Fediverse: what your webmasters can see

Original link: https://blog.fivest.one/archives/6374

When you register as a user of a fediverse instance (mastodon pleroma misskey …), the instance you are in may be a large site with hundreds of thousands of users, and the webmaster is far away from you; it may also be dozens or even several The user’s small station, the stationmaster has a close relationship with you, chatting and playing together every day. But no matter what kind, your webmaster, can you see what content is related to you? I think this is something you should know.

First, what everyone can see:

  • Your profile, and all public articles
  • Who has your article been forwarded and liked?
  • Public replies you have received
  • Your following and followers——in some instances, you can set it to hide your follow list from other users, but whether it is hidden or not, your webmaster can see it after all

Then, what you can see, other users can’t see, and you probably don’t want others to see:

  • All your private articles
  • Your private message can be seen not only by your webmaster, but also by the instance webmaster of the receiving party
  • Your retweets, likes, bookmarks
  • Your registered email address——again, it is recommended that you do not use your company’s school email address, or an email address with obvious personal information in your id
  • Every time you access the instance’s ip address, – users can hide it by using vpn
  • Who do you block / mute
  • Personal notes you add to other users
  • The article of the person you follow, even if the other party has set a follow request, the article is not visible to other users by default. From the moment you follow him, all his articles that you can see, your webmaster can also see arrive

Finally, you can’t see it as a normal user, but your webmaster can see it:

  • The poll you opened, everyone who participated, which option did you choose?
  • Who blocked you – you can only guess and confirm one by one, but the webmaster can directly get the whole list

What else? Welcome everyone to add~


P.S.

  1. All these things that the fediverse webmasters can see, when you use twitter, facebook, or Sina Weibo, of course their administrators can also see them.
  2. When I say “the webmaster can see it”, what I mean is “the webmaster has the authority to do it”. ——Most private content does not have a management interface, allowing the webmaster to simply click the mouse to see it; instead, it needs to be searched in the background database, with a little bit of technical content (not more difficult than building the site itself).
  3. I list these, not to demonstrate, what kind of webmaster can be trusted, what kind of webmaster needs to be vigilant. ——This is something you have to judge and make your own decisions. I’m just telling you what you need to know to judge.
  4. Some other social networks can be encrypted so that the webmaster cannot see the information, such as nostr, but it is not widely popular yet. ——And, “the webmaster can’t see it” does not mean that this tool is “better”. The structure of the entire twitter-type website is based on the fact that all texts of all people are made public. All these privacy settings, it can be said, are functional patches added later, and it is impossible to meet everyone’s different expectations. So, I’m just letting you know more about “what it can do”, and on this basis, think about how to use it.
  5. Quite a few of the listed privacy items can be avoided by building your own instances. But on the one hand, the technical threshold for self-built is relatively high; on the other hand, after being your own webmaster, the higher permissions you have may not be what other users are willing to let you have. (I am writing another post about self-built, I will post the link here after I finish writing)

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