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Threads' New Terms & Conditions Affects the Fediverse

wedistribute.org Threads' New Terms & Conditions Affects the Fediverse

Threads, Meta's new microblogging platform, is updating its terms to focus on data collection from "Third Party Users".

Threads' New Terms & Conditions Affects the Fediverse

Threads, Meta's new microblogging platform, is updating its terms to focus on data collection from "Third Party Users".

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13 comments
  • Now, I am on the can we ban Threads train, I wasn't at first because they hadn't gotten involved in actually joining the rest of us, now they are and they've admitted they want all our information too, I just don't want any part of that.

    Things collected from fediverse participants that interact with Meta users...

    - Username
    - Profile Picture
    - IP Address
    - Name of Third Party Service
    - Posts from profile
    - Post interactions (Follow, Like, Reshare, Mentions)
    
    

    They've never met a piece of data they didn't want to mine, have they?

  • Permanently Deleted

  • I asked bing to tldr the article, and here’s what I got:

    Here is a summary of the article you requested:

    The article discusses how the recent changes in the terms of service of Threads, a popular social media platform, affect the Fediverse, a network of decentralized and interoperable social media platforms. The article argues that the new terms of service are incompatible with the Fediverse's values and principles, and that they pose a threat to the Fediverse's future.

    The main points of the article are:

    • Threads is a social media platform that allows users to create and join communities based on their interests. It is part of the Fediverse, which means it can communicate with other platforms that use the same protocols, such as Mastodon, Pleroma, and Pixelfed¹.
    • The Fediverse is based on the idea of self-hosting, which means that anyone can run their own instance of a platform and have full control over their data and moderation policies. The Fediverse also promotes federation, which means that different instances can interact with each other and share content across platforms².
    • In August 2023, Threads announced a new terms of service that introduced several restrictions and requirements for users and instances that want to use its service. Some of these include:
      • Users must agree to let Threads collect and use their personal data for advertising and analytics purposes³.
      • Users must follow Threads' community guidelines, which prohibit certain types of content, such as hate speech, harassment, nudity, violence, etc.
      • Instances must register with Threads and obtain a license to federate with its service. Instances that fail to comply with Threads' terms of service or community guidelines may be suspended or banned from federation.
    • The article claims that these changes are harmful to the Fediverse for several reasons:
      • They violate the Fediverse's ethos of user autonomy and privacy, by forcing users to give up their data and follow Threads' rules.
      • They create a power imbalance between Threads and other platforms, by giving Threads the ability to dictate who can federate with its service and what content can be shared.
      • They undermine the Fediverse's diversity and innovation, by discouraging users and developers from exploring alternative platforms and features.
    • The article concludes by urging users and instances to boycott Threads and support other platforms that respect the Fediverse's values and principles. It also suggests that the Fediverse should develop more robust standards and protocols to prevent similar situations from happening in the future.

    Source: Conversation with Bing, 31/08/2023 (1) TLDR This - Article Summarizer & Online Text Summarizing Tool. https://tldrthis.com/. (2) TLDR 2023-08-14. https://tldr.tech/tech/2023-08-14. (3) Generative AI in big tech ‍ , Stability AI ... - tldr.tech. https://tldr.tech/ai/2023-08-09.

    • Did we really need an LLM summary of an otherwise already short article? Why do you assume it's even able to correctly transcribe the point behind the article in the first place? For example, it says:

      The article claims that these changes are harmful to the Fediverse for several reasons:
      They violate the Fediverse’s ethos of user autonomy and privacy, by forcing users to give up their data and follow Threads’ rules.

      The article never said this. If anything, the author of the article even acquiesces "Granted, these sound like basic table stakes for federation to work well within the Fediverse. Most Mastodon servers collect roughly about the same amount of data for basic features to work correctly. ".

      So how can this then be "violating the fediverse's ethos" when it is something the fediverse already does? The issue is not trusting facebook with this data, not the principle of data collection itself. Because of subtle nuance like this I'd say the summary is just misrepresenting the original point and just generating incorrect clickbait. There's other stuff in it that just seems made up since it's not mentioned in the article at all.

      TL;DR Fuck LLMs, stop thinking they understand context. They are just glorified autocomplete algorithms.

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