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The recent excitement surrounding Thread's arrival on the Fediverse is concerning. To understand why this is not a good idea, consider their economic interest in harvesting data, their poor moderation, and their manipulations. Nothing good can come from their federation. Don't roll out the red carpet for them.
@davidrevoy @ariane I have a hard time understanding all this angst about Threads, besides a gross misunderstanding of how the Fediverse works. The misunderstanding is quite acceptable for an artist or most of the users, far less so for some mastodon admins who decided to block Threads.
I'm therefore inviting anyone thinking Threads is dangerous to at least read Mastodon's creator thoughs about it (and dispel some weird beliefs on the way) :
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/
The way Meta makes money via harvesting data and people manipulation on the other hand is important, the fact that Meta is proprietary is also important because it means they can do extensions without others being easily able to follow or solve interoperability issues.
Gargron here is playing a dangerous game and is trying to lessen the harm Meta can do.
@lanodan @davidrevoy @ariane Meta CANNOT harvest data on the Fediverse, this need at least to be understood. It is this myth and some others that Gargron is trying to dispel. Honestly explaining what Meta can and can't do on the Fediverse technically is not lessening the harm Meta could do but letting people make informed choice (as long as their admins allow them to).
@Leuenberg @lanodan @ariane Do you think they'll not harvest data about what a Threads user is watching on remote instances? What content they visit, how much time they spend on it? If it triggered a compulsive buy, or writing a post? Do you think Meta will not deboost your post sent from the Fediverse on Threads, and boost artificially the brands, celebreties and politics they want, or just local users? To you think they'll do not nudge any of their users to accomplish things?
@davidrevoy @lanodan @ariane What Meta does to Thread users (a lot of invasive stuff) is irrelevant to what we do on the Fediverse, everything you're describing is happening on the Threads App, no matter if Threads is on the Fediverse or not.
On the opposite, if I'm subscribing to a Thread user, Meta cannot do anything about my activity : because I'm not using their App they CANNOT advertise stuff to me and they CANNOT get my personnal data (only my server has my email, IP address, etc.)
> Meta CANNOT harvest data on the Fediverse
awww that’s so sweet and naive
they totally can, activitypub federation is basically a replication platform
@duponin @davidrevoy @lanodan @ariane Gorgron disagrees with you here, guess who's right ? Why would Meta get more power than any other application on the fediverse ? Why would your server suddenly disclose to Meta what it is not disclosing anyway to the other servers ?
nice try on your authority argument fallacy btw
@duponin @davidrevoy @lanodan @ariane I think I understand enough to know that Meta is certainly not an issue here. But then please explain how suddenly Meta would be able to harvest your personnal data from your server ? I'm not aware of any way ActivityPub would allow you to get any information about the poster beside the thing he is posting (which is public anyway).
And personal data doesn't magically becomes detached from a person when it becomes public (which is actually not so public when it comes to profiles only visible via authenticated-fetches).
@lanodan @davidrevoy @ariane @duponin Agreed, but then it's not a concern with Meta, technically they could retrieve all the public data they want with an accounts on big instance and start playing with the APIs.
I suspect that many people freaking out about Meta have no idea of the big privacy issues intrinsic to ActivityPub, at least I know that Meta do not care about my activity since they can't monetize it. I'm not so confident about those rogue or badly maintained servers.
And we know ActivityPub sucks about data privacy and it could do better, but we also know that enforcing data privacy via technology alone doesn't really works because otherwise you'd end up a hermit.
Never had a friend tell someone else about your secrets? Or did something a bit embarrassing in public? (Or that you'd regret years/decades later)
Meta works like a creep who would gather information about people at their expanse.