Threads new ‘Supplemental Privacy Policy’ (Instagram link) says they’ll collect (from fediverse users interacting with Threads users):
- Username
- Profile Picture
- IP Address
- Name of Third Party Service
- Posts from profile
- Post interactions (Follow, Like, Reshare, Mentions)
From the linked article:
“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. But again, Meta is first and foremost an advertising and data harvesting company…”
Honestly, Meta federating is probably the best chance of Mastodon becoming accessible to the larger public, and I’m all for anything that brings us closer to a world where Twitter isn’t top dog.
And I say this as someone who’s rooting for BlueSky/ATProto, not Mastodon.
Meta isn’t connecting to Mastodon to make Mastodon better, it’s doing it to get free users for Threads. As soon as it has enough Treads-first users, it will break or stop supporting Mastodon and most users of Mastodon will wonder where all the content went.
This is behind lots of tech companies’ support for open standards. The adopt, modify, dominate, and then drop the open standards and move on.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.