When you post on reddit, instagram etc. you’re giving the company your valuable data. (And it often is valuable, you put your thoughts into it and all that). Consider if you take 15 minutes to create value content, you’d get paid $5 or sth if you were doing it commercially. Now all that value is donated to big tech companies. (that’s the only reason why they have value at all.)
So what’s the problem with that? The problem is that reddit and others can instantaneously put your years-long effort behind a paywall. I’m not joking. Look at these:
when i want to see content on reddit (for research) or instagram (for local community) they don’t allow me to see the data that users have contributed. Reddit claims that it blocks VPNs for “security reasons”, meanwhile i’m using VPNs in browser’s incognito mode to not be tracked. Instagram wants you to sign in sothat they amass more users and can take leverage of the network effect even more.
I can understand restricting who can post to limit bot activity, but reading must always be possible. After all, it’s our data. That’s exactly what happens when you give your data to big companies to “communicate with other people”: your data becomes a source of income for them, at our expense.
Consider if you take 15 minutes to create value content, you’d get paid $5 or sth if you were doing it commercially.
Real “I grew up doing content farming in the early 2000s” energy.
I just post my unhinged performance art
People on lemmy don’t seem to enjoy it for some reason
I appreciate your efforts stranger.
Uhh…ಠ_ಠ
Apparently not everyone wants to see a man nail his dick to a piece of wood, or shoot fireballs from it
Aww, I was hoping for… gestures at your username
Oh, I definitely enjoy fisting
I’m going to need to see this for research purposes.
I’ve posted some shit here
That links to my redgifs, where it’s all available
Bravo
Reddit is trying to pull its value from content as an AI source, because they can’t monetize users more directly.
It’s way too late
If we all agreed to this when google was handing out invite only keys to gmail, then maybe we could’ve made a difference
Unfortunately most of the internet is login-gated at this point. And honestly a lot of it is justifiable, lest you let the bots run wild scraping your site until it goes down completely.
a lot of lemmy servers use anubis to hinder bots. it’s quite effective actually. makes the bots do some hard cryptographic riddles before accessing data. insignificant for human users who only read 100 posts but significant for bots who want to read millions of posts.
What.
All you have to do is host your own lemmy instance and federation will give you all the data. Free of charge
I’ve been slowly replacing, by hand so it doesn’t trigger their detection alerts, all of my 15 years of comments on Reddit, a lot of it valuable answers to tech questions or programming problems, with a randomly prompted unrelated paragraph of ChatGPT whatever.
When one of the first exodi(?) came, a lot people replaced their comments with random words through scripts, back then it was not as detected and prevented (which Reddit promptly scrambled to prevent), and thanks to people doing that I’ve eventually blocked Reddit from my Kagi altogether, simply because 90% of what I found was either questions with scrambled answers, comments that are just ads from bots, or just unrelated bullshit. So, it does have an actual impact.
Have fun selling that to AI companies.
LIke you I deleted all my comments and verified they were deleted. When I looked a couple of months later, Reddit had actually restored each and every one.
I’m slowly deleting them again. Maybe this time they’ll stay gone.
Have you tried a GDPR request?
Deleting (or editing) comments does not change what the hosting website has, it just updates what they display. so there will be lines in a database saying:
- the original comment was “blah”
- on the 6th of August 2024 it was changed to “blah2”
- and the 20 of January the comment was deleted
There isnt a way for you to remove that unless there is some legal mechanism for you to force them to remove all data about you.
Even with GDPR requests there’s zero guarantee they actually comply with deletion requests. They may decide to show something that may lead to think they have complied. That’s it…
That’s why I went with editing them to something random, unrelated to the thread, but still a feasible paragraph, in hope that this won’t trigger this mechanism.
i think the reason reddit deleted both my accounts, was so that i couldnt modify or delete my contributions.
after the accounts are deleted, they probably still have copies saved somewhere. but it revokes my access to remove or tamper with my content.Unfortunately, I think there is a pretty easy way for them to detect comments that were deleted/edited with the intent of making them useless to Reddit: check the age of the comment/post when it was modified.
Whether they would bother to do this is a different question.I’d be interested in your results a few weeks/months from now.
You should back those up first and consider contributing them elsewhere. Maybe even just a WriteFreely blog with all your old comments and context.
I wish there was a third-party reddit archive, because before it enshittified it was a great resource for a lot of niche topics.
You can download archives of Reddit comment and submissions from Academic Torrents.
I’m not aware of any similar public archives of Fediverse content.
hmm i’m not entirely sure either but it seems like fediverse content should be easily archivable.
probably this is another engineering challenge to think about once that i have checks notes a few months of free time …
Interesting, if I’m not misreading that index you have 2007 to 2015, then jan 2024 onwards monthly (at 30-50gb a file) but not the 9 years in the middle
Doesn’t every lemmy instance federate all the content anyway?
Not holistically, as an archive. When new content is posted on an instance it gets pushed out to any other instances that are subscribed to it. That’s the only time the content is sent out. So if you start up a new instance but don’t subscribe to anything nothing will be sent to you, and you won’t get any historical content sent to you from beforehand. The Fediverse isn’t a “flood fill” mesh.
Gotcha. But if someone ran a lemmy archive instance continually it would work.
The problem is that reddit and others can instantaneously put your years-long effort behind a paywall. I’m not joking. Look at these:
Those aren’t paywalls.
meanwhile i’m using VPNs in browser’s incognito mode to not be tracked
That’s not what a VPN or incognito modes do.
Reddit sucks for a number of reasons, but your internet literacy also kinda sucks.
That’s not what a VPN or incognito modes do.
It absolutely is. I’ve verified this by toggling the VPN off and wallah access is restored.
wallah
Please tell me this is a joke/reference.
Not a reference, just a little BoneAppleTea for breakfast 😉
That’s because Reddit bans VPN IP addresses. You still have an IP address when using a VPN, and VPN IPs aren’t exactly secret information. Reddit blocks all the VPNs they know of with an ever-updating blacklist.
Yes, that’s what was said…
Those aren’t paywalls.
Why?
The concept of “paying for something” isn’t limited to “paying with fiat money/currency”. One can “pay for something” by “paying with their attention/time”, one can “pay for something” by “paying with PII” (personally-identifiable information), both situations of which are present in both Reddit’s and Meta’s “Sign up to read this”.
Sure, Reddit and Instagram/Facebook are “free” insofar the user isn’t required to do any kind of bank/credit card/cash/cryptocurrency payment, but the user ends up paying with all the time they spend in these platforms while seeing (thus, giving part of their attention span) advertisement, and also hand personal data.
When it comes to PII, even if the user set up a pseudonym and a generic PFP, the user is still handing, even if unbeknownst to the user themselves, their preferences, opinions, etc. Even lurkers end up handing PII whenever they stop at certain posts to read/see it (thus, signaling one’s preferences) or use specific search queries (again, signaling one’s preference).
That’s not what a VPN or incognito modes do.
The incognito mode may not prevent tracking (especially because of the IP address), but rotating VPNs may do. Notice I used the word “may”, not “will do”, because of the behavioral tracking I mentioned earlier, as well as other technical aspects (DNS leaking, browser fingerprinting, etc).
People who can afford being an actor/actress and performing very convincing alt-personas behind a VPN IP address could theoretically fool platforms enough for the person not to be tracked by their gait… except this dramaturgical skill is a behavioral tell (gait) itself. And the usage of a VPN-assigned IP address is another tell.
meanwhile i’m using VPNs in browser’s incognito mode to not be tracked
That’s not what a VPN or incognito modes do.
VPNs prevent the site from attaching an IP address to the site visit, and incognito mode means that browser cookies routinely get scrapped.
VPNs prevent the site from attaching an IP address to the site visit
While this is a popular selling point that VPN providers like to advertise, it’s pretty misleading in terms of what this actually means with regards to tracking. Realistically, this does almost nothing to prevent sites from tracking you. They don’t see you at your home IP as “John Smith” and see you on your VPN as “Hans Schneider”, instead they see you at your home IP as “John Smith” and on your VPN as “still John Smith, but either traveling in Germany or using a European VPN”.
Advertisers have tens of thousands of individual data points on nearly every single person who uses the internet at all for any purpose. All a VPN does is obfuscate ONE data point. That’s less than 1% effectiveness at hiding your identity from advertisers. A VPN does basically nothing against all the other fingerprinting methods advertisers have.
Think of using a VPN like speaking into a walkie-talkie: your voice comes out at a different location, but if the person on the other end already knows what your voice sounds like, then they still know who you are, just not necessarily where you are. Unless you’re taking other efforts to mask your voice, the walkie-talkie isn’t protecting your identity in any way. Likewise with a VPN, if you go to the same sites from the same devices and log into the same accounts and otherwise engage in the same online behavior, the VPN is only hiding where you are, but it’s still trivially easy for an advertiser to determine who you are.
This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, because VPN providers harp on this idea so hard in their advertisements that it tricks people into thinking VPNs are capable of things that they just simply are not.
A few browser extensions can help with that further. UBlockOrigin, NoScripts, CanvasBlocker, Privacy Badger, Consent-O-Matic, etc. Maybe Decentraleyes but I don’t fully understand that one yet.
Then there’s DNS proxying and/or DoH, and a variety of other settings that can be tweaked for maximum privacy.
Any one of these things alone will leave holes, but putting them all together can significantly reduce your trackability and fingerprint. Of course it’s a trade-off because some of these will break websites, but most allow granular exceptions so you can still use the sites you need.
In any case, a VPN is an important part of that, but the main purpose is to make it harder for your ISP to track you. Obscuring your IP from web hosts is just a bonus.
yeah i get your point but that’s not what i meant. i’m using VPNs to do google searches, for example, in incognito browsing tab. so google knows the 10k searches i did, but it cannot connect them to each other, as session cookies between them are deleted each time i close the browser (which is about every few minutes). and i don’t log in to any account in the incognito tab either, so it can’t use account identities as fixed points either. and it cannot associate the queries by IP address either.
edit:
after seeing this website … https://amiunique.org/fingerprint i get what you mean now. i have to think about this.
So how would one acquire the obfuscation they are seeking for? Making advertisers don’t know who you are for everything you visit. Is it possible?
Uss the Librewolf browser. You need to turn off reduceFingerprinting and turn on WebGL to make some sites work, but even then if you go to CreepJS you will see that compared to Chrome, there is much less information like battery level, actual core/RAM count, etc for sites to use. And the browser has uBlock Origin to block ads and trackers, although turn off the Quick Fixes list as it might break YT bot protection and shadowban comments.
Not the OP you asked, but realisticly, your single best option is not giving any data. Use settings to prevent cross-site tracking in your browser where available, but really just post as little information as possible. The less you reveal, the less they will know.
I think you are overestimating the capacity and will of advertisers to actually identify people like that. The data may be available for it in theory, but it’s unlikely they built the systems to make it happen because they don’t really have much economical interest to do so. They care about market segments, not individuals.
I had to work a bit on this kind of things. Most of those systems are really shitty and ineffective.The little advertisers aren’t the scary ones. It’s Meta, Alphabet and Amazon that are scary and absolutely do fingerprint in this way. That said, the scale of these systems really does roll right past the individual user, unless someone really cares about YOU, but unless you’re doing something wrong, they don’t really give a shit. CSAM, illicit substances, amd more could probably be pretty easily rooted out by these systems, but that wouldn’t make-line-go-up so it doesn’t happen.
Try this while on a VPN and in incognito mode: https://amiunique.org/fingerprint
I bet you’ll be surprised at the methods companies use to fingerprint you - browser agent, Do Not Track enabled/disabled, timezone, screen size… not accepting cookies is also a data point to filter you by.
wtf. why does my browser send such an uniquely identifying token. wtf
(there’s more to the right of it, i cut it to preserve privacy)
WTF
TIL. the way trackers can do stuff
NoScripts and CanvasBlocker can help reduce your fingerprints.
Basically, most websites these days run javascript to harvest this info from your device. Sometimes they even integrate it into their basic functionality so that it breaks the site if you block it.
thats good. but it doesnt cover behavioral fingerprints(indications).
fyi i have seen some moderately effective tools that help to fight against this. but generally rare. people understimate how much their data is worth and the amount of development, that companies are willing to invest to break every privacy toolAre those things like mouse jigglers? It seems those would only work if enough people use them to create a blanket of obscurity.
Isn’t there any hardware that just… doesn’t log this stuff in a way that’s retrievable by backend server scripts?
Analogy
Imagine a restaurant where diners place orders through a discreet slot on the kitchen door.
- The web user is the diner who slips a note into the slot asking for a specific dish.
- The web‑service backend is the chef who receives the note, prepares the meal, and slides it back out the slot for the diner to collect.
Now, the diner adds a bizarre request: “Please serve the food, but I never want you to know you ever cooked it.” In practice, the chef can’t fulfill this—once he’s touched the ingredients and used the stove, his hands are inevitably stained, and the kitchen’s heat tells the story. Likewise, when a web user asks a server to fetch data, the server must process the request, so it inevitably knows it handled that request, even if it can’t tie it back to the individual’s identity.
Ad‑blockers, cookies, IP addresses, user‑agents, and browser signatures are like the various “fingerprints” a diner might leave on the restaurant’s doorstep:
- Cookies are tiny crumbs the diner drops on the floor while walking to the slot. The chef (or later staff) can later sweep them up and infer that the same person visited before.
- IP address is the diner’s shoeprints on the hallway carpet leading to the kitchen—an easy way to trace where the diner entered from.
- User‑agent / browser signature is the unique style of the diner’s napkin (its color, fold, and logo). Even if the napkin is discarded, the pattern tells the chef which brand of napkin was used.
- Ad‑blockers are like the diner wearing a cloak that blocks the kitchen staff from seeing the crumbs he drops, trying to keep the chef from noticing the usual “tipping” (ads) that would normally be left behind.
Just as no chef can truly be blind to the fact that he cooked a dish, a web service inevitably knows it processed a request, and the “fingerprints” left behind (cookies, IP, user‑agent, etc.) let it—or any intermediary—recognize or track the diner unless the diner takes strong steps (like using a cloak or wiping the floor) to hide those traces.
Deleted my previous comment - you’re right, it’s not able to identify the screen resolution etc without JavaScript.
Unfortunately I’m still fingerprinted though - no JavaScript is itself an identifiable marker.
Opens your eyes quite a bit, heh? It’s like you start seeing the matrix. Then you think of your friends and family, the “normies”, and realize they have zero chance. We have all become a cog in this advertising machine.
The problem is that reddit and others can instantaneously put your years-long effort behind a paywall. I’m not joking. Look at these:Those aren’t paywalls.
They are. You pay with you being tracked, profiled, your data etc for advertisement and other uses. That’s what these “free” services use to monetise the user.
Yea but thats not what a paywall actually is.
Toy companies don’t expect kids to spend their own money on the products they learn of though targeted advertising.
Ok, but a cash register isnt a paywall. A paywall is a specific thing with an actual definition.
well it feels like one
I abandoned my 250k+ karma account two years ago when I saw where Reddit was headed.
After a decade of reddit and over a half million karma I quit for multiple reasons. Primarily the cash grab for the API and forcing the reddit app, but also the explicit acknowledgement that the mods and community were absolutely being exploited for unpaid labor and anyone who didn’t take a knee could get fucked.
I use Lemmy (obviously as I’m posting here) and Cat’s Arch Redlib (https://catsarch.com/) to view Reddit. I sometimes post on the r/poisionai subreddit, as I am disgusted with how AI has been used in general, but that’s a different topic. Also, if you’re using Chrome incognito, you can still be tracked, even with a VPN on and without signing in to your account. Might want to switch browsers to reduce your digital fingerprint. Just a suggestion. Assume anything Google is tracking you at some level for behavioral or personalized advertising. Again, that’s a different topic, but thought it was worth adding.
Yeah, I’m sure this post won’t ever get scanned.
Not wrong, but I feel like you’re preaching to the Choir here.
it helps to clarify one’s mind from time to time :)
I don’t contribute anything worthwhile anywhere.
I see you, too, are a man of culture
This realization and the API thing is why I swore of reddit 3 years ago (to the month).
