ActivityPub and Mastodon brought new incentives into the world of decentralised communication platforms, even so far as I would call it a serious alternative to platforms like Twitter. But all efforts made by hundreds of individuals every day – administrating servers, developing software and moderating communities – have a weak spot which needs to be addressed in the near future: who has control over the underlying computing infrastructure of the Fediverse? And are users aware of the conditions?

Some interesting data on hosting service centralization of mastodon instances.

  • federico3@lemmy.ml
    51·
    4 years ago

    your hosting provider has access to all your and your user’s data

    This statement is a ridiculously absurd exaggeration. It’s like complaining that your bank has access to your money.

    Yes, the hosting provider has the ability to access your VM and extract data. They will give access to the police if they receive a warrant. This is not the same as putting your data on platforms like twitter and facebook, which mine your data, sell user profiles to advertisers and manipulate you.

    technically not better than using Twitter if the provider decides to act maliciously with the data

    This is a big “if”. If a cloud provider is found to leak customer’s data regularly they would lose credibility quickly. (Don’t get me wrong, I still think owned hardware and a P2P model similar to Briar is better)

    As a side note, If anything the underlying problem of ActivityPub is that it has no method to prevent centralization. Just like email, a few large companies can capture the majority of users.