Lemmy

12544 readers

122 users here now

Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Protection from Threads using ActivityPub. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

With threads coming to the Fidiverse, I feel dirty and violated. I don't care about my posts being accessible from various instances, but I fucking don't want meta to use what I write, from my username to my subbed communites and such.

I leave in Europe where the app is not allowed right now. How can I protect myself from meta ?

top 9 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From what I understand about the fediverse, everything that Meta already knows about you and your content is going to remain the same. Federated or not, they will only have access to info you make public, and how much that is is entirely up to your instance. Even if Meta never wanted to join and federate with others, they could still scrape the same info and use as they see fit for training AI, duplicating posts or whatever.

So basically you don't have to do anything, Meta cannot demand any extra data from you that your instance owner does not want to share. If you are worried your instance owner might do some deal with Meta for your data, then you can better control that with self hosting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's really not the point. If the instance you post on is defederated from Threads and you create a valuable post (for example a lengthy review of some hardware) then Meta can't just copy your post and put it on their platform. It would be stealing/a copyright violation.

If Meta gets your content then they can (ab)use it. Put ads on it, charge to see it, mask it as their own content, whatever. So wanting to defederate from Meta is absolutely valid and if Meta steals your post you could force them to take it down.

Meta just reading the content to train AI.. not much you can do there. But putting your post up on their platform to serve to their users is a wholly different beast. Even when federated they would have to show your [email protected] and can't just say they created it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

So. If I understand this correctly it’s possible I do not)

Your mastodon account is on a server that is federated with threads

A threads user, your mom for instance, decides to follow your mastodon account.

When you mother sees your cool post, she will probably have an ad in line with it.

Is meta monetizing your content, or your mother’s attention? Is there a difference?

Is the optimal outcome 1: your mom cannot see your cool post, or 2: your mom joins a mastodon server?

Is 2 likely? Seems to me the real concern here is that non corporate fediverse systems are finally getting some traction and the users (us) are afraid that meta will steal all the users away. I’m not sure if defederating them from a server will make a damn bit of difference.

Meta is going to win the fight for user numbers. Full stop.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Unless i misunderstood, I believe the point of this post wasn't talking about defederating, it is asking about protecting the users data from Meta if federation happen, and for that point it is what I said, his data is as protected as before, federated or not, Meta won't get access to any extra data from being federated than it already has access to now.

Defederating is another entire discussion that is really up to the instance admin, self hosting is the only way to really guarantee anything if you want that much deep control of your data and fediverse experience.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think you can just make/join an instance that defedirates threads

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Sure, but my content will eventually end up on some instances me and thread users are federated to at the same time, no ?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Edit: I tried writing out an explanation of how defederation works, but Lemmy has a few more gotchas with communities being owned on different instances. See https://lemmy.world/comment/276067 for some info about how the Beehaw defederation of LW worked.

Meta can and already probably does have crawler bots capturing the data anyway. Anything public on the internet you should assume is consumable by these types of companies.

Additionally, instances of ActivityPub platforms can further require releases of ownership if they have a TOS stating so in their registration (like any other website). IANAL but I would reach out to one to discuss your options on restricting the usage of your works if that is a concern. In general, I think the safest option is to host your own works and share only the links and what you don't mind being scraped on sites like these. Some AP platforms like Mastodon Glitch Edition allow local-only (non-federated) posts, but as far as I know Lemmy don't support that yet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Only if you post on intances federated with threads, I think

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I think you can just make/join an instance that defedirates threads

load more comments