Fediverse

Yes. That's part of all of it.

What we should be doing is de-federating them en-mass.

Nothing good will come from having Facebook/Meta involved here.

I fear that many people are not aware just how public everything in the fediverse is. Everything you post, every comment, every upvote, boost, favorite, like or other interaction is broadcasted to every instance where there is at least on subscriber/follower. Nothing in the fediverse is private. There is no real way to protect from this. You don't even need a real instance for that. You could write a software that subscribes to everything and just takes the data. The fediverse is as public as it can be. It's like standing on a market place and screaming out your thoughts. There is nothing stopping anyone from writing it down. And that is by design.

And I don't mean that in a negative way. It is not really different from all the commercial platforms. They just take the data without you knowing it. Here you are very aware that you don't control anything that you do in public.

The solution is to act accordingly. Use cryptic usernames and don't post anything that can be traced back to you. Be aware that you are in a public space.

I posted a version of this in another thread:

I really think Lemmy, Kbin, and Mastodon need to figure out a way to have a default terms of service that ships with their product which forbids using the API to collect data for anything outside of user-facing social network interfaces, including account association heuristics and similar processes.

A way for users to set licenses on individual posts would be huge as well, with a default license instance admins can set.

That way for-profit instances could be forced to filter out posts with licenses that do not allow for-profit use. Honestly, even just a simple check mark "[ ] allow for-profit republication", and have two licenses that can be attached: one that allows for-profit use and one that does not.

The fediverse should start baking in data control into it's legal framework. Want to federate with Mastodon? You need to follow the ToS for what you can do with its posts. If we wanted to get really extreme we could even say the license should be copy-left. Any instance that wants to federate with a non-profit instances needs to also be non-profit.

That could block for-profit companies from becoming part of the network in the first place, even by use of stealth relay instances.

#threads

While I doubt this is as much of an issue for us, as it is for mastadon (the interaction is possible, but not really common I think) the following part:

We use the information we collect for Threads for the purposes described in the Meta Privacy Policy, including to provide, personalize, and improve Threads and other Meta Products (including seamless personalization of your experience across Threads and Instagram), to provide measurement, analytics and other business services (including ads), to promote safety, integrity and security, to communicate with you, and to research and innovate for social good.”

Is the best argument for defederating from them right from the start IMO. They're forcing their privacy policy on people that might not even have read it just because they interacted on a submission that happened to originate in threads.

Now, I know everything we do here is open. But I don't think it's OK in a moral sense to suck up data from users other than your own to be sold to advertisers. I doubt we have much legal power but we do have the power to stop delivering the data to their door.

I don't fully understand—would Meta be able to serve you targeted ads based on your non-Threads fediverse activities? Where would these ads appear? How do they know it's you just from your fediverse accounts?

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/

Doesn't all social media have this, unfortunately?

Wow! It's so much worse than I can imagine. I just know they are motivated by the bottom line but I don't have the insight on what they gain with federating.

Basically, what they're planning to do is to try and deanonimize user handles. I use the handle ZILtoid1991 on most networks, and is the same for most other people. In general, there's nothing wrong with it. It makes people to be easier to be found. However, it can be easily exploited by data harvesters, like Meta, and I have to rely on their services still (especially Facebook) due to how prevalent its use is in my home country, Hungary.

I also think they might use the Fediverse as a free moderation team, if they plan to moderate it at all. Facebook report system is completely broken, as instantly flags hate speech as safe, and will likely delete anything critical of it. However, large corporations like Meta (and X) can win more by playing some lip-service to the far-right: work-moralist attitude, tax breaks for the wealthy, protection from the working class, and so on. I have some theory that some tech corporations secretly boosted the far-right until they got too big there, then tried to write it off as an "oopsie". Twitter seems to be way more open about it.