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Comment by phoe-krk | Hacker News Reader

> That's sort of the point of the fediverse.

You're mistaking the technical implementation of the Fediverse with the social contract that maintains its existence. The Fediverse is built on the idea of consent, where interacting with you happens because you consent to that interaction happening, and you can withdraw that consent at any time by e.g. deleting your original post. (That's also why the "quote tweet" feature from Twitter is absent on the Fediverse.)

When people and instances don't follow that contract, they simply get defederated.

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That doesn't control the existence of screenshots and copy-paste though. Once you have released something to the internet, there's no guarantee it won't be copied and distributed via channels you don't desire.

Certainly.

Just because it's technically possible, that doesn't make it "good" or even "sought".

> You're mistaking the technical implementation of the Fediverse with the social contract that maintains its existence.

People are unpredictable. If there are "correct" ways of using the Fediverse, they need to be implemented into the code. Otherwise people can and will use it in whatever ways the code allows.

At any rate, there are many people, myself included, who don't really care if my posts get screenshotted or reposted outside of my server or circle of friends. How is someone supposed to determine to whom to apply this "social contract?"

Again, the default mode of thinking when posting anything to the internet should be "everyone, everywhere, forever into the future, will be able to see this." The Fedi is not immune from this rule.

> (That's also why the "quote tweet" feature from Twitter is absent on the Fediverse.)

It's absent from Mastodon. Other front ends support it. Not sure why Mastodon is holding out.

Yes, and the social contract is that if you post to the tool which is designed exclusively to broadcast your message publicly, it's ok to broadcast it publicly. If you wanted a social contract of limited visibility, then a tool which includes or supports that would be a good first step.

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