this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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In the few short hours since I started using #Threads, #DuckDuckGo has already blocked over 200 data tracking attempts. These include things like "headphone status" and "screen density."

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[–] 6mementomori@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

wtf do they even need charging status, headphone status, volume, direction rotation accelerometer wtf

[–] plz1@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They coded for "everything they can get" and just figure they'll use it all eventually. Must be a GDPR nightmare for them, if they even honor it vs. just not being caught doing bad actor things.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Must be a GDPR nightmare for them, if they even honor it vs. just not being caught doing bad actor things.

It's not currently available in the EU I believe.

[–] Marcy_Stella@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

They likely coded it all in quickly in a messy fashion that they didn't think about ways to disable any of the tracking in the EU and that's why is not available there at launch. While Meta has plenty of software engineers to get jobs like this done the speed they supposedly went to get it done(Being start in January launch in July) likely means things got rushed as it supposedly wasn't planned to launch till later this year but with twitter imploding Meta wants to get as much of the existing marketshare moved over quickly with instagram being the perfect way to make moving seem easy.

[–] gk99@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To advertise. If your battery is at 17%, they're gonna advertise a wireless charger. If you listen to headphones at max volume and are jumping up and down at a concert venue, they're probably not gonna recommend you earplugs.

[–] dan@upvote.au 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd guess that rotation is probably to rotate the video player when you rotate your phone.

Accelerometer is likely for the feature where you can shake the phone to report a bug.

Headphone status may be to pause videos when you unplug your headphones? Unsure.

[–] 6mementomori@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

if i understand correctly this isn't just grabbing info for functionality but rather is info being permanently collected and stored, so this shouldnt be it otherwsie there would be no need to keep it

[–] dan@upvote.au 2 points 1 year ago

How would DuckDuckGo know the difference between grabbing the info temporarily vs permanently? The app would still be calling the same APIs.