Dataprivacy & Law

In contrast to what many instances, mainly Mastodon, advertise, data protection is not even present in Fediverse. The important thing is to know how the software you use is working, and that’s precisely what most wannabe administrators don’t know.
Once the “cache” fills up on their Server because Mastodon has downloaded all the images and stored them on their own server so that Mastodon does not have to retrieve them from the other instance every time, these noobs start crying that their instance is consuming 400 GB to 1 TB space on their hard drive.
For artists who share their illustrations on Mastodon, it is like allowing anyone to save and use their work without further ado.

The fact that hardly any of these hobby administrators really seem to have any idea of applicable laws, but instead think that they have domiciliary rights on “their” server, makes the Fediverse far more dangerous than posting family pictures on Facebook or Twitter. After all, it is neither guaranteed nor really verifiable whether an instance will delete your message if you delete your post on the instance you are. So if you really want to make a name for yourself as an artist and want to protect your rights as a copyright holder, you will definitely not be happy with the Fediverse.

An excellent example can be seen in the German legal situation and how rarely it is followed at the Fediverse. For example, §5 of the German Telemedia Act requires an imprint to be provided as soon as user-generated content is published on a website. For blogs, it is the comment function, for forums the creation of and responses to topics, and for “social” media the responses, reactions, … So, a Fediverse node is treated like a blog by law. No matter where the comments come from, be it from the local instance itself or from another instance via the ActivityPub protocol, they are also displayed on the instance and the data is processed. This means that anyone who either has a server in Germany and/or is a person registered in Germany would be obliged to provide an imprint. The fact that only a handful of operators do this tells a lot about them.

For information: If the registration on an instance is free, an imprint is missing, the data protection policy is missing or incorrect or the terms of service are incorrect, it can also result in another administrator contacting the Competition Centre (Wettbewerbszentrale). The Competition Centre comes into play when missing information is used to gain an advantage over the competitors.

In addition, the possibility of commercial use may also apply if, for example, links for donations are published. The law often refers to the fact that providing a service is about generating income then. Keyword: tax fraud.

Overconfidence

The pure fact that almost none of the providers even want to understand the legal situation, unless they feel attacked, is a sign of overconfidence. Another one is how the providers react when the server needs to be maintained, how the firewall should be set, how the software should be kept up to date, how a problem should be analyzed and solved. Things that differ from the installation instructions they used.
It is not uncommon for a Mastodon instance, which should actually be behind a reverse proxy on ports 80 and 443, to be accessed directly via the port, the web server displays a file directory, the SSL certificate has expired, or simply the wrong SSL certificate is provided, the wrong SSL ciphers are set, missing security headers in an HTTP request, … And yet, many of these wannabe administrators/moderators think they are superior to the rest and believe they can decide who is allowed to say/write what and who is not.  

An excellent example of massive overconfidence is provided once again by cyberpunk.lol with their “administrator”, who has initiated a “pact” to block Facebook Threads.  

A rogue who would expect anything bad. This list is also being abused by power-hungry, petty-minded people to force those who do not want to comply and threaten to block all those who do not demonize Threads from the very beginning.

Of course, mastodon.art must also be featured in this list:

Who also refuses to allow anyone to have their opinion if they do not agree with her:  

Of course, you want to trust such a person and create an account at their instance! /i

Sign this pact, or you’ll be “Fediblocked”! - The only thing missing is a kind of badge, like the ones we know from the Nazi era, which marked Jews, to mark instances that federates with Threads to make it easier for other despots to block them. Oh, wait. We already have such a list.

Of course, defenders of such a pact try to excuse themselves with “But nobody does that”, while forgetting the stupidity and tendency of users to abuse it:

Or in other words: When wannabe dictators want to say who is a dictator.

No, I will not link the lists because I do not support such a Stasi like method of targeted harassment and discrimination!

Despotism, Dogmatism and Hatemongering

As already described in detail in Parts I and II of the series, there is a pronounced, despotic attitude at the Fediverse. Blocklists are usually used to spread highly speculative arguments explaining why one should not federate with another instance.
One of the prime example of a despot is obviously the administrator of mastodon.art, who not only has the control over the most popular blocklists, like Oliphants and The Bad Space, but also draws attention with lies in her blocklist. It’s quite common that she labels someone as a stalker, Nazi, fascist or something else because she is unable to keep personal problems away from the administration and moderation office of a fairly large instance. However, this is not all you’ll see from her. Besides all the spam, which she clearly seems to have too much time for, this definitely lonely person seems to have nothing better to do than start witch hunts, or join existing ones with more lies and hate speech to boost her own ego. What the junkie sees as the next shot is for her spreading hate and smear campaigns. In addition to acting irresponsibly as an administrator by passing on personal data, such as statements from e-mails, e-mail addresses, locations, … she uses a Discord channel that she set up to encourage other administrators and users, for example from mas.to, c.im, mstdn.social, writing.exchange, to spread her lies and even trigger attacks, such as “report spam”. Do you really want to publish your artwork there? If so, then artists shouldn’t be surprised if they are no longer commissioned or even taken seriously. I’ve already explained above why the Fediverse is a bad idea if you want to keep your copyright. But if you start on an instance that rides roughshod over data privacy, you only have to blame yourself.

If you want to see the framing and lies of mastodon.art by yourself, the best place to look is at fba.ryona.agency. Because there she can no longer undo her hate and the entries there correspond to the original block statement she made.