Technology

I started using #Threads

Ah, I see, there's the problem.

Shit, did your phone extend a needle for a blood test?

There's a reason it's not allowed in the EU.

What I don't understand is why people wound even want to use this app...

What possible appeal could it have?

That tracks about everything it possibly can just for the sake of it. I despise Meta so much...

Not sure why anyone would install that garbage. Even a one off install to check it out means it will upload lots of data.

At this point I think it would be more informative to simply display the data they don't collect. My guess is "nothing".

Thank you EU!

Holy crap are you kidding? Mastodon IIRC requires zero priviliges/personal information to run.

That’s insane, well I know one thing. This is making me want to go download the DuckDuckGo browser.

A lot of that stuff is pretty standard if you're doing logging and metrics on your service (which you should if you want to resolve outages). From the IP address and user agent you get rough location, os info, and network info. A few other things can be used for optimization (faster load times), and a Meta-scale, I wouldn't be surprised if they do that.

Why in the first place do you want to use that garbage?

This is why I use Privacy Badger

Not only does it show you what and where it blocks, but you can also whitelist blocking in case you play browser games.

You get a lot of information out of one addon.

Holy shit. I'd ask how the fuck is this even legal, but seeing EU's reaction I guess it really kinda isn't

Why did you download threads in the first place? Just scanned the app in exodus and the list of trackers is worse than all meta apps combined

Orientation? Why would Facebook need to know if my phone is gay? Jk, I know they really want to know my phone's political orientation. Joke's on them, my phone voted for Megatron.

Damn, just straight up stealing other people's content. Very cool

Original post: https://writing.exchange/@kreig/110664764474921792

Original poster: https://writing.exchange/@kreig

• The name of your first crush.
• Your religious beliefs.
• Your innermost fears.
• That thing you did in June of 2007 that you must never speak about.

It’s unbelievable that an app which collect this many data points, including voice, is legally allowed. Insane. Yes, people should not use it and should care, but come on… this is just mass surveillance and collection.

That's your fault for using threads

absolutely wild, was going to (naively) give it a go, but I work on telemetry for a big platform and cannot in good faith use this product.

Remind me of that scene in The Dark Knight when Lucius Fox has all the screens with all the data from every smartphone around.

That’s insane

200 in a few hours sounds like a lot (well, it is) but is small compared to some apps I use. Revolut tried to make tens of thousands of requests in an hour last time I looked! I expect that particular app is coded badly so when it gets rejected it just endlessly tries to repeat the request.

I highly recommend everyone installs something like the DuckDuckGo android app because it blocks tracking attempts in all apps. It's a bit horrifying to see how often, how much, and what type of data all our apps are requesting.

People here complaining about Threads and TikTok (Chinese owned) being the defacto social network for an entire generation over there without outrage, and when it's outrage about it people just say "at least is not the US" what kind of defense is that?

And then they'll need another permission to access your photos, contacts, text messages... They'll grab and run with everything what's in your phone. Before your 1st day is over, they'll know everything about you, your friends and family. It's just another massive privacy/data grab. Fuck them (and fuck u/spez ofc).

Looking at the data collection categories in the ios app store for Threads is terrifying. Similarly, mastodon collects nothing. General population doesn't seem to care though given the number of signups that Threads has received in the last few days. People are happy to give their information away.