As I understand it, instances can be hosted by anybody. So, doesn’t it make sense that you should be able to shop around what instance you want to join based on stated beliefs on how the instance and information should be run (de-federation, etc)? Shouldn’t there be some kind of public information to keep them held responsible for instance usage and management? Or is there? Do people just blindly trust whoever wants to host a community?
I literally know nothing of hosts of lemmy.world, I’m sure they are nice people, but they could be literally be Nazis and I wouldn’t know. I’d rather not contribute to another Reddit situation or something worse.
Isn’t it up to you to find that out before choosing an instance? It’s not a bad idea, but instance owners are already doing a lot of unpaid work - it doesn’t feel right to start making demands.
Maybe you could build a simple website that allistic instances and allows owners/users to post info on them. Seems a fairly simple project.
Yeah. When I was trying to find a kbin instance to join I’d go to the different ones, read the FAQ, privacy policy, terms of service, and made an educated decision after finding one that I thought was good, and I am not disappointed with my choice. A directory would be nice but a few extra clicks to find out the same information with more detail is worth it imo
Ultimately does it matter? They can say they do or don’t track you and they can say your data and privacy is safe but you never have a guarantee. It’s no different from when companies promise us xyz but then in the background they’ve been doing shady shit. My best suggestion is to try to make the best educated choice and to accept you made the best choice you could with the information you had at the time.
0 guarantee. Whatever they say, in reality, it may happen otherwise. Best efforts/intentions/etc. Remember the hacks recently? Maybe the hackers could have dumped the databases on those instances and taken everything.
You want more certainty? Host your own instance.
Ruud, the administrator of Lemmy.world, has a ton of stuff written publicly, and does an awesome job of communicating with us in this instance. So if you want to find out more about him you can definitely do that.
You could require that of the server you live on and not join ones that don’t comply. But I don’t see that as becoming a requirement to host an open instance.
They don’t really have to as it is up to you to choose how to “access” the instances. It’s the client that is tracking you. And if you want to know how the api “tracks” you, you are free to read the code as it is open source.
