Red flags in the Threads privacy policy
1–10 of 263 posts
Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy
#2Man I hate these alarmist hit pieces.
- "You cant delete Threads without deleting Instagram altogether": but you can deactivate it. What's the difference, and why do I care? Without including that info, you're useless.
- "Threads collects sensitive personal information about you": How? Inferred from the things I post? Well I'll just not post those things.
- "Threads collects data about your employment": Same.
- "Threads collects data about your body": Same. Alternatively, this could come from the Health API, which I have to provide explicit permission for. Such permission was not even asked for.
- "Threads collects data about your web activity": How? It reads referrer headers. So an issue with my User Agent, if it were configured to do that. Which it isn't.
- "Threads collects data about your location". It may reverse-geocode my IP. Okay. And? Literally any analytics service with a map does the same.
Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy
#3In my opinion, all the people complaining about privacy policies are barking up the wrong tree. As the saying goes in business, if you have to read the contract, you're already screwed.
The reality is that the privacy policy will almost never be a determining factor in whether somebody will use a service. The Facebook haters on HN were never gonna use a Facebook product anyways, regardless of what the policy said, and the same goes for the people that are happily using threads now. Does the privacy absolutist who refuses to do anything outside of a VM behind Tor exist? Of course, but not in any meaningful amount for it to matter.
The people closely reading terms of services and opting out of arbitration provisions or whatever are wasting their times with busywork. It's doing work that feels meaningful and feels like giving it to the man without actually accomplishing much of anything.
Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy
#4Man I hate these alarmist hit pieces. - "You cant delete Threads without deleting Instagram altogether": but you can deactivate it. What's the difference, and why do I care? Without including that info, you're useless. - "Threads collects sensitive personal information about you": How? Inferred from the things I post? Well I'll just not post those things. - "Threads collects data about your employment": Same. - "Thre…
Interesting to see the media side of the battle of the billionaires.
Honestly, I find it far more interesting than the physical fight that Musk and Zuckerberg were talking about.
Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy
#5Man I hate these alarmist hit pieces. - "You cant delete Threads without deleting Instagram altogether": but you can deactivate it. What's the difference, and why do I care? Without including that info, you're useless. - "Threads collects sensitive personal information about you": How? Inferred from the things I post? Well I'll just not post those things. - "Threads collects data about your employment": Same. - "Thre…
This reply is a good example of someone whose perspective is utterly locked in to their own perceived personal threat model (which may or may not accurately understand their own actual threats). This technology, they think, is perfectly acceptable according to their own sense of threats, so why isn't it good enough for literally everyone?
Other people's threat models are so unimaginable, so inconceivable that the commenter "hates" the "hit pieces" that attempt to inform people of risks, people who may face different threats than the hater.
I hope most folks can step out of their own context occasionally and view our current zietgeist from the perspective of a sex worker, or a journalist, or basically anybody who may have perfectly good reasons for electing to maintain their privacy.
I don't think that's too much to ask.
Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy
#6Man I hate these alarmist hit pieces. - "You cant delete Threads without deleting Instagram altogether": but you can deactivate it. What's the difference, and why do I care? Without including that info, you're useless. - "Threads collects sensitive personal information about you": How? Inferred from the things I post? Well I'll just not post those things. - "Threads collects data about your employment": Same. - "Thre…
> "Threads collects data about your body"
This could come from any number of sources. Running AI to determine race, height, weight, and age from a profile picture for example.
> "Threads collects data about your web activity": How? It reads referrer headers.
Or it fingerprints you and your local network so it can associate browsing outside the app with your threads’ profile to better target ads?
Honestly you seem 20 years behind the times with how invasive tracking and analysis can be.
Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy
#7If your problem is with the ownership of Twitter, I don’t understand why you would run from the arms of one wannabe cage-fighter into another’s.
If your problem is with ethics, FB isn’t a beacon of good behavior.
If your problem is getting rate-limited or losing your blue checkmark, I guess go wild, but you probably already loved Twitter too much to leave.
Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy
#8Man I hate these alarmist hit pieces. - "You cant delete Threads without deleting Instagram altogether": but you can deactivate it. What's the difference, and why do I care? Without including that info, you're useless. - "Threads collects sensitive personal information about you": How? Inferred from the things I post? Well I'll just not post those things. - "Threads collects data about your employment": Same. - "Thre…
This reply is a good example of someone whose perspective is utterly locked in to their own perceived personal threat model (which may or may not accurately understand their own actual threats). This technology, they think, is perfectly acceptable according to their own sense of threats, so why isn't it good enough for literally everyone ? Other people's threat models are so unimaginable, so inconceivable that the co…
Is it too much to ask how, exactly, other apps safeguard this info? Allegedly, according to the App Store privacy declaration, mastodon collects no user content. Now how does that work? How does one post on a network that doesn't collect user content?
Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy
#9If your problem is with the ownership of Twitter, I don’t understand why you would run from the arms of one wannabe cage-fighter into another’s. If your problem is with ethics, FB isn’t a beacon of good behavior. If your problem is getting rate-limited or losing your blue checkmark, I guess go wild, but you probably already loved Twitter too much to leave.
I think we spend too much time and mental energy questioning other people's reasons for how they spend their free time.
Re: Red flags in the Threads privacy policy
#10If your problem is with the ownership of Twitter, I don’t understand why you would run from the arms of one wannabe cage-fighter into another’s. If your problem is with ethics, FB isn’t a beacon of good behavior. If your problem is getting rate-limited or losing your blue checkmark, I guess go wild, but you probably already loved Twitter too much to leave.
It's not about any of those things, it's about just being a well-run internet service. Facebook is very good at running a big internet service that billions use, Twitter not so much under new management.
A well-run internet service tries not to keep causing self-inflicted PR disasters. A well-run service is stable, consistently available, doesn't have a large amount of feature churn, and generally has stable leadership making sane decisions about maximising value. None of those things describe Twitter under Musk, but Facebook is a generally well-run company with sound policies and competent leadership.
Just because people here disagree with many of Facebook's decisions doesn't make them any less good. I may think that the focus on VR is a strategic mistake, or that Facebook has a PR problem, but generally they're good stewards of the platform they've created and run it fairly well.