"Will Meta get my data or be able to track me?" Yes...

"Will Meta get my data or be able to track me?"

Yes Mastodon servers don't forward your IP to remote parties. However, Meta has several social applications that are widely used including Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and there is a good chance that someone in your household is using those and that this can be used to facilitate that. Meta's tracking famously relied on the decentralized web and webmasters implementing Like-buttons and such to create aggregate profiles and track individuals across the web. The core thing is, you don't have to be on Meta to be tracked.

In addition however, focusing only on IP-address is an intentionally narrow thread model to make it look less bad than it is. A more honest and complete answer to this question would look like this post https://privacy.thenexus.today/fediverse-threat-modeling-privacy-and-meta/ by
@thenexusofprivacy

Like 6 Jul 2023 at 7:23 | Open on post.lurk.org

7 comments

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"Will Meta enforce content moderation policies on other servers?"

"Just like any Mastodon server, Threads will have their own moderation policies and tools, and just like any Mastodon server, they will be able to choose which content to block on their platform. However, their decisions can only affect their own platform. "

Of course, this is the best one. Typical libertarian individualist approach, no idea of coercion or unpleasant tradeoffs, nor of interdependence.

What if Meta defederates from you until you accept their ToS? What if you don't want to, but have to because all of your friends and family are on Meta? I mean, this is the dynamic they have been rolling with since forever. Why would this be different?

Mastodon.social is for all intents and purposes already unblockable because it is so big, and you will sever so many valuable connections by blocking the instance. This dynamic will only be exacerbated by Threads.

"Will Meta enforce content moderation policies on other servers?"

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6 Jul 2023 at 8:20 | Open on post.lurk.org

fsnk :NeonCat:

@rra
Alternate view:

Mastodon.social isn't unblockable because of its size

If anything, the opposite. It's so big that it's insufficiently moderated & many servers already limit/suspend federation with it for that reason

There's no profit motive to drive servers to fight for eyeballs, no advertisers to serve, and a lot of discourse is based on false assumptions born from cut & pasting corporate, profit driven, commercial goals onto what are largely community & personal projects

6 Jul 2023 at 8:43 | Open on mastodon.acc.sunet.se

anti-bergsgatan aktion

@rra nah let's just block mastodon.social. What's the point of the fediverse if it's just gonna end up as twitter with different css

6 Jul 2023 at 8:45 | Open on radikal.social

Allan Haverholm

@rra Hmm, I'm the person you don't want to tell, "Do whatever you want but you can't do that". Now I wonder how my TLs would look if I just blocked .social (and maybe .art as well) for a month?

6 Jul 2023 at 10:09 | Open on imaginair.es

Duco

@rra well, the Fediverse currently has a few million users. It's still kind of small. Currently you can not follow your friends on Instagram or twitter. If Threads federates and blocks your server, it's still like it is now, isn't it? So we don't loose anything really, or not?

I understand your concern, but it could also be the other way around. Currently your friends loose their contacts switching from Instagram to Pixelfed. If Thread federates they can switch to Mastodon without loosing them.

6 Jul 2023 at 10:19 | Open on norden.social

Duco

@rra I have also described a potential future here: https://norden.social/@duco/110665374817177327

We will see how it will turn out in the future. There are some realistic risks that Threads will damage the Fediverse, but there also chances how it can improve the Fediverse. The Fediverse is decentral, so everyone can decide how they react to it. We can not stop them from implementing the ActivityPub standard anyway. So let's wait and intervene when it turns into the wrong direction.

6 Jul 2023 at 10:26 | Open on norden.social

Job

@rra @thenexusofprivacy one of my biggest "forgot to bookmark" regrets is a thread (I suspect it was on Twitter, so it's probably gone anyway) where someone tried to give an exhaustive overview of all direct and more importantly *indirect* ways that companies can track you.

Especially the latter, where they don't even need to directly track you because they essentially can build a you-shaped silhouette through context clues, was a disturbingly deep rabbit hole of hard-to-avoid technologies.

6 Jul 2023 at 8:36 | Open on vis.social