Widespread use of social media has changed the way we communicate, but many believe these changes aren’t necessarily positive. What are De...
    • maxprime@lemmy.mlEnglish
      27·
      9 months ago

      Posting something in a public forum and having that be posted elsewhere is not bad for privacy. What’s bad for privacy is social media megacorps installing apps that extract unreasonable amounts of personally identifying data and selling those databases to the highest bidder.

  • HughJanus@lemmy.mlEnglish
    8·
    9 months ago

    To be clear, Fedi is basically the opposite of private. Every post you make is archived on some 25k servers. Even your DMs.

    Also it’s entirely dependent on your server admin and what kind of info they are collecting.

    If you want private social media, Signal stories are pretty much all we got, to my knowledge.

  • TheInsane42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    9 months ago

    The web is decentralized, social media, which is a small part of it, just isn’t. (Which consumes loads of traffic)

    • ruination@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Technically true, but in practice, it’s very vulnerable to conglomeration of power by a few. Social media, for one: it’s not exactly a matter of quality to get users to use your platform. Beyond a certain threshold of minimum quality, people use and stay on a certain platform because the people they know are on it, such that it becomes a chicken and egg problem. Other than that, Google have such a ludicrous market share of web advertising (which unfortunately remains the primary method of monetising the web) that it’s very difficult to not use Google’s advertising, giving them immense power to surveil and monitor people. Google Chrome, which remains the most popular browser for reasons that elude me, has so much sway over the internet that it had the courage to even propose the idea of WEI. The infrastructure on which the entite internet runs are controlled by just a handful of massive ISPs, yet another centralisation of power.

    • QuazarOmega@lemy.lolEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      There is none yet that I know of.
      But I think something has to be said as well: the problem with copying to the T the most popular social networks is that those are designed to be deliberately predatory and addictive, many parts of their design is implemented in alternatives without even thinking what it really means for the users, because it has become second nature to us and they also feel good, but are mostly detrimental exactly for that and I’m the first to say that I keep falling for it, spending hours on end on my phone. Think infinite scrolling, instant notifications, etc.
      While it’s good to have the option, if we want a healthier social media experience, it doesn’t suffice to decentralize it, we also need to think of at least better defaults, then let the users decide for themselves if they want a more addicting experience