Mastodawn

clifff Jul 4, 2023

Meta’s new app “Threads” is up pre-order in the App Store. Let’s do a quick check on what data they want from you compared to the official Mastodon app, Mammoth and Ivory.

Spoiler: Meta wants to know and track everything about you, and Mastodon doesn’t want anything.

#threads

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Willow (she/her)Jul 4, 2023

@clifff Why the fuuuuck does a social media app need to know my financials and health info?!

YUCK.

ETA: This was not an invitation to reply guys to pile up in my mentions. Go away. No one wants you here.

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arnoid Jul 4, 2023

@MsHearthWitch @clifff If you use instagram you give them the exact same data. Threads is essentially based off of instagram’s data, so yeah threads also has access to the exact same data.Also to add on this a lot of this is opt-in ,i.e., you can choose whether or not to give access to nor not. #threads

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Deeso Snep Jul 4, 2023

@arnoid @MsHearthWitch @clifff Yeah, but as usual the problem is that you have to opt out of that stuff. Big Techs rely in a large part of the population who don't understand or are not concerned about privacy.

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Peter Bindels Jul 4, 2023

@Deeso @arnoid @MsHearthWitch @clifff It's not just the opt-out; usually they will gate part of functionality behind unnecessary (but related) permissions.

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arnoid Jul 4, 2023

@dascandy42 @Deeso @MsHearthWitch @clifff They are not allowed to do that as per the store guidelines for both apple and google. Their app submissions would be rejected. So for example a navigation app requires you to give it location access , but if for some reason it also requires access to your contacts for navigation that app will not pass the app review process and the dev will have to make the necessary changes but my main point remains “Transparency” is imp

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Peter Bindels Jul 4, 2023

@arnoid @Deeso @MsHearthWitch @clifff I wonder who wants to start a discussion with Facebook about having a permission that's not strictly necessary but related. Can't imagine anyone being paid enough to actually start that.

Not to mention that this is the company that had to patch symbol table loaders in early Android because their code base has so much code.

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arnoid

@dascandy42 @Deeso @MsHearthWitch @clifff Apple and google will do it , when it violates their app guidelines, they may manage to sneak one in but it will eventually be caught and have to be rectified. The second part not surprising , any codebase used for so many years and worked on by mutiple devs will have such issues.