cross-posted from: https://social.fossware.space/post/123876
In the few short hours since I started using #Threads, #DuckDuckGo has already blocked over 200 data tracking attempts. These include things like “headphone status” and “screen density.”
Trackers, trackers and ol’ Zucc’s roboface galore.
Not sure just mildly infuriating 😅
Also infuriating: the number of my friends who have installed this shitty app 😑
And their justification of it.
Edit: since for whatever reason i couldn’t reply to @BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social, i’ll edit my comment here:
I have no issue with the difference in opinion, but idk, if giving up way more privacy than it needed to run the app doesn’t seems bad to you, i have nothing much to add 😐
The usual “that’s basically all social media shrug”, which i agree but then again i don’t really use social media much, and i use sync for reddit.
Okay, this is an honest question.
Why do you care? How does it matter at all to you what apps your friends use? How does it affect you?
I can totally understand people valuing their privacy strongly and refusing to use mainstream corporate social media. I can also understand people who don’t care about that and decide that they get more out of it than they give.
Given that people posting on a social network that you’re not on has essentially no effect on you at all beyond a vague bit of FOMO, why does it matter?
Why do I care?
Well, I get all manner of spam texts because my mom gave some shitty app permissions to access her contacts. The spam messages are directed to me by name.
It’s not just their personal info they’re putting at risk when they click “agree” on data sucking apps.
Yes, whatsapp has my real name and phone number on their servers without my consent because several people I know have my details saved in their phone contacts, and when someone signs up to WhatsApp, they give my personal contact information to WhatsApp because the person signing up to WhatsApp consented to give it, not me. Tbf it’s the same for all messenger apps these days. I miss MSN Messenger.
It’s a valid question and I understand your point, but it becomes an issue for me when I end up being caught up the a snowball effect and need to use a bad app too. Here in Europe, WhatsApp is an example of something I’d rather not use, but because it’s the platform everyone else is on, it’s very difficult to avoid. The parallel I see is if Twitter is supplanted not by Mastodon, but by Threads, then that is the place people will gravitate towards and then the privacy friendly version becomes less useful due to lack of users and content.
Of course it is an option to just not use these apps, but the preferably outcome is that I am able to have the nice experience without sacrificing my privacy.
I just cannot fathom why people would see the shortest that Musk has made of Twitter and think the best solution is to go to a clone made by Zuckerberg. Have they learned nothing?
Because fundamentally, people really don’t care about all that much. They want a simple social network that’s vaguely pleasant to use, has the people and content they’re looking for, and otherwise stays out of their way. They certainly don’t care about Musk’s random crusade du jour against the evil woke libs.
Nor do they particularly care about targeted advertising so long as it remains vaguely unobtrusive and their data isn’t constantly leaked in ways that directly harm them. Zuck, for all his many flaws, is smart enough to know that the single biggest thing he can do is to largely stay out of the way.
Not just lazy. Wilfully ignorant and, dare I say, largely stupid as well.
Because people just submit it. He doesn’t know why. They just trust him. Dumb Fucks.
What I hate about this is that they say things like “Try the best to protect users’ privacy” etc then do shits like this
Well, they need to know your device rotation to serve you the perfect ads! /s
Seriously, I wouldn’t mind them knowing a thing or two about me, when I’m using their services. But tracking everything, just because they can, is just obnoxious. If you would translate this to the real world, you would definitely get arrested when you would stand on the corner of the street, noting down everything you see, every dimension/detail of every person walking by. You would be labeled “creep”. But if Facebook does it, governments go like: You can build your new data center right here, don’t mind the measly peasants that currently live in the village nearby
No wonder the app is not available in Europe, there is no way that list passes GDPR :P
Facebook I’m only comfortable using inside a browser for this reason, and not with Chrome either. Something proper like Firefox that can block third party cookies and run it in a container automatically so it can’t follow you around. I need to contain the filth.
What kind of addon do you use to contain the tracking cookies on Firefox? I’d really like to get it too.
It’s built into Firefox! You don’t need one.
Click on the shield icon in the upper left (on Desktop) and from there you can get into your tracking protection settings. It also has a dashboard showing what has been blocked. Categories are social media, tracking cookies, tracking content, fingerprinting, and cryptominers. Facebook containers are also built into Firefox on desktop. That feature is called Container Tabs and is in settings also.
On Firefox for Android, you go to the three dots thing -> Settings -> Enhanced Tracking Protection.
Most browsers today have something like this built-in because it’s such a problem, except Chrome, because Google is an ad company first and would be shooting their own foot.
There is also this official extension. IIRC, this also makes sure that all the meta owned sites are not able to interact with other sites, but can work fine with each other. It also makes sure that any links leading to their sites also only open in the container, maybe also sanitized to remove the tracker from original link. The last part I am not sure, as I might be confusing it with a different extension. But if you are using any of the Meta sites, I would recommend it.
