The good news is some of those already exist here!
comfy
joined 3 years ago
I think an exodus to a new site allows an interesting opportunity to break from the restriction of traditions and create new communities. There's no reason the 196 clones have to be called '196'! (or worse, '197')
No problem :)
Linux is obviously the choice for my desktop, especially since I'm not defending against organized crime or a government, but like you said it's important to understand its strengths and weaknesses.
Disclaimer: I've never had a mastodon account.
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Authentication: who will have accounts? Artists and fans? How can you reduce spam accounts signing up? If you just have open sign-ups and trolls abuse it to mass spam other instances, they might defederate (Lemmy had this issue with a political troll).
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Always go through all the settings/configuration!
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if it's within your means, decorate and personalize the place a little to match your purpose. I dont know how easy it is to do theming adjustments, even simole things like colour scheme. Especially since half the Mastodon sites all look the same.
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Have something of value. Why should people use your site instead of just twitter and facebook? What can you do that they don't? Does your audience care about those things? I can talk about FOSS and privacy and security for days but most people don't care about that enough to join a different site.
As a quick introduction to the idea of Linux phones vs. Android ROMs, this post (updated about a year ago) gives an introduction from a security perspective. Depending on your adversary's capability, security can be an important dependency of privacy.
It sounds like you're suggesting Linux phones are more private and secure than GrapheneOS. Given their current state and limitations, it is extremely unlikely that any of them are more secure than GrapheneOS against a typical hacker or malicious app.
with the downside that is limited to one single phone brand
In terms of security, this is also a benefit. It means they aren't trying to aim at fifty different targets which may behave different or even unexpectedly. The software developers have far far far more confidence that their security features will work on your device if they test it on theirs.
Again, there is no such thing as “full privacy and security”. It is unpragmatic idealism. Not only does it misinterpret privacy and security as concepts, it is an unconstructive attitude for creating an effective security model, and just encourages burnout for no benefit. We don't limit "full". There is no full. There is no perfect answer. It's an undefined and unachievable idea.
"[Someone made] a laptop, encased in foam in a full Faraday cage, wrapped by alternating metal foils, and finally covered by a 1" layer of reinforced concrete."
"It had been billed as the most secure computer ever. Right until two research papers had come out that showed it was possible to decipher processing by the amount of power being consumed and by pulling the slight RF signal being carried by the ground line. "
Now, I'm not saying you can't effectively secure your device adequately against big-tech and corporate capitalism. I say you can! It's achievable. But it's unconstructive to hold the illusion that there is some absolute "full privacy" against them.
Who are you hiding from? "Increasing privacy" means nothing without context.
My adversaries (well, when I'm not at a protest) are not likely to be tracking my phones location, and my phone is set up that no app or website can, so to me personally it's a large sacrifice for no benefit.
But for someone else, it could be good advice!
Adding on to what Grouchy already said (good post) :
- Like they said, safer for what? Against who? A landline can't get stolen from your pocket. A landline can't use encrypted E2EE messaging apps like Jitsi or Signal. Words like 'safe', 'private' and 'secure' mean nothing without context. They describe situations.
- I use a phone for far more than calls, a landline wouldn't change that
- Most of the benefits of a security-focused ROM are against hacking and untrusted apps. These don't affect landline phones.
There is no such thing as "full security and privacy". It doesn't exist and it's not a useful goal.
Security and privacy don't exist as absolute values. Things are not universally more or less secure than other things. You need to understand things like the needs of a situation (e.g. you correctly pointing out a modern phone has more use-cases than a landline), who the threats are, and what their capabilities are. Putting a decent password on an iPhone makes it adequately private and secure against my parents. Using a landline is not adequately secure against a government agency. Know Your Enemy!
As for your advice, a quick counter:
- FOSS does not imply correctness. In fact, FOSS is great because we know for a fact it has and always will have bugs! That helps us know his much to trust it instead of being a mystery like proprietary junk. So while I personally trust GrapheneOS to do those tasks better than stock ROMs, that line of reasoning is dangerous and historically known to be inaccurate.
- FOSS is on the software level anyway, certain adversaries are capable of attacking at the hardware level. Typical scammers aren't. Who's your threat??
I've seen a lot of websites (not so much in the Fediverse, but small forums and spin-off forums) and the kinds of basis they have does affect whether people want to post there, and how the place grows. (I'll just call them instances, because they technically are but I'm not just talking about Fediverse instances, so the dynamics of cross-visibility between sites aren't really being considered)
Topic-based instances and goal-oriented instances seems like the best bet for a high-quality discussion community. I mean broad topics as well, consider mander.xyz or the former gtio.io, not just more specific ones like slrpnk.net. It can be limiting, but so long as you're secure enough with your ego that you don't need to chase high numbers to know you're stable and active, then I'd recommend it. The tough part is that you may not get as much casual exposure to start off with, by being on the same site as larger communities, you might need to be active (without being annoying) in crossposting good topics to make people aware your community exists.
National-based instances are also popular, probably because of shared language, cultural elements and local issues. But they are otherwise pretty compatible to general instances. They do have a place, I've enjoyed a couple on occasion, they have a place, but I do prefer the topic-based communities. There's no point limiting every topic arbitrarily by nation or state.
General instances (either topicless copy-cats or freely user-defined communities) are hit-or-miss, I personally don't like them in a federated space unless they are specifically solving an issue.
lemmy.ml is somewhere between topic-based and general. It is explicitly "A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers" (I notice that broadened a bit, surprising although no complaints), and you can see that bias in the communities list, but the mods aren't aggressive with enforcing the topic. There are random sports, country and interest communities here. Whether that's out of inactivity (volunteer time and effort is limited!) or lax policy (the more the merrier!), it makes this feel more like a general site despite the tagline. I remember last time I checked (admittedly a year ago) the staff were explicit and purposeful that this is not an official instance and was not trying to cater to everyone as a general instance, encouraging people to make more granular instances for things which weren't meant to go here.
If that is the case (again, policy could be different) then maybe some extra messaging on the Create Community and Register pages could help prevent the regular issue we had when someone fundamentally against the community (like someone kicked from reddit because of racist comments) would show up and be surprised when they were herded out of here too.
A good thing about community-driven non-profit software is the features which get implemented are typically more in-line with what the users want, rather than adding commercial things like more ads and grifting gimmicks.
It is a mix of 'has this! doesn't have that yet' and some rough edges because it is still young (well, 4 years is young compared to reddit's 19 years) and only has a handful of developers, many of them hobbyists. But it's great to see it already growing, and updates are a pleasant surprise rather than a cause for concern.
You could... if it was there and not here :P For an example of visiting communities on another followed instance: The communities page, with All selected