Here is the Threads Supplemental Privacy Policy referenced in the article. Some relevant excerpts are:
We collect information about the Third Party Services and Third Party Users who interact with Threads. If you interact with Threads through a Third Party Service (such as by following Threads users, interacting with Threads content, or by allowing Threads users to follow you or interact with your content), we collect information about your third-party account and profile (such as your username, profile picture, IP address, and the name of the Third Party Service on which you are registered), your content (such as when you allow Threads users to follow, like, reshare, or have mentions in your posts), and your interactions (such as when you follow, like, reshare, or have mentions in Threads posts).
And further down…
If you are a Third Party User, our ability to verify your request may be limited and we may be unable to process your request. Please note, however, that the interoperable protocol allows Third Party Services to automatically send Threads requests for deletion of individual posts when those posts are deleted on the Third Party Service. We make reasonable efforts to honor such requests when we receive them. Contact your Third Party Service to learn more.
Thats a nothingburger and a half.
This just lists the info that is auto shared through federation, in legalese. The second one explains how federated deletes work, also in legalese. This is the info any instance would handle if you interacted with it.
It’s worth thinking about what you’re putting out there, but you’re right. This isn’t a Threads specific thing.
You’re putting these posts on the internet. You should expect everyone to read them, including Threads and Google and Putin and Kim Jong Un. That’s kind of the idea of public posting. They don’t even need an API to do that.
why should it be ok that Meta collects this information though?
because every other instance does the same.
this comment is content, it’s now stored on the instance I share it with, and all the instances it federates to, along with my username and so forth.
the above is just a legalese explanation of how the fediverse works.
Maybe it‘s a legalese explanation of a problematic aspect of the fediverse though. When a commercial entity comes in that deals in people‘s data, which doesn‘t just store data on its servers, but creates a product out of the data. And it seems like it can do that here without you ever agreeing or even knowing about it.
Maybe it‘s a legalese explanation of a problematic aspect of the fediverse though.
The literal foundation of federation is “a problematic aspect of the fediverse”?
A few months back when there was all the talk of facebook joining the fediverse I figured nothing good was going to come of it, and this doesn’t prove me wrong. Fb doesn’t do anything unless they see money in it somewhere.
They are deeply threatened by it and are desperate to capitalize off xitters failing. Mark is probably enraged that he can’t just buy up the company and snuff it out.
I think it’s inevitable that if they aren’t going to use a blocklist (which they are probably too stupid to consider doing) they will likely end up in legal hot water for having the site become a war zone of alt-fedi instances harassing celebrities and random people off threads. I do not see how them federating will go well, at all.
Genuine question here, it looks like most of the info they’re collecting here could also be collected via scraping that info from any publicly available instance (profile pic, username, etc.)
What added info would they get from federation that isn’t already something we are giving away ourselves by participating in a public protocol like ActivityPub?
Federation basically just means your instance will scrape Meta in turn and serve their content to you, whereas being defederated it will not. That means federated or no, without additional precautions by admins of particular instances, Meta will be getting the same info federated or no. Being defederated makes interacting with Meta’s service much less likely though, which makes them scraping your data less likely. This update to the ToS honestly just sort of describes how the fediverse works anyway this isn’t some special feature of Threads, all instances behave this way.
Thanks, this was the impression I got as well. It doesn’t make anything public that wasn’t already public, it just makes it easier and more likely for Meta to ingest the data more directly.
Can’t instances defederate preemptively?
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They can, if they modify activitypub for their own server
Surely we need some context with this, as what we post is basically publicly visible. Even if we defederate the posts are anyway visible. Our IP addresses are probably visible to the home instance we connect to (or our VPN IP address etc) but how does our IP address then travel off with the federated post to someone following us on Threads? It’s only what travels out through the ActivityPub federation.
What would help with this post was, instead of just a link, maybe extracting the two or three issues that look problematic, and say why. That gives us something definite to actually debate.
For those who have friends stuck on Threads still, this maybe a good way for them to stay in contact. The Threads user gets their login times, IP address, location, etc tracked by Meta, and the Lemmy user with their Lemmy app, only identifies with their Lemmy instance. Threads should only be seeing the post and time that a Lemmy user posts something that is followed by a Threads user.
Threads is the Google Plus of 2023.
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Threads is dying. Give it time
