As for funding, the servers are supported on a donation basis, with no big corporations behind them. This leads to a problem concerning user data and privacy, as there isn't a single accountable entity behind the network.

Bit of a weird take now, isn't it?

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 49 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's kind of fair, to be honest, and the "no big corporation" seems more like a pro than a con

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 33 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Eh, it is a con when there are problems, service problems, bugs, etc...

My instance have had a few of them and for a while our 1 admin was unavailable.

It is difficult or impossible to get it resolve because there is no contact point, nobody hired to fix issues that need immediate triage, etc... which can result in longer outages or bugs on specific instances.

I'm not complaining. This is a fantastic service that is being offered completely free from actual altruistic incentives, unlike corporations. There are a few downsides though.

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Definitely, that's why I always prefer instances with at least two admins, and a Matrix room for status updates

[–] Turun@feddit.de 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's great and all.

But feddit.de just became usable again after more than two weeks of being basically unusable - because the 19.0 and 19.1 releases of Lemmy were buggy and there was no downgrade migration possible on the database. No big corporation would break their product for two weeks like this.

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Seems okay at the moment, at least !europe@feddit.de properly federates

[–] Turun@feddit.de 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes, it works now.

Version 19.0 and 19.1 were basically not working at all.

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 10 months ago

Yes, happy to be over that

[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, true. It seems like that is a pro that greatly overshadows the cons. Like someone else pointed out, it's just worded weirdly in the article.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Kind of funny how the privacy crowd is big on Lemmy but it skips over the fact that all of its Lemmy data is hosted on the machines of people that have no accountability...

[–] NovaPrime@lemmy.ml 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

You're always free to spin up your own server and host it if you're concerned about the way your data is being handled. Not something you can do with the corporate alternatives

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

But as soon as you interact with literally anyone (or anyone interacts with you) your data is still replicated on other servers.

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Your posts are all public and discoverable by web crawlers even if your instance didn’t federate at all. That’s kind of the point of activityPUB

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

How about private messages which are also unencrypted?

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

ActivityPub does not have support for private messages. Services that try to shoehorn a direct message as "private" are misusing the protocol. You could configure client-side encryption but thats outside the scope of ActivityPub

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 1 points 10 months ago

That's true, but neither the article nor the discussion are about ActivityPub.

Both are specifically about Lemmy, and Lemmy does have private messages.

[–] Hubi@feddit.de 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

No personally identifiable information or private account information is transmitted between instances. The only thing that is synced is the content of your posts, reports and up- and downvotes. And all of that serves a purpose and is shared willingly.

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 2 points 10 months ago

And the content of private messages.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And only post on your own instance and talk with users of your own instance... Might as well just send emails to your friends at that point...

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 3 points 10 months ago

Emails also go to other's servers.

But you could just host an IRC server.

[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 months ago

I may be naive, but even though I don't personally know my admin, this is a person who has a stellar reputation, and who I'd trust far more than some massive corporation that has to abide(1) by some anemic laws

(1)if it finds it profitable to do so

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