Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)…

What you see via the UI isn’t “all that exists”. Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see “under the hood”. Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won’t normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.

Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.

  • pulsereactionEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    if theres a way to link your username to an email address, Meta could, for example, create an instance and scrape all that info and attach to your shadow profile, and depending what kind of things you upvote, they could infer your political opinions, sexual preference, location, hobbies, etc.

    If you use the same username on the Fediverse and somewhere else, they could even already have that info on file.

    • Stuka@lemmy.worldEnglish
      48·
      1 year ago

      This circles back to if you are that concerned about privacy

      1. Don’t join an instance that requires an email and 2. Use temporary or one off email accounts.

      Its seeming like a lot of people want privacy but aren’t willing to take even basic steps to protect their own privacy, instead wanting someone else to do it for them.