Notices by Ewan Donnachie (erdonnachie@mstdn.social)

@emilygorcenski @siderea
That's true, they're offering a service that people definitely seem to want. But coming from a European perspective, it's horrifying.

Germany tends to go the other way, due to having 2 dictatorships in the past century that misused such data. We're having trouble getting basic, pseudonymous data on the entire population made available for research. Genetic data is viewed as incredibly sensitive, for obvious reasons.

@emilygorcenski
Who would have thought it's a bad idea to entrust a private, commercially-oriented company with the analysis and storage of your genetic information?

@siderea @emilygorcenski
I'm always astonished at the personal information and video material that the US police share with the world. Data protection culture is quite different in Germany...

But I'm also astonished that people give their sensitive health data to a private company, that is incentivised to use this data for their profit, not for the benefit of the customer. I would expect misuse of data by the company, and probably less focus on data security (than in Germany...)

@anneroth @marty_crabneck @Luca
Mastodon has developed as a safe apace where people, especially minorities, can meet without their discussion being hijacked by trolls. Respect for privacy and data protection are seen as core values, and many have #norobots on their profiles.

So for many, full text search is something that should be avoided as far as possible. Given a lack of T&C and privacy policies, it's also legally questionable.

@marty_crabneck @anneroth @Luca
There's a big difference between allowing your account to be visible and allowing a third-party (to whom you have not given this permission) to scrape all your posts and feed them into a full text search engine.