Comment on The free fediverses should emphasize networked communities
dipshit@lemmy.world 11 months agoYou do realize that federating with meta doesn’t mean that the instances which allow federation with meta will be tracked more, right? Meta users are going to be tracked as much as meta users are going to be tracked. The old tricks that facebook used to do to track everyone with a facebook account everywhere on the net don’t really work any more in modern browsers and won’t ever work on an instance that doesn’t have a facebook “share this link” or “like button” integration.
Technically, if an instance did have those buttons and facebook users in older browsers used those instances, that would be tracked by meta, even if the instance itself didn’t federate with meta.
But where will meta put its ads, and how can it filter what you see if you can’t (as a user of an instance blocking meta/threads/…) subscribe to meta instances?
I mean it’s just a hot mess, so I’m all for blocking those predatory psycopaths even if it theoretically isn’t needed in some cases.
Ask your same question about any other instance.
For example, what’s keeping me from setting up my own instance that just spams ads across every community? Answer: nothing.
What could owners of instances do to prevent seeing advertisements? Answer: defederate.
How much are users of instances that don’t defederate from my spam instance tracked? Answer: the same as any other site.
Tracking online works by communication with a client and server, ideally with identifying information. Everyone on the web has some identifying information, such as IP address and user agent. The problem is, IP addresses are shared with many people, the same as user agents. The only way to uniquely identify a user online is with cookies. Facebook used 3rd party cookies to track users who visted site A when site A has a image serve from facebook servers. Facebook gives the visitor a 3rd party cookie “You are now 93ga3490f” and logs that the cookie was served to visitor 93ga3490f on site A. That visitor then goes to site B and sees a facebook like image button, but this time when the user asks for the like button from facebook, the browser says “Hello, I am 93ga3490f requesting the facebook like button” and facebook records that 93ga3490f also visited Site B. Honestly this is still pretty useless until that user logs into their facebook account. At this point, the browser tells facebook, “Hello, I am 93ga3490f logging into facebook with email xyz@example.com” and facebook records xyz@example.com as visitor of Sites A and B (formerly user 93ga3490f.)
How does tracking work with federation? Answer: it doesn’t. Federation you can think of as a server subscribing to another server. You’re offline, and instanceXYZ downloads a copy of new content uploaded to instanceABC, since instanceABC and instanceXYZ are federated with one another. You go online, log onto your instance (instanceXYZ) and instanceXYZ serves you the downloaded content that it previously got from instanceABC. instanceABC doesn’t know you’ve viewed this, doesn’t know you’ve downloaded this. All instanceABC knows is that instanceXYZ copied this content for all of its users. The only way you can be tracked here is:
It’s all about scale and resources. They have thousands of times more than the whole lemmyverse.
This isn’t new
thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
You do realize that instances federating with Threads will share data with Threads, and that Meta’s supplemental privacy policy specifically says that they’ll use all activity that federates to meta for tracking and ad targeting, right?
So for example, if you’re on an instance that federates with Threads, and somebody on Threads is following you, all of your posts – including your followers-only posts – will get tracked by Meta. Or if somebody who boosts your post and they’ve got followers on Threads, your post will be tracked by Meta. Or if you like, boost, or reply to a post that originated on Threads, it gets tracked my Meta. And these are just the most obvious cases. What about if somebody on an instance that’s not Threads replies to a Threads post, and you reply to the reply? It depends on the how the various software implements replies – ActivityPub allows different possibilities here. And there are plenty of other potential data flows to Meta as well.
Of course they’re still just at the early stages of federation so it’s hard to know just how it’ll work out. Individually blocking Threads might well provide a lot of protection. But in general, instances which federate with Meta will almost certainly be tracked significantly more than instances that don’t.
dipshit@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I just wrote a comment explaining in detail how tracking works and why it wouldn’t work with lemmy. I suggest you read it or skim it first lemmy.world/comment/6404079
If those instances choose to share data with Threads, you should not join those instances. Federating with threads shares “data” in the form of content, which is how the fediverse works. But this data is the content we are looking for - posts. The “data” you’re worried about being shared (tracking info, identifying info) won’t be shared. See the linked post for more details.
I’ve got some bad news for you buddy: there’s defederating and there’s blocking. If meta or any other company wants to right now they can create a crawler for the entire fediverse, follow everyone and log everything. We have no evidence that people aren’t already doing this so I would assume that they are. Lemmy isn’t an isolated island, it’s a public internet-type software where content exists on the internet. Don’t want your content used by AI or linked to your pseudoanonymous lemmy account? Your only option is to join an instance that isn’t connected to the Internet (at least not publicly allowing access to accounts, something where all communities to community members only. Federation simply means that Threads users can’t interact with your instance and vice versa.
Please keep in mind that there are open source developers who understand that facebook is just another silly site (i.e., isn’t the internet, isn’t the gods of the internet). The only way this tracking nightmare you’re describing comes true is if Lemmy developers decide to make instances track users and ship that private tracking data to facebook.
As for “site A tracks users who interact with site A” yeah, that’s the internet for you.
Federation isn’t complex. I explained this in the linked post. The one point I want to put across here is, if your instance decides to defederate from threads, your instance is still going to be tracked by meta and everyone else, and you probably won’t care because you haven’t in the past. It’s a different kind of tracking, not the 3rd party web-based tracking we’re used to when just visiting any site. There’s some exceptions to this which I’ve outlined in the linked post.
thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙: If those instances choose to share data with Threads, you should not join those instances. Also 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙: Federating with threads shares “data” in the form of content
I appreciate all the time and energy you’re putting into the comments here, but what it comes down to is that you’re not concerned about the difference between the federation scenario – where this data is given to Threads under an agreement that explicitly consents to giving Meta the right to use the data for virtually whatever they want – and the situation today – where Meta and others can do the work to non-consensually scrape public data on sites that don’t put up barriers.
We’re not going to convince each other, and we’ve both got enough walls of text up that at this point neither of us are going to convince people reading the thread who aren’t already convinced, so let’s save ourselves the time and energy and leave it here.
dipshit@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I pretty clearly described the difference in “data” between the data we want and data we don’t want. Try re-reading that and if it still doesn’t make sense I’ll explain in more detail.
Buddy, that’s the internet:
This is how data is exchanged on the internet. It’s less of an agreement and more of a protocol. If you’re trying to claim here that an artist putting up a peice of work on a fediverse site means that facebook now has full rights to that work, I think you’re mistaken. Yes, as part of how the fediverse operates, if you are federated with my server, you are giving me permission to federate the federated content with my server’s users. This is currently happening right now across all federated instances.
It’s a shame, because we have the same goal in mind: not being tracked by facebook / meta. We aren’t on opposing sides of this issue. My point is that defederating from meta doesn’t stop meta from tracking you online. If you want to stop meta from tracking you online, you need to do the following:
Defederating isn’t on the list because defederating from meta doesn’t stop meta from tracking you.