On a self-hosted instance, Fluxer has none of that instance's messages, files or accounts to hand over to anyone. The people who run the instance decide where its data is stored and who can access it, and self-hosting Fluxer is free for everyone.
Who controls the data on a self-hosted instance?
The people who run the instance control its data and are responsible for it under the law that applies to them. They choose the server and the country it's in, and their own privacy notice and terms say how they handle requests for data. They can access the messages and files on their instance, because nothing on Fluxer is end-to-end encrypted yet.
Does Fluxer get any data from a self-hosted instance?
Fluxer gets nothing from a self-hosted instance unless one of these two features is turned on, and the list below says who has to turn each one on.
- If you and the people who run your instance both turn on our push relay, it passes your notifications on to Apple or Google in encrypted form, and we can't read them. Our push relay notice lists the few details we record about each notification.
- If you turn on "Send crash and performance reports" on iOS or Android, reports come to us even though your instance isn't ours. They include crash and error details, the screens you opened, moments when the app stuttered, how long network requests took and your device and app version, and they leave out message content, IDs and the instance address, as section 2.2 of our privacy policy says.
How will federation and encryption help?
Federation will let people on your instance talk to people on other instances, and you won't need an account on a bigger instance to talk to your friends. Federation will be optional, and an experimental draft is planned for 2026 with a stable release in 2027.
End-to-end encryption for calls, personal notes, DMs and group DMs will go into the open source software too, and self-hosted instances will get it. Once each part has its stable release, the people who run an instance won't be able to read that content either.