There’s an option in your user settings to hide bots

I thought you still got all the posts, just not any of the comments?

One of the main benefits of open source software is that you can build it yourself or verify that a built blob is what it claims to be. If you’re using someone else’s instance then you don’t know that they haven’t made a change to it that could be doing something malevolent under the covers.

Just let people do their thing, who cares if its embarrassing if it makes them happy?

You can save posts, “commenting so I remember” is just as irrelevant here as it was on reddit!

That’s missing the point though: if something isn’t completely private then it has the chance of going public. Too many services pretend to be more private than they really are by using terms like “private message” when all they’re really offering is a relatively small barrier to seeing your data, especially if anyone can set up their own instance.

…is that it can be picked up and continued by anyone rather than lost forever, right?

Unlikely that any of us can answer this question properly unless we happen to know detailed laws for every country in the world. If we want a real answer we can trust then we’d need a statement from someone like the EFF otherwise our “licence” is barely more than one of those chain-letter comments saying “I do not give Facebook the right to do X”.

See Wikipedia

Exactly. If you’re worried about someone searching for your post then you should not be posting it online (or at least ensuing you use an account that’s anonymous enough that it can’t be associated with you). If you want private chats then set up a group in matrix or signal!

No, I think the point of the article is that they might try to siphon off all the casual fediverse uses with flashy features and big names and then break compatibility

I think xmpp is just the example of what could happen to the fediverse if Facebook follow the same play

Well that’s shit, no wonder online discussion groups / safe spaces are so popular over there. That does raise a different issue though, the USA-dominated (and consequently often USA-centric) view presumably warps the view of people seeking help from places where they can and should be talking to real medical professionals.

Yeah, why would you trust a professional with legal responsibilities and a duty of care when you can go to an anonymous forum where I’m sure everyone tells the truth all the time and always has your best interests at heart!

Obviously I’m being facetious and I get your point that taking to your peers is very important, but careful not to slip into the rampant anti-intellectualism and distrust of “so-called experts” which fuels all the insane conspiracy shit we see all over the internet nowadays.

It doesn’t seem to be snobbery, the concern is more that big corp with money to throw around muscles their way in and changes what the Fediverse is either through EEE, or just by being bigger

Judging from some of the other comments in this thread I’m not so sure

Given the backlash against everyone who tries to make a reddit-lemmy mirroring bot then hopefully you’ve saved yourself a headache in the future!

I imagine most of the big servers have them blocked but it’s probably the individual servers that make up the majority of the numbers. If you’re self-hosting then you can just ignore instances you don’t like and be relatively confident they won’t hassle you. The other kind though, probably want to preempt them!

I think this highlights what people think when they hear “defederating” vs its actual purpose. It’s controversial when it’s between serious instances that people actually use but with wildly incompatible opinions, but there’s very few objections when it’s blocking CSAM!

That’s good, though I’d imagine people would still rather not read 100 bot-summoning comments on a popular thread. Any way to activate the bot via PM too? Or maybe by sharing somehow?