Why just blocking Meta's Threads won't be enough to protect your privacy once they join the fediverse
Why just blocking Meta's Threads won't be enough to protect your privacy once they join the fediverse
At least, not with today's software.
Relevant HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36673040
Facebook goes out of its way to ruin everything, big surprise there... I got rid of Facebook years ago and I'm amazed that anyone still uses it. They've gone out of their way to spread hate, steal data, publish misinformation etc why are so many people still supporting it?
The answer is that people today would gladly give their souls away for free if it saves them the minor inconvenience of having to put in the minimal effort required to find something better
What kind of privacy expectations do people even have around an open microblogging platform???
I have generally taken to the principle that I wouldnt say anything here I wouldnt say in mixed company or in public.
Its less stressful that way.
BUT - privacy is still important. When I was on reddit I had people witchunt me for relatively mundane hot takes. Luckily (for me) they didn't string together the details correctly to identify me specifically but they tried, and probably harassed some innocent bystander in the process. So even while my main principle applies, I also tend to try and keep things vague and non-specific. Of course though, that gets more difficult as topics change, your account becomes more "seasoned" etc. I dont really care if my co-workers know my handle. Just dont want some random crazy person trying to get me fired because i go fishing or something.
Every action on the Fediverse is inherently public. Every server operator can see every post, comment, like, dislike, favorite, etc.
Even commercial 'social' media need anonymity.
You control how anonymous you are. If you post non personal stuff under a pseudonym you are anonymous. Even to meta.
Not accurate. Due to how widespread facebook trackers are, it can identify you from the behaviour of others. People in your social circle linking to your content. People in your subnet using facebook services. People who hgave your phone numbers linking to your content on whatsapp etc. It's scary how easy it is for a massive corpo to remove anonymity from anyone if they want to.
That's not the question here.
The 2 problems here are
that F*book scrapes this user's personal data from other random places (very illegal)
and that they change the FB profile without asking the user specifically (should be illegal, but maybe they find an excuse in their terms & conditions)
Anyone wanna give the tldr?
There's a cookie in it for ya 🍪
Even if you and the instance you are using is blocking Threads your information still becomes visible to Threads if someone on an instance that isn't blocking Threads interacts with you. The interaction can come in the form of following, boosting, or mentioning your name.
Then the fear, according of the article, is for hate groups going out of their way to harass vulnerable groups.
And it's worth mentioning that the article has specific cases of that happening already.
They don't even need to go through a middle third party instance, they just have to have a ghost instance that nobody know it belongs to them and this one will federate with everybody else
For example if you go to FMHY federated instances, there is one called evil.social , that could be from Meta or Google or NSA... nobody knows
Threads has an influx of bad actors (right-extremist, anti-LGBT racists and any permutation) who intentionally target vulnerable groups on the FV.
You can't rely on individual blocks, including for the whole Threads "instance". If Threads ends up in a federation, everything else on that federation is now compromised because that's simply how public content works on AP. There's no real way around this without keeping Threads out of federation.
I agree wholeheartedly with this. Block Threads if they do a shitty job moderating their users and they post stuff not permitted by our instance like homophobia, transphobia, racism, etc. Preemptively blocking them to "protect privacy" won't do that and gives the false impression that what you're posting to the fediverse can't be just hoovered up by google/meta anyway.