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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

#241

Post by paxys »

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…

> Blocking Threads from federating is just a short-term patch over mastodon's bad privacy controls.

It's not a patch at all. Facebook (and literally anyone else) can still scrape or otherwise access that data in a hundred different ways. Blocking Threads is simply some server admins making an anti-Facebook statement, nothing more.

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

#242

Post by not2b »

bmacho wrote: post #206
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If you have personal information you do not wish bad actors to see, do not publish it using an open protocol explicitly designed to allow anyone to read said information.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…

Can Meta scrape twitter or reddit, and pair your messages with your facebook account? Sure they can. But it is probably not legal, and looks very scary. Mastodon and Fediverse however explicitly offers your data to them.

Even though Threads isn't federated yet, you can find any user's public messages via https://threads.net/@username (which is identical to the scheme Mastodon and other fediverse sites use). Anyone's public postings can be found in the same way, and defederation doesn't prevent it. There is nothing to stop the Meta folks from looking at https://sfba.social/@not2b even if our admin blocks threads.net.

Mastodon and the fediverse explicitly offer public posts to everyone. Some sites use robots.txt to block search engines and web crawlers that follow the conventions. Others don't.

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

#243

Post by [deleted] »

bobthecowboy wrote: post #223
smoldesu wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As many others have said before, this isn't very likely to happen for many of the reasons it never happened with the web or Linux. - ActivityPub is an open protocol. If Meta goes all-in on it, they'll be implementing a transparent spec everyone knows. Modifying that would send obvious shockwaves through the network and signal their non-cooperation. There isn't a covert way for them to really try this. - Mastodon itse…

It doesn't have to be a technical strategy, but a UX path to EEE. I've been thinking about this in terms of Lemmy (also built on ActivityPub), which I understand isn't currently on the table for interop (but if Facebook is after Twitter's lunch, why shouldn't they be after Reddit's). It could even be the same application - Kbin is another AP service which has separate tabs for "link aggregation" and "microblogging" (…

[deleted]

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

#244

Post by scarface_74 »

dcow wrote: post #224
Guvante wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not that simple. If I sell you a book, I cannot place a restriction on that sale saying you can't resell that book (first sale doctrine). You're allowed to do that because you own the copy of the book. You can't copy the book and sell it, because you don't own the copyright , but you can sell the original copy, show it to whomever you want, etc. It's not that "copyright is okay with transitive licensing" but mor…

> Saying "only on Tuesdays and not in Brazil" gives too much control to creators to dictate how their art should be interpreted.

Do you feel the same way about restrictive open source software licenses like GPL3?

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

#245

Post by dahwolf »

mrguyorama wrote: post #145
dnissley wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if this happens it won't make any difference to how these instances operate, will it? It'll just reduce traffic to them, right?

People are complaining that facebook is, intentionally or otherwise, going to suffocate the baby in the crib, before it has a chance to grow. If you provide a way to see mastadon content without actually doing the work of joining mastadon, nobody will join mastadon except the people who have strong ideological reasons to join mastadon, which accelerates the problem. It's the same effect as any platform that tries "fr…

The original idea of having many small-sized instances is already failing, also without Meta. Small instances are unreliable (they quit/shutdown), have major sync issues (not seeing all replies, boosts etc) and have a tendency for too restrictive moderation and defederation.

So indeed, most people (normies) will naturally flow towards larger and more mainstream instances. It's already tilting in that direction and actively encouraged in the signup process.

As these instances grow, they will simply have more disagreeable posts (from the perspective of the ideological instances) leading to even more defederation, hence the split will become ever harder over time.

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

#246

Post by nobody9999 »

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…

>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.

A fair point, and one that's not really new either.

Don't want something to be public? Don't post it publicly. As I recall, when my employer at the time (mid 1990s) "federated" their email with the rest of the world, they sent out a memo which stated, in part, "don't put anything in an email that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of your local newspaper."

That was back when local newspapers were a thing, but I imagine you can see the parallels.

That said, I do get to control who sees my content -- by not making it public (i.e., I don't federate my AP instances and curate who can create accounts on them).

If you want something to be private, don't post it publicly. I'm not sure why that's such a foreign idea to some folks since, as I mentioned, it's not even close to being a new idea.

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

#247

Post by dahwolf »

strogonoff wrote: post #48

ActivityPub has a problem of laying all data out, nicely structured, just waiting to be scraped and mined and machine-processed, in perpetuity by default, as if it was something people inherently need when communicating. Is it, though? It does look like something idealistically-minded early techies would justifiably find really cool. It may indeed be desirable for, say, Dutch government (and perhaps any government th…

Indeed, and I extend this problem to any data of any value. The more semantically you describe it, the more pathways you create for abuse.

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

#248

Post by dcow »

scarface_74 wrote: post #244
dcow wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that simple. If I sell you a book, I cannot place a restriction on that sale saying you can't resell that book (first sale doctrine). You're allowed to do that because you own the copy of the book. You can't copy the book and sell it, because you don't own the copyright , but you can sell the original copy, show it to whomever you want, etc. It's not that "copyright is okay with transitive licensing" but mor…

> Saying "only on Tuesdays and not in Brazil" gives too much control to creators to dictate how their art should be interpreted. Do you feel the same way about restrictive open source software licenses like GPL3?

Yes all software should just be public domain. But because we have icky copyright, we have to have icky software licenses.

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

#249

Post by vidarh »

smoldesu wrote: post #205
vidarh wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason for Meta to use Mastodon in order to federate, so I don't see why the license of Mastodon is relevant.

Then there's nothing for them to extend or extinguish. If they're not able to manipulate the client and they can only control the content on their own server, what leverage does Meta have to extinguish the fediverse?

They can potentially try to make changes to the protocol, and try to leverage their users numbers to force people to accept it. I think, though, that they'll find that a lot of us are stubborn and don't like them and will not react well to that.

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

#250

Post by usrusr »

godelski wrote: post #143
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 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…

Even "effectively re-centralized federated" will still provide much better ways to keep all that browser fingerprinting stuff and the like away from Meta et al than a closed system. E.g. if for some reason you need to operate a Google email address you could run the day to day read and write behind a forwarding setup never connecting your regular browser or your imap client to Google servers, dealing with the occasional setup/maintenance from a browser properly isolated from your search history and the like.
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