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Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Technology
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To the people shitting on the idea of a default defederation with Meta, how about we deferedate not because it will affect us as posters but because they are evil pieces of shit?
yeah, the difference is pretty stark:
- Mark Zuckerberg
(yes it sounds like satire but that's a real quote)
The Lemmy DM is imo actually quite important. If I want to get in touch with someone about a post, nothing more. It is an easy option, and serves a purpose. It isn't imo meant to be used for anything else.
yep, it's important that we have this capability, but it's also nice that unlike other platforms that do their best to lock you in, lemmy actively pushes you toward a safer alternative
What's the name of that safer alternative?
Matrix, which is pretty much an encrypted and open-source Discord clone (at least in the same fashion as Lemmy would be a Reddit clone). I personally use Element to interact with it and have a matrix.org account, but Matrix is just like the fediverse, you can choose any instance or client you want, or even host an instance yourself. In your Lemmy settings you can set up your Matrix user, right below your email address as of 0.18.1, and if you do, a new buttons saying "send secure message" will show up on your profile, next to "send message", which will redirect people trying to message you to Matrix.
https://matrix.org/
I mean I agree with Zuck on that one.
Was it Facebook that killed xmpp or Google? Legitimately asking because I've always seen that blamed on Google.
It was Google, they Embraced, Extended, and Extinguished it with Google Chat. Then they killed that themselves.
correction: it was both! fedbook chat also supported xmpp at first, they never federated but you could at least use it with a jabber client. then when they had enough market share they killed it.
fun semi related fact is that whatsapp, at least a couple of years ago, was using modified ejabberd (ie an xmpp server) as the backend - so arguably they helped with EEE too.
google does seem to be the main culprit, but facebook still played a role as far as i'm aware. these two companies also colluded a lot so i wouldn't trust either of them with anything federated
Yeah they can both get fucked. Cheers
This was Google/Alphabet.
And even if what I do is relatively tame, I want others to be protected from the wolf at the door.
This. I don't need to win, I just want Meta to lose.
Are you saying that the individuals who run these servers and instances aren’t subject to the same laws? I read the article, and Facebook complied with a court order.
You don’t think anyone running Lemmy would do the same without access to lawyers and capital like Facebook has?
Do you have to run your lemmy instance in the US?
Maybe do it in a less backward place
Not disagreeing with you there.
Every interaction on Lemmy is copied to all other federated instances. There are instances all over the world with a copy of yours and my comment. They can track and use those comments for any purpose. Its both a blessing and a curse of an open federated structure.
they can also scrape them. that's not really the point.
people can dm on lemmy, and only the two instances that host the people on either end of the dm (which may even be the same instance) store that dm. that instance may actually receive a subpoena. but all of this is heavily discouraged by the lemmy interface itself, instead prompting people to set up a matrix account instead, and matrix chats are end-to-end encrypted.
Its a social platfrom. Dont use it for personal communications.
And how can we be sure that all the instances federated with any instance we participate on aren't run by law enforcement themselves? I'd be surprised if there aren't running instances by every major investigative agency themselves.
This is why everyone should take steps to protect their privacy. You don't have to go 0-100 overnight. Just audit yourself and do a few things now. Keep those habits up. Then audit and add a few more things, repeat.
I need to do this myself, I've been slipping
Lemmy promotes using Matrix, which is a separate service, so instance admins don't need to be in the business of hosting private conversations.
Matrix is end-to-end encrypted so even the admins of your Matrix server could not provide your chats to law enforcement.
I wish Lemmy was as well. Ah well.
Complying with the law is less of an issue than keeping that data accessible in the first place.
But also fuck these laws and the people passing them and the people voting for the people passing them. They're the real evil.
We have to always assume rich corporations are going to do whatever serves their best interest. It's nature. Like a mantis is gonna bite off her mate's head when they're done mating. It's up to governing factors to keep them in check. On that note, +1 to defederate. They will cannibalize or however abuse Lemmy if it will make them a penny.
I think we’re realizing more and more any corporate-operated platform is luring us in to sell to us and sell us.
Ya. That's fucked. Just ruin someone's life like that. Holy fuck.
I totally agree with your sentiment... However they don't have a choice. They are legally obligated to turn that information over if they are served a warrant. Doing anything less is obstruction at the very least and they could be shut down and put into receivership.
The fault here is with the two individuals trusting a corporation to keep data private and to put the individuals interests ahead of the corporation. Neither is a realistic expectation.
they could have made their shitty DM system end-to-end encrypt messages by default, instead of burying that feature[0] in chat settings
or, they could have used their MASSIVE wealth and lobbying power to directly fight the warrant in court (if there even was one, they have a long history of just requiring a form ostensibly signed by any cop to turn over private data)
or they could have just lied and said they couldn't find the data
I don't disagree that people shouldn't trust Facebook but saying "they don't have a choice" is absurd
[0] https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/786613221989782
I vote to write this reasoning at the very top, on the sticked topics when it happens. Like, literally just write "Because Facebook is evil" and don't elaborate.
Plus, if someone shows up being a concern troll on the point, they will laser focus on it, taking the bait, we can all just block the person, a world improved.