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I need opinions on a HappyView feature: inspection for atproto spaces. TL;DR - should the dashboard be give admins a clean view into spaces content? More deets in the thread. 🧵 #atproto

Basically, spaces are fully accessible to server admins. This is the same for spaces hosted by HappyView, as well as spaces on your PDS. If somebody has access to the database, they can read anything in your spaces.

From a technical perspective, this is not surprising. Spaces are not encrypted. They provide access control, not privacy. If you want privacy (even from admins), you need some form of E2EE.

From the perspective of a server operator, it actually makes a lot of sense. The operator of a PDS needs to be able to moderate the content on their PDS. We don't need bad actors creating spaces just to store their CSAM. That would be Very Bad™.

Having access via the database is one thing, but having a tool for a clean view into that data feels like a whole different ball game. So here's the question: Is it too skeevy for HappyView to provide an interface for browsing space data?

Of course the goal isn't to give operators a creepy tool to rifle thru your private stuff, but any tool that provides this sort of auditability CAN be exploited in that way.

I feel like this is defensible: if I create a private account on Facebook and upload a bunch of sensitive photos, I know there are Meta employees that will have access to that.

If, then, I sign into VeryPrivateService.at with my atproto account, I should have the same expectation that operators of that service have visibility into my otherwise permissioned content... right?

inspect them (along with blobs) in a nice viewer. that to me makes inspection *too* easy, to the point where I would actually worry that admins would poke around in spaces just for the hell of it. I think programmatic access of records makes perfect sense, but a viewer is too far.

I think there's probably a way to at least not encourage overly broad rifling, for example checking one account's space records at a time is likely needed, but browsing all users at once by collection may not be. For apps with multiple moderators, including space access in a mod-visible audit log…

… would be a good idea in my opinion, maybe with a click-through where the target and scope is selected, potentially with comment box, and then that's logged only once for the next hour or two where it's 'unlocked'. That would make it much easier to use in a professional context, in my opinion.