[HN Gopher] WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with F...
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WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with FB or stop using
the app
Author : erwinmatijsen
Score : 176 points
Date : 2021-01-06 20:45 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| Simulacra wrote:
| Sounds like my Oculus paperweight...
| jordache wrote:
| why not just create a burner FB account?
| sneak wrote:
| It's no longer a burner if you type in payment details to buy
| stuff, it's then linked to your banking identity.
| purplecats wrote:
| it ceases to be a burner with usage. gaze into the abyss and
| the abyss gazes back into you
| simonswords82 wrote:
| That's a really interesting point.
|
| I created a new burner FB account (I don't use FB) to go
| with my Quest 2.
|
| I used a fake name and a gmail burner account.
|
| However I've had to enter my credit card details to make
| payments so they have my real name, bank details and
| address information. They also know what I'm watching, what
| I'm buying etc
|
| So my question is - do they call me out at some point and
| tell me to add a real name or prove my ID. Or do they let
| me carry on under my burner account because they can still
| profit from me both from my spend on apps/games and by
| selling my real data?
| wayneftw wrote:
| Use a Visa gift card next time.
| ve55 wrote:
| imo Facebook has enough data that if you want to use it
| completely anonymously there is no reasonable way to put
| in half of the effort, and even Visa gifts cards won't be
| enough.
| zizee wrote:
| Apparently this is against Facebook's ToS and it risks
| account suspension at any time (removing access to anything
| you bought in the Oculus store).
|
| I am thankful that I made the decision early on to use steam
| for purchases early on.
| LegitShady wrote:
| If you've got $200 and a chip in your shoulder, Oculus'
| arbitration clause in their user agreement ensures that if you
| pay $200, Oculus will pay thousands to handle the arbitration,
| and case law so far says they can't "combine" arbitration cases
| just because its convenient for them to do so.
|
| I no longer have an oculus HMD, but Oculus no longer has any
| profit from me.
| rusabd wrote:
| I am hosting rocketchat for majority of communication just for my
| family. It has some maintenance overhead but generally works
| really well
| nickcw wrote:
| How about pay $1 / year to opt out of all data sharing?
|
| I foolishly installed the Facebook app on Android for a while.
| When I asked for a data dump from Facebook I was amazed at the
| amount of data it had stolen from my phone, including full
| contacts list. It sounds like that is exactly what Facebook are
| planning with WhatsApp.
|
| I'd pay $1 / year to opt out of that and be the customer rather
| than the product.
| noncoml wrote:
| If you live in US, the number has to be probably close to
| $30/month to match what FB is making out of you
| judge2020 wrote:
| $1 a year is super low. YouTube values their ads at
| approximately $19 a month[0] - FB can't be much less.
|
| 0: https://YouTube.com/premium
| iagovar wrote:
| Telegram works fine.
| foofoo4u wrote:
| I'd like to move my family off of WhatsApp due to these concerns.
| I've used Signal before, but I am not a big fan of it. I often
| have to re-register my devices to sign in, syncing takes a long
| time, and conversations do not persist across devices. I am
| perfectly happy using a paid service. Does anyone here think
| Discord or Slack would be a suitable replacement?
| bigiain wrote:
| > or Slack would be a suitable replacement
|
| Jumping out of the Facebook frypan into the Salesforce fire
| doesn't seem to be a particularly winning move...
|
| (Which also raises the question, whichever alternative you
| choose, you probably need to evaluate the risk of Facebook (or
| some equally evil corp) acquiring them down the track. I wonder
| how likely Discord/Telegram/Signal are to be able to resist
| Facebook-sized acquisition offers?)
| ObsoleteNerd wrote:
| Try Telegram. It's as easy to use as WhatsApp for non-tech
| family and friends, yet has all the features you want out of an
| IM without too much of the bloat. It has native apps on all
| major platforms, and for the techies it has a solid API so you
| can do fun stuff like write your own bots.
| frereubu wrote:
| I'd love to give up WhatsApp, but network effects are key here. I
| tried moving my extended family off WhatsApp onto Signal a couple
| of years ago and it failed miserably because the app wasn't
| nearly as easy to use, and they had all their friends on
| Whatsapp. Has anyone here had any success moving a large group of
| people onto something like Signal or Telegram? If so, do you have
| any tips?
| gsich wrote:
| Probably depends on you. Do people want stuff from you? If yes
| chances are good.
|
| Don't expect people to uninstall Whatsapp. Having multiple
| messengers is fine.
| srfvtgb wrote:
| Fortunately I don't live in a place where WhatsApp is
| completely pervasive. I personally had luck saying "if you want
| to contact me use Signal, iMessage or at the very least SMS"
| and when people asked why, I would cite Cambridge Analytica.
| gotem wrote:
| Which turned out to be a bunch of hyped up marketing talk.
| Why does every person in SV I know seem to love the narrative
| that we're being mind controlled by micro-targeted FB ads,
| which to be fair is what I used to believe.
|
| Everyone on HN switches between "ads don't work and targeting
| is BS" to "ads are manipulating our entire country by taking
| our data"
| Retric wrote:
| Not everyone on HN is the same person. So, different people
| can believe each without any contradiction.
| st1x7 wrote:
| Your post says one thing but you must be wrong because
| the post above says a different thing.
| [deleted]
| petersonh wrote:
| I had success moving my friend group onto Signal, but that was
| a group of young-ish, privacy interested, anti-Facebookers, so
| it wasn't much of a hard sell.
| nifhel32 wrote:
| I moved almost all my friends and family to Telegram. I think
| the secret, once I managed to get them to install it, was to
| create common groups instead than many one-to-one chats.
|
| Then they got hooked up, mostly thanks to the huge amount of
| high quality stickers.
| bigiain wrote:
| From the opposite point of view, in the last hour I've been
| added to 3 different group chats on Signal that were all
| previously WhatsApp chats (in which I did not participate, in
| spite of many of those friends repeatedly asking me to).
|
| That's added at least 20 or 30 friends/acquaintances into my
| signal contact list that I'm 99% sure downloaded signal for the
| first time this morning.
| paulz_ wrote:
| I've moved some group chats to discord and have had pretty good
| luck with it so far.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Sadly, no 6 people was my max and those were my family members.
| And my mom still complains Whatsapp was easier..
| [deleted]
| Akronymus wrote:
| I personally moved to Element/Matrix with a large community. It
| works quite well.
| stainforth wrote:
| Network effects as a emergent principle has been discovered to
| violate the promises of capitalist economics. We have a right
| to come together and set the limits and terms by which a few
| can extract from the many.
| netizen-9748 wrote:
| Why must there be extraction at all? Even trade seems like it
| would be better for the majority of parties involved,
| including having the effect of not having a bunch of pissed
| off people down the line.
| dijit wrote:
| I contact the majority of my friends with telegram, the UX is
| similar enough and people get on board quite quickly- the
| difficult part is convincing someone to install /another/
| messaging app- if they have network effects too then it's a
| hard sell.
|
| But once most people have both it gets easier.
|
| Signal (UX wise) is not really super great for my family, I
| burned a lot of my "technical expert advisor" capital and
| reputation by pushing that too hard.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| I had success at least moving my parents and sister to chat
| with me on Telegram. I was having weird issues with Telegram
| video call (very low sound on my parent's phones), so I still
| had to call them on Whatsapp. Also, didn't find any audio
| call option on Telegram, only video call.
| ObsoleteNerd wrote:
| Another vote for Telegram here. I tried to get at least the
| core group of family/friends on Signal or Wire and to their
| credit they tried but it never stuck. They loved Telegram so
| much that we now have the entire extended family/friends on
| it.
| frereubu wrote:
| Interesting that you had such a different result with
| Telegram. I'd prefer to use Signal for privacy reasons, but
| like you I burnt a lot of social capital trying to get my
| extended family to use it!
| bilekas wrote:
| IMO telegram has the best feature and usability parity as
| Whatsapp..
|
| As for converting people who are not that interested, I can
| tell you from experience talking about privacy generally
| doesn't sell it.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| People still use facebook/instagram/gmail. If you tell them
| whatsapp is linked to facebook, it changes nothing to them...
| tpoacher wrote:
| Yay! I've been trying to get friends to jump onto telegram for a
| while now. Hopefully this might do it!
| afrcnc wrote:
| DUPLICATE: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25656993
| rohan1024 wrote:
| The sooner they take such actions the better it is for everyone
| in the long run. Someone somewhere will come up with an
| alternative that is better than anything we have today. And sorry
| but Signal is not the pinnacle of messaging.
|
| I like what Matrix is doing but they are far away from becoming
| mainstream. Within 2-3 years a new platform will rise and it will
| fix flaws of existing messaging apps. This will then be followed
| by social media but it might take another 6-7 years to fix that
| mess.
| upofadown wrote:
| >Within 2-3 years a new platform will rise and it will fix
| flaws of existing messaging apps.
|
| And then 2-3 year after that an entirely incompatible platform
| will do the same thing...
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Or, more likely, someone will buy it and screw it up. That's
| pretty much par for the course.
| CerealFounder wrote:
| Curious to all those family power users. What would you want to
| see in the next gen WhatsApp?
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I just installed element today (the new name for riot) It's
| interesting and may have some features like rooms that will
| build interest outside of just being an IM tool. I do miss the
| days of AIM/Jabber/Google Talk/ where everything just worked.
| Bringing that experience to phones should be the goal rather
| than jumping from service to service.
|
| My friends from Europe and Brazil are locked into WhatsApp, my
| American friends seem to prefer FB messenger. They're really
| using 2 versions of the same company's products which are
| "incompatible" at this point. Facebook could make them
| compatible with one another and with each other only OR they
| could do the socially beneficially thing and use an open
| protocol. Unless employees at FB push for this, they're likely
| to take the former route.
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| https://signal.org/en/
| anoncake wrote:
| https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
|
| Moving to a different walled garden is not a solution.
| marricks wrote:
| Did they really do this just as the election was being certified?
| No one outside of tech will be talking about this for a while...
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| WhatsApp has such a strong network effect, that a wholesale move
| off is very difficult. I asked my immediate family to move to
| Signal and they agreed.
|
| Then came the question - can we talk to people on whatsapp using
| signal because friends, aunts, uncles, cousins who live
| international all live on whatsapp. Moving your network, their
| network and their networks network becomes quite the task.
| [deleted]
| throwbacktictac wrote:
| Naively it seems like the problem that will make progress at
| both ends with the right spark. As I image it, soon enough
| someone else will have already convinced part of your network
| to make the move.
|
| People, in general, don't have a qualm about installing another
| app when it's recommended by someone they trust.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Hopefully, it is however a slow process. In India, whatsapp
| is so dominant, I cant imagine what it would take for them to
| move to anything else
| darau1 wrote:
| Uninstalled. Signal is better.
| draw_down wrote:
| This is good, people should be forced to make these choices
| explicitly. And it's Apple that is forcing the matter.
| srfvtgb wrote:
| A lot of people mention Telegram, as far as I can tell, it's a
| worse Signal. What advantages does it have over Signal?
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Depending on your perspective, Signal is actually a worse
| Telegram. Telegram has the best UX and feature set ouf of all
| messaging apps, and privacy does not outweigh convenience for
| the vast majority of people.
| _ink_ wrote:
| I think the UI is better. Encryption is worse. But I like how
| they structured their data centers. They have sprinkled them
| into different countries and they claim that servers from
| different jurisdictions are necessary to access the data. So if
| an agency wants to access it, they have to get warrants from
| different countries. With all the war on encryption going on,
| e.g. forcing companies to include backdoors, I think this is
| the way to go.
| himujjal wrote:
| 3 years of me and my girlfriend using signal. no problem
| whatsoever
|
| lol. whatsapp
| tolbish wrote:
| Signal users: How is quality of multi-person video calls? If it's
| as good, I wonder why it's still a beta feature.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| The quality is good not great. If you are going to compared to
| Duo or Facetime, its not there yet. Ill say thats its not a
| show stopper though
| hyko wrote:
| FB owned = FB. Why is that so hard to understand?
| DiederikvandenB wrote:
| Does this also apply to European customers, given GDPR?
| [deleted]
| blue_box wrote:
| Seems like, no. On their EU Privacy Policy, it says:
|
| "Today, Facebook does not use your WhatsApp account information
| to improve your Facebook product experiences or provide you
| more relevant Facebook ad experiences on Facebook."
| utf_8x wrote:
| European user here - I got the notification today so... I guess
| it does?
| TrianguloY wrote:
| I also got the notification, but it's strange because
| WhatsApp in Europe is from WhatsApp Ireland Limited, and
| WhatsApp outside is from WhatsApp LLC. They are different
| companies with different legal requirements. I've seen some
| news stating that these new changes apply only to WhatsApp
| LLC, but the notification seem to say otherwise.
|
| Someone else with more info could explain better?
| rusk wrote:
| This was the very question I have. Presumably given this
| ultimatum they would pull out of the EU market? That's great
| that solves the problem of getting my friends and family onto
| something else!
| svckr wrote:
| That's odd. I did not receive any notification yet? Is the
| privacy policy country specific?
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Im in the US and received it 2 days ago. Im the only one in the
| family and amongst my friends to have gotten it
| simonswords82 wrote:
| I've not had it either. Perhaps it's being rolled out over time
| in the run up to 8 Feb switchover?
| airstrike wrote:
| I'll just leave this here
|
| https://epic.org/privacy/internet/ftc/whatsapp/
| solnyshok wrote:
| ouch. first I thought that it is about FBI, then realized it is
| about Facebook. They should merge sometime in future, anyway.
| bigiain wrote:
| Some argue this has already happened...
| utf_8x wrote:
| Once again - Signal[0] as an alternative. It's fully Open-Source
| (including the backend) and their crypto is public and
| independently verified[1][2][3]...
|
| [0] https://signal.org/en/
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Encryption_p...
|
| [2] https://threatpost.com/signal-audit-reveals-protocol-
| cryptog...
|
| [3] https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf [PDF]
| sagivo wrote:
| How is it compared to telegram?
| utf_8x wrote:
| IMO it works just as well and unlike Telegram it's actually
| credible... The telegram crypto is an absolute disaster and
| they have been pretty shady and defensive when asked about it
| in the past. Not to mention the back-end is closed-source.
| Also, the desktop clients still don't support encryption,
| many years after it's been first requested.
| seniorivn wrote:
| not as good in terms of UI/ux but compared to pgp emails much
| simplier ps telegram is no more secure than Whatsapp unless u
| use secret chats
| hiq wrote:
| Better security, worse UX.
| Evidlo wrote:
| That's just moving from one silo to another though. Users of
| centralized services don't have much recourse when the company
| pulls the rug out from under them.
| andrewchambers wrote:
| If the backend is open source then there is recourse.
| utf_8x wrote:
| True but you have to consider the app needs to be user
| friendly to see any real adoption...
|
| Don't get me wrong, I love Riot (or whatever it's called
| these days) but it's just not user-friendly for your average
| Joe...
| Arainach wrote:
| Users want centralized services. Syncing across devices and
| shared history are mandatory features, and are basically
| impossible to do well in distributed models.
| st1x7 wrote:
| The problem isn't silos, it's lack of privacy. Signal solves
| that problem.
| afandian wrote:
| Last time I tried to use it it on my android didn't work
| without google play services. And they really bury the apk
| download, which means it's useless(or heavily discouraged) for
| people without a google account.
| utf_8x wrote:
| The APK is really not that hard to find...
| https://signal.org/android/apk/
|
| That page also states "Advanced users with special needs can
| download the Signal APK directly. Most users should not do
| this under normal circumstances." which IMO is a very good
| point. Downloading random APKs from the internet is rarely a
| good idea...
| nowzarifarhad wrote:
| That's a dumb move from facebook unless they are planning to buy
| every other chat applications and ask their users to share their
| data with Facebook. I'm amazed that they are asking for it and
| not doing it already.
| [deleted]
| personlurking wrote:
| So, the part below is new, or not new? And what is "user content"
| exactly? All messages, images and audio?
|
| _______
|
| >WhatsApp, according to the App Store, reserves the right to
| collect:
|
| Purchases
|
| Financial information
|
| Location
|
| Contacts
|
| User content
|
| Identifiers
|
| Usage data and
|
| Diagnostics
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Signal and Telegram seem to be the most commonly mentioned
| alternatives here. Which one do you prefer and why?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Signal. Open source, non-profit, very good privacy defaults.
| Telegram seems even worse than whatsapp to be honest because
| they don't even have encryption on by default.
| AndriyKunitsyn wrote:
| Telegram always has encryption, just no end-to-end encryption
| by default. This is a privacy/convenience trade-off. When
| chatting about groceries/memes/latest Netflix releases, you
| don't really need E2EE that much, and chats without E2EE are
| synced to all devices in Telegram, including a fully-
| supported desktop app.
| post_break wrote:
| Telegram because it works across all my devices and so far has
| been adopted by friends. Closest to iMessage for any non Apple
| device for me.
| darau1 wrote:
| I would prefer signal, but I use Telegram. Everyone I talk to
| likes the feature set, so Signal would seem like a step
| backward.
| anoncake wrote:
| Signal is just another walled garden, making it a no-go for me.
| itsnot2020 wrote:
| Out of interest, what do you use instead?
| bigiain wrote:
| Signal, because I have more trust in Moxie that the Telegram
| team.
|
| I have not used Telegram though, so that's not a preference
| based on usability, just on trust.
| sneak wrote:
| Wasn't that Facebook's main promise when they purchased WhatsApp?
|
| Forget whether or not they can, legally; if I recall correctly
| they explicitly promised not to.
|
| People who work for those without integrity are baffling to me.
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