Lemmy.ml has now blocked threads.net / Meta
(lemmy.ml)
It should come as no surprise that the lemmy.ml admin team took about 2 minutes to decide to pre-emptively block threats / Meta. Their transparent and opportunistic scheme to commodify the fediverse and it's users will not be allowed to proceed.
We strongly encourage other instance administrators to do the same, given the grave threat they pose to the fediverse.
It's public data to some degree.
It's a whole other thing when they can see what an admin of an instance can see.
I think the more concerning part is the medium in which people use Threads. It's one think for Meta to scrape for data, it's a much worse thing for someone to install the apps on the phone.
That's the last, worst step... Installing any Meta app on your device, making it a de facto telescreen.
So how would it see what the admin sees if it is not an admin of the instance?
Any admin from any instance can as long as both instances are federated with each other.
Say I upvote something on lemmy.ml, then the admins of every instance federated with lemmy.ml can see it in their logs.
Doesn't seem bad? It can be if someone collects this data en masse to feed some ad-algorithm with it. Or much worse, an adversary gets this data to target people based on their opinions, to dox them, etcetera.
They probably can already see that. It doesn't take much to start an instance.
True. Still worth fighting.