Here’s what is collected by Threads, as well as by Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, Spill, and Hive Social.
Can a brother get a tl;dr?
Output from “Boring Report”:
Meta has launched a new social media app called Threads. This app is designed to provide an alternative to Twitter and is part of Meta’s attempt to recreate an online experience similar to Twitter. Threads will be incorporated into the online Fediverse, a group of shared servers where users can interact across multiple platforms.
The app collects a wide range of personal data, including purchase history, physical address, browsing history, and health information. It also collects sensitive information such as race, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, religion, and biometric data. Threads falls under Meta’s larger privacy policy that covers its other social media platforms.
Android users have more control over the personal data shared with the app compared to Apple users. In the Google Play Store, users can toggle what data is shared. The app’s data collection is comparable to that of the Facebook and Instagram apps.
Overall, Threads aims to provide a Twitter alternative while collecting various personal data. Users should be aware of the privacy policy and the data they are sharing when using this app.
I feel like this person doesn’t know how iOS works. Android users may have more control, but iOS users will be told up front when something is requesting their data (I believe this happens on android too?). For example, things like health data. Threads can not gain access to the Health app on iOS without the Health app popping up in threads and saying “Threads wants to access this data: Heart rate, weight, etc” and you can toggle things on and off. But Threads doesn’t do that. The stuff they put in their privacy policy doesn’t mean they are actually able to access parts of your phone unknowingly, it’s there because if you wrote any of your personal data on threads, Instagram, Facebook, or message anyone with that information, they are saying “hey, we reserve the right to tack that info onto your digital profile so we can serve you accurate ads and make us more money”.
It sucks, but so do all the others.
Except Mastodon
I like the quote from the article:
Below is all the data collected by Mastodon that’s mentioned in the App Store.
In the style of Taylor Swift.
[Blank Space]
At this point there’s little reason to not use mastodon. It’s very busy now, and will only continue to grow because of its decentralized nature. I do not understand people’s eagerness to use worse alternatives that are practically spyware.
basically expect that Twitter and Threads will both suck up as much as they legally can.
