Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

privacy.thenexus.today

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 458 posts

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#401

Post by erenyeager »

gonehome wrote: post #229
dcow wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am continually impressed by how much more relevant Urbit has become (contrary to people years ago arguing it would fade out into irrelevancy). Urbit was designed holistically to solve the problems the "web 2" internet experienced in a structural way, not just apply some fancy "web 3" bandaids to some them. So of course it is a lofty project. But time and again it's proven that it took the right stance on socio-tech…

I work at Tlon (the main startup behind urbit, so disclaimer) - it's a lot easier to use urbit now than it used to be thanks to free hosting. It needs to be a lot easier still (particularly the mobile experience isn't there yet without a fully formed app), but if it's been a while it's worth checking out again: https://tlon.io/ It'll be insanely hard to actually pull off, but it's the only attempt in this space that…

Thoughts on Nostr?

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#402

Post by cmrdporcupine »

zzo38computer wrote: post #379
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no web version. Threads can be viewed at a URL, but you can't join, post, or browse via web. Amazing, eh?

If it uses the ActivityPub protocol, then couldn't you use any ActivityPub client to send/receive messages with it (or else, to deal with the JSON data directly)?

It doesn't use ActivityPub yet. (Or maybe ever)

Also ActivityPub as I understand it has two separate forms -- a client mode, and a server to server federation mode. When/if they do implement ActivityPub, it will likely be the latter that gets implemented not the former.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#403

Post by nottorp »

mrguyorama wrote: post #155
nottorp wrote: post #66

'I had a FB account as Mistress Matisse, but FB scraped my legal name from somewhere else and then changed my displayed NAME on my account without notice/consent.' Who gave FB permission to conflate two different identities?

The legal right for a private entity to do most things to its private property. The law says they don't need permission to do something like that, regardless of any morality or decency issues that causes. The law is often not aligned with morality. Most people seem to not really get this, even when they objectively know it, or are otherwise unable to imagine what could go wrong, because doing so basically requires yo…

I didn't ask if it's legal.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#404

Post by sanderjd »

rocqua wrote: post #359
sanderjd wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe people who are into decentralization and federation now essentially want to reinvent DRM!

DRM could be cool if, rather than cryptographically preventing copying, it would encode complicated licensing agreements especially if it effectively, when transmitting, rewrites the license for the recipient. This could be guaranteed by laws rather than tech. Laws don't do much to protect big companies from the little people. That's why DRM is currently about technical solutions. But laws can have a huge impact on p…

This is a very thoughtful take! I agree that an encoding of intent for enforcement by law rather than code would be a useful solution.

But let's come up with a different name for that than DRM :)

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#405

Post by sanderjd »

jstanley wrote: post #391
sanderjd wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good question, so let me try to explain why this is dissonant to me, if I can. I think maybe the easiest way to illustrate it is through the person of Cory Doctorow. I don't know for sure because I haven't been following him for awhile, but I suspect he is a fan of the fediverse concept. He and the kinds of people that he influenced (like me) strike me as the kind of people for whom open federated social netwo…

This is the classic problem of assuming that people who share a few opinions with you share all your other opinions as well.

Yes, totally. But that is common because it is useful for understanding how aggregates of people behave. It's an estimation heuristic. It's bad to get caught thinking estimates are truly reality, but it's not bad to try to estimate things.

I do think there is a throughline between the ... techno-hippies? of my youth for whom DRM was a big concern, and those of today, for whom corporate concentration of social media is a big concern. But I know that's just a heuristic. Nevertheless, I think it's interesting to me that there is now some subset of the newer group who is arguing for something that seems very analogous to DRM for social media content.

I think you're probably right that it's totally different people, not the same people being inconsistent.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#406

Post by kmeisthax »

xigoi wrote: post #389
kmeisthax wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liberals never actually left the free speech refuge - they just wanted to keep the far right out of it. There's a logic to this; you don't want people advocating for mass censorship to be able to use free speech as a weapon to cut your head off. In other words, it's OK to censor Hitler[0]. Not everyone will agree, I suspect you don't. I put that disagreement in the same category as, say, the BSD vs. GPL arguments bac…

> Liberals never actually left the free speech refuge - they just wanted to keep the far right out of it. There's a logic to this; you don't want people advocating for mass censorship to be able to use free speech as a weapon to cut your head off. The political censorship on current social media goes far beyond “we don't want people advocating for mass censorship here”. Ironically, they do like advocating for mass ce…

If you mean Twitter specifically they jumped from "we have a bunch of rules that accidentally censor right-wingers more because they break the rules more" to "we intentionally censor left-wingers for the sake of balance" the moment Musk jumped in.

I'm not entirely sure how that refutes my point, though - the liberals the grandparent post was talking about aren't the same class of people who actually have moderation privileges on Twitter. Their crimes here are... cheering when Twitter did a thing that might technically go outside one's core values?

The biggest thing I can fault liberals for is adopting the Comcast argument: i.e. that Twitter is allowed to censor because it's a private platform and only government action carries the Evil Bit that makes content removal into censorship. This was always a losing argument, and we knew it was a losing argument because we'd already shat on Comcast for trying to do the same thing back when Net Neutrality was still a thing. But it's less "leaving the refuge of free speech" and more "adopting obnoxiously technical arguments that only Daddy SCOTUS would love right before Daddy SCOTUS decides to start tearing down Roe v. Wade."

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#407

Post by sanderjd »

Nursie wrote: post #363
sanderjd wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good question, so let me try to explain why this is dissonant to me, if I can. I think maybe the easiest way to illustrate it is through the person of Cory Doctorow. I don't know for sure because I haven't been following him for awhile, but I suspect he is a fan of the fediverse concept. He and the kinds of people that he influenced (like me) strike me as the kind of people for whom open federated social netwo…

Licensing != DRM though ... ? You can have a very strict license without actually using any cryptographic 'protection' on the content. See, for example, the way IBM used to in the 00s (still does?) release software. There was no copy protection, no license servers, no keys. But copyright was absolutely retained and you couldn't legally just give it to anyone. If you were found to be running their stuff without the ap…

Yeah fair. My reading was that the intention is a technical solution to lock down public data. I do think a legal solution makes more sense.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#408

Post by sanderjd »

themitigating wrote: post #344
gowld wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? These are separate concepts.

Because people who create decentralized networks usually also subscribe to the concept of free flowing information, hence the decentralized network. One is their issues with a centralized service is control. Their issue with copyrighted material is control. Of course not everyone holds the same beliefs

Hey well put! Your answer is both more succinct and better than mine :)

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#409

Post by giaour »

dcow wrote: post #287
justcool393 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to place downstream restrictions on your content then you have to license it (and get someone to agree to your license) That's not how copyright works like... at all. HN needs a license to display your comment right now (see here: https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/#tou ). Copyright works by default (in the US) of being the most restricted. The first sale doctrine applies but online when you distribute s…

I understand how copyright works. I'm arguing it's silly to try and apply it to a public forum in the way it's implemented. And all the centralized social platforms agree as you've pointed out because they require users to forfeit their copyright to posts made on their platform, or at least force them to licenses the content for redistribution on/within their network. Like, by quoting me on HN you're actually violati…

> I have a painting. You visit. By shining light on the painting I'm reproducing the image on your retinas. You say copyright violation? I say preposterous! What if I take a picture of the painting that I own and show you? Uh oh.

Those are all fair use. The definition of fair use is intentionally somewhat vague, leaving a lot of room for courts to exercise discretion, but showing an artwork to a guest and taking a photo of a copyrighted work for noncommercial purposes are clearly protected by precedent.

Two of the key factors a court will look at in deciding whether a use is fair is the use's purpose and character and what effect (if any) the use will have on the market for the used work[0]. Threads is an ad-supported, commercial endeavor, so I don't foresee them winning on a fair use argument when they republish a post from another site in order to sell ads next to it. If you have your own mastodon instance and you sell a single ad on it, then Threads would, by republishing your post, be depriving you of revenue for your creative work in order to increase the value of their own ad real estate via exhibition of your copyrighted content.

[0]: https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/copyright/photo...

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#410

Post by slikrick »

dcow wrote: post #287
justcool393 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to place downstream restrictions on your content then you have to license it (and get someone to agree to your license) That's not how copyright works like... at all. HN needs a license to display your comment right now (see here: https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/#tou ). Copyright works by default (in the US) of being the most restricted. The first sale doctrine applies but online when you distribute s…

I understand how copyright works. I'm arguing it's silly to try and apply it to a public forum in the way it's implemented. And all the centralized social platforms agree as you've pointed out because they require users to forfeit their copyright to posts made on their platform, or at least force them to licenses the content for redistribution on/within their network. Like, by quoting me on HN you're actually violati…

I feel like you're being needlessly obtuse when the other person is being objectively correct.
Post reply on HN