From a privacy standpoint, i guess. I want to support open scrobbling with listenbrainz and the account isn’t directly linked to a real acc. Why shouldn’t I/ why don’t you?

    • Social engineering. The more information they have about you, the easier you are to immitate.

      The threat isn’t in any one piece of information about you; it’s in the corpus of knowledge, the profile they can build. Your tastes in music - at the granularity of not only what you listen to, but how much, and at what times - can help narrow down:

      • how old you are
      • where (in the world, and maybe to the time zone) you live
      • your mother tongue
      • probably your socio-economic status

      These are just the things I can tyink of off the top of my head, and I’m not in infosec.

        • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          11 months ago

          Depends on how much you let them link it back to you, but you’re absolutely right: social media is a privacy nightmare. It can be mitigated; pick a Lemmy instance that doesn’t require an email, and don’t give out any identifying information, or just lurk. Many of us have multiple accounts on different servers, with carefully segregated personas. You do what you can; OP asked why (or why not) scrob. I see no reason to give out that information, only to give a company more information they can sell.

    • angrystego@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      In totalitarian countries, those who listen to certain types of music are persecuted, because it links them with demografic that can be threatening to the regime. Even if your country is not totalitarian now, the existence of this data could be potentionally harmful to you in the future (just like any data, really).

        • angrystego@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          11 months ago

          Yeah, it’s great to be safe in your country. I enjoy it too, fortunately. But it’s not the same everywhere.

      • loutr
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        11 months ago

        In quite a few countries some genres of music are actually illegal. Nazi music in France, most of western music in Iran, …

  • harsh3466@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    11 months ago

    I just started scrobbling with Listenbrainz. I do it through an anonymous account, and the scrobbling comes through my self hosted music server.

    I’m trying it out to see if I like the recommendations. If I do I’ll consider it a fair trade off in privacy for now.

    • juli@programming.devOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      If you listen to X and there is another guy listening to X and Y, one could recommend Y to you. Not only that, you actually have an influence which artist is at the top. You get a database of your listens and anyone, including you, can have a look at mass audio scrobble data.