[optimuspaul]

Playing devils advocate here, but I also kind of believe this... There is no such thing as privacy in the social network. It is foolhardy to assume it is even possible. Even a real life social network relies on trust, trust that can be broken very easily and totally outside of your control. Maybe the answer is to accept that privacy isn't a real thing and stop sharing things, even in what you assume is a protected environment, that you don't wish to be public. I don't think there is a technical solution to "people can't keep secrets"

[daveFNbuck]

Technical solutions can't stop people you intended to share your secrets with from breaking your trust, but they can help prevent uninvolved third parties from getting direct access that no one intended to give them.

[znpy]

Not really. I've been using Mastodon for the last four months and I feel pretty safe. My instance doesn't know much more than I already told it. And I don't get reminders, emails telling me to check in, or ads following me. I could also run my own instance, and still be connected to the people I know.

Mastodon is pretty cool.

[dkn]

Sure but the real-life equivalent of that would be God telling Nike what kind of shoes you and your friend were talking about in secret.

[greensoap]

No; the real life equivalent would be the the kid in class sitting between you and your friend opening the note and telling class what you said.

You asked the kid in class to pass the note. He did so freely. You assumed he wouldn't open the note, but guess what... he totally opened that note. And now he wants to profit off the information.

[SlowRobotAhead]

That’s an interesting point and I’m stealing it for in real life conversations, to point out the human element of secrets - but we should understand people are bad at keeping them while also not allowing Facebook to monitor messages to find a better way / leverage to sell us things.