this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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This post feels like fearmongering...
Why would Meta care about small instances? I feel like Meta would only see the big instances as pontential threat.
Honestly, this could actually be an opportunity for fediverse. I don't want Meta to harvest my data, so I would never make an account there. However I am interested in content/people from Meta and I can follow that from fediverse. I believe there is large group of people who think the same way and they may join fediverse if they haven't already done that.
The nature of federation means that you don't have to make an account there for them to harvest your data. They probably do it already.
They can do that without Threads though. Everything you upvote, downvote, and comment on is public record. Plus the way federated content works is the host server isn't accessed unless you actively try to go there, everything else is reposted in your local instance. So they're not going to get data from Threads that way.
If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: they don't care about the Fediverse one way or another. This is just a way to kill Twitter, and they're doing it through a loose alliance of sorts.
That's exactly what I meant, they don't need Threads, it's all public (except possibly email addresses?) , but @[email protected] commented to me and said it doesn't work that way, so now I'm secend guessing myself.
Either way, they can scoop all that post data up anyway, to me the data is almost becoming a red herring. IMHO, Facebook's history of being a platform of hate-fueled content, violence, trolling, social manipulation, etc. is of greater concern.
I'm also wary of the day that Facebook is the driving force of the Fediverse due to it's sheer size. All those users come along with a great deal of inertia, and Facebook could end up being the mega-Corp who decides all the protocol standards forcing others to keep up with their "contributions" or get left behind.
Your posts are only public if you set your profile to public. Otherwise, they're private. But even if they're public, I'm pretty sure an instance can make them almost private (as in: you can only see the data if you're federating with them).
I agree that most of the instances don't make things private at the moment (I think), but at least they can protect your information if they want to.
But anyway, federating or not, Meta and other companies are already tracking everyone one way or another.
Small correction, I don't want them to harvest data that is connected to me as a person. With Meta I have to give out many personal info that they don't actually need for their service to function. It's just a way for making more money.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only personal info on Fediverse I have to give is my email.
That’s not hot activityPub federation works