Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

privacy.thenexus.today

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 458 posts

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#121

Post by Karrot_Kream »

notatoad wrote: post #44

>Mastodon (and most other fediverse software) wasn't designed with privacy and user safety in mind this is the real problem. Mastodon and lemmy share way more information than they actually need to (like lemmy shares a list of usernames who upvoted or downvoted a post, not just a count), and if you're using one of those services you should expect that all your data and interactions are public. that's the actual threa…

Not justifying the design decision (which is bad IMO), but the reason upvotes and downvotes are shared is the nature of sending discrete events. I've been working on a Reddit like thing on top of Matrix and likewise I have to send upvote and downvote events, which means other clients that fetch events will fetch each upvote and downvote event and a malicious client can then track what individuals upvote and downvote.

(I'm trying to play around with ways around this, like using a bot to instead publish aggregation events and making votes private, but it's an ongoing exploration.)

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#122

Post by kevinventullo »

joe_the_user wrote: post #119
Nextgrid wrote: post #39

If you have personal information you do not wish bad actors to see, do not publish it using an open protocol explicitly designed to allow anyone to read said information. Defederating from Meta as a solution is stupid - Meta can (and will if they actually care enough) just rejoin undercover. Furthermore, when it comes to the fediverse, Meta is actually one of the more trusted actors compared to whatever else is on th…

Defederating from Meta as a solution is stupid - Meta can (and will if they actually care enough) just rejoin undercover. I agree with the rest of your post but I suspect that in this instance Meta, a large public company, that might leery about doing something that potentially embarassing. But your basic point remains true. A wide variety of companies, many bad actor, are going to be scraping, processing and connect…

Meta, a large public company, that might leery about doing something that potentially embarassing.

I don’t know, they did depend on Onavo analytics for a while: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#123

Post by chrisnight »

ajross wrote: post #105
chrisnight wrote: post #104

The problem I see with Threads isn't what Meta will do with fediverse data, it's the power they have with owning 97% of the entire fediverse network [1]. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Owning the vast majority of the fediverse userbase will cause them to have a large amount of power to compel users or servers to do whatever they want. What do you do when Facebook implements a new feature and all of your followers compl…

Threads is still way behind Twitter, though, which doesn't even federate with Mastodon and never did. If that's your complaint, why wasn't it doubly or triply so with the last corporate overlord? "Don't use that silly Mastodon thing, everyone is on Twitter" is, in fact, the way the world has worked for the whole lifetime of Mastodon.

> If that's your complaint, why wasn't it doubly or triply so with the last corporate overlord?

I'll interpret this to mean "If the problem is that Threads owns the majority of the userbase, why didn't you complain about Twitter owning the majority of the userbase?"

I'll reply to that as: Mastodon users did. That's why they used Mastodon in the first place, because they felt too much power was controlled in a single entity, so they complained and moved.

In terms of actions to take, what power was there with Twitter that Mastodon users did not exert? With Threads, Mastodon server owners have the power to defederate and block Threads trying to intermingle with their userbase. With Twitter, Mastodon users were the ones with the power to publicly disclose their Mastodon account and tell users to follow them on there.

In each instance, Mastodon users are doing what they can to reduce corporate overlords from having power over as many people as possible. Even if Threads is more centralized because of other instances defederating with it, the overall reach of Meta is reduced.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#124

Post by Dma54rhs »

kazinator wrote: post #56
Dma54rhs wrote: post #14

What's the point of joining a decentralized federated platform if you don't want other instances or people to see what you post? Meta scraping your name and doing other shenanigans is a different subject and obviously bad, but the rest is like complaining joining a public torrent tracker and being mad about leaking your ip address to its peers.

What's the point of joining a decentralized, open-source federated platform if you don't want Facebook to collect information about you and track you online, even though you aren't a Facebook user?

As others have noted they are doing it anyway. Gmail accepts emails from ProtonMail despite "ideological differences" and vice-versa, otherwise it's destined to doom.

If being separated from the mainstream internet is the reasoning then yeah sure, go ahead, but you also can't complain why no one besides fanatics is using alternatives when the alternatives are not worth using for the mainstream audience.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#125

Post by treyd »

dbfx wrote: post #95
ipaddr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thread users are today's aol users. Better to keep them out of areas where real conversations happen

Then I fail to see the issue since "real conversations" aren't happening on the fediverse either.

What do you mean by this? There's over a million active users including quite a few high profile people like Cory Doctorow.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#126

Post by numpad0 »

kazinator wrote: post #56
Dma54rhs wrote: post #14

What's the point of joining a decentralized federated platform if you don't want other instances or people to see what you post? Meta scraping your name and doing other shenanigans is a different subject and obviously bad, but the rest is like complaining joining a public torrent tracker and being mad about leaking your ip address to its peers.

What's the point of joining a decentralized, open-source federated platform if you don't want Facebook to collect information about you and track you online, even though you aren't a Facebook user?

And what’s wrong about details on bunches of whore - people engaged in the oldest professional occupation known to humanity, no less - scraped into Meta systems, as a replica? It’ll end up in recording, representing, normalizing birth control as well as commercial sexwork and also current status and known issues around it.

It’s just Mastodon movement or whatever it calls itself don’t want to be associated with shady corners of lower classes or the human society, despite there shouldn’t be such classes and hidden areas in the first place, as in not trying to stigmatize, deny and nullify the fact that we’re dirty animals, but in constructively removing negative aspects of life.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#127

Post by blitzar »

kazinator wrote: post #56
Dma54rhs wrote: post #14

What's the point of joining a decentralized federated platform if you don't want other instances or people to see what you post? Meta scraping your name and doing other shenanigans is a different subject and obviously bad, but the rest is like complaining joining a public torrent tracker and being mad about leaking your ip address to its peers.

What's the point of joining a decentralized, open-source federated platform if you don't want Facebook to collect information about you and track you online, even though you aren't a Facebook user?

Threads doesnt need to exist for facebook to capture every post in the fediverse.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#128

Post by cubefox »

srveale wrote: post #113
cubefox wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's completely different. Libs of TikTok only reposts very far-left takes to expose their absurdity.

They provide commentary too. They certainly have an agenda. They have targeted specific people and organizations, and also groups of people generally. The article writer needed an example of a well-known social media account that fit this description, and accounts that are worse in terms of explicitly encouraging harassment have already been banned.

Their only "agenda" is "exposing" and making fun of far-left excesses by simply reposting them. I don't think they have targeted anyone in particular. If the things they repost are damning, they were damning in themselves.

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#129

Post by justincredible »

jdp23 wrote: post #78
cdot2 wrote: post #40

[flagged]

Here's a couple of excerpts highlighting way many LGBTQ+ people see Libs of TikTok as a threat "After gaining a large Twitter following in the spring as she baselessly accused LGBTQ teachers of being pedophiles and “groomers,” Raichik began criticizing children’s health facilities earlier this summer, targeting a hospital in Omaha in June and another in Pittsburgh in August. The attacks resulted in a flood of online…

[dead]

Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse

#130

Post by jchw »

I wonder if all of this hoopla over Meta joining the Fediverse is even justified. If Meta wanted to suck up all of that data right now, they could do that without creating an entire social network to do so, by literally grabbing it from the source, where it is publicly available, and they can do this with basically no fear of ever getting called on it. By merely federating with and supporting ActivityPub, all they do is make it reciprocal, and opt-in, at least from our PoV.

The real risk here in my opinion is the influence that Threads could have over the Fediverse indirectly. What if they become an integral part of it and threaten to leave, or just leave? What if they become the defacto censor of what instances you can federate with, by virtue of cutting off anyone that doesn't defederate certain instances? Etc, etc.

The privacy concerns, while they hold some validity, are a little bit moot for people who weren't going to consider using Threads in the first place. Google hoovers up all of this data already if only indirectly, and nobody seems to bat an eye.

Post reply on HN