As X could soon be banned in the UK amid sexualised AI images concerns, the obvious beneficiary will be Bluesky (a US public benefit corporation) and not Mastodon (whose software is owned by the German non-profit Mastodon gGmbH, now in the process of moving the project to a new foundation.)
The privacy approach of the microblogging service Bluesky risks being confused with that of the instant messaging app Signal (also based in the US, but run by a Foundation), as they are both led by outspoken women (Jay Graber and Meredith Whittaker) who are frequently covered in the media.
But they are really quite different: direct messages on Bluesky are unencrypted (as they are on Mastodon unfortunately) and the service collects quite a lot of personal data (see section 8B in their privacy policy), uses these data for marketing and “other purposes” (section 10), and shares them with “third-party services” and “business partners” (section 11).
As a European-based service, what is Mastodon doing to be seen (and chosen) as a valid alternative?
I don’t think privacy will be ever an advantage of fediverse or any federated platform. Isn’t it actually quite opposite by design? The goal of fediverse is to make you and your account discoverable by anyone. You comments, your likes, your follows are public. Fediverse is for freedom not for privacy.
So, Mastodon is structurally libertarian, but de facto culturally pluralistic?