I don't understand why you're being downvoted. I'm not familiar with Mastodon's architecture but I highly doubt DMs have E2E encryption—so the server maintainers must be able to get to DMs.
I downvoted the parent, because they are missing the point of a public social network. It was never the goal of Mastodon to provide a place for private communication. Use Matrix for that.
We maintain a free messaging server for many years and believe me, there are far more important and interesting things to do for a server operator than looking at some random user DMs. It is simply not interesting.
So the answer is yes, the server operators can look at our random DMs. You may not be interested in looking at them but some other server operator might. So it is a good thing to know this beforehand to know what we are getting into.
yikes. OK, then I'm definitely never using Mastodon. At least at Twitter and Facebook the employees have a strong incentive to not breach my privacy expectations other than me not being "interesting".
That was precisely the same with every single forum or email server since the beginning of time. And you know what, the capability to log in from anywhere and read your messages trumps privacy concernts for 99% of users. For the rest there are ways to exchange information without risk of it being accessed by third party.
Not sure if you're serious, or if this is some attempt at satire?
If it's the former: Okay, it's great that you don't feel the temptation to spy on your users, but even the most basic understanding of human nature should tell you that this doesn't generalize to all (or even most) people and organizations that would run a messaging server, free or not.
I'm serious and I also know many operators of public servers. Unless you are somebody important/person of interest for various three letter agencies, no one cares for your messages. If you are such person, just run your own server and use e2ee. Other than that, enjoy the convenience and easy message syncing and server side search the unencrypted messaging brings.
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I don't understand why you're being downvoted. I'm not familiar with Mastodon's architecture but I highly doubt DMs have E2E encryption—so the server maintainers must be able to get to DMs.
Correct me if @serverholic is wrong here.
DMs do not have e2e encryption. Don’t use it for non-public things.
I downvoted the parent, because they are missing the point of a public social network. It was never the goal of Mastodon to provide a place for private communication. Use Matrix for that.
Mastodon is for speaking publicly.
A direct message is implied to have a certain level of privacy. By definition they are not public.
Mastodon should at least have some way of indicating that the server owners can read their messages.
We maintain a free messaging server for many years and believe me, there are far more important and interesting things to do for a server operator than looking at some random user DMs. It is simply not interesting.
So the answer is yes, the server operators can look at our random DMs. You may not be interested in looking at them but some other server operator might. So it is a good thing to know this beforehand to know what we are getting into.
yikes. OK, then I'm definitely never using Mastodon. At least at Twitter and Facebook the employees have a strong incentive to not breach my privacy expectations other than me not being "interesting".
That was precisely the same with every single forum or email server since the beginning of time. And you know what, the capability to log in from anywhere and read your messages trumps privacy concernts for 99% of users. For the rest there are ways to exchange information without risk of it being accessed by third party.
Not sure if you're serious, or if this is some attempt at satire?
If it's the former: Okay, it's great that you don't feel the temptation to spy on your users, but even the most basic understanding of human nature should tell you that this doesn't generalize to all (or even most) people and organizations that would run a messaging server, free or not.
I'm serious and I also know many operators of public servers. Unless you are somebody important/person of interest for various three letter agencies, no one cares for your messages. If you are such person, just run your own server and use e2ee. Other than that, enjoy the convenience and easy message syncing and server side search the unencrypted messaging brings.