Found this post super informative as it relates to Mastodon, and thought Lemmy might also benefit from this perspective. I'm not sure I share his optimism, but his points seem sound to dampen some of the alarm bells over Meta joining the Fediverse.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Meta isn't really in the data SELLING business. It'd be counterproductive to let their competitors have access to all the data they do - it's what keeps their advertising network competitive. Same goes for Google. They don't want third parties to have access to your data, they want to be THE company that sells targeted advertisements.

[–] 314xel@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sell it in bulk to governments for large sums of money for which advertising isn't their interest.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh what makes you think governments need to pay for that? Is free if you're a big enough market.

[–] krolden@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-us-government-purchases-your-user-data-heres-what-it-does-with-it/

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm surprised that they pay for it. They could just demand it through all kinds of national security laws.

[–] krolden@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Oh they definitely do that stuIf but when they do they have to disclose that to the senate or whomever oversees such things. This way they can quietly buy up a shit ton of data with whatever dark budgets they have access to.