You know instance admins can read your direct messages in the fediverse? Twitter and Facebook also can - and sometimes do - read your private messages, and they have infrastructure to comply with law enforcement requests. I'd love to see some end-to-end encryption built into Mastodon clients.

@micahflee Another reason why the "Pick a server that you trust!" blurb on Mastodon's front page makes me skittish.

For me at least, there aren't any!

@auerbach All you should have to trust the instance with is your identity. Given federation, you will have no control over your data. Post only things that are public, discuss only things that are socially constructive and move your private business to either a medium designed for privacy (XMPP) or make sure to use pseudonyms on alternate accounts to go about your less public business. Those are my two-fiddy.