John Coggeshall
Luke LeBrunComparing and contrasting app privacy policies for Threads, Bluesky, Twitter and Mastodon:
Smellbringer@llebrun And yet people still don't wanna use it because "server scary."
Semi Sentient AI Cooling Water@Smellbringer @llebrun I do think we need to dumb it down slightly just make simple invites to friends to our preferred instances. Don't bamboozle them with choice.
Joe Lapp, Bug Poet@sentient_water @Smellbringer @llebrun It also took me about 60 seconds to figure out how to create a link the the above post I could share on Facebook. When I attempted to share the boosted post, FB provided an error graphic, likely because Mastodon is not making proper use of Open Graph (to play well with others). Mastodon *is* often a pain to use.
Joshua A.C. Newman@sentient_water @Smellbringer @llebrun “Dumbing things down” is the opposite of bringing someone on.
Overcoming choice paralysis doesn’t make you smart. It means you had a criterion on which to make a decision. If “it doesn’t matter” what instance to use, yeah: send them an invite. If it matters, send them an invite. There’s no reason to have to make an inherently uninformed choice first.
@JoshuaACNewman @Smellbringer @llebrun Yeah that's definitely not the case. Also you didn't solve the equation so jog on.
@JoshuaACNewman @Smellbringer @llebrun x3+y3+z3=k, with k being all the numbers from one to 100
Solve the above & I'll agree with you!
@sentient_water @Smellbringer @llebrun Ah, I get it. You’re invested in gatekeeping. Don’t worry, were all working hard to tear down gates and you’ll be able to find something useful to do soon.
Natalie@Smellbringer @llebrun Which is weird because you'd think data collection would be scarier. I mean, given how often data leaks happen on big sites.
MuckrakingMadness@llebrun Pretty obvious comparison. Thank You.
Jonathan Zhan@llebrun Good reminder to donate to Mastodon.
HRH ginsterbusch
AJ Grant@llebrun I’m convinced they just report that they collect everything. Probably bc they don’t wanna go through the effort of listing what they don’t track
joshhunt@llebrun the Mastodon self-report is obviously incorrect as it collects personal data like your email, no?
UnsavedTrash@unsavedtrash none of the other stuff that the Meta properties report are required either.
The listing doesn’t report require properties, just what can be ‘tracked’
@joshhunt they are required though, if they are listed it means that they require that data to be available to use the app, even if it isnt needed for the app to function. Facebook will still poll for that data because in seeing the prompt and downloading it with those permissions displayed, you consent to them polling for it when they want to.
Mastodon doesnt need nor require an email or any data to run, nor does it poll for any data.
@unsavedtrash Granted its only been one day, but I've never had the threads app request Health & Fitness information. If that data isn't required to function, why is it there?
@joshhunt because they want the data to sell or for whatever Zuck's reasoning is.
Think of it this way, you dont need to pay to enter a concert, you can sneak in but you may be unable to access most of the features of the event without your special $20 wristband you have to pay for when walking in normally.
Health and fitness is the $20 fee you pay at the door.
Why do they want the $20? Maybe for recouping the event, maybe for profit, maybe just to prove everyone coming in isnt homeless.
@joshhunt in this case specifically no one has figured out a way to sneak in yet so everyone has to relinquish and pay the consent fee of allowing threads the option to access this data.
Shanya (Over at BlueSky)
Quills
Fabio Tavano@llebrun that’s what they declare...
athe52@llebrun I don't even get why some apps need to track all of this. Like, apart from advertising, why would someone need to know my screen density or headphone status or some other garbage like that?
Canadian Dude@openrain502r @llebrun knowledge is power
@openrain502r @llebrun
Fingerprinting, its to get an idea of what makes your device unique, so when another sister site or data hoarding company sees the unique parts again they know its you, even without you having to sign in or tell them.
It makes it really good when 2 separate companies have your very unique fingerprints and they both sell different data about you to make a bigger picture for a 3rd party like an advertiser or government.
🪨@openrain502r @llebrun Could be used for debugging, for instance if you report an issue with text disappearing behind a button on your phone that has a smaller form factor than the devices used when testing the app, or if there is an issue with sound from videos specifically happening when headphones are disconnected in the middle of a video, or something like that.
But then it should only be sent as part of bug reports, in my opinion.
But then it should only be sent as part of bug reports, in my opinion.
Orb 2069@openrain502r @llebrun technically, hardware statistics are used to determine what specs of phone they should prioritize bug fixes/development for. For ad revenue, how expensive/recent your phone is can correlate to your spending habits generally, something advertisers care about greatly.
tom4okstate@llebrun this brings to mind something I've wondered in the past. Are there people who like seeing targeted advertising? It seems so annoying to me, but there must be a subset of people who don't mind it I guess. Or even enjoy it.
Ondrej Toman@tom4okstate I personally think it’s just an excuse to run those ads at the first place. Who would like to be followed with products and services they visited, it’s creepy.
“Some people like to see targeted ads!”… What a BS! Most of the people would like everything for free, without ads.
Havyhh2@llebrun ...holy shit!!!
Samuel Synthwave 
@llebrun And this is the reason why Europe don’t allow Threads in it’s region, yet. This data recollection system doesn’t allign with the GDPR articles of how to manage the consumers data
GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)@llebrun Image descriptions: Threads collects a lot of data about you, Mastodon none, Twitter and BlueSky in between
Jesse@GreenSkyOverMe @llebrun Almost. Threads collects *all* the data about you.
MrSerLoL@GreenSkyOverMe @llebrun I wouldn’t call Twitter “in between” tho - it’s a bit closer to Threads
Ryan B. Anderson@llebrun well there you have it. After what just happened with Twitter it amazes me that more folks aren’t paying attention to this stuff.
@llebrun literally what I did earlier today hahaha
Julio Perez 🌏📯
Abhimanyu Aryan@llebrun I think bluesky will eventually change that? How will they survive as a company?
The Frog@llebrun health, financial and browsing history?
Sinister or what?
Sam Swaine@llebrun in a nutshell 😜
Lancillotto@llebrun Surely this is enough to sway people? But apparently many folk love their yoke.
Tobias Denkinger@sentient_water
Unfortunately, most people don't care about privacy until it's too late. Just like most people don't care about democracy until it's too late.
@llebrun
Unfortunately, most people don't care about privacy until it's too late. Just like most people don't care about democracy until it's too late.
@llebrun
Marsha 
@[email protected] @davidakin oof 😳😣
Alexandre Morin@llebrun the problem is that most people do not care…
- Sent from Metatext, also not collecting data on me
- Sent from Metatext, also not collecting data on me
CalebDusdal@llebrun what a beautiful comparison.
Makes the choice much easier I would hope.
Xiuwen@llebrun Great comparison makes the choice simple 👍
Chris_Swan@llebrun Data is the new money. I, like everyone else, was drawn to social media before it was huge. Billionaires don't give you something for nothing and who knows who they are selling it to. At the start of the UK's badger cull, 10 years ago, there were definite funny goings on with people's FB accounts. That platform was used for a lot of information sharing - bad, bad idea. More recently, a number of my contacts have been hacked. A system that harvests data is ripe for the picking.
n3wjack@llebrun if there's one thing people clearly don't care about, it's their privacy.
Until it's too late. Then its 😭
I like how this is presented on iOS. On Android this is just way too hard to find.
🇺🇦🇪🇺 cweickhmann@llebrun "Health & Fitness" ... yup, because that's strictly necessary for the functioning of this app.
Also: Got to love "Sensitive Info" 🤷
Akos Miklos 
@llebrun Technically Mastodon does collect personal info (username, pass, email) and user content (posts, images/vids uploaded), because those are needed to use the app.
.
Anca@miklos_akos @llebrun That information is collected by the operators of each server, not by the providers of the Mastodon mobile app.
No information is getting sent to Mastodon, the company, when you use Mastodon, the mobile app.
Nameless Cynic@llebrun I'm actually a little surprised that there isn't more being tracked by Threads. Anything produced by our friends at Facebook is usually optimized for it's data-mining potential.
Felix Neumann@llebrun @brunomvsouza Health, Search History, Financial Info, Contacts. Incredible how they don’t give a damn.
But then I laugh at them as they can’t bring it to the EU due to their strong data protection laws 😂