Hey I Love Scuttlebutt, I am actually writing a client for it. But I don't think the objective here is privacy. If I follow you on ssb, I will start replicating your feed (unless you block me), and all you post publicly will be in my own HD which I could use to generate some "intelligence". There are no incentives in ssb for those marketing type actions we see on FB and Twitter but we can still mine it. Of course your private communication is private, but the public feed is very public.

SSB does support encrypted private messaging, notably.

You could send a private message to a group of (7 or fewer) friends and then only they could open it.

yes and as far as I know there is work being done to make private channels a thing. So in the near future, private conversation might be able to include more than 7 people.

I just have this feeling that people sometimes talk about SSB as if it is like "private by default" and thats not really the case, public feed is quite public (and I don't think that is bad).

I for example considered using private messages to myself as a diary. I know they will remain private.

IPV6 is really needed to create social media distribution with customized privacy. Example, use a smart phone as the actually distributing and access control system. This way a person can instantly block and know who is accessing their content too. End to end encryption communication with content distribution.

Of course this is more into the future when Cellular ISP are better with less strict data caps and better upload speeds along with not having to connection to Apple or Google or Amazon for Voice to Text / Command / Action solutions and smart phones actually have a viable storage capacity.

Please do not downvote this comment. It may not make technical sense for you but there is nothing wrong with the comment otherwise. The author has some vision and shared it with us.