this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Kinda sucks because now you really have no control over who gets your data. No need to scrape pages or embed trackers when the fediverse just broadcasts your activity to anyone.

Even if your instance defederates from threads, doesn’t mean they defederated from yours, so anything you do is fair game for Meta’s data collection. That’s at least as I understand it.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You are posting publicly online. It's all scrapeable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

Yes, but I doubt Meta scrapes Reddit or Lemmy, for instance. With this change we’ll just be delivering it to them on a platter. And, knowing Meta, they’ll find ways to use the data.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago

Even if Meta doesn't do it themselves there are likely hundreds of companies that do, and Meta can pay them for the data they want.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

If it's visible, you're best assuming that Meta, Google, Amazon, the CIA, everyone, has a copy of it and are linking it all together behind the scenes.

At least this way they don't get your IP address or linked advertising cookies. Here you're just a username and whatever you post. Unless you browse and post directly on threads that is. Those guys get all their milkshake drunk.

[–] rottingleaf 11 points 11 months ago

but I doubt Meta scrapes Reddit or Lemmy, for instance

Why do you doubt that?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

If it's on the darkweb or deepweb then MAYBE they are not, but the reason the rest of the web is not considered part of those groups is because Google/Meta/Microsoft/etc scrape it, categorize it, and process it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If they don't scrape Reddit, it's because scraping Reddit costs money. Because they closed down their free-of-charge APIs, remember? Which they did because people were scraping their data for free.

Scraping Lemmy is free, and most probably will always remain that way.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago

Welcome to the internet? We've been here the whole time

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Then why are you posting publicly on the internet? Anything you post here is fair game.

Also, Meta's data collection is from their own clients so they can target ads to you. This information is basically useless as you aren't on their platform so they cannot take sensitive data and cannot target ads at you

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago

The point isn't to combat data collection.

Fediverse admins have had their first taste of power, and they're clinging to it like most corrupt people would.