Private and Public Mastodon
I don&#x27;t trust any &quot;private&quot; settings in any public social networks, for anything remotely serious.<p>Anything I publish on any social network I&#x27;d be also comfortable seeing posted on every wall in foot-tall letters, with my real name attached to it. Were I not be comfortable with that, I won&#x27;t post it.<p>I consider <i>all</i> &quot;private&quot; or &quot;limited&quot; posting provisions on all social networks as paper walls at best, one small devops or SWE mistake from being torn and becoming visible to public. Maybe I&#x27;m overshooting a bit, but my past experience shows that it&#x27;s not much of an exaggeration. So I never use any &quot;private&quot; features and post everything I ever post as openly as possible.<p>Social media is a colander. Expect anything and everything to leak. Embrace being public.<p>If you want something with more real <i>privacy</i>, as in not likely to leak if all parties involved take reasonable care, use something that was built with privacy in mind, like, IDK, Signal, or maybe a private Telegram chat, or a private Mastodon instance only accessible through a VPN which you personally and competently operate. Of course it&#x27;s unlikely to hide you from state-level actors, but at least it&#x27;s more likely to protect you from simple operator blunders.