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Is there not a concern that a government operated Mastodon server enables them to read the private DMs of all their users and allows other instance admins to re
by vogon_laureate 3y ago
Is there not a concern that a government operated Mastodon server enables them to read the private DMs of all their users and allows other instance admins to read inter-instance DMs with government controlled servers?
- tremon 3y agoThis is not a public instance. The only users on this instance will be government officials, and I see no problem with the government having access to the private DMs of all their spokespeople. It's actually mandated by WOB (Wet Openbaar Bestuur, i.e. FOIA) laws. But in the general case: yes. That is the same concern that a government-operated telephone network enables them to record the private conversations of all their citizens, and that every commercially-operated e-mail provider on US soil enables the government to read all mails of all users. It doesn't seem to raise much concern.
- vogon_laureate 3y agoThanks for clarifying. So users on a private instance can't DM users on a different instance, correct? Does that also mean they can't read Fediverse content from their private accounts? So it's basically a corporate intranet.
- tremon 3y ago"Public instance" in this case means that the general public can't register accounts there, not that the posts themselves aren't public (that would defeat the purpose of this being a public communication platform). I'm not sure if DMs are supported cross-instance or not.
- vogon_laureate 3y agoI would hope they couldn't because admins of the other instance would be able to read those DMs AFAICT.