Well there is a lot that you can do to maximize security, privacy and anonymity in this setting.
For expample, you can do optional client-side/end-to-end encryption, so the instance owner doesn’t even know what is going on on their server. E.g. like how Whatsapp, Signal etc do it. Delta Chat is even an example of an end-to-end encrypted federated messaging servive. Anyone can host a server, but server owners don’t know what anyone is talking about.
For example, there might be an instance for my local county that most people from the county chose as a home instance. I can do end-to-end encrypted personal messaging on it like Signal/Whatsapp or end-to-end encrypted group chata or my end-to-end encrypted discord like community or a personal end-to-end encrypted Lemmy community for my friends and me. Only people with access can see what happens in these communities, server owners can not, they can only see the encrypted storage.
Also you could do privacy protection cross instance by hiding the real account. Let’s say 1) you visit a new instance from your home instance, 2) you generate a new identity tied to your existing account, 3) you do some convoluted sheme to use zero-knowledge proofs to get your home instance to authenticate you as a trustworthy user, BUT without your home instance knowing your new identiy on the other instance, nor the new instance knowing your old identity. For all intents and purposes it’s like creating a completely new account for the new instance, except you get to keep your positive reputation from your home instance. Like a recommendation letter from your instance for an anonymous user.
This will also become much more relevant once AI bots are becoming a problem in the fediverse. You need some way to prove you are a human, that doesn’t rely on centralization, or reduces your privacy or anonymity. Basically every instance also becomes an identity service, that can vouch for you that you are a trustworth real human.
And again all these features would be optional for instances, communities and users. Some communities would use none of this and just work like regular old Lemmy. Even DMs could be visible for instance owners. As long as it’s clearly visible what your current level of privacy/anonymity is, I don’t see a problem with it. E.g. for corporate transparency you might have nothing end-to-end encrypted.
I just want one big federated platform that can be used for pretty much every form of communication with appropriate levels of privacy and security for every use case. That’s my perfect fediverse, like the concept of “the end of history”, it’s “the end of social media”, i.e. we won’t have to change it for as long as humanity lives…
But I’m gonna be honest, it’s possible that it would be a better solution to not have your identity tied to any single home instance, but have some sort of global identity management, that is like an umbrella layer over all instances. It functions in the same way that I described, with no instance knowing your real global identity. It just generates a new identity for every instance BUT somehow accumulates reputation accross instances. That reputation you can use to join new instances or to prove you are human, without actually ever revealing your “real” identity to them. Like, imagine you are a bouncer for a club, you can’t see anyone who wants enter the club, you just have an omnipotent guy that looks at them for you and that knows if they are trustworthy, and this guy just tells you who to let in and who not to. The bouncer is the instance and the omnipotent guy is the global identity service and the people that want to enter the club are users like you. The instance owner doesn’t know what users just entered, but they still know everyone is trustworthy.
Something like that.
Identity services/human verification like that are inevitable in my opinion, so I’d like them to be implemented in the best way possible, open-source, secure, completely decentralized, anonymous and private. No centralized government ID services, nor Big Tech ones, that is just ripe for abuse on a scale we’ve never seen before.
This global identity service that I’m envisioning wouldn’t nescessarily be centralization, as there might not be some central point that does all the global identity management. Sort of how there are password managers that don’t store your passwords on any single server, but passwords are generated from the name of the domain and your master password and maybe a pw reset counter. This global identity management could function algorithmicly without any data storage OR work on “truely” decentralized (not federated) solutions like blockchains or torrents etc… Basically where the trustworthiness is guaranteed by the algorithms, not the server owners.
And again all this obfuscation of identites might be optional. You might use the same identiy across different instances and everything you write in those instances might be public OR visible to the instance owner OR it might be completely encrypted, anonymous, private.
Having all identities under one umbrella will give you a lot of convenience. For example you might want to delete your entire social media presence, so you just delete your global identity and all your sub identites will be deleted as well, along with all the content you posted under them (where that is allowed).
It’s all about having the appropriate amount of privacy and anonymity for any use case, while keeping maximum convenience for users.
Of course you could do this all today, using different platforms like Whatsapp, Discord, Matrix, Lemmy, etc. while juggling 10000 different accounts, with every platform working differently. No one can tell me that that is better solution… I just want it all federated standardized so you always know exactly what you’re getting yourself into.
There might be 50 different variables that affect your privacy/anonymity on any instance/community and you get the same clearly structured overview of those varbiable on literally every instance/community on this “network”. No painfully extracting these variables from 1000 terms of service declations, no dealing with their shitty web design that is being forced on you to maximize clicks, no popups etc…
Instead you can pick your own clients to browse, just like the Fediverse, while always having a clear understanding of your level of privacy and anonymity.
Like I said, it should be the social media platform to end all social media to give the power back to the people, not some tech bro or the government. Just want people in virtual spaces to have the same agency they used to have in physical spaces. Privacy and anonymity by default used to be the norm in phyiscal spaces in a free society, but with the increasing virtualization that is no longer the case. I just want things to go back to normal.