We are providing these services because we believe in decentralized and federated networks, and free and open source software. The tools we host are a great and convenient entry-point to these services like Matrix, Mastodon, and WriteFreely. We hope that we are able to spur the adoption of these alternative networks, and we strongly believe all of our services are far better than traditional providers, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google.
However, as with any hosted, online service, remember that using our services involves risks that may or may not be acceptable to you. Using online services requires trust in the service provider. We don't know of any surefire way to evaluate a provider for privacy, or provide a service that we can guarantee is operating in a privacy-respecting way. Of course we strive to provide the best services possible for our community, but at the end of the day this involves you trusting us and the system administrators that host our services.
Long story short, never trust a service provider with sensitive information, even if they are trustworthy.
-We also recommend you to not base all your online activity around our services. This is because it goes against the whole purpose of decentralization, and you will putting all your eggs in one basket. +
We also recommend you don't centralize all your online activity around a single provider's services (such as ours). This is because it is not a good idea to give a single party control over everything you do online.
We highly recommend hosting your own services whenever possible. Not only is it a fantastic learning experience, but it allows you to have services entirely in your control. There are a number of great resources available, including...