Whatever your software, the person running it can read your messages. Unless you're using a non-web client that does E2EE, of which there are none right now.

> a non-web client that does E2EE

Yeah, I guess secure scuttlebutt comes to mind? But it's kinda it's own thing, notably with it's own scaling issues when it comes to widespread use.

Does mastodon even support E2EE? If you want encrypted chat rooms, isn't that what Matrix is for

The server has the bits to do it [1], but clients need to implement it (they are the "ends" in "end-to-end encryption" after all). However this hasn't seen much interest from app developers and users.

[1]: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/13820

> non-web client that does E2EE

Signal?

Signal has a web client? Link please.

Signal is a non-web app, but not (afaik?) a client for Mastodon.

> It seems like Mastodon assumes that misbehaving nodes will be cut off and just ignored by well-behaved ones...

A de novo Eris-free network?

This is actually something to worry about.

Most Mastodon instance are hosted by individuals. Granted, I would assume most people are hosting the service with good faith, but there is no binding way to ensure that. With Twitter, doing something feral will (at least was possible to bring) doom to the company and it's investment, which is far bigger balancing factor than just someone's honesty.

I'm not promoting Twitter here, but for Mastodon, something needs to be done to protect the integrity of the content posted, so the admin cannot modify it easily (moderation can still be done through deletion).

Investment is more balancing that honesty? Surely you meant something else?