Depending on where they want to sit in the scumbag chart, there’s no technical barrier stopping them from selecting threads-hosted accounts with high metrics and injecting advertisement posts under their handles.
That would be A) identity fraud because it would be my favorite fair trade drink endorsing Coca-Cola without the ads being clearly separated as required by many jurisdictions and B) not targeted advertising in any way.
Even if Threads posts illegally embedded extra ads: Users could just opt not to follow Threads accounts. Threads cannot just magically place ads in the feed. That’s impossible.
I’m sure they could find some way to have the terms of service agreement include a paragraph on how a handle is the property of Meta and not a user identity.
My favorite fair trade drink endorsing Coca-Cola.
Business accounts can be exempted from injected advertising.
Without the ads being clearly separated as required by many jurisdictions.
Post the ad as an image attachment and put the advertising disclaimer within the image? There’s a lot of ways they can make an ad disguised as a post, and not all of them are as easy to filter out as a quick text search.
Not targeted advertising in any way.
If @OutdoorsyOdin posts content about hiking and mountain climbing, you can make a reasonable guess that the subscribers are going to be interested in that kind of activity. It’s not targeted to a specific user, but it’s good enough to serve ads targeted at specific lifestyles or hobbies.
Users could just opt not to follow Threads accounts.
Exactly.
Anyways, this whole thing is to show that they could try to enshittify their fediverse integration if they really wanted to. There’s no technological barrier preventing them from sending ads through ActivityPub.
ActivityPub literally will not let them impersonate accounts from other instances. That much should be obvious. The topic is about them impersonating their own users and using that to push ads through federation.
No, that’s not the topic. The topic is ads being placed in the fediverse in a way only defederation could block. Even if Meta silently making posts in the name of my favorite organic orange juice advertising Coca-Cola was legal (it’s not), it would be easily solved by simply not following any Threads accounts. Also, Lemmy cannot interact with Threads anyway, so Lemmy servers defederating from Threads is completely pointless.
about them impersonating their own users and using that to push ads through federation.
No, that’s not legal. That would violate copyright, consumer protection, competition laws, and whatnot, at least in the USA and the EU. Mastodon users (!!) must be explicitly aware that a post is an ad, not the brands ticking off an EULA on Threads. Therefore Mastodon users could decide to follow a brand account were products are promoted (just as they can right now if that brand has a regular Mastodon page) but Threads cannot legally impersonate one account on Threads to advertise another account. That’s not a grey area.
I didn’t set a timer but it took me at most a single-digit number of minutes to find documents and announcements about the FTC tightening the rules about deceptive advertising several times throughout the years.
The topic is ads being placed in the fediverse in a way only defederation could block. Even if Meta silently making posts in the name of my favorite organic orange juice advertising Coca-Cola was legal (it’s not), it would be easily solved by simply not following any Threads accounts.
Let’s go with your idea of what the topic is for a second: have you considered how advertisement posts could appear in search results, hashtags, or the explore section? Or what if they decide to screw with the normal process and artificially inflate the number of boosts and favorites for advertisement posts? Okay, the solution is to simply have your instance users refrain from following any Threads accounts so the posts don’t show up anywhere—which is effectively defederation.
Also, Lemmy cannot interact with Threads anyway, so Lemmy servers defederating from Threads is completely pointless.
Irrelevant to what I’m saying.
That would violate copyright, consumer protection, competition laws, and whatnot, at least in the USA and the EU.
Copyright to what? A person’s name? A small string of characters that is a “handle”? None of that is copyrightable.
That would violate copyright, consumer protection, competition laws, and whatnot, at least in the USA and the EU.
Doot Doot @SomePerson@example — 4h
Looking for gifts in time for the holiday season? Head on down to Best Buy to pick up some amazing deals on Black Friday!
– This is an advertisement shown to you by Meta. Click here for more info. –
That would violate copyright, vonsumer protection, competition laws, and whatnot, at least in the USA and the EU.
As I previously mentioned, corporate accounts can be excluded to remove running afoul of competition laws.
Mastodon users (!!) must be explicitly aware that a post is an ad, not the brands ticking off an EULA on Threads.
As with my example toot above, that took all of 15 words. They don’t need to be deceptive about what is or isn’t an advertisement to push that shit through the ActivityPub protocol.
Threads cannot legally impersonate one account on Threads to advertise another account.
Your whole argument is predicated on the idea that a (personal) account on Threads is either owned by its creator, or is associated with a trademark. Furthermore, there are a number of different approaches they could take to argue that the ActivityPub support provides access to a feed of content, and not an individual identity.
In any case, you’re repeatedly glossing over the fact that my original point was to say there isn’t a way to prevent it AT THE PROTOCOL LEVEL.
How do you know that Threads won’t inject ads as posts?
Ads in Instagram are posts from accounts you don’t follow. Threads can’t make you follow promotion accounts you don’t want to follow.
Depending on where they want to sit in the scumbag chart, there’s no technical barrier stopping them from selecting threads-hosted accounts with high metrics and injecting advertisement posts under their handles.
That would be A) identity fraud because it would be my favorite fair trade drink endorsing Coca-Cola without the ads being clearly separated as required by many jurisdictions and B) not targeted advertising in any way.
Even if Threads posts illegally embedded extra ads: Users could just opt not to follow Threads accounts. Threads cannot just magically place ads in the feed. That’s impossible.
I’m sure they could find some way to have the terms of service agreement include a paragraph on how a handle is the property of Meta and not a user identity.
Business accounts can be exempted from injected advertising.
Post the ad as an image attachment and put the advertising disclaimer within the image? There’s a lot of ways they can make an ad disguised as a post, and not all of them are as easy to filter out as a quick text search.
If @OutdoorsyOdin posts content about hiking and mountain climbing, you can make a reasonable guess that the subscribers are going to be interested in that kind of activity. It’s not targeted to a specific user, but it’s good enough to serve ads targeted at specific lifestyles or hobbies.
Exactly.
Anyways, this whole thing is to show that they could try to enshittify their fediverse integration if they really wanted to. There’s no technological barrier preventing them from sending ads through ActivityPub.
Threads has no influence on the terms of service on Mastodon. So no, Threads can’t allow to misrepresent profiles on Mastodon.
From my previous comment:
ActivityPub literally will not let them impersonate accounts from other instances. That much should be obvious. The topic is about them impersonating their own users and using that to push ads through federation.
No, that’s not the topic. The topic is ads being placed in the fediverse in a way only defederation could block. Even if Meta silently making posts in the name of my favorite organic orange juice advertising Coca-Cola was legal (it’s not), it would be easily solved by simply not following any Threads accounts. Also, Lemmy cannot interact with Threads anyway, so Lemmy servers defederating from Threads is completely pointless.
No, that’s not legal. That would violate copyright, consumer protection, competition laws, and whatnot, at least in the USA and the EU. Mastodon users (!!) must be explicitly aware that a post is an ad, not the brands ticking off an EULA on Threads. Therefore Mastodon users could decide to follow a brand account were products are promoted (just as they can right now if that brand has a regular Mastodon page) but Threads cannot legally impersonate one account on Threads to advertise another account. That’s not a grey area.
I didn’t set a timer but it took me at most a single-digit number of minutes to find documents and announcements about the FTC tightening the rules about deceptive advertising several times throughout the years.
Let’s go with your idea of what the topic is for a second: have you considered how advertisement posts could appear in search results, hashtags, or the explore section? Or what if they decide to screw with the normal process and artificially inflate the number of boosts and favorites for advertisement posts? Okay, the solution is to simply have your instance users refrain from following any Threads accounts so the posts don’t show up anywhere—which is effectively defederation.
Irrelevant to what I’m saying.
Copyright to what? A person’s name? A small string of characters that is a “handle”? None of that is copyrightable.
Doot Doot @SomePerson@example — 4h
Looking for gifts in time for the holiday season? Head on down to Best Buy to pick up some amazing deals on Black Friday!
– This is an advertisement shown to you by Meta. Click here for more info. –
As I previously mentioned, corporate accounts can be excluded to remove running afoul of competition laws.
As with my example toot above, that took all of 15 words. They don’t need to be deceptive about what is or isn’t an advertisement to push that shit through the ActivityPub protocol.
Your whole argument is predicated on the idea that a (personal) account on Threads is either owned by its creator, or is associated with a trademark. Furthermore, there are a number of different approaches they could take to argue that the ActivityPub support provides access to a feed of content, and not an individual identity.
In any case, you’re repeatedly glossing over the fact that my original point was to say there isn’t a way to prevent it AT THE PROTOCOL LEVEL.
Remember, the rule is “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish”.
Threads is doing this. Kicking them to the curb regardless of the cost is the only solution.
Threads had more users than the entire non-Threads fediverse within a day or two. Mastodon is not the competition.