Has anybody considered the idea that boosts from non-Meta properties to Threads could legally be used to build ad profiles? We already know they do that sort of account association with non-fedi accounts.

EDIT: Looks like that’s absolutely the plan. From the privacy policy

"Information From Third Party Services and Users: We collect information about the Third Party Services and Third Party Users who interact with Threads. If you interact with Threads through a Third Party Service (such as by following Threads users, interacting with Threads content, or by allowing Threads users to follow you or interact with your content), we collect information about your third-party account and profile (such as your username, profile picture, IP address, and the name of the Third Party Service on which you are registered), your content (such as when you allow Threads users to follow, like, reshare, or have mentions in your posts), and your interactions (such as when you follow, like, reshare, or have mentions in Threads posts).

We use the information we collect for Threads for the purposes described in the Meta Privacy Policy, including to provide, personalize, and improve Threads and other Meta Products (including seamless personalization of your experience across Threads and Instagram), to provide measurement, analytics and other business services (including ads), to promote safety, integrity and security, to communicate with you, and to research and innovate for social good."

https://help.instagram.com/515230437301944?helpref=faq_content

EDIT 2: After doing a little more thinking, I’ve come to the conclusion that the general narrative about Threads plan to steal users from similar federated services ignore the fact that it’s certainly cheaper to let the volunteers of the fediverse take on the moderation costs while they monetize the data. Though the two certainly are not mutually exclusive.

  • ZILtoid1991
    4•1 year ago

    Basically, what they’re planning to do is to try and deanonimize user handles. I use the handle ZILtoid1991 on most networks, and is the same for most other people. In general, there’s nothing wrong with it. It makes people to be easier to be found. However, it can be easily exploited by data harvesters, like Meta, and I have to rely on their services still (especially Facebook) due to how prevalent its use is in my home country, Hungary.

    I also think they might use the Fediverse as a free moderation team, if they plan to moderate it at all. Facebook report system is completely broken, as instantly flags hate speech as safe, and will likely delete anything critical of it. However, large corporations like Meta (and X) can win more by playing some lip-service to the far-right: work-moralist attitude, tax breaks for the wealthy, protection from the working class, and so on. I have some theory that some tech corporations secretly boosted the far-right until they got too big there, then tried to write it off as an “oopsie”. Twitter seems to be way more open about it.