Most of the dissent I've seen around Zot from the AP side seems to be centered around me making privacy claims and promises I never made (or were taken out of context) and that Zot can't deliver. This is why I have tried very hard over the years not to make such claims.
So let's be clear.
1. Your friends and their site admins that have access to your private stuff can share your private stuff.
2. Comment permissions do not prevent people from talking behind your back.
3. Software has bugs
No decentralised/distributed technology can prevent these things, not even E2EE, although it can take site admins out of the picture. The only claims I make about our software is that we try to implement privacy and permissions to the best of our abilities within these constraints.
There is actually a lot that can be done within these constraints to provide a reasonably private and spam resistant environment. Note I am not using absolute terms here. "reasonably" and "resistant" acknowledge the challenges. We aren't attempting to provide military grade security because we can't actually provide it. Neither can Pleroma.
The take home message is that just as in real life, sometimes people violate your trust. We can't change that. Choose your associations carefully and do your best to steer clear of deception. These are social issues that software alone cannot solve.
Unlike many software engineers I am willing to deploy things that work for 95-98% of people and are satisfactory for their immediate needs. I see on many projects (Diaspora is notorious for this) a resistance to deploying any software whose algorithms aren't 100% perfect. The problem with this is that given that goal, 95-98% of your customers are left for years with no workable solutions to their needs. Many ActivityPub developers are following this same path. I love perfection, I really do. But when you've been in this game as long as I have you have to face the reality that the last few percentage points of perfection are usually not achievable within human lifespans. My experience at Netscape taught me the value of time. In six months the world will be different and people will have completely different needs. Write software for today. Get it out there.
W/r/t the semantic web - I do not personally care about this. If you do, get involved.