this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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[–] [email protected] 199 points 1 year ago (4 children)

"Instagram owner"

Have they paid the publication for this weird title? It's Meta. Are they so ashamed they believe calling it a Meta service would mean less users?

[–] [email protected] 145 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Also, are we all going to pretend that Meta isn't just Facebook, the company that sold all our data to Cambridge Analytica for a quick buck, a company who then used that data to direct target right leaning moderate, pump them full of anxiety and fear, and turn them into Trump devotees? A company that then later didn't store that data properly and leaked it, allowing thousands of identities to be stolen (including mine)? Meta / Facebook / Instagram are not good actors on the internet and we should be doing more to sully their name

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not saying that Facebook/Meta aren't terrible but this is a misunderstanding of what happened with Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook didn't sell anything to Cambridge Analyitica. Their API at the time allowed CA to gather information about you and all of your friends when you took one of their free personality quizzes (during the era when 90% of Facebook was people sharing personality quizzes).

When Facebook found out what CA had done, they fixed their API to prevent it from happening again (not because they cared about user privacy but because CA got a bunch of information from them that they could use to target advertisements on their own without paying FB to run ads) and covered it up so their users wouldn't know how massively negligent they had been with their data.

So it's not that Facebook was wantonly selling you data to shady characters so much as they were carelessly leaking your data to any shady characters who happened by.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

It may just be me but I feel like that is even worse. Because who knows who got a hold of it now.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

Don't forget that the groups they targeted were as small as 10 people. Facebook is the reason our world is a shit as it is now. Fuck meta. Fuck Facebook. Fuck all of them. I despise them with deeper hatred than 99.99% of the things I have ever known

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Don't forget that they paid teens to (unbeknownst to them) install a vpn and collect all their data, including message content

They also used a hacky mechanism bc they knew they were breaking the app store rules

Facebook / Meta / the instagram owner is evil as fuck

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

I would gamble all the tea in China that they sold and continue to sell data to literally anyone with a big enough sack of cash.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Well, we aren't. But if you mean "we" as in "humans". Then yes, we've already forgotten and we don't care anymore if you remind us. You're being a paranoid nerd, I don't get all this techy crap, and I'm sure Mark has learned his lesson or at the very least the government will do something.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do mean "we" as in "humans." I think you're setting yourself up for disappointment if you think Mark Zuckerberg is going to pivot permanently away from the most profitable set of activities his company ever engaged in.

You're based on a Germany focused instance, I see. You're probably more safe from the kinds of things Facebook gets up to than we are on our side of the Atlantic. Over here, Facebook paid $100,000,000 in fines for their behavior. This was 3.3% of the original fine. No regulatory changes were made. It's unknown how much money Facebook made from data brokering with Cambridge Analytica, but they sold the data of 87 million users. Disturbingly, the number of users Facebook who directly participated in the app used to siphon this data was around 270,000. In other words, Facebook didn't even need people to interact with Facebook directly to collect information about people, since they were using network connection information to build profiles about people.

THIS is my concern about why they're so hot to get on the Fediverse right now. They don't want a huge number of users to sign up for Threads. If numerous users do, that would help them greatly with what they do want, though. They want insight into the greater distributed network of the Fediverse. They want to collect information about Mastodon, Pelorma, Friendica, Calckey, Miskey, BookWyrm, KBin, and Lemmy users who interact with users on Threads.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure how much this will affect Meta etc., but it seems like the US gov is looking into data brokers at least: https://www.kanary.com/blog/the-cfpb-is-taking-aim-at-data-brokers-what-you-need-to-know

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
  1. Mark hasn't learned his lesson because look at the data they are trying to collect. He's trying to collect so much data that it has become a meme. Do you realize how much information can be captured by using that new Twitter replacement? It seems like you just plugged your ears, screamed "Lalalalala", then buried your head in the ground
  2. "He learned his lesson" was also used by a senator to justify trump and he then led a coup against the US government. The rich don't learn lessons, they get slaps on the wrist. Nothing has changed from 2016 when this all went down.
  3. The government will NOT do anything because they are lobbied by ISP providers. There's no reason for them to make any changes because they are making bank as is. We peasants don't pose any risk and we certainly aren't making the elected officials millionaires so why should they listen to us?

I wrote my senior paper at university on data collection and facebooks role in all that. You are so off base with your comment, it's sad. That "paranoid nerd" you just shit on is entirely right and you sound like a reductionist oaf

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I think the comment you replied to needed a /s

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Well I guess this is because it is called "Threads, an Instagram app"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Fewer users.

And yes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

No, they've already said it'll be connected to Instagram and allow you to push updates to your Instagram followers

[–] [email protected] 80 points 1 year ago

Honestly, it's scary. For people that are unaware, there's an amazing resource on privacy-respecting alternatives to popular services and softwares: https://www.privacyguides.org. They are also on Lemmy if you have any question.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why the first reaction frame? Instagram is owned by Meta, of course they're going to have incredibly invasive data collection policies.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I expected some data collection but to be honest, have not expected as much (especially location etc., although this can be partly deactivated). But maybe I was too trusting in this case 😅

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mastodon is the federated equivalent of twitter the same way lemmy can be considered the federated alternative of reddit. That's the nice Twitter alternative you are looking for.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is what I've been telling everyone. Don't go to threads, go to mastodon.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

Mastodon is a viable option, but then again, this app does some basic automatic account creation from existing FB data and follow people from it. This alone will impress some non-tech journalist and praise it. We have become too lazy to get out of the burning house and save our life.

I wonder if any of that break some GPDR or California Data laws.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Great, another Meta privacy brea... I mean service I can stay away from.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

No no, you were right the first time

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Yeah.. Meta the owner of Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp wants to collect data from you? Shocker

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

you lost me at "Instagram"

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is anyone really supprised?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not the fact they want to collect our data but it's the kind of data that's concerning.

"Sensitive info". Does Zucky want to collect data about the size of our peepees?

"Other data". Aka "literally whatever the fuck we want"

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

They want to collect all sizes not just peepees!
But tbh they are doing this on twitter... There is not really any big difference, the only difference being is that people complain about this now.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

twitter alternative, is mastodon, everything else is companies trying to cache with fediverse

[–] Quills 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

At least we have all the fediverse micro-blogging section

And here!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The ONLY good thing about the existence of Threads is that I'll finally be able to follow people from Instagram without actually having to use Instagram. Otherwise it's the largest honeypot of the entire Fediverse

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I seriously doubt you'll be able to see Instagram content from any other app. At most, they'll federate Threads content. But more probably they'll only federate inwards: Threads users will be able to follow anyone on the Fediverse, no one outside will get to see anything from inside.

[–] 10EXP 1 points 1 year ago

Just to confirm: One-way federation is actually a thing? If so, I honestly wouldn’t put it past Meta to do this. Still doing lines of copium that they don’t pull this shit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Am I hallucinating or didn't they have an app called Threads already? and it was a snapchat UI clone bolted on top of instagram backend?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Even tho the meme is using "disappointed black guy", I wouldn't be surprised or disappointed actually.

It's meta, what else can someone expect from them?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My big hope from this is that people might learn more about federated content and the fediverse in general. Then they can move away from stuff meta makes into the actual private internet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm reeeeeal cautious about it. There's a Dr. Strange level of one positive ending, and that's where users log into FB's not twitter, discover a ton of content on mastadon and lemmy, subscribe, and then when they eventually try to sever the connection (when, not if), most of the content is over here and people want to switch.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

installs app

Declines everything

"To use the app You need to allow-"

Uninstalls app

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

While I want to support decentralized approach, tbh at this point anything with correct moderation can be better than Twitter lol

[–] dr_dour 2 points 1 year ago

Eh... All the data is already with meta through Instagram, it's users is the target here. I'm sure most of Instagram users aren't complaining that much about collection of data. As long as this kills twitter I'm happy. Who knows it might point the rest of the users towards eventual decentralisation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I don't know if it this new service will be able to read posts from Lemmy or not, but I've already blocked this monstrosity just in case.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I don’t get why they need all these permissions. Crazy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Because they want it. It's the main reason why they've built the app.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

"Instagram owner" just say Meta lol

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Facebook makes a product that squeezes every last drop from your privacy? Nooooooo waaaay!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ahem. They're called Meta.

But seriously, fuck anything Zuckerberg owns.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They gave up on the metaverse already so I don't think that name fits anymore.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I don't care what they all themselves, they are always going to be Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

It’s like this for every major mainstream social media app

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