Has anybody considered the idea that boosts from non-Meta properties to Threads could legally be used to build ad profiles? We already know they do that sort of account association with non-fedi accounts.
EDIT: Looks like that’s absolutely the plan. From the privacy policy
"Information From Third Party Services and Users: We collect information about the Third Party Services and Third Party Users who interact with Threads. If you interact with Threads through a Third Party Service (such as by following Threads users, interacting with Threads content, or by allowing Threads users to follow you or interact with your content), we collect information about your third-party account and profile (such as your username, profile picture, IP address, and the name of the Third Party Service on which you are registered), your content (such as when you allow Threads users to follow, like, reshare, or have mentions in your posts), and your interactions (such as when you follow, like, reshare, or have mentions in Threads posts).
We use the information we collect for Threads for the purposes described in the Meta Privacy Policy, including to provide, personalize, and improve Threads and other Meta Products (including seamless personalization of your experience across Threads and Instagram), to provide measurement, analytics and other business services (including ads), to promote safety, integrity and security, to communicate with you, and to research and innovate for social good."
https://help.instagram.com/515230437301944?helpref=faq_content
EDIT 2: After doing a little more thinking, I’ve come to the conclusion that the general narrative about Threads plan to steal users from similar federated services ignore the fact that it’s certainly cheaper to let the volunteers of the fediverse take on the moderation costs while they monetize the data. Though the two certainly are not mutually exclusive.
Just because it’s public does not mean they have the rights to sell it. Some over on Mastodon seem to think they likely would lose if it ever went to court (definite illegal in the EU but Threads is delaying launch there) but until then they plan to monetize your interactions.
If the fate of your posts is the concern, threads and whether or not it is federated with your server doesn’t matter. It never mattered
Anyone, anywhere on earth (including meta) can gather your public statements and do with them as they please. Legal or not, it’s a big world and the law doesn’t cross borders as easily as information does.
They don’t need threads to harvest and sell something you have posted online freely.
They don’t need threads to gather enough data to start associating your user name with a real name. Especially if you have an account on one of their services.