So from my understanding, I can block an instance which prevents it from showing in my feed.
However, if the instance I post to (.world) is not blocked on the receiving instance’s end (Meta), they will still get my post (unless defederated)?
If so, doesn’t that open up the idea that Meta will be able to scrape and take ALL the data from ALL the (still federated) instances’ posts that are not blocked by the Meta instance(s)? How can I protect my information from Meta while still being federated, or is that not possible?
Meta can already scrape everything from every fediverse instance. Hell - if you wanted to and were willing to invest the time and effort, you could scrape everything from every fediverse instance.
By definition, everything that you post online is accessible to other people. The devices through which those other people view the content you posted are able to make copies of whatever they view. So literally anyone with a computer and an internet connection can already “take” whatever you post.
There’s only one way in all the world to protect your information, and that’s to not post it in the first place. The instant you post it, anyone who cares enough to do it can “take” it, and there’s NOTHING you can do to stop them.
If Meta cares about your information, they’ll go ahead and collect it anyway, with or without Threads or federation with Threads.
If you post publicly on the internet, your post is publicly available on the internet. Anyone can read it. Everything that can be read can also be scraped.
So they don’t need Threads to scrape all Lemmy data. Or to be more precise, if they wanted to scrape Lemmy data, they would most likely do it separately from Threads.
Using threads / ActivityPub does make it easier though.
If they’re using a traditional crawler you could in theory block them at the user agent level (i.e. Cloudflare). If they’re using the public APIs, they’d have to write an interface for each distinct piece of software (Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, etc…) (How my search engine works)
But with ActivityPub were essentially just sending them the data in near real-time all using the same rough structure. Individual instances may block them but it wouldn’t be hard to setup proxies/relays that the community as a whole just isn’t aware of. (i.e. a new “Lemmy” instance comes online that just looks like a single user server, but it’s actually just a relay to Meta). The only real gotcha with ActivityPub is that there’s no real way to get historical data (nothing from the past).
Now I still have mixed feelings about Meta joining the fediverse, but if we’re just talking about blocking them from getting the content we have here, then things get difficult.
Hear me out. Why don’t we create a paywalled API for 3rd party apps (like Threads), that will end up costing, say, $20 million annually to use at Meta’s rate… And then use the proceeds to keep all the instances running, and for other shenanigan.
If you post something online, it is public and you have to assume someone or even everyone has already scraped and harvested the data.
It has always been like this.
If you come from an incumbent social media platform, perhaps you never got yo experience this lesson for yourself. But that data has also been harvested. They just gave you a bit of illusion of privacy.
The only thing online that is private is E2E encryption directly with a party you trust, and only if you are the only ones with a copy of the keys.
They can do it anyway, without threads being in the mix at all. Unfortunately the only way to be sure no corporation can scrape your data is to not be on the internet at all.
If there are they are never enforced in the US. Court case after court case has sided with the scraper rather than the site. Though usually Facebook is the scrapee in these cases, not the scraper.
I used to work in real estate tech so I know a lot of efforts the US’s National Association of Realtors has made to stop scrapers of RE data. Some where via the legal system, some tried to push the onus on us as paying consumers of their data. Not a single thing worked - if anything they may have invoked the Streisand effect once or twice and gotten more of their data scraped.
Slightly longer answer is: “all of your public posts on Lemmy or Mastodon or any other federated platform are the Public web. So no, it’s not different.”
If you post something public, people can access it. Corporations can access it. It’s one of the reasons I ditched all my social media that identified me directly. They can scrape my stuff, sure; but they won’t be able to link it to my actual name, face or existence in real life.
What scraping can get is very little public information.
There’s a lot of information that servers keep contained such as IP addresses of where you are when you made a post. Other info such as your email address remains contained within your own instance. Meta cannot get at that information. No other Fediverse server can get at that.
This blog from Gargoron (Eugen Rochko) who essentially created ActivityPub that underpin all these Fediverse systems including Mastodon, Calckey, Pixelfed, kbin, Lemmy etc.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community space dedicated to being helpful and answering each others’ questions on various topics.
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All posts titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That’s it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it’s in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content. Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
Matrix Chat Room
To find & join our chat room, log into fluffychat.im(or any other matrix client) and put #nostupidquestions:matrix.org on the search bar.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
Always have been.
Push your local legislation to change the law in favor of consumer data protection and not infinite growing company profits.
…now?
sweet summer child.
Meta can already scrape everything from every fediverse instance. Hell - if you wanted to and were willing to invest the time and effort, you could scrape everything from every fediverse instance.
By definition, everything that you post online is accessible to other people. The devices through which those other people view the content you posted are able to make copies of whatever they view. So literally anyone with a computer and an internet connection can already “take” whatever you post.
There’s only one way in all the world to protect your information, and that’s to not post it in the first place. The instant you post it, anyone who cares enough to do it can “take” it, and there’s NOTHING you can do to stop them.
If Meta cares about your information, they’ll go ahead and collect it anyway, with or without Threads or federation with Threads.
If you post publicly on the internet, your post is publicly available on the internet. Anyone can read it. Everything that can be read can also be scraped.
So they don’t need Threads to scrape all Lemmy data. Or to be more precise, if they wanted to scrape Lemmy data, they would most likely do it separately from Threads.
Using threads / ActivityPub does make it easier though.
If they’re using a traditional crawler you could in theory block them at the user agent level (i.e. Cloudflare). If they’re using the public APIs, they’d have to write an interface for each distinct piece of software (Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, etc…) (How my search engine works)
But with ActivityPub were essentially just sending them the data in near real-time all using the same rough structure. Individual instances may block them but it wouldn’t be hard to setup proxies/relays that the community as a whole just isn’t aware of. (i.e. a new “Lemmy” instance comes online that just looks like a single user server, but it’s actually just a relay to Meta). The only real gotcha with ActivityPub is that there’s no real way to get historical data (nothing from the past).
Now I still have mixed feelings about Meta joining the fediverse, but if we’re just talking about blocking them from getting the content we have here, then things get difficult.
Hear me out. Why don’t we create a paywalled API for 3rd party apps (like Threads), that will end up costing, say, $20 million annually to use at Meta’s rate… And then use the proceeds to keep all the instances running, and for other shenanigan.
If you post something online, it is public and you have to assume someone or even everyone has already scraped and harvested the data.
It has always been like this.
If you come from an incumbent social media platform, perhaps you never got yo experience this lesson for yourself. But that data has also been harvested. They just gave you a bit of illusion of privacy.
The only thing online that is private is E2E encryption directly with a party you trust, and only if you are the only ones with a copy of the keys.
The benefit now is that one company can’t get exclusive access to your public data. It’s open to anyone that wants it.
removed by mod
They always could? These are public facing platforms. You’re being scraped by far more than just meta.
Yeah, absolutely nothing was preventing them from doing so already, without launching Threads.
Blocking Meta / Threads instances isn’t going to stop them, either.
They can do it anyway, without threads being in the mix at all. Unfortunately the only way to be sure no corporation can scrape your data is to not be on the internet at all.
Ahh, very true, but aren’t there legal obligations regarding privacy if data is collected via a site vs the public web?
OpenAI is currently being sued because they used everything they could fin to train their AI models. We will see how that works out.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/28/tech/openai-chatgpt-microsoft-data-sued/index.html
If there are they are never enforced in the US. Court case after court case has sided with the scraper rather than the site. Though usually Facebook is the scrapee in these cases, not the scraper.
I used to work in real estate tech so I know a lot of efforts the US’s National Association of Realtors has made to stop scrapers of RE data. Some where via the legal system, some tried to push the onus on us as paying consumers of their data. Not a single thing worked - if anything they may have invoked the Streisand effect once or twice and gotten more of their data scraped.
Short answer is “no.”
Slightly longer answer is: “all of your public posts on Lemmy or Mastodon or any other federated platform are the Public web. So no, it’s not different.”
If you post something public, people can access it. Corporations can access it. It’s one of the reasons I ditched all my social media that identified me directly. They can scrape my stuff, sure; but they won’t be able to link it to my actual name, face or existence in real life.
Not more or less then they can already do by just using web bots.
What scraping can get is very little public information.
There’s a lot of information that servers keep contained such as IP addresses of where you are when you made a post. Other info such as your email address remains contained within your own instance. Meta cannot get at that information. No other Fediverse server can get at that.
This blog from Gargoron (Eugen Rochko) who essentially created ActivityPub that underpin all these Fediverse systems including Mastodon, Calckey, Pixelfed, kbin, Lemmy etc.
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/
What I wonder is how Lemmy handles this. He is writing about how Mastodon do things, not Lemmy.