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Mastodon's Founder & CEO Gives His Thoughts on Meta's Threads
(blog.joinmastodon.org)
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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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They didn't even address what will happen when Facebook starts aggregating data from instances federated with Threads:
Heck, not only did this post not address it, it seems like they tried to downplay it.
Facebook is an analytics company. Even if it's not mission critical to the function of Threads, they will scoop up data sent to Threads, they will use it to create profiles on every single non-Threads user they can, and they will sell that data.
It doesn't even matter if it violates privacy laws; the laws are toothless to companies as large as Facebook. They'll just be made to pay a fine and carry on as they are.
Yes, interoperability would be a win, but not when it comes from a company that has routinely demonstrated they abuse every crumb of data they can get their hands on.
What should happen? That's all public information, they can (and probably do) scrape this already. As does all and any AI project and company.
But it's probably not legal for them to sell it. The fact that they've tricked us into thinking this is normal is part of the problem.
Meta isn't really in the data SELLING business. It'd be counterproductive to let their competitors have access to all the data they do - it's what keeps their advertising network competitive. Same goes for Google. They don't want third parties to have access to your data, they want to be THE company that sells targeted advertisements.
Sell it in bulk to governments for large sums of money for which advertising isn't their interest.
Oh what makes you think governments need to pay for that? Is free if you're a big enough market.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-us-government-purchases-your-user-data-heres-what-it-does-with-it/
I'm surprised that they pay for it. They could just demand it through all kinds of national security laws.
Oh they definitely do that stuIf but when they do they have to disclose that to the senate or whomever oversees such things. This way they can quietly buy up a shit ton of data with whatever dark budgets they have access to.
If the fine it's less than the profit they will do it anyways.
If it's public information why would it be illegal? If I understand correctly the only thing stopping anyone else from doing it as effectively is Meta's ability to aggregate the data and find the buyers, and perhaps morals.