Fediverse trust building
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Fediverse trust building
Looking for a suitable Pixelfed instance for an intl organization I realized that the vast majority of pixelfed servers do not specify who is running the instance. They all have "terms" but hardly any of them states who is on the other side of the "legally binding terms". Extremely few instances have an imprint.
With mastodon the situation is less bad but still far from inspiring confidence.Sure, most people don't care about legal noise. Neither do I. It would improve people's trust in the fediverse, though, if every instance would tell its potential users who they are.
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Fediverse trust building
Looking for a suitable Pixelfed instance for an intl organization I realized that the vast majority of pixelfed servers do not specify who is running the instance. They all have "terms" but hardly any of them states who is on the other side of the "legally binding terms". Extremely few instances have an imprint.
With mastodon the situation is less bad but still far from inspiring confidence.Sure, most people don't care about legal noise. Neither do I. It would improve people's trust in the fediverse, though, if every instance would tell its potential users who they are.
I agree with you. I'm turned off by instances that don't reveal who is behind them. For those who leave Big Tech because they're concerned about privacy, anonymous instances won't solve the problem. Currently, there may not be serious risks, but as the Fediverse becomes more popular, we can expect malicious actors to set up instances to collect people's data and social graphs.
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The long-running Pixelfed instance https://pixelfed.de has an "impressum" as required by German law, which gives the name as well as a public postal address, phone and email for the lead administrator: https://pixelfed.de/site/legal-notice
However, most countries don't have these kinds of impressum legal requirements, which is probably why this is so rare.
Another approach if it's a large organisation is to start their own instance through e.g. https://weingaertner-it.de/index.php/produkt-kategorie/pixelfed-hosting
@FediTips
I am aware of pixelfed.de's imprint. OTOH there are big instances like gram.social who remain anonymous and aren't even replying to emails asking "who are you?"
As @veroandi pointed out, anonymous instances in the fediverse do not improve trust, quite the opposite. I'd appreciate if the "server covenant" would encourage the operators to tell who they are.
You are doing a great job making the fediverse a place where people feel at home, feel safe and comfortable. Knowing who is behind a server would be another element contributing to that. -
I'd like to know whom I am entrusting my pictures to. I think every instance should have an imprint like the one of pixelfed.de or instapix.org .
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Sorry to be so specific, but I'm trying to avoid any misunderstandings
The imprint on instapix doesn't give any names, but it does give a postal address. Is it a postal address that you want?
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Thanks for following up!
I would like to know: who is my partner", where is s/he/it, where is the data (a server in the US, EU, ...)
And: how can I reach them reliably if I really need to.instapix.org states in the about-section that it's run by fediverse.foundation, an association. On their website I find enough information that gives me confidence.
[I am not a legal person, in fact I kind of detest legal issues.]
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Thanks for following up!
I would like to know: who is my partner", where is s/he/it, where is the data (a server in the US, EU, ...)
And: how can I reach them reliably if I really need to.instapix.org states in the about-section that it's run by fediverse.foundation, an association. On their website I find enough information that gives me confidence.
[I am not a legal person, in fact I kind of detest legal issues.]
"And: how can I reach them reliably if I really need to."
If this helps at all, every Mastodon instance has a public email contact address on their "About" page. The instance software won't let it be activated without giving such an address.
This is usually on a different provider to the instance itself, so it should work even if the instance is broken. If a user didn't make a note of the address, they can look at the archive.org version of the instance's About page.
