- cross-posted to:
- tech@lemmy.fmhy.ml
- mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- tech@lemmy.fmhy.ml
- mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
In the few short hours since I started using #Threads, #DuckDuckGo has already blocked over 200 data tracking attempts. These include things like “headphone status” and “screen density.”
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I started using #Threads
Ah, I see, there’s the problem.
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People left Facebook because it got overwhelmed with their parents and grandparents, not because they ever cared about privacy.
Idk, literally everyone I know has a Facebook page. They may not use it, buts it’s there almost like a listing in a phone book.
Facebook won’t let me login to delete mine unless I send them a photo of my drivers license. Not gonna happen.
Happened to me. Had a fake profile to test some apps and when they asked for an ID, I literally sent a pic of my MIDDLE FINGER. They accepted.
Did you make sure to remove the EXIF metadata? It would be ironic if it has the image location coordinates in it.
They can get your location to various degrees of precision just from your IP address.
200 iq move by facebook, now they have the biometric reading from the nail on your middle finger
Seriously? I’ve never even given it an email I use, let alone phone number, where do they get off asking for ID?
He may also be an admin of a Facebook page. I was an admin for my job’s (an absolutely important to no one but our community company) page, and Facebook suddenly decided one day that I was a ‘high value person of interest’ , which made me a possible hacking target. The wanted all kinds of personal info, including a copy of my ID, to prove I wasn’t some hacker, or they would disable all my access. Fuck no I’m not giving you that, go ahead and disable me
Same here. I didn’t sign in for a few years, and next time I did, they demanded my drivers license. Why would I possibly send my ID to this shitty website? They way overestimate their importance.
Same thing was happening to me, tried again after a couple of days and it just logged in without asking anything 🤷♂️
I know not a single one who has that. My wife uses WhatsApp and Instagram though.
Has a lot to do with age demographics and the inability for Meta to allow a person to easily delete their page. Many if not most millennials have a Facebook page, but like myself, never use it and when asked if I have a Facebook, say no even though I technically have a one I don’t log in to.
Anecdotally, most of the people I know over the age of 45 have a Facebook and use it regularly. I don’t know very many zoomers, but the few sub-30 year olds I do know, never even made a Facebook account, but do use Instagram.
I had a person that hated me in high school create a FB page that said I graduated from Harvard and worked at a gay bar with a picture she sneakily took like a creep. Idiots believed it was my FB page and asked why I wasn’t accepting their friend requests. Not sure if the page still exists, I had family ask to try and take it down but I don’t use Facebook to know if anything happened.
Well, what we learned from those tech whistleblowers was that, even those of us that never even made a FB account have a profile made of us from pictures and things people said about us on their fuckin FB accounts. This probably goes for those of us born before ‘95, but I would assume that practice is only heightened by data scraped from Android devices, the expanded access via Instagram, the leaps in tech, etc for those born after ‘95.
So buckle up, folks. It’s all bad.
They’re called shadow profiles. They were also using information from the contact information in your phonebook.
I have one haven’t used it years. But don’t delete it because of friends but now reminds me I need to delete it like asap.
I hate whatsapp, but I “have to” use it, because otherwise I would be unable to talk to 98% of my RL contacts.
The phone book was not a big tech corporation, which is why it was a suitable place to have your phone number.
It was owned by a big tech corporation, Ma Bell. And then it got broken up and there were just a bunch of smaller monopolies printing phone books.
So what you’re saying is decentralization killed the phone book so Meta is actually saving us!? /s
I didnt know that… thank you, stranger.
Big tech monopolies involved in everything, im just tired of it.
One of the advantages(?) of being old is you remember all the previous times corporations have fucked us over in various ways. The phone company monopoly which turned into mini-monopolies was just one more example unfortunately. At least that one’s over now.
In the current age we don’t even have to be that old to have been screwed by big corporations more than once. I guess anyone in their 20s would have by now gone through it at least thrice.
I pretty much have to have some form of Meta account or else I’m considered “shady” by some people. I haven’t even logged in in years, but just saying the username is appaeently enough.
I’ve seen goddamn ads for apartments that require sharing FB/Instagram contact info.
These people are so low info they don’t even know Facebook owns Instagram
Shit, did your phone extend a needle for a blood test?
There’s a reason it’s not allowed in the EU.
What I don’t understand is why people wound even want to use this app…
What possible appeal could it have?
Using Threads knowing it’s a product of Zuck, is like voting for Trump in 2024 cause he wore a different style suit.
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You say that, but if he went out on stage in a pink sequins suit with assless chaps because it would somehow “own the libs”, a tragically high number of people would be all over that.
Remember kids; assless chaps don’t exist, it’s just chaps. If they had asses, they’d be pants!
As a member of the local #42069 Union of Chapless Chaps, I waggle my fingers and blow a raspberry in solidarity.
Hey, if a bloke happened to be a waist-down amputee, I’d say he’s an assless chap. They can exist.
Honestly that would make me sorta like him a bit. Especially if he did Eddie Murphy and wore a purple leather skintight outfit. Stupid sexy trump. Feels like I’m wearing nothing at all. nothing at all.
The Proud Boys leader fucked a dildo to own the libs. So you’re not wrong.
Oh God I forgot about that lmao, what a fucking idiot. I wonder how many of his fellow Proud Boys tried it out too 🤣
Bro, put one up mine too! Come on man we gotta own them!
I’d guess you have to like Twitter in the first place to understand the appeal. Some people like it, some don’t, but the Twitter format has been pretty popular over the years, and this comes at at time when Elron has been making twitter dramatically worse for anyone who doesn’t share his political views. Meta gives the appeal as “having a platform that is sanely run, that they believe that they can trust and rely upon for distribution”. At this point, even if I thought Elron was a great guy I sure wouldn’t invest much in building my twitter account as the future of the site seems shaky. Also though, on the other hand, who knows if this will be a success for Meta and whether they’ll still support it 3 years from now.
I do have a Twitter account but I almost never use it anymore because it has become such a cesspool…
I just don’t think another copy of that cesspool run by a different asshole is likely to really be any more interesting than the original.
I did have an account, until the API changes made Twitteriffic unusable and all the people I follow left. Then I started using Reddit.
Now I use Mastodon and Lemmy. I will not go back to using a Social network that does not have; A) an open API which allows my choice of third party apps. B) a way to migrate my data and content.
The exceptions are Apple Messages (for family and close friends), SMS (for family and close friends who do t have iPhones) and Facebook under a fake name, sandboxed in FireFox Focus.
We all have our exception (s)
I deleted my twitter account from 2009 once it was apparent what a clusterfuck Elron was going to make it. I never really used it that much until a few years ago, but I started in 2020 as it was the platform with the most recent and close to real-time news on what was going on with the riots and stuff (I was in downtown Portland when the Floyd protests started). I found a few niche communities I enjoyed and liked some of the humor accounts, like Roz Chast or NYT Pitchbot. I thought it was cool to see posts from people like Sandra Boynton. Buy yeah, no way I’m being on there in the Musk era.
I don’t have high hopes for Threads either, of course, considering I don’t like or use IG or FB and have very little respect for Meta as a company, and their weird-ass founder. The privacy concerns are horrifying - I will never install the app on my phone, so if there isn’t web access I will literally never even try it.
If you are already eating out of a dumpster, even the worst fast food looks appetizing.
There’s a lot of dumpster divers out there, too. According to an AP article Threads “has drawn tens of millions of users since launching this week”.
That’s nuts. And depressing.
They probably funneled them in with an ad from Instagram.
“Okay so it’s basically Twitter, but with like… Facebook features…” Is literally a joke I have made about annoying app ideas people have when you tell them you’re a software developer.
I have made this joke a few times, because it killed every time.
I’m stunned. Out of material, and stunned.
Had a dude tell me he wanted to ‘disrupt’ social media by creating a LinkedIn alternative that allowed posting videos.
He just needed a couple ‘techies’ like me to get it off the ground.
Haven’t heard from him in a while. I hope rehab worked out for him.
Your responsible for this you willed this evil into the world I cast you out to the sea and rocks below to you and your twitter with Facebook features
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Social media fomo
I’m not really sure, but then again I also didn’t really understand the point of Twitter, so I’m a bit biased.
Latest news, with spirited discussion attached
I always say: Almost like Reddit, but instead of following topics, you follow idiots
Edit: I should add that reddit is now down the drain, that’s why I’m here now, lol. Federated Internet for the win!
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It will be interesting to see how quickly companies will substitute the “follow us” troika of icons on their website and brochures from a blue f, camera and blue bird to a blue f, camera and stylised black T.
I assume that printing companies will make a packet reprinting all those brochures, or selling little stickers to cover up the little blue bird.
What is Dril?
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I can’t relate to anything in that comment.
Well the majority was clearly him being facetious
If your using facetious does it track you?
And *you’re
My phones Swype function feels horrible.
Hey now, Grimace can’t feel sexy?! Let the purple monster be!
A guy on twitter who’s kinda funny.
I googled him/her/it just in case it was a leggy, smoking hot “influencer”.
Yeah no. Maybe a kind of influencer?
There is a percentage of people who are fucking weird bro.
Yeah, about 9 out of 10.
Umm… That’s a fraction, not a percentage… /S
Hate to be in that 1 or of 10 group, they’re weird.
the sad truth seems to be that vast majority of people just don’t care about the threats.
Even if you don’t have Threads app installed. Meta is still a privacy threat for fediverse users. If there are fediverse instances that remain federated with Meta. And there are already millions of people who joined Threads in just a day.
Ross Schulman, senior fellow for decentralization at digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that if Threads emerges as a massive player in the fediverse, there could be concerns about what he calls “social graph slurping." Meta will know who all of its users interact with and follow within Threads, and it will also be able to see who its users follow in the broader fediverse. And if Threads builds up anywhere near the reach of other Meta platforms, just this little slice of life would give the company a fairly expansive view of interactions beyond its borders.
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-threads-privacy-decentralization/
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It works, unlike this place.
“They trust me” “Dumb fucks”
It’s unbelievable that an app which collect this many data points, including voice, is legally allowed. Insane. Yes, people should not use it and should care, but come on… this is just mass surveillance and collection.
Well, that’s how Cambridge Analytica scandal happened
Ross Schulman, senior fellow for decentralization at digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that if Threads emerges as a massive player in the fediverse, there could be concerns about what he calls “social graph slurping." Meta will know who all of its users interact with and follow within Threads, and it will also be able to see who its users follow in the broader fediverse. And if Threads builds up anywhere near the reach of other Meta platforms, just this little slice of life would give the company a fairly expansive view of interactions beyond its borders.
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-threads-privacy-decentralization/
including voice
how else would facebook live and such work?
i mean some of these makes sense
but its also a question of … does the app use all these things, all the time?
do we know?
On my mac i have to allow discord to record my voice etc. if i dont, i can still use the app but i cant talk in a voice call, and such.
i’d like if apps did similar, on phones. they’d work but some functions would just be unavailable
i’d like if apps did similar, on phones. they’d work but some functions would just be unavailable
Both Android and iPhones let you do this last I checked
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Actually, apps can check how many times other apps have been opened without any special permission. You can create a Work Profile with applications like Shelter and install all of these spyware there!
That tracks about everything it possibly can just for the sake of it. I despise Meta so much…
The list is just a list.
The VPN just blocked requests to Facebook domains and it says that it might have contained that data. But it has no idea what data was inside. Maybe was filled with tracking or maybe it was just requesting something else
I mean here is a screenshot of the data the Threads iOS app collects:
This checks literally every vector the app could collect data from.
I am also trying DDG app tracker out. This is what I got after opening Simcity Buildit. Not really surprised, because Fuck EA, but some of the requests might be the linking of account. Still, 930-- damnnnnn.
Damn, just straight up stealing other people’s content. Very cool
Original post: https://writing.exchange/@kreig/110664764474921792
Original poster: https://writing.exchange/@kreig
Okay I’ll bite. I work in product management for capitalist software companies. Every single software product you use has trackers built in unless if you’re hardcore FOSS.
Even if the company has no interest in selling your data, it’s still really hard to learn about user behaviours in the real world in order to figure out what to build next. Many of these trackers are UX tools, much more than selling your data tools. My previous employer fully anonymized and aggregated usage data, but we can’t necessarily say the same for other companies.
These trackers are the industry default and honestly, I don’t know where we’d be without them. We use them to measure the success of what we build and to look for surprises/opportunities.
On that note, for products and websites that I like, I sometimes intentionally turn off my ad and privacy blockers for them (as long as it’s not intrusive). It’s hard to do our work without that data.
Obviously there’s a difference between UX analytics and data collection the data vacuuming Facebook does.
Say you can justify each piece of data collected via a UX element. Someone said in the comments: low battery, charger ad. Where do you draw the line between data for the product vs data for profit? You don’t. It’s all embedded in the idea of “the product”.
This is a company that sells ads AND data. They collect everything. Consumers don’t seem to care. Tiktok is still popular. People see this post and will still download Threads.
It’s important for people to understand the industry justification behind data collection and why it’s so widespread across the industry so we can have this conversation about what “too much data” actually means. Serving me relevant ads like places near me for food? I guess that’s a feature. A face aging app that we train to feed a military database of faces to track down deserters? Not so much.
that sells ads AND data
Companies like Google and Facebook don’t sell data. That’s a common misconception. Having data that other companies don’t have is what makes the companies valuable, so it doesn’t make business sense to sell it. What they do is allow advertisers to target people using that data. Advertisers never actually see the data, nor the exact users their ad reached, just aggregate metrics.
Don’t they have partnership agreements and secondary products that repackages their data as insights? (I’m thinking Cambridge Analytica.) It’s not a direct sale, per se.
Repackaged data in the form of other products is one way to do it.
No. Cambridge Analytica scraped data via the Graph API, which was open for apps to use.
The original idea with the API was that apps could become more social - for example, Spotify had a Facebook integration that’d show which of your friends use Spotify, and their favourite playlists (if they chose to share them). To handle this, the API granted access to not only your data, but some of your friends data. Keep in mind, this was all public profile data that people chose to make visible to public or at least to their friends.
That was fine when people were legitimately using it, but there were bad apps that didn’t follow the rules. Cambridge Analytica scraped data via a quiz app. People would click a link and log in to a quiz app on Facebook. The log in page shows a list of the data types that’d be shared, but people still logged into it. They’d then scrape all accessible data for both the person that logged in, as well as the data their friends had shared.
The API is very locked down now. People that use the API have to have a privacy audit of some sort, and much less data is available. A lot of people don’t like the API being so locked down (for example, it’s impossible to make third-party Facebook apps), but there really wasn’t any other choice.
Thanks for taking the time to educate me (and any passing readers.)
I don’t care if this app becomes the new norm, I ain’t risking all that metadata. Fuck Facebook
Youtube has done it now. The internet fighting is on. Truly not able to see Youtube now with blockers.
The fight is on. Youtube just started playing this game.
Kinda unironic here and I do not know why, I stared at the preview of this image and for a spilt second I felt literal fear. I couldn’t read the words, I just saw “Facebook” and a lost list, and I already felt some voided terror rising within as I clicked on the link. Now that I take a closer look, I can understand why my “gut sense” was warning me.
Jesus, man! Do they want my birth certificate as well?
This is why I use Privacy Badger
Not only does it show you what and where it blocks, but you can also whitelist blocking in case you play browser games.
I’ve been using Chrome with Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin for eons, now. Listening to youtube playlists without getting interrupted by ads is a real treat…
You’d LOVE Sponsor Block then.
It uses AI to cut out all sponsorships from within YouTube videos. Anything AI misses, the users can cut out.
So no more Raid Shadow Legends or Nord VPN interruptions. Just pure entertainment!
squints …that sounds annoying. I honestly don’t mind sponsors. It’s a simple way for content creators to make money. I just ignore or skip.
You literally don’t notice it. That’s the point.
It’s like it cuts it out using a scalpel
You get weeks of your life back from one add-on.
Yup, just checked Revanced and it’s showing 851 segments totaling 8hr 31 mins saved.
Is it AI based? I thought people add their own time segments with a label. I know I can turn the feature on to do that using Revanced.
It’s AI based, but humans can put in the segments too.
It’s not AI based whatsoever and is entirely crowdsourced by users creating the segments. Not sure where you got the idea AI has any part in it other than a purely blind assumption that you’re now spreading as fact.
…a purely blind assumption that you’re now spreading as fact.
Hey, let’s not dismiss this technique out of hand. Sometimes, it helps people get elected President!
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Nice addon, I’ve just installed it.
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How is this compared to Blokada?
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Holy crap, TrackControl is really good and informative! Scary to see which companies try to gather your information! Thanks for this. I thought Blokada was the best. Going to try out URLCheck as well. Any other privacy apps for Android or even for Windows hit me up!
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Yeah, i’ve been using Revanced. Thanks!
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Can’t find it. Is it under a different name in f droid?
Edit: found it. Thank you
Cant get it to work alongside my vpn.
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Good rec, thanks!
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I’ve been using blokada 5 for quite a while and it seems pretty good although it’s recently switched to a subscription service in version 6 (you can still use 5 for free)
I might look into Trackercontrol instead, thanks!
Just installed it, thanks. Looks good!
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