[lukeschlather]

Federation doesn't help at all if your host is untrustworthy. This is a question of having strong data privacy rules baked into law and also a good compliance regime. In fact, federation can make things a lot worse since federation makes it a lot harder to reason about who is transmitting and storing your data.

[dijit]

Nothing helps if your host is untrustworthy.

But need I go into the little rant about how signal controlling the clients and the network means you have to take it on trust?

However the point of federation is that you can find someone you trust. - and you get to control data residency, all those weird hard to comply with laws become super easy if your uncle hosts a family chat server that federates with others; or your ISP, or your favourite local library.

[lukeschlather]

Hosting a family chat server is a fair amount of work, I wouldn't call it super-easy. I would prefer that the hosting for my server has at least half a dozen people for whom it's their full-time job. I don't think one person can really keep such a thing secure and reliable to the standards that I would prefer.

[dijit]

but it would then be your choice.

and, c’mon, people do harder things in the interest of family.

Maintaining a home is a shitload of work, but we dont live in a prison so that we can avoid the effort of cleaning and cooking.

The skills to run a federated matrix instance, for example, can be had in less time than it takes to learn how to BBQ without starting a fire or poisoning someone. Yet we choose to do that, we even consider transferal of those skills to be a bonding experience.

[lukeschlather]

There are a lot of different layers here. Sure, it's not hard at all to set up a federated matrix instance. Doing it so it's as secure as keeping something in a locked house though, that's actually a pretty tricky skill. I'll grant that it's not necessarily harder than safe cooking, but it's a lot easier to find someone who can teach you safe cooking.

Now, another layer is that while I have a healthy distrust of corporations like Apple or Facebook, I actually think that it's virtually impossible to match the level of security they provide. And it's not a prison, it's a nice, clean cafeteria, with pretty good food which is practically free. The food could be better but I would much rather spend my time making home cooked meals than securing a server.

[dijit]

I’m going to continue the analogy then;

In truth: I’d rather someone else cook my meals, seriously.

I’m a terrible cook, however what is happening is that everyone has decided they they’re a terrible cook and the planet has become completely dependent on fast-food restaurant chains.

“But its where my friends are, they would never join me in a steak restaurant, it’s unfamiliar and theres no parking”.

We forgot how to make home-cooked meals, its learned helplessness, for decades.

It’s going to be painful if we start now. It’s going to be even more painful if we start a decade from now.

[lukeschlather]

This isn't food, it's mail delivery. As a general rule I don't hand-deliver my own letters and I shouldn't have to hand-deliver them to get privacy.