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Social Web Foundation launches, supported by Vivaldi
- turblety 2y agoJust a PSA, that you really shouldn't be using Vivaldi or any closed source browser. As we know, companies that start off privacy/ethically focused (take Mozilla for example) eventually turn evil and start spying/tracking their users. Vivaldi will eventually start doing this, and you'll have absolutely no idea because it's entirely closed source. No one knows what mischief they get up to. TL;DR; Don't sign into your bank with Vivaldi
- onethought 2y agoThat’s right, the hill to die on is the browser’s openness. Not your OS, not your firmware. Not your hardware. It’s the browser
- turblety 2y agoThanks for raising closed hardware too, and I presume you are talking about the Intel ME (backdoor spyware [1] that Intel puts into all their chips via their closed source proprietary firmware). It's a complete blackbox, other CPU that no one knows entirely what it does, but has full access to your main CPU/memory/computer, and allows it to be remotely controlled by anyone with Intels signing keys. We need to open this too, or at least be transparent, and your points on closed firmware/hardware is really important. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine
- fsflover 2y agoIntel ME is disabled and neutralized on my Librem 15.
- turblety 2y agoYou can never truly be sure as it's can't be entirely removed. There has to be a little bit remaining, just the first few modules or the machine will shut down after 30 minutes, but the Librem 15 is a beautiful machine and Puri.sm are really awesome.
- stavros 2y agoIt's a hill, I don't think anyone said it's the hill.
- loophol-rabbit 2y ago'Try to detect benefit cheats.' Or wait till the 1st one surrounded a mountain successful at a hight of 3,5km ;-)
- ryanmentor 2y agoAs a cat of nine lives, there are many hills I intend to die on
- mastazi 2y agowhataboutism is a logical fallacy.
- dr_sausages 2y ago[dead]
- Hamuko 2y ago>take Mozilla for example I thought Firefox was open source?
- isodev 2y agoThat's not it, Mozilla decided to leave the fediverse and has been loading Firefox with AI and opt-out tracking features. All while still being funded by Big G.
- fnord77 2y agomozilla is spying/tracking users now?
- turblety 2y agoYup [1]. They've basically left their core mission and just sell out now. 1. https://noyb.eu/en/firefox-tracks-you-privacy-preserving-feature https://noyb.eu/en/firefox-tracks-you-privacy-preserving-fea...
- yoavm 2y agoThings are more complex than that. Yes, they're engaged in creating an ads measurement technique that is actually very private (read the specs). No, they're not making money out of it. Yes, they've done a terrible job at explaining that to users.
- goldsteinq 2y agoGiving non-zero bits of information to advertisers is the opposite of private. They won’t stop using other methods of tracking, they’ll just use these bits as a part of your fingerprint.
- yoavm 2y agoAFAIK it gives advertisers aggregated data on the performance of the ads, such as "23% of the clicks on the ad end up buying the product". I would be enlightened to hear how this can be used as part of my fingerprint.
- goldsteinq 2y agoThe absolute best case is that it doesn’t actually help advertisers track users, so it’s net-zero to users: advertisers will still track us through other means, but at least Firefox doesn’t help them do it. If any part of the process leaks non-zero bits of information, it’s actively detrimental to privacy; otherwise it’s just not helpful to anyone other than advertisers. This also involves trust. The party doing aggregation has access to non-aggregated information and is able to sell it. As far as I understand, currently this party is ISRG, which has reasonably good reputation and probably won’t sell it. I don’t trust Mozilla to not silently add other aggregation providers though, as they did with this option itself. I’m also not sure that this data doesn’t pass through Mozilla servers, and I very much don’t trust Mozilla with it. To summarize my thoughts, 1. There’s no evidence that “PPA” improves privacy in any way; 2. You have to trust centralized third parties doing the aggregation, and the full set of parties you need to trust is not completely clear; 3. The only party who obviously benefits from “PPA” is advertisers, which tracks with the fact that the protocol was designed with heavy involvement from Facebook: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KpdSKD8-Rn0bWPTu4UtK54ks0yv2j22pA5SrAD9av4s/edit#heading=h.i060oca51sde https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KpdSKD8-Rn0bWPTu4UtK54ks...; 4. So it’s at best neutral for users and at worst is actively detrimental.
- timeon 2y agoSince you are also mentioning Mozilla, what browser would you recommend instead?
- input_sh 2y agoVivaldi is one of the dozen supporting orgs, so why link to their blog instead of the original annoucement that mentions all of them? https://socialwebfoundation.org/2024/09/24/launch/ https://socialwebfoundation.org/2024/09/24/launch/
- aquir 2y agoEven after reading through this it is not clear at all what is it! "Something-something-fediverse"
- kissgyorgy 2y agoThere are literally bullet points to list what the Foundation will do.
- input_sh 2y ago...and a giant mission button in the menu.
- bastawhiz 2y agoThese bullets? > educating general and targeted audiences about the social web > informing policy-makers about issues on the social web > enhancing and extending the ActivityPub protocol > building tools and plumbing to make the social web easier and more engaging to use Maybe I need more education about the social web but these tell me very little about what is actually going to be done.
- tonypace 2y agoThis stuff was probably human-written, but that actually makes it worse. At least the AI has an excuse.
- phoe-krk 2y agoAnother related link was submitted earlier at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41636491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41636491 if it helps.
- Semaphor 2y agoRelated: "Holy Hell, the Social Web Did Not Begin in 2008" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41644267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41644267
- Unai 2y agoI have to agree with that post. The only objective of this foundation seem to be the advertisement of the term "social web", I guess because they found "fediverse" to not be marketable enough. The web doesn't have to be "social media" to be social, and federation doesn't make it any more or less social, it's just federated. The web have always been social, way before "social media" came along. Words have meanings, and taking over them for personal and economical gain doesn't add anything, only subtracts. I love the web more than anything, and I'm tired of people using advertisement campaigns to try to poison people's minds for their personal agendas. Your crypto-crap is not the third version (?) of the web. And your flavour of social media is not the social web. Of course, I think crypto is useless and social media have been detrimental to society, so I might be biased.
- mattlondon 2y agoI see Meta is one of the founding supporters. Is Meta not the absolute antithesis of privacy? The complete polar-opposite of what people have tried to achieve with the fediverse? One of the main things they are trying to move away from? Seems like a very strange decision here - "letting the fox into the hen house".
- darnfish 2y agoMeta runs Threads which has ActivityPub support
- sebstefan 2y agoI'm more knowledgeable about Lemmy than Mastodon but It's a misconception that the fediverse is more private The decentralization forces some things to be fully public, such as your likes, who upvotes what etc Plus from a legislation standpoint, you lose some of your rights out there - like the right to be forgotten. It's impossible to enforce GDPR on ActivityPub. It's a weird middle-seat where on one hand, the fediverse won't start asking you for your name or to get a picture of you holding your ID, but on the other, at least when Facebook trains its models on the stuff you post, they'll tell you about it in their user agreement.
- gnramires 2y agoI don't see why right to be forgotten is fundamentally incompatible with Fediverse (or other social web 4.0, idk the name)? For example, there could be a central server where you publish some credentials along with a request to be forgotten, and all instances must (if they want to comply with the law) check there from time to time (this would happen automatically of course) and erase associated content. Or you could ask to be forgotten to your instances and it would message all relevant instances of your wish to be forgotten, which then is their own duty to comply. It doesn't seem like an insurmountable issue.
- sebstefan 2y agoI think the same thing, but it only takes a temporary instance whose goal is just taking your data and selling it to a broker then shutting down to defeat it
- PaulHoule 2y agoVivaldi does what MozDon’t?
- shortrounddev2 2y agoI've noticed that Twitter is the only platform that gets any real widespread support for alternatives in the fediverse. I never liked Twitter originally, and I don't like mastodon now. I want federated Instagram and Facebook, but that would require that people I actually know are on these services and not strangers on the internet.
- dancemethis 2y agoIf Vivaldi cared, it wouldn't be proprietary.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pixxel 2y agoClosed-source Vivaldi. They shout privacy but collect and store your data. You can’t trust these people. https://mastodon.social/@designer/113198144562226848 https://mastodon.social/@designer/113198144562226848