Hiding/defederating site's directory and public posts, and local-only posting like Mastodon fork 'Hometown'

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 17:59:22 +0200

adminsforum@hubzilla.org

UniVox Admin wrote the following post Fri, 15 Sep 2023 17:59:21 +0200

Hiding/defederating site's directory and public posts, and local-only posting like Mastodon fork 'Hometown'

Goals:
not immediately federated/ need-to-know-basis/ non-Public (big P)
1. post content which is available to anyone visiting your site, logged-in or not, but which doesn't appear in other public streams.
2. keep your local directory unfederated. People on other servers can still follow your accounts if they know the address. The directory can still be viewable by non-logged-in users.
local-only / non-public (little p)
3. post content viewable by all and only people logged-in on your server.

Is there an existing feature for making some content public with a little p: unlisted for people off your server, i.e. you need the link if you're not discovering it on the original site.

After setting up a few sample public posts and public channels, I didn't realise how well they would actually federate! So I could see my site's public channels on other site's directory. It was quite cool to see, but actually these channels are only useful/relevant for the people accessing my site. I've kept them public because I don't want people to need to sign-in, but equally they shouldn't be Public (with a big P, as in discoverable searchable to random users online). I know this is quite anti-federation, but since every user on my site will know each other, and be actively directed to it, I don't need anything to be searchable or Publically listed/discoverable. These are all useful features for communities all based on one hub.

I wasn't sure if this was an existing feature. I don't think you can edit posts to be unlisted like this. The permission settings don't seem to have an option.

Local-only (non-public) posting: I suppose I can make a 'privacy group' which everyone on my server is automatically added to. But privacy groups are channel-specific, so you'd also have to copy this privacy group to everyone's channel.
hometown (a Mastodon fork) has local-only posting as its hallmark (singular?) feature.

These goals aren't really an issue of security (except local-only posting) but privacy.

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 17:35:49 +0200

Scott M. Stolz

scott@loves.tech

There is actually a feature in Hubzilla that allows you to create your own directory (realm). That way only your users show up on the directory on your website.

I don't have time to go into detail right now, but that is the functionality that you are probably looking for.

As far as federation, basically public is public, and private is private. Set up users with "personal" channels instead of "public" so that their posts only appear to their connections (friends) unless they explicitly make it public.

As far as federation goes, only people who follow someone will see their posts. If it is a one way connection (follow), they can only see public posts, if it is a two way connection, they can see private posts (to the default friends group). So you can still allow federation and have privacy.

And it should be noted, that anything public, is public, federated or not. It can be copied, a screenshot can be taken, it can be indexed by search engines, can be crawled by bots, etc. So it is best to instruct users that if they don't want someone to see something (an ex, an employer, a professor, etc.), don't post it publicly.

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 00:50:47 +0200

Grouchy

grouchy@hub.grouchysysadmin.com

@Scott M. Stolz

And it should be noted, that anything public, is public, federated or not. It can be copied, a screenshot can be taken, it can be indexed by search engines, can be crawled by bots, etc. So it is best to instruct users that if they don't want someone to see something (an ex, an employer, a professor, etc.), don't post it publicly.

^^^ That bears repeating

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:34:53 +0200

Scott M. Stolz

scott@loves.tech

As far as the directory goes, you would need to do two things to have your own directory:

Create a primary directory server (which can be your hub).
Give your directory its own realm.

https://biztechtonics.net/help/en/directories

The benefit of having your own realm is that other colleges or departments at your university could start their own Hubzilla hubs, and share the same university directory (realm).