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Threads' inexorable enshittification is an opportunity: an opportunity to make the case for the Eurostack, an opportunity to improve the lives of millions of Europeans, and an opportunity to break through the walled gardens that keep the people we love stuck on legacy social media platforms.
When they did it to us, that wasn't progress. When we do it to them, it's not piracy.
31/
I know we aren't in the EU but can we lobby to do this too please? (Repeal our equivalent of Article 6)
(and can you tell your Southern compatriots to get a Mastadon account!?)
Here's how OG App worked: first, it popped up a browser window and loaded the Instagram login screen. Then, after you'd logged into Insta, it stole the "session key" (the cryptographic proof that you were logged into your account). That let it impersonate you to Insta's servers, and slurp down the whole feed that Insta had queued up for you.
2/
After grabbing your feed, OG App deleted all the ads, all the slop, all the boosted content, all the months-old clickbait that The Algorithm (TM) had surfaced. What was left was pristine: the posts from people you followed, in reverse-chronological order. To make this all even sweeter, OG App sent *no* data back to Meta as you used it, except for the likes and comments you *intended* to transmit to the company.
3/
All the other data that Meta's apps gather got blocked: everything from your location, to which posts you slowed down your scrolling on, to accelerometer readouts that revealed minute changes in how you hold your phone from second to second.
*Boy* did people like this! By the end of the day, OG App was in the top ten charts for both Google and Apple's app stores.
4/
By the next morning, it was gone. Meta sent a takedown notice to the app store duopoly and they killed OG App on its behalf (there is honor among thieves):
https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/27/og-app-promises-you-an-ad-free-instagram-feed/
The funny thing is, the OG App creators were just following the Facebook playbook.
5/
When Facebook opened up to the general public in 2006, it had the problem that everyone who wanted social media already had an account on Myspace, and all of Facebook's improvements on Myspace (Zuck made a promise *never* to spy on his users!) didn't matter, because Myspace had something Facebook could not match: Myspace had all your friends.
Facebook came up with an ingenious solution to this problem: they offered Myspace users a bot.
6/
You gave that bot your Myspace login credentials (just as OG App did with your Insta credentials) and the bot impersonated you to Myspace (just as OG App did with Insta), and it grabbed everything queued up for you on Myspace (just as OG App did with Insta), and then flowed those messages into your Facebook feed (just as OG App did with Insta).
7/
This is a bonfire demo instance for testing purposes. This is not a production site. There are no backups for now. Data, including profiles may be wiped without notice. No service or other guarantees expressed or implied.
