input, and IP addresses. As long as your server isn’t using cloudflare (unfortunately many lemmy servers are), and you aren’t using a closed-source app or web UI (unfortunately many users are), you’re likely safe.

Of course the other comments are correct that this is a public platform that’s distributed, so we have to assume nefarious agencies are scanning it, so you shouldn’t say anything that could tie your account to your real identity. Its also probably a good idea to create new accounts every so often if you’re the type of person who tends to leak that info.