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Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting Instagram account, Meta says

techcrunch.com

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Re: Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting Instagram account, Meta says

#61

Post by nmltprand »

unmole wrote: post #55
nmltprand wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want your selfies for facial recognition in order to track you better across the web and possibly resell that information to third parties. Also a great dataset for "AI" training, so your face can appear in modified form in laundered pictures.

> They want your selfies for facial recognition in order to track you better across the web How on earth does facial recognition help with tracking someone across the web?

If they get a match with a high school picture for "John Smith" from a school in an affluent area, they can adjust advertisements.

If your face appears in a riot, they can resell the information to the government.

Re: Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting Instagram account, Meta says

#62

Post by londons_explore »

londons_explore wrote: post #29
Emma_Goldman wrote: post #22

I still can't believe it's app-only, that there's no desktop version. I refuse to wall off parts of the internet into silos that I have to enter through downloadable portals.

I just run anbox so I can run android apps as desktop apps. Sometimes it actually performs better than a crappy slow react webapp.

Sometimes you get banned from apps because anbox makes you look like a botter...

Re: Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting Instagram account, Meta says

#63

Post by janalsncm »

samwillis wrote: post #18

its clear Meta are trying quite hard to piggyback Threads off the more palatable brand of Instagram rather than Facebook. However ultimately it's all still the same company, the same data mining and ad/influencing platform. It's an interesting strategy, the app on the Apple App Store is published by "Instagram Inc" rather than Meta, prominently named as "Threads, an Instagram App". They could have launched it as a co…

Well this is an alternative to Twitter, a company which lied about needing phone numbers for 2FA and then used them for targeted ads.

> does that show that they feel threatened, have weakening market position, and need a new direction?

It shows they are trying to capitalize on Twitter’s dumpster fire, and for the first time there is a mainstream competitor. Sorry Mastodon. Every time Twitter bugs out, people will go to Threads. Some may never go back to Twitter.

Re: Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting Instagram account, Meta says

#65

Post by fallingknife »

bjohnson225 wrote: post #37
ssl232 wrote: post #2

People jumping ship from Twitter for this thinking they're going to be treated any better are probably in line for a nasty surprise.

I thought the quotes on the BBC article were quite revealing: > Mr Zuckerberg said keeping the platform "friendly... will ultimately be the key to its success". > But Mr Musk responded: "It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram." If Threads is a fractionally less toxic version of Twitter, it’ll do quite well.

Is that really true, though? All of the social media today was absolutely packed with all the stuff that everybody now says is absolutely toxic during its rapid growth phase. And users today often talk about how much better it was 10 years ago when it was still the wild west.

Re: Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting Instagram account, Meta says

#66

Post by hnbad »

Completely tangential to the article itself, TechCrunch's privacy controls are also extremely user hostile.

First it prompts you with the usual consent banner but of course doesn't provide a button to refuse all unless you click through to a second screen (this is in violation of the GDPR and ePrivacy guidelines btw, the "reject all" button needs to be front and center and must be given as much weight as an "accept all" button if present).

Then it shows me the article but the article embeds something (presumably a tweet or a Facebook post or something else) and tells me "To view this this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Click here to do so.". So instead of letting me decide in place that I want to agree to that one embed or even all embeds from the same source, I have to go somewhere else. And I don't even know what I'm missing out on and of course there's no direct link to whatever is being included either.

Finally if I click the link it takes me to a page with a big toggle switch that asks me to agree to all social advertising partners. Not just social networks either, most of these are just advertising and analytics. And I can't pick and choose either, I have to give a blanket consent without being informed of the details and purposes, which, again, blatantly violates the GDPR and ePrivacy guidelines.

I'm not pointing out that these are in violation because I think US companies should be beholden to EU law. I'm pointing this out because it demonstrates how blatantly user hostile this is.

Re: Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting Instagram account, Meta says

#68

Post by hnbad »

Zealotux wrote: post #41

I guess I'm safe since I live in a literal hell for Meta (GDPR-compliant country).

Arguably, Mastodon is also problematic from a GDPR perspective as ActivityPub doesn't offer a way to control data once it has left the instance (which is the entire point of federation). But something tells me Meta didn't have to hold off on publishing Threads in the EU because it uses ActivityPub. And this account merging may indeed also be in violation.

Re: Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting Instagram account, Meta says

#69

Post by Terr_ »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #33
safety1st wrote: post #16

Meta will nuke your Instagram account for basically anything, including for no reason at all. I have like 50 followers, 10 photos, and check my IG once every week or two - haven't posted anything in months. Meta has banned me twice for unspecified policy violations (both times I had to send them a selfie and got reinstated, and there was no way to ask a human what these policies were). I suspect they'll ban/unban me…

> Meta will nuke your Instagram account for basically anything Opened the app last week and had to click through an accept gate warning me if I keep using "Scraping tools" I'll lose my account. The only "scraping" I've been doing is copying the direct image links and posting them to slack and my bookmarking service a few times a month. Insane to me that they're red in the face threatening me to lose my account over h…

Is it possible you're using some ad/JS-blocker or DNS blacklist, and Meta's silly tools are interpreting that as proof of a headless scraping client?

So far that's the best theory for why Reddit recently plunged my 13-year account into Kafkaesque censored limbo. And then did it again after a month of seeking answers on another account.

Re: Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting Instagram account, Meta says

#70

Post by unmole »

nmltprand wrote: post #61
unmole wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want your selfies for facial recognition in order to track you better across the web How on earth does facial recognition help with tracking someone across the web?

If they get a match with a high school picture for "John Smith" from a school in an affluent area, they can adjust advertisements. If your face appears in a riot, they can resell the information to the government.

> If they get a match with a high school picture for "John Smith" from a school in an affluent area, they can adjust advertisements.

Right, it's not like they gather location data and insist on real world names or buy data from brokers or use cookies. Facial recognition is the missing piece of in the puzzle!

> If your face appears in a riot, they can resell the information to the government.

It's not like governments have databases with photo identification.

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