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

privacy.thenexus.today

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

#211

Post by mattl »

someNameIG wrote: post #195
wizofaus wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the vast majority of people are on gmail, apple, or outlook What do apple email addresses look like? I genuinely don't know anybody that uses an address that says to me "provided by Apple"... I do know a lot of people that use their corporate/organisational addresses for personal email though, which always surprised me. Edit: just read that "me.com" email addresses are apple-provided - I have at least seen them use…

me.com is the old address, it's been icloud.com for years now.

And mac.com previous to that. Plus you can use your own domain name.

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

#212

Post by omoikane »

Havoc wrote: post #118
zzzeek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point they're making is that Meta is in a special place, where by using their unusually vast amounts of personal data and photos, they are somehow (?) going to dox anonymous users by publishing their real names, based on matching their profiles in some way. At least that is the implication based on the quoted tweet right at the top of the post (which is lacking any real detail how exactly Meta got this pe…

>using their unusually vast amounts of personal data Jikes. Hadn't considered that. Certainly seems plausible, not just via technical means but also content. I've got a reddit profile that I try very hard to keep "clean and anonymous" yet I've had people from halfway around the world message me say "Hey you're Jack from X". Post sufficient volume and it becomes identifiable no matter how hard one tries.

I think people can make that discovery but you could always deny that association, and it might be difficult for random strangers to gather enough proof to say that two accounts are linked.

Meta appears to be publicizing account associations that were previously difficult to confirm, in a way that defeats any previous efforts to maintain deniability.

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

#214

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#215

Post by mattl »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #124
kazinator wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was a post here from Drew DeVault a while ago on how they’re rejecting all non-plaintext email.

I see the situation as similar

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

#216

Post by wizofaus »

mattl wrote: post #211
someNameIG wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

me.com is the old address, it's been icloud.com for years now.

And mac.com previous to that. Plus you can use your own domain name.

Are there any stats on how many people do that? It seems me the only way it could be true that Apple mail has far more users than outlook/live/hotmail is if the former tend to be associated with custom domains.

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

#217

Post by dcow »

gonehome wrote: post #159
godelski wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Defederating from Meta as a solution is stupid One question I've had for fediverse people is how you prevent a federated system from centralizing. I am legitimately curious. Email is often given as an example, but imo that a perfect example of a decentralized system BECOMING centralized. Sure, other players exist but the vast majority of people are on gmail, apple, or outlook (which is much smaller than the other t…

I think you don’t, which is why I think federated systems built on the existing stack are doomed to fail (by recentralizing). You’re right to point out email as an example of this failure. You need urbit or something like it to fix it, the problems are deeper. https://martiancomputing.substack.com/p/tlon-urbit-computing...

I am continually impressed by how much more relevant Urbit has become (contrary to people years ago arguing it would fade out into irrelevancy). Urbit was designed holistically to solve the problems the "web 2" internet experienced in a structural way, not just apply some fancy "web 3" bandaids to some them. So of course it is a lofty project. But time and again it's proven that it took the right stance on socio-technological issues. Will it ever gain enough traction so that it replaces your text message app? Well that's really a social question, and one can wish. But it certainly solves all the problems people keep bumbling into when trying to "do web3". I wish more people would give it a serious look.

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

#218

Post by Guvante »

dcow wrote: post #203
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…

Yeah I stopped reading the article once it mentioned people getting annoyed and wanting to control who sees their public content. You don't get to make that call. The community doesn't get to make that call. The protocol makes that call and the protocol allows anybody to view stuff you post publicly. You don't get to say "I publish this but Meta can't view it". Not even legally you don't. That's not privacy and no am…

Your understanding is flawed. Copyright is 100% okay with transitively controlling production of content.

After all how else would you describe someone allowing Netflix to stream your content?

You can't restream Netflix and Netflix is restricted on how it can stream to you. Both rooted in the original Copyright protection and the licenses to content given out by intermediaries.

Most posting platforms give themselves very broad rights with what they can do in a transitive fashion.

But that is "companies don't want to get sued for user uploaded content and are lazy" not "you don't have any rights over things that are published".

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

#219

Post by mattl »

wizofaus wrote: post #216
mattl wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And mac.com previous to that. Plus you can use your own domain name.

Are there any stats on how many people do that? It seems me the only way it could be true that Apple mail has far more users than outlook/live/hotmail is if the former tend to be associated with custom domains.

Apple mail the client has a lot more users than any Apple-offered mail.

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

#220

Post by charcircuit »

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…

>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

Mastodon already did this to ActivityPub. Extending open protocols is important else people will stop using them in order to accomplish building what they want.

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