I want to preface this by saying that yes, I know that Instagram is bad. I am planning to get rid of it in the future but as of now I have to keep it for communication with people who are only on that platform.

So I have grapheneOS, use protonvpn (free version), use mull as my browser, and do not have google play services enabled on my phone. I do have some apps downloaded through aurora store such as Instagram, whatsapp, mychart, and mint mobile, but the rest came from f-droid.

I have noticed multiple times that after having private conversations on matrix, I get Instagram content in my feed that is scarily accurate to the conversation I had on the other platform immediately after. I know that things discussed in Instagram direct messages and group chat will give suggested content based on those conversations, but I get stuff that that is very specific to what I have ONLY discussed on matrix and didn’t look up via my browser.

So my question is how is Instagram doing this and what can I do to mitigate the spying it’s doing on my other apps. Thanks.

    • noodlejetski@lemm.ee
      1·
      3 months ago

      there are some Mastodon instances (like bird.makeup) that mirror posts from Twitter accounts, someone just has to request to mirror each specific account first. technically someone could set up a Pixelfed instance that would do the same with Instagram users, but 1. storage is much more of an issue when it comes to a media-first service, and 2. I bet Meta’s legal team is much more trigger happy than Twitter’s.