This is what I mean when I mock the "TikTok is spyware crowd". Elmo just gave a bunch of dubious political trolls backend access to Twitter. We should be far more concerned with what we upload, less where we upload it to. Assuming that TikTok is bad because China and other platforms are good because not China ignores the fact that ownership is temporary but data is forever.
My threat model didn't explicitly cover "the most unhinged person you've ever seen has just bought your social media platform of choice and all your data along with it". But luckily, that is implicitly covered by "every platform will likely be compromised at some point".
@malwaretech this is certainly true. Do you think in a few decades time social media platforms will be recognized as public utilities?
@SethPFR @malwaretech Social media SHOULD already have been been recognized and regulated as public utilities.
Electricity was barely invented before Public Utility Commissions were formed in the US to make sure the new new resource was shared equably among citizens. Same with the initial reaction to broadcasting. Though over time both have been whittled away.
@SusanKraemer IMHO this is not the correct way to look at it. The real public utility that has gone unrecognized is Internet access, and we should have addressed that problem a decade ago rather than still have the issues we have with last mile connections today.
If anything we should be trying to replace centralized social media with decentralized protocols like ActivityPub (which is what Mastodon uses and is how I am able to communicate from this server to the one you are on) rather than trying to nationalize the former.
