Votes are entirely public, Lemmy just made a UI choice not to show them. They show up if someone views it from kbin and ultimately something that could be mined from a self hosted admin.
I think this information may make some of those who profess everything is saved on the internet and why care change their tune.
Saves I am not sure about yet. Think that may be locals only.
Also USA does have laws regarding site usage by children. Might be more of a TOS thing, but this was brought over from the Mastodon policy I adapted.
IANAL. Especially anywhere near children.
You're almost there.
Only if your home server remains unfederated. Even then other users of the server will be able to see everything. And will be more likely to remember, like miss Busy Body.
Uh, a, if not the primary point in my post?
Your IP, your email, will remain at your local if your admin is responsible. If you act to your comfort level in your engagement, you will remain private in the public sphere.
If you self host, or find an admin you have incredible trust in, you should remain untraceable if you manage your engagement responsibly.
Though another thing I highlight in the policies is this is experimental software. Leaks can and will happen. We have a voice and can play an active part in preserving that privacy.
Recorder is always on by default with your engagement; recorder is always off by default when it comes to things that automatically identify you. It is the opposite in a monolith service.
Booo to miss Busy Body.
It does to many, thus the awareness of how it works here, that is all.
If you don't think it matters, or you understand enough to be sure never to expose yourself in a way that you are uncomfortable with that is awesome! Many are waking up to a realization of the nature of things here they were previously not aware of, and some are growing very uncomfortable with that now that they can't adapt their previous engagement to that knowledge.
I don’t think the word “privacy” is a good word for the concept. I believe “user data control” or “right to be forgotten” is more appropriate for the “deletion issue”. However, there are few privacy issues such as instance admins having access to private messages and the potential for a hack to expose users e-mail addresses and usernames.
This has been debated, and is very dependent on the context. It is a very broad concept to try to address and the lines do get blurred on the definition of what is "private data". The hope here is to partition the responsibilities of the admin from the user.
Me too! The world is different now.
Existing social media never really gave you a real edit/delete button anyway either. It’s all anonymity theater. The reality is that your data was always being scrapped and archived, somewhere by someone. This is just a reality created by digitization and virtually free recording/copying. No specific digital medium was ever going to protect you from this.
I explain the distinction to federated in the post. It is very different than a scrape or archive.
In the early days of the internet, everyone knew to use pseudonyms and not share personal information. We seemed to have forgotten this lesson. Maybe it’s time to relearn this lesson. Life is full of lessons. Let this be just one more.
Exactly. I am bringing awareness back to this.
No one should fool themselves into thinking they can use a pseudonym and not eventually doxx themselves accidentally if they have any level of engagement. People have grown accustom to being able to somewhat reverse that mistake. Many are also not accustom to their interests, their votes, and their voice is all retained, in one, easily digested and public place.
I explain the distinction in the post. It is very different on a platform designed to distribute at instant of hitting submit.
Also...
I do expect my account to be secure, in that no one should be able to pretend to be me.
Surprise! They very easily can here.
When you shout in a town square, does everything else you've ever shouted, everything you've ever voiced your support for, everything you follow closely echo and remain in that square?
Again, this is a feature. But one people really have to understand before they engage here.
I have had concerns about this since I joined. Personally I don't mind that the votes are public and can see a case for it, however the wider community is doing a very poor job of informing the users how this all works, and that will result in very bad outcomes.
Lemmy (the wider community) privacy does stink (and how to change that)
It's the same camp.
I'm not making the claim other platforms are better because you might be able to slip in a ninja edit before it is captured. I am making the claim that if you are not on high alert here, more than ever, it will bite you.
For better or worse, some people are coming here from other services expecting a measure of control of their data that you don't get here.
The experimental aspect of this space is the other thing I feel warrants more explicit warning about, and noted in my policy template.