- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/7193618
The “free fediverses” are regions of the fediverse that reject Meta and surveillance capitalism. This post is part of a series looking at strategies to position the free fediverses as an alternative to Threads and “Meta’s fediverses”.
You do realize that instances federating with Threads will share data with Threads, and that Meta’s supplemental privacy policy specifically says that they’ll use all activity that federates to meta for tracking and ad targeting, right?
So for example, if you’re on an instance that federates with Threads, and somebody on Threads is following you, all of your posts – including your followers-only posts – will get tracked by Meta. Or if somebody who boosts your post and they’ve got followers on Threads, your post will be tracked by Meta. Or if you like, boost, or reply to a post that originated on Threads, it gets tracked my Meta. And these are just the most obvious cases. What about if somebody on an instance that’s not Threads replies to a Threads post, and you reply to the reply? It depends on the how the various software implements replies – ActivityPub allows different possibilities here. And there are plenty of other potential data flows to Meta as well.
Of course they’re still just at the early stages of federation so it’s hard to know just how it’ll work out. Individually blocking Threads might well provide a lot of protection. But in general, instances which federate with Meta will almost certainly be tracked significantly more than instances that don’t.
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𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙: If those instances choose to share data with Threads, you should not join those instances.
Also 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙: Federating with threads shares “data” in the form of content
I appreciate all the time and energy you’re putting into the comments here, but what it comes down to is that you’re not concerned about the difference between the federation scenario – where this data is given to Threads under an agreement that explicitly consents to giving Meta the right to use the data for virtually whatever they want – and the situation today – where Meta and others can do the work to non-consensually scrape public data on sites that don’t put up barriers.
We’re not going to convince each other, and we’ve both got enough walls of text up that at this point neither of us are going to convince people reading the thread who aren’t already convinced, so let’s save ourselves the time and energy and leave it here.
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Yes, you described what you see as the difference between data and “data” clearly. And I described what I see as the implications clearly. If anybody’s still reading the thread, they can make their own conclusions.
Threads Supplemental Privacy Policy begs to differ that there’s not an agreement here.
I never claimed it did. It eliminates one path of consensually sharing data (or “data”, in your terms) with Meta.
In terms of your list, my perspective is that a server that federates with Threads is part of Meta’s ecosystem – #1 in your list. You don’t seem to see it that way, and that’s what we’re not going to convince each other about.
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Meta is a company whose business model depends on exploiting the data it gathers, and its privacy policies are carefully written to give it as much flexibility as possible. It’s true that if you’re on an instance that federates with Threads you’re assuming that risk. If you compare their language to a policy that’s written with a goal of privacy – like eu.social’s the differences are clear.
OK, then, speak for yourself: do you see instances that federeate with Threads as being part of Meta’s ecosystem?
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Thanks for the detailed explanation. I agree that it depends on whether “Meta’s ecosystem” is defined as including "ActivityPub federated instances which do not block ActivityPub data from going to Meta”. I do, and I originally said that “you don’t seem to see it that way.” You objected that I was putting words into your mouth … but after your last post I’m pretty sure that I accurately described your position: your definition of “Meta’s ecosystem” only includes sites that help Meta do their tracking, and you had previously said don’t consider federating data there as tracking.
Like I said, we’re not going to convince each other. I understand your position and why you think that way, I just disagree. It’s true that defederating from Threads while still federating with instances that use Meta’s services doesn’t help, it’s true that federating with Threads just sends them the data that goes to other ActivityPub instances, it’s true that Google’s also a threat – this is all part of why I frame things in terms of surveillance capitalism, not just whether or not to federate with Threads. We just come to different conclusions about the privacy impact of defederating from Threads. Restating our arguments another time won’t change anything.
And in any case, that’s not even the reason that most instances are defederating from Threads! Concern about harassment from hate groups there is a much bigger deal. So, as interesting as this conversation is, is it really a good use of our time?