Any Admin worth their salt is going to defederate anyways.
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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I imagine Threads is gonna defederate from a lot of instances on their own. Any instance based around NSFW content or which even allows discussion of piracy will be blocked pre-emptively.
This will be the next shit storm when Lemmy.world doesn't defederate with Threads and people get surprised. :)
How much would that help? If even one instance doesn't defederate, fb is still going to scrape all the data they can through that instance, negating all the other instances that did defederate. (Unless I'm misunderstanding something)
As an example: I'm from .ca and lets say they defederate. I make a comment or post (or upvote/downvote) on another instance like .world that didn't, am I not a "third party" and opening myself up to them collecting everything they can about me and my account?
If you look at your profile from another instance, your user history there will only contain stuff that that instance is federated with. Users looking at your profile wont see comments and posts you've made onto communities that aren't federated onto the instance they are looking at your profile from.
One comment onto an instance that federates with threads would leak that one comment, not your entire user account's worth of data.
It's still bullshit.
Can’t instances defederate preemptively?
Defederating doesn't prevent them from seeing what you post. It only prevents you from seeing them
Hmm, I see. What a complex web, can nothing be done to stop thier blatant thievery?
Here is the Threads Supplemental Privacy Policy referenced in the article. Some relevant excerpts are:
We collect information about the Third Party Services and Third Party Users who interact with Threads. If you interact with Threads through a Third Party Service (such as by following Threads users, interacting with Threads content, or by allowing Threads users to follow you or interact with your content), we collect information about your third-party account and profile (such as your username, profile picture, IP address, and the name of the Third Party Service on which you are registered), your content (such as when you allow Threads users to follow, like, reshare, or have mentions in your posts), and your interactions (such as when you follow, like, reshare, or have mentions in Threads posts).
And further down…
If you are a Third Party User, our ability to verify your request may be limited and we may be unable to process your request. Please note, however, that the interoperable protocol allows Third Party Services to automatically send Threads requests for deletion of individual posts when those posts are deleted on the Third Party Service. We make reasonable efforts to honor such requests when we receive them. Contact your Third Party Service to learn more.
First one: "we will take as much as we legally can"
Second one: "we will give as little as we legally can get away with"
Up next: "we will change the law to take even more and mask it as protecting you"
Thats a nothingburger and a half.
This just lists the info that is auto shared through federation, in legalese. The second one explains how federated deletes work, also in legalese. This is the info any instance would handle if you interacted with it.
It's worth thinking about what you're putting out there, but you're right. This isn't a Threads specific thing.
You're putting these posts on the internet. You should expect everyone to read them, including Threads and Google and Putin and Kim Jong Un. That's kind of the idea of public posting. They don't even need an API to do that.
why should it be ok that Meta collects this information though?
because every other instance does the same.
this comment is content, it's now stored on the instance I share it with, and all the instances it federates to, along with my username and so forth.
the above is just a legalese explanation of how the fediverse works.
Maybe it‘s a legalese explanation of a problematic aspect of the fediverse though. When a commercial entity comes in that deals in people‘s data, which doesn‘t just store data on its servers, but creates a product out of the data. And it seems like it can do that here without you ever agreeing or even knowing about it.
I don't rly understand as far I know the users IP adresse isn't shared at all, so Threads don't can get even its hands one it, dxcept.you visiting Threads directly.
They can, if they modify activitypub for their own server
They would have to modify it for the other, "third party" server through which the user interacts with theirs, though.
Genuine question here, it looks like most of the info they’re collecting here could also be collected via scraping that info from any publicly available instance (profile pic, username, etc.)
What added info would they get from federation that isn’t already something we are giving away ourselves by participating in a public protocol like ActivityPub?
Federation basically just means your instance will scrape Meta in turn and serve their content to you, whereas being defederated it will not. That means federated or no, without additional precautions by admins of particular instances, Meta will be getting the same info federated or no. Being defederated makes interacting with Meta's service much less likely though, which makes them scraping your data less likely. This update to the ToS honestly just sort of describes how the fediverse works anyway this isn't some special feature of Threads, all instances behave this way.
Threads is dying. Give it time