this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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Asklemmy

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also i can't self-host.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago

your own self hosted one

[–] [email protected] 12 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Lemmy, and ActivityPub in general, is quite bad for privacy. To the point where I doubt it'd be legal for a company to host a server within the EU. Everything is handled by volunteers and amateurs. Privacy policies are bog standard or barely enforced. You have no idea what servers are using and selling your information, and any server can follow basically any community.

The easier it is for someone to create a new account after getting kicked or banned, the more likely it is that other servers will block that server and leave you with a near useless Lemmy account.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

~~[email protected] seems pretty active to me.~~

Sorry, misread privacy for piracy. I'll show myself out.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

If it makes you feel any better, I thought the same until I read your comment

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 15 hours ago

This server is probably the best for privacy too FWIW

[–] [email protected] 13 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Privacy and social media don’t go together. Logs of your IP are the least of your worries.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 17 hours ago

Yeah, especially Lemmy.

Lemmy is apparently bad if you want privacy.

IMO IP logs aren't that big of a deal.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I would think the most privacy friendly would be to make a random user and not give out too much info. There isn’t anything else other than email. Hosting your own instance doesn’t equal privacy either as it’s super obvious since all content on that instance is from that user lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

I'm not sure, but I've heard that some instances log IPs.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 19 hours ago

if theyre smart, they dump their logs regularly. i think my instance is 36 hours. that data is a liability.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I think they all do in the logs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Does each comment store the user’s IP address as well? (Like it would on other forum software?)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago

The Lemmy software seems to only store IPs for login tokens (i.e. on login).

It's likely many instances store IPs short term in access logs as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago

Lemmy.ml requires no email. The only person who can doxx you is yourself.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Given that all Lemmy instances are run by private individuals you should probably think about using a vpn (or dns proxy at the very least) to obfuscate your true location and data. This applies to any mainstream or corporate social media platform, obv.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (2 children)

Some instances block connections from VPN.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 20 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago

fair enough.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago

lemme.ee doesn't

[–] neidu3 6 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

After proving that I wasn't a bot via Matrix, sh.itjust.works activated my e-mail despite having an obviously bogus e-mail registered, so that's a plus.

[–] Whooping_Seal 3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

What are your goals?

I would say it's really a combination of the instances policies and their jurisdiction, and in terms of jurisdiction it also depends on where you live (e.g. you may have more protections under law if the instance is hosted in your country)

There's also nothing stopping you from using multiple instances β€” siloing your interaction in different types of communities in different accounts on different instances. This may be useful if part of your privacy concerns are having all of your post / comment data on one account on one instance.

Edit: You can also use an email aliasing service to avoid even giving your email out. There are aliasing services such as Addy.io, Simplelogin (subsidiary of Proton AG), Firefox Relay (Mozilla), as well as some email providers which provide (iCloud, Proton, Mailbox.org to name a few)