- cross-posted to:
- thenexusofprivacy
- cross-posted to:
- thenexusofprivacy
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/7193618
The “free fediverses” are regions of the fediverse that reject Meta and surveillance capitalism. This post is part of a series looking at strategies to position the free fediverses as an alternative to Threads and “Meta’s fediverses”.
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Are there any instances that aren’t free? Instances which run ads and tracking?
Today almost no instances run ads (misskey is as far as I know the only platform that’s got support for ads) and Threads is the only one that does tracking. I’m using “free fediverses” the way https://freefediverse.org/index.php/Main_Page does – instances that reject federation with Meta.
You do realize that federating with meta doesn’t mean that the instances which allow federation with meta will be tracked more, right? Meta users are going to be tracked as much as meta users are going to be tracked. The old tricks that facebook used to do to track everyone with a facebook account everywhere on the net don’t really work any more in modern browsers and won’t ever work on an instance that doesn’t have a facebook “share this link” or “like button” integration.
Technically, if an instance did have those buttons and facebook users in older browsers used those instances, that would be tracked by meta, even if the instance itself didn’t federate with meta.
You do realize that instances federating with Threads will share data with Threads, and that Meta’s supplemental privacy policy specifically says that they’ll use all activity that federates to meta for tracking and ad targeting, right?
So for example, if you’re on an instance that federates with Threads, and somebody on Threads is following you, all of your posts – including your followers-only posts – will get tracked by Meta. Or if somebody who boosts your post and they’ve got followers on Threads, your post will be tracked by Meta. Or if you like, boost, or reply to a post that originated on Threads, it gets tracked my Meta. And these are just the most obvious cases. What about if somebody on an instance that’s not Threads replies to a Threads post, and you reply to the reply? It depends on the how the various software implements replies – ActivityPub allows different possibilities here. And there are plenty of other potential data flows to Meta as well.
Of course they’re still just at the early stages of federation so it’s hard to know just how it’ll work out. Individually blocking Threads might well provide a lot of protection. But in general, instances which federate with Meta will almost certainly be tracked significantly more than instances that don’t.
I just wrote a comment explaining in detail how tracking works and why it wouldn’t work with lemmy. I suggest you read it or skim it first https://lemmy.world/comment/6404079
You do realize that instances federating with Threads will share data with Threads, and that Meta’s supplemental privacy policy specifically says that they’ll use all activity that federates to meta for tracking and ad targeting, right?
If those instances choose to share data with Threads, you should not join those instances. Federating with threads shares “data” in the form of content, which is how the fediverse works. But this data is the content we are looking for - posts. The “data” you’re worried about being shared (tracking info, identifying info) won’t be shared. See the linked post for more details.
So for example, if you’re on an instance that federates with Threads, and somebody on Threads is following you, all of your posts – including your followers-only posts – will get tracked by Meta. Or if somebody who boosts your post and they’ve got followers on Threads, your post will be tracked by Meta. Or if you like, boost, or reply to a post that originated on Threads, it gets tracked my Meta. And these are just the most obvious cases. What about if somebody on an instance that’s not Threads replies to a Threads post, and you reply to the reply? It depends on the how the various software implements replies – ActivityPub allows different possibilities here. And there are plenty of other potential data flows to Meta as well.
I’ve got some bad news for you buddy: there’s defederating and there’s blocking. If meta or any other company wants to right now they can create a crawler for the entire fediverse, follow everyone and log everything. We have no evidence that people aren’t already doing this so I would assume that they are. Lemmy isn’t an isolated island, it’s a public internet-type software where content exists on the internet. Don’t want your content used by AI or linked to your pseudoanonymous lemmy account? Your only option is to join an instance that isn’t connected to the Internet (at least not publicly allowing access to accounts, something where all communities to community members only. Federation simply means that Threads users can’t interact with your instance and vice versa.
Please keep in mind that there are open source developers who understand that facebook is just another silly site (i.e., isn’t the internet, isn’t the gods of the internet). The only way this tracking nightmare you’re describing comes true is if Lemmy developers decide to make instances track users and ship that private tracking data to facebook.
As for “site A tracks users who interact with site A” yeah, that’s the internet for you.
Of course they’re still just at the early stages of federation so it’s hard to know just how it’ll work out. Individually blocking Threads might well provide a lot of protection. But in general, instances which federate with Meta will almost certainly be tracked significantly more than instances that don’t.
Federation isn’t complex. I explained this in the linked post. The one point I want to put across here is, if your instance decides to defederate from threads, your instance is still going to be tracked by meta and everyone else, and you probably won’t care because you haven’t in the past. It’s a different kind of tracking, not the 3rd party web-based tracking we’re used to when just visiting any site. There’s some exceptions to this which I’ve outlined in the linked post.
𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙: If those instances choose to share data with Threads, you should not join those instances.
Also 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙: Federating with threads shares “data” in the form of content
I appreciate all the time and energy you’re putting into the comments here, but what it comes down to is that you’re not concerned about the difference between the federation scenario – where this data is given to Threads under an agreement that explicitly consents to giving Meta the right to use the data for virtually whatever they want – and the situation today – where Meta and others can do the work to non-consensually scrape public data on sites that don’t put up barriers.
We’re not going to convince each other, and we’ve both got enough walls of text up that at this point neither of us are going to convince people reading the thread who aren’t already convinced, so let’s save ourselves the time and energy and leave it here.
I pretty clearly described the difference in “data” between the data we want and data we don’t want. Try re-reading that and if it still doesn’t make sense I’ll explain in more detail.
I appreciate all the time and energy you’re putting into the comments here, but what it comes down to is that you’re not concerned about the difference between the federation scenario – where this data is given to Threads under an agreement that explicitly consents to giving Meta the right to use the data for virtually whatever they want – and the situation today – where Meta and others can do the work to non-consensually scrape public data on sites that don’t put up barriers.
Buddy, that’s the internet:
where this data is given to Threads under an agreement that explicitly consents to giving Meta the right to use the data for virtually whatever they want
This is how data is exchanged on the internet. It’s less of an agreement and more of a protocol. If you’re trying to claim here that an artist putting up a peice of work on a fediverse site means that facebook now has full rights to that work, I think you’re mistaken. Yes, as part of how the fediverse operates, if you are federated with my server, you are giving me permission to federate the federated content with my server’s users. This is currently happening right now across all federated instances.
We’re not going to convince each other, and we’ve both got enough walls of text up that at this point neither of us are going to convince people reading the thread who aren’t already convinced, so let’s save ourselves the time and energy and leave it here.
It’s a shame, because we have the same goal in mind: not being tracked by facebook / meta. We aren’t on opposing sides of this issue. My point is that defederating from meta doesn’t stop meta from tracking you online. If you want to stop meta from tracking you online, you need to do the following:
- don’t participate in meta’s services. This means facebook, instagram, threads, the entire ecosystem that meta has created. Deactivate, delete your accounts, etc.
- don’t participate in the fediverse via meta’s servers (this is the same as #1 really).
- Use an anonymous handle on the fediverse
- Use a modern web browser that is up to date (which blocks 3rd party cookies by default, or configure your browser to do so)
- Block content from facebook domains at a router level if possible to protect your entire house.
Defederating isn’t on the list because defederating from meta doesn’t stop meta from tracking you.
Yes, you described what you see as the difference between data and “data” clearly. And I described what I see as the implications clearly. If anybody’s still reading the thread, they can make their own conclusions.
It’s less of an agreement and more of a protocol.
Threads Supplemental Privacy Policy begs to differ that there’s not an agreement here.
My point is that defederating from meta doesn’t stop meta from tracking you online.
I never claimed it did. It eliminates one path of consensually sharing data (or “data”, in your terms) with Meta.
In terms of your list, my perspective is that a server that federates with Threads is part of Meta’s ecosystem – #1 in your list. You don’t seem to see it that way, and that’s what we’re not going to convince each other about.
There are pay to join instances. Not many, but they exist.
There’s also at least one add supported Misskey instance
And of those pay to join instances, do we know they are tracking their users without their consent? That would be the only real issue here (tracking without consent)
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If I’m not free to join the Fediverse from the server of my choice, whether that’s mastodon.social or threads.net, is the Fediverse truly free?
Joining the fediverse is just a matter of using a platform that implements ActivityPub (the protocol that lets servers communicate with each other. If Threads implements ActivityPub, it’s part of the fediverse, and the people on Threads can interact without any instance that chooses to federate.
However, instances don’t have to federate with Threads. That’s part of the freedom of the fediverse. If an instance admin decides that they don’t want to deal with an influx of hate, don’t want most of the content their uses see to be from Meta, or just don’t want to federate with a for-profit company that has an awful track record, they should be able to defederate. If a user of that instance really wants to see Threads content, they should be able to move to an instance that lets them, but defederation doesn’t make the fediverse or ActivityPub less free.
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Are there cross instances communities in Lemmy? How does that work?
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Yes, I’d say Lemmy communities are cross-instance communities - people can join communities on a different instance than their account.
Oh, I understand. That’s not what I was thinking tho, I misinterpreted the “cross-instances” thing, I thought it meant supercommuties taht includes communities from various instaces
Meta’s fediverses probably also won’t be able to compete with Threads on this. Threads plan to make federation opt-in is the right thing to do from a privacy and safety perspective, but also means that people in Meta’s fediverses won’t be able to communiate with most of the people on Threads. And Meta has the option of adding communication between Threads and the billions of people on other networks like Instagram (which already shares the same infrastructure), Facebook, and WhatsApp. Longer-term, it seems to me that this is likely to be a huge challenge for Meta’s fediverses, but fediverse influencers supporting federating with Meta have various arguments why it doesn’t matter.
Is it really Meta’s fediverses, when communication between them and their alleged owner is fairly little and actively gatekept by their alleged owner?
no just like federating with mastodon.social doesn’t make your instance a part of the Gargron fediverse. Meta can’t control non-Meta instances that federate with them
Here’s the definition I gave for term in the first article i the series:
“Meta’s fediverses”, federating with Meta to allow communications, potentially using services from Meta such as automated moderation or ad targeting, and potentially harvesting data on Meta’s behalf.
…ad targeting, and potentially harvesting data on Meta’s behalf
That is already possible regardless of federation status.
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