The Zuck suck is in full swing.

I started using #Threads

Ah, I see, there's the problem.

Shit, did your phone extend a needle for a blood test?

There's a reason it's not allowed in the EU.

What I don't understand is why people wound even want to use this app...

What possible appeal could it have?

That tracks about everything it possibly can just for the sake of it. I despise Meta so much...

Not sure why anyone would install that garbage. Even a one off install to check it out means it will upload lots of data.

Thank you EU!

"They "trust me". Dumb fucks." - Mark Zuckerberg c. early 2000s: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#2000's

At this point I think it would be more informative to simply display the data they don't collect. My guess is "nothing".

Holy crap are you kidding? Mastodon IIRC requires zero priviliges/personal information to run.

A lot of that stuff is pretty standard if you're doing logging and metrics on your service (which you should if you want to resolve outages). From the IP address and user agent you get rough location, os info, and network info. A few other things can be used for optimization (faster load times), and a Meta-scale, I wouldn't be surprised if they do that.

Why in the first place do you want to use that garbage?

This is why I use Privacy Badger

Not only does it show you what and where it blocks, but you can also whitelist blocking in case you play browser games.

You get a lot of information out of one addon.

That’s insane, well I know one thing. This is making me want to go download the DuckDuckGo browser.

Holy shit. I'd ask how the fuck is this even legal, but seeing EU's reaction I guess it really kinda isn't

Why did you download threads in the first place? Just scanned the app in exodus and the list of trackers is worse than all meta apps combined

Orientation? Why would Facebook need to know if my phone is gay? Jk, I know they really want to know my phone's political orientation. Joke's on them, my phone voted for Megatron.

Damn, just straight up stealing other people's content. Very cool

Original post: https://writing.exchange/@kreig/110664764474921792

Original poster: https://writing.exchange/@kreig

• The name of your first crush.
• Your religious beliefs.
• Your innermost fears.
• That thing you did in June of 2007 that you must never speak about.

That's your fault for using threads

It’s unbelievable that an app which collect this many data points, including voice, is legally allowed. Insane. Yes, people should not use it and should care, but come on… this is just mass surveillance and collection.

absolutely wild, was going to (naively) give it a go, but I work on telemetry for a big platform and cannot in good faith use this product.

People here complaining about Threads and TikTok (Chinese owned) being the defacto social network for an entire generation over there without outrage, and when it's outrage about it people just say "at least is not the US" what kind of defense is that?

That’s insane

Looking at the data collection categories in the ios app store for Threads is terrifying. Similarly, mastodon collects nothing. General population doesn't seem to care though given the number of signups that Threads has received in the last few days. People are happy to give their information away.

Remind me of that scene in The Dark Knight when Lucius Fox has all the screens with all the data from every smartphone around.

That list reads like a law enforcement surveillance request, wtf.

Threads: I see everything.

And then they'll need another permission to access your photos, contacts, text messages... They'll grab and run with everything what's in your phone. Before your 1st day is over, they'll know everything about you, your friends and family. It's just another massive privacy/data grab. Fuck them (and fuck u/spez ofc).

200 in a few hours sounds like a lot (well, it is) but is small compared to some apps I use. Revolut tried to make tens of thousands of requests in an hour last time I looked! I expect that particular app is coded badly so when it gets rejected it just endlessly tries to repeat the request.

I highly recommend everyone installs something like the DuckDuckGo android app because it blocks tracking attempts in all apps. It's a bit horrifying to see how often, how much, and what type of data all our apps are requesting.

Mother fucking mother fuckers

How do I get duckduckgo to block tracking attempts?

The latest in data collection technology also happens to have some social features.

Funny enough the screen density thing could just be display optimization, did some web development and that would've been useful. But hoy shit the rest is really bad. Good thing I live in the EU and won't be tempted.

If you block them from collecting even one of those things, they'll lock you out of your account until you show them your ID and SSN. It should be illegal for social media to spy on you THAT invasively.

Wait, they're trying to check the status of your headphone? That's way too far. Why do they need to know if the headphone's plugged in?

They clicked "select all" when choosing what to gather, it's easier.

Jesus, man! Do they want my birth certificate as well?

I hate Zuck, but I'm happy to see him destroy Muskrat.

Kinda unironic here and I do not know why, I stared at the preview of this image and for a spilt second I felt literal fear. I couldn't read the words, I just saw "Facebook", a long list and it is a phone screenshot. And I felt some voided terror rising within as I clicked on the link. Now that I take a closer look, I can understand why my "gut sense" was warning me.

FeDiVeRsE hAs NoThInG tOo WoRrY aBoUt

Those infos are different for everyone. It's like your extensions in web browsers, it creates a fingerprint.

What does Threads do that Mastodon doesn't? Aren't they basically just a different app for the same thing? What am I getting wrong here?

How did you block all that? Can duckduckgo block apps from accessing that data? There's no website version of threads yet right?

Edit: nvm. Duckduckgo has an app tracking blocker built in these days. Coolcoolcool

That's egregious, not even trying to hide it lmao.

This is what I got after 5 minutes.

We need a third party app.

Delete them? Just dont install the damn app, stop using facebook!

Disgusting

That seems so unnecessary. Why do they want to interfere with screen density??

"They trust me" "Dumb fucks"

I don't care if this app becomes the new norm, I ain't risking all that metadata. Fuck Facebook

Is this the duckduckgo browser?

Oh no! the rats are eating each other.

Youtube has done it now. The internet fighting is on. Truly not able to see Youtube now with blockers.

Well this fuckings sucks. Hard.

This is why I only ever access Facebook through FireFox Focus and use a fake name.

in best BfME2 goblin voice: The Eye watches!

"sorry, our dev uploaded debug version as production release"

wow, it really sucks

The fight is on. Youtube just started playing this game.

wtf do they even need charging status, headphone status, volume, direction rotation accelerometer wtf

So just don't use it?

Okay I'll bite. I work in product management for capitalist software companies. Every single software product you use has trackers built in unless if you're hardcore FOSS.

Even if the company has no interest in selling your data, it's still really hard to learn about user behaviours in the real world in order to figure out what to build next. Many of these trackers are UX tools, much more than selling your data tools. My previous employer fully anonymized and aggregated usage data, but we can't necessarily say the same for other companies.

These trackers are the industry default and honestly, I don't know where we'd be without them. We use them to measure the success of what we build and to look for surprises/opportunities.

On that note, for products and websites that I like, I sometimes intentionally turn off my ad and privacy blockers for them (as long as it's not intrusive). It's hard to do our work without that data.

Other than GPS coordinates, what's the problem?

It's pretty standard stuff that every app collects.

I'm actually asking what specific thing is the problem.

ITT: Users not having any fucking clue what's going on, and laughing at a client that was clearly released in a few days. As if it's not blatantly obvious they are going to add the reddit and Twitter features later. Threads is going to own fediverse, deal with it.

So much Threads panic, yet we're apparently willing to just believe whatever DuckDuckGo says, even though the company has a pretty terrible track record.

Go look at the permissions Threads is granted. Mine has Notifications and nothing else. Android won't let it have access to most of the information in that list.

"Known to collect" - this app is sending data back to Facebook and we've made some wild ass assumptions about what that data might be in order to scare you into getting all your friends to download our browser. Worked pretty well, huh.