this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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Threads usage drops as Meta blocks VPN access in EU::Move comes as Meta tries to avoid violating privacy laws.

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[–] busturn 60 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I still hate the fact that the same people who said that no one is going to adopt a whole new social network in regards to mastodon suddenly changed their minds when the zuck made a worse version of it.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The marketing of the fediverse is not as good as Zuck's

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Someone needs to piggyback off Metas marketting machine and create a glorified Mastodon instance for Europe called something like OpenThreads. Licence a Mastodon client and customise it to look (and behave) like Threads and federate with Threads.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How do you know it's the same people?

[–] busturn 1 points 1 year ago

I follow them on Twitter :/

[–] larlyssa 1 points 1 year ago

It’s because the barrier to entry was lower. Mastodon requires learning about and understanding instances and the fediverse, finding one with good performance and the vibe you want and creating a new account. For threads, you just install the app and log in with your preexisting instagram account. Even users who weren’t interested in the long term would check it out briefly, because the hype is high and it’s easy.

[–] fucker 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As someone who doesn't use threads, how does it stand up to something like Lemmy or Reddit? I doubt it's worth using a VPN to use Threads, but that's just my assumption.

[–] ultratiem 30 points 1 year ago

About as well as Twitter does. It’s literally a Twitter clone. Not really good for micro blogging.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Omg your avatar nearly gave me a seizure.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's just red squares for me what does it look like to you?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The squares are his display name. His avatar was a rapidly shifting rainbow of colors. It looks like it was slowed down now. Not as seizure inducing.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm in the US, and I hate Meta, so this doesn't impact me, but can you disable location access on your phone to circumvent this?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They check your IP address for geofencing, and it's not something you can "not give a permission to look at"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Doesn't a VPN give you a different IP address?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Yes, but those IPs are fairly simple to identify for a company the size of Meta.

[–] joel_feila 1 points 1 year ago

yes but those address are assigned to countries so a vpn can give a US device a Swedish ip address

[–] fusion243 5 points 1 year ago

Without a VPN your IP will indicate your location, irrespective of GPS settings. In layman's terms, a VPN will allow you to appear to be using [in this case] a US IP, regardless of your actual location.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Incredible how thirsty europeans for the Zuck are that they bypass good intentioned privacy laws...

[–] WolfhoundRO 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Meanwhile I'm so happy being in EU and not having this data-stealer app anywhere in my vicinity for the foreseeable future. Life's relatively good

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah sometimes I'm also glad being an EU citizen.

[–] Faust223 5 points 1 year ago

Wouldn't this block VPN access from anywhere, not just EU?

[–] joel_feila 3 points 1 year ago

ok so people want to access treads and will a vpn to do so

[–] stooovie 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

How does that work? IF (VPN detected) THEN (fail)? Do apps even have access to that information?

Or maybe they have mandatory geolocation, compare that with IP location and if it doesn't match (=VPN), then refuse to work?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Known VPNs use a limited amount of IP addresses, which result of easily being able to flag them as VPN ones. When a bunch of users (like, hundreds of them) use the same IP address to connect to a given social network, either it is a VPN one, either a company’s CEO might have to put a proxy at the office.

[–] stooovie 1 points 1 year ago