First of all, re: "I personally do not see any effort from the GNU Social side of things to alleviate any of this.", I don't believe we've talked so I'm not sure how you'd see that effort at all .)
Nevertheless, I'm pretty concerned with fake privacy as implemented in Mastodon. There is no guarantee for users even when there are two Mastodon instances communicating that these posts are private. Fine, you trust your admin - but do you trust the _other_ side's admin? I believe you don't.
If Mastodon actually wants to implement privacy it should do it with proper means and not try to bolt it onto an inherently insecure infrastructure (the world wide web).
Have a look at XMPP for proper privacy and security. The web's designed to be open and transparent, not just OStatus.
Also there's the UX issue of having private and public communication in the same UI. You'll undoubtedly end up with users accidentally posting private stuff in public. That's bad.
Regarding privacy, OStatus and the web
Nevertheless, I'm pretty concerned with fake privacy as implemented in Mastodon. There is no guarantee for users even when there are two Mastodon instances communicating that these posts are private. Fine, you trust your admin - but do you trust the _other_ side's admin? I believe you don't.
If Mastodon actually wants to implement privacy it should do it with proper means and not try to bolt it onto an inherently insecure infrastructure (the world wide web).
Have a look at XMPP for proper privacy and security. The web's designed to be open and transparent, not just OStatus.
Also there's the UX issue of having private and public communication in the same UI. You'll undoubtedly end up with users accidentally posting private stuff in public. That's bad.