Microblog Memes

I'm so sorry ladies, but you had me until the Ts & Cs. This app is a privacy nightmare. I would put all of this energy into finding or crowd funding a better alternative.

I signed up for the app and there are so many dark patterns used in the signup process it's insulting.

Take all that neatly organized data and turn it into Christmas tree lights that have been sitting in a box all summer.

I am gonna get it.

Why in the world do we even need apps for this stuff? There is no reason to give your data to these companies at all.

Here's a crazy thought: get a journal. And write in it.

Why are such apps popular? Do these offer something more than what a combination of reminders and notes (digital or analog) providr?

Perhaps, these apps offer some insights based on the data. But would one take the risk of listening to an app for medical advice?

What is the actual goal here and will this behavior achieve that goal? Are we...

Adding a bunch of bullshit fictional data into a database that contains and will continue to gather legitimate data.

It strikes me that this would make the entire dataset less useful for legitimate medical research while not really doing much against targeted attacks. I could see some women's health researchers using anonymized data from something like this, and noise from people vomiting into it in protest would destroy it for that use. Or, you'd notice a bunch of accounts all join at about the same time making nonsensical data and just ignore the data from the accounts that joined around that time. Meanwhile I doubt this will stop the Gestation Gestapo from correlating genuine data with the actual identity of its owner.

Are you going to try to input obviously fake data? Make an attempt at realistic data? Try to trigger a Gestation Gestapo death squad, trying to make the service useless via false positives?

Or run up the service's data bills and maybe take up some of their cloud storage with fake data?

Start adding bullshit fictional data coinciding with women genuinely leaving the service

What would this accomplish that just having women stop using the thing do?

I've been trying to make that point for over a decade now. I think I get to unironically drop this xkcd. The alt text mentions diaspora, lol.

iOS has a first party health app that has menstrual tracking. I’m under the impression Apple takes data security seriously. If you don’t, self hosted is probably best.

Done. If only I could script it...

Okay, but since real menstrual cycles are typically highly regular - wouldn't it be fairly easy to filter out the fake ones?

Will it work if I do this from Canada? I haven't had a period in over 4 years (help, I've been pregnant for 4 years!) But I want to help y'all too!