Are there attack vectors through public Wi-Fi in recent history? Now that most sites and services are HTTPS there’s nothing they can do except do network-level blocks.

I don’t know if those useful features are the main reasons VPNs are used, though. There’s evidence they are used often for bypassing blocked sites (like VPN downloads jumping in Russia recently), most of the other advertised privacy and security benefits are questionable. Most of them don’t advertise torrenting/piracy because that’s a legal gray area.

VPNs don’t really protect your privacy though, except in cases where you’ve already eliminated other means of tracking (e.g. fresh incognito browser tab + VPN). Every website and service I use still has a record of my activity if I’m logged in, advertiser networks have other means of tracking you, etc.

The issue is buying a VPN and thinking that’s the end of it.

It does all those things because you explicitly agree to it before getting the TV. Not the same as paying outright for a TV that somehow needs a constant connection.

No it’s not, AirTags are just Bluetooth beacons. When an iPhone or other apple device picks them up, the location data is uploaded to Apple’s servers and then sent to whoever owns the AirTag. There’s no two-way communication and the owner of the AirTag doesn’t get any personal info from the devices picking it up.

Yep, most of them won’t complain if you just never connect them to Wi-Fi during setup.

Yes, I’m aware. Fediverse also has nazis, they’re everywhere. I can put on my big boy pants and block them as I see them, instead of an admin doing collateral damage and preventing from talking to all the other people who won’t leave Threads.

FOSS bros: we’re all about user choice!

also FOSS bros: no not like that

Yes, you can domain block threads.net just like any other mastodon/misskey/whatever server.

I’m okay with Threads federating because there are a some people I know who won’t use Mastodon but will use Threads, and I would like to talk to them without downloading Threads. That’s probably true for most of the people supporting it, or they just think it should be up to individuals instead of the admin making unilateral decisions about who you’re allowed to talk with.

Threads joining would also introduce a far wider group of people to Fedi that isn’t just “nerds who like Linux and/or programming”, which is the bulk of people using Mastodon (and Lemmy, for that matter) right now. I’m not really concerned about EEE because there will always be a huge chunk of people using the FOSS platforms.

If I am on Mastodon, there is nothing that Threads can collect from me that they can not get already. My posts are public, Meta or anyone else doesn’t need permission to look at them.

The only risk is if I am sending direct messages to someone on Threads from Mastodon, then obviously Meta has a copy. ActivityPub is not E2E encrypted, you shouldn’t be using it for private communication at all, the threat model is the same between Threads and any other Mastodon server.

Public Mastodon posts are already indexed by search engines.

How about users make decisions for themselves and block Threads if they want?

Hell yeah.

Because the integration isn’t finished yet.

When you’re in Chrome or another browser, there’s an install option in the main overflow (three dots) menu.

I made a PWA that can quickly remove tracking variables called Link Cleaner. If you install it through Chrome or another Chromium browser on Android, it shows up as a share target, so you can share links to Link Cleaner and then share again to the intended target.

Or just an RSS reader, every channel has an RSS feed

There is no expertise in that interview, that’s the problem. It’s the Ghostery dev making vague statements that Engadget partially misinterprets and then everyone else gets wrong. The main insight there is that content blockers need their lists updated on a daily basis for YT which is not new information.

Ah yeah, that one didn’t show up on my server. That’s just an opinion about the overall situation, not disproving anything I said.