Darnell Clayton Jul 3, 2023
Threads by Instagram will launch on July 6th (thanks for the heads up @dansup!) & I noticed Meta collects a lot of data. So much data!

Threads is rumored to adopt ActivityPub later on (in October maybe‽ We will see), but when it joins the Fediverse (if not on launch day), it’s data collection policies will make it easier to convince some (but not all) to migrate over to Misskey, Pixelfed, Mastodon & Pleroma.

Note: Uploading on Misskey as my Mastodon account @darnell is being fixed server side right now.

#Threads #Instagram #Meta #Facebook #Misskey #Pixelfed #Mastodon #Pleroma
Show threadJohnWJul 4, 2023

@darnell @darnell @dansup

I'm not completely sure how to sort this. I'm a techie but on the front end side. Are they able to pull in this data from instances federated with them and from users who respond/comment on Threads?

I'm not sure how big I can type HELL NO if that's the case.

Show threadDarnell Clayton 

@the_Effekt @darnell @dansup #Meta does not need to subscribe or follow you to pull data from your instance. They can easily pull info via API’s, RSS feeds of simple scraping of your site.

I believe #Google is already doing this, & it would not surprise me if #Facebook is as well.

The question folks are asking is “Will #Threads future timeline launch with ads‽ Will #Fediverse followers of Thread accounts see those ads‽”

We will find out soon.

Jul 4, 2023 at 12:25amWeb
Show threadJohnWJul 4, 2023

@darnell @darnell @dansup

Thank you for explaining. It sounds like it's pretty much anything goes for them.

As far as ads, I sincerely hope not. That would be particularly invasive of them if they tried that.

Show threadThe Nexus of PrivacyJul 4, 2023

@darnell @darnell Agreed that people are asking about ads ... although the question folks *aren't* asking is what about promoted posts (which aren't necessarily ads) and how that'll affect fediverse followers and timelines. We shall see.

In terms of Meta having other ways to get the data, yes, but those could largely be blocked or reduced (and I expect will be by instances that don't federate with Meta). Agreed that Google's also doing this, and I'm sure various bad actors are as well, so reducing this is a good thing in general. I'm working on a more detailed analysis of these various ways of getting at the data, I'll let you know once a draft is ready.

@dansup
@the_Effekt

Show threadJérômeJul 4, 2023
@thenexusofprivacy RSS is open to everyone. It’s really not hard to scrape the whole fediverse and many are doing it already. Having a federated server isn’t really changing anything. You’ll have to let us know how you think this can be blocked without shutting down every ways for people to find you (which is what Elon just learned this week by putting a login screen in front of everything and rate limit). Surely we don’t want to do the same that Elon tried and failed?
Show threadThe Nexus of PrivacyJul 4, 2023

@jerome And agreed that the approach of turning everything off only works for instances and people that want to keep a very low profile, but that's not the case in general. The Mastodon option that disables public access to the site even breaks the About page so it's useless. But, it's not all-or-nothing. Straightforward improvements can really cut down on the scraping and other ways of accessing data.

It's true that many are scraping the whole fediverse already, one of the interesting things about looking at Meta as a threat actor is that mitigations that stop them also stop other threats.