[HN Gopher] Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypte...
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypted WhatsApp
messages for ads
Author : arkadiyt
Score : 119 points
Date : 2021-08-04 14:31 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macrumors.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macrumors.com)
| 101_101 wrote:
| well, the dumb fucks won't mind.
| stuaxo wrote:
| And of course the same tech can be used for surveillance.
| fsflover wrote:
| Targeted ads _is_ surveillance.
| coldcode wrote:
| Maybe they plan on making the encryption slightly less encrypted
| so they can tell something about the content? Would that not mean
| the encryption is basically pointless?
| keyme wrote:
| Isn't there client side code in every Whatsapp client that
| analyzes your messages and sends data to FB for ad targeting?
|
| I know for a fact they can block certain message content from
| being sent. So at least a hash of every message is sent to FB.
| This isn't very far from it.
| forrestgumbc wrote:
| How dare they try to make money from their business
| LightG wrote:
| If ad revenue is your only go to for money, maybe your business
| model just ... sucks.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Lots of people are happy with products that are supported by
| advertising. Problems arise when the business model relies on
| _surveillance_ , which endangers and violates the rights of
| end users.
| LightG wrote:
| True. Personally it demonstrates a lack of imagination or
| the "easy way out".
|
| For example, Google showed incredible to innovation to do
| what they did with Adwords. But then the way they slapped
| ads on Youtube has been gross.
|
| There's basic user experience also.
|
| Agreed though. Surveillance and privacy are even more
| important.
| deweller wrote:
| Well, I suppose it is possible to target ads to specific users
| without knowing anything about the user other than an anonymous
| user ID.
|
| Of course, this requires one to trust that Facebook is not
| actually collecting any identifying info. The temptation to cut
| corners for more profit or for sheer expediency might be hard to
| resist.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| This should not be possible, or must be considered crypto
| analysis right away. An encryption is build by design such that
| it is not possible to obtain any knowledge of the content of the
| encrypted message (or series of consecutive encrypted messages).
| If I can make some assumptions about an encrypted message (i.e.
| its content, the authors interesets etc.) the encryption is
| flawed by definition.
| kop316 wrote:
| This is a dup of:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28053808
|
| From my other comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28054329
|
| There is a severe misunderstanding of what Homomorphic Encryption
| is, but how they explain facebook is trying to use it is not how
| it works.
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| This seems like a good thing for FB and users (isn't that why
| researchers playing with homomorphic encryption more and more)?
|
| This way, FB gets to make money off ads with fewer privacy
| concerns.
|
| I have no insider knowledge but I fully expect Apple, Google and
| MS are actively trying to do this too.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Zuckerberg said that they combat spam on WhatsApp not by reading
| your messages because since they are end to end encrypted they
| are obviously unable to do it but by analyzing your metadata and
| your behavior on the service. So I assume the same strategy can
| be used for ads.
|
| Encryption is not a problem; if I'm not mistaken various security
| agencies in USA also bet on metadata when strong encryption is in
| question.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Perhaps we consumers should demand E2EE metadata then?
|
| Would such a thing be theoretically feasible?
|
| Or not because it would be like Tor with the entire Internet
| controlled by the adversary?
| forcry wrote:
| We should all just switch to something like
| https://delta.chat/en/ where the messaging protocol is
| implemented over plain old emails.
|
| It makes the most sense, even without Facebook being bad and all.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I'm sure end-to-end encryption is great and all, but if a company
| like Facebook is giving you the client, what difference does e2e
| encryption make if you're trying to prevent Facebook from seeing
| your stuff?
|
| Obviously you can see the plain text messages even if it was
| encrypted, and so Facebook/WhatsApp could theoretically see it
| too. Isn't this true of any app, e2ee or not?
|
| Adding ads at that point is just trivial - process on the client.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| > [...] is hoped to allow companies to read information from
| encrypted sets of data while also preserving privacy [...]
|
| These tow items sound mutually exclusive.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I don't know, how could figuring out the message is about
| arranging an extramarital affair or discussing cancer treatment
| options with your spouse be an invasion of privacy.
|
| /s
|
| This stuff is so obvious that it's obviously just willfull at
| this point.
| tmcb wrote:
| Not only that, but if they can generate meaningful targeted
| advertising from encrypted data, that would be pretty a strong
| indicator that the encryption method is not strong enough.
| Ideally, encrypted data must be indistinguishable from random
| noise.
| [deleted]
| bovine3dom wrote:
| As another comment mentioned, they're talking about using a
| technique that allows you to perform computations on
| encrypted data, with encrypted results output - the thing
| doing the computation never sees any decrypted data.
|
| So they could target advertisements but, as far as I can
| tell, they wouldn't be able to know which advertisements were
| served ... until the phone makes a request to download them,
| which seems to me to render it fairly but not entirely
| pointless.
| dahfizz wrote:
| My understanding is that homomorphic encryption allows one
| to transform encrypted data, but the data is still
| encrypted (random noise). i.e:
|
| decrypt(encrypt(x+1)) == decrypt(encrypt(x) +1)
|
| This does not allow you to get any information about X,
| only perform computations with it. If advertisers are
| getting information out of encrypted data, that means the
| encryption is broken.
| bovine3dom wrote:
| > If advertisers are getting information out of encrypted
| data, that means the encryption is broken.
|
| I'm just suggesting that Facebook wants to use
| homomorphic encryption to tell your phone which adverts
| to download. It won't know which adverts it told you to
| download or why ... but it will know that you've
| downloaded them once you do.
|
| It could in theory serve the adverts through homomorphic
| encryption, but then it wouldn't be able to invoice
| people based on how many times their adverts were served.
| I don't see that happening though.
| tmcb wrote:
| Oh, thank you, I should have paid more attention to the
| original article as well.
|
| As a complete layman on the topic, I am kind of wary of
| (fully) homomorphic encryption. Not sure if I understand it
| right, but it seems to me that anybody in possession of the
| ciphertext would be able to run it through an arbitrary
| circuit, even if the result is encrypted and they cannot
| read it; in theory it would be vulnerable to MITM attacks.
|
| For instance, say Facebook servers are compromised (yes, I
| know...) and an attacker then runs their own version of the
| recommendation algorithm instead, presenting fake ads to
| people that mention specific terms.
|
| I am certainly several steps behind any academic
| discussions on the subject, so if that is not a problem I
| am curious to know why.
| hanniabu wrote:
| You mean like zk proofs?
| bovine3dom wrote:
| I mean
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption : )
| capableweb wrote:
| They are not, they are referring to "Homomorphic encryption"
| which basically allows you to do computation on encrypted data
| without decrypting it or otherwise reveal the encrypted data.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
| howaboutnope wrote:
| > These resulting computations are left in an encrypted form
|
| As opposed to "read information from encrypted sets of data"
| beauHD wrote:
| I just wish AdTech companies had a system where you could fill
| out an extensive form, where you openly state what your
| preferences are, because the targeting seems very skewed and
| wrong, at least from what I've experienced.
|
| Facebook thinks I like rock music, but I really like house music.
| Facebook thinks I eat meat, but I am a vegan. Facebook thinks I
| like cars, but I don't even drive. There's no way of telling
| Facebook what my tastes and lifestyle preferences even are.
|
| Facebook just infers based on keywords and what things I interact
| with on their platform, which is a terrible way to gauge
| preferences, since I could talk about cars in a comment, per se,
| but that doesn't mean I drive.
|
| It's the same with all other ADs I get. They're all almost
| fraudulently inaccurate, and as an engineer I think we should be
| building things that work properly, are lucrative on their own
| merit, and not based on borderline fraud.
| g_p wrote:
| There's a growing base of evidence in both the US and the
| Netherlands (from news media websites, I believe), that
| targeted advertising is effectively a bubble, and didn't yield
| higher metrics or revenues. In fact I believe in a couple of
| examples, they saw higher growth and revenues from ads by going
| totally non-targeted.
|
| There's an entire sector now focused on trying to hyper-target
| ads, on the presumed basis they're more effective. If the house
| of cards falls down, and people realise untargeted ads perform
| better without all that extra cost, things could get
| interesting.
|
| Unfortunately it isn't as simple as that, as "independent"
| audience measurement seems to still be a requirement that leads
| to adtech type solutions emerging.
|
| To go back to your observation about the quality of targeting
| though, this shows in a way that it simply doesn't work... The
| trouble is advertisers continue to throw money at the services
| falsely claiming to have these accurate data-driven targeting
| models, without seemingly ever thinking to cross-validate them
| to be sure they aren't absolute nonsense of false claims of
| targeting demographics - your ones having entirely the opposite
| of Boolean demographics show how wild it can be.
|
| I fetched my data from Spotify and the limited data they had
| (in theory objective data) was chronically wrong - they had
| tried to put me into a group based on phone network used, but
| it didn't even get that right, despite that being trivial to
| do(!)
| foobarian wrote:
| Interesting. Reminds me of the analogous process of
| iteratively improving a model or fitness function and over
| time ending up with something overfit.
| marketingtech wrote:
| There's growing evidence that large media companies can
| generate revenue from advertising deals from large brands
| with high-level interest targeting.
|
| That doesn't say anything about the performance of targeted
| ads - just that high-level targeting is a suitable
| replacement for narrow targeting at a certain scale.
|
| That's a separate concern from niche publishers (without
| direct sales teams) and niche brands (who only have a few
| thousand dollars to spend on marketing) who both want to
| maximize the value they're getting from the ecosystem.
|
| And that's where the real money in advertising is. Fortune
| 500 companies boycotted FB last year and it didn't make a
| dent in their revenue, because they have millions of small
| businesses that all spend $50 on ads per month. That level of
| spending is only effective with narrow targeting.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| There is. It's a bit crude and as far as I remember you can
| only remove things.
|
| https://www.facebook.com/help/247395082112892
| dunnevens wrote:
| Facebook kinda lets you do this now. Filling out a preference
| sheet, that is. Buried in your ad settings is a list of what FB
| thinks are your interests. You can remove any that don't match.
|
| Doesn't always work though. You can remove all "interests"
| related to meat, and then still get slammed with steak ads
| after you clicked "like" on an article criticizing the beef
| industry. There seems to be a shadow list of interests that the
| user can't see or edit.
|
| The one combo that does work over time is deleting interests
| and consistently choosing "Do not show this ad again" for the
| unwanted subjects. But that's more work than most are willing
| to do. I only did it because the ad system is interesting to me
| and I wanted to see how trainable it is.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Couple this with the questionable junk they're always
| advertising too. Even when they do advertise correctly it's not
| anything I would ever consider buying. I left the platform last
| year and haven't looked back, it's a time suck/waste all
| around.
| russh wrote:
| I'm convinced that the real target of targeted advertising is
| actually the ad buyers and not the ad viewers. It's a tool to
| increase the revenue of the ad sellers.
| AdSeller wrote:
| delete this comment
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Form I would fill out:
|
| [[?]] Doesn't like ads.
| emsy wrote:
| I mean I get it. I got to know somewhere that something I'm
| interested in buying exists. However, there has to be a
| better system then tracking my every move online and then
| force-feeding me ads about crappy products that I don't like
| or worse, outright scams. I even watch videos on youtube
| about products I'm interested in VOLUNTARILY. How is this a
| billion dollar industry?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > I got to know somewhere that something I'm interested in
| buying exists.
|
| I even have a problem with that. It's hard to put into
| words -- I'm put off even by the idea that I am to be
| treated as a consumer. I am even slightly embarrassed when
| I consume a non-necessity.
|
| I don't like door-to-door salespersons. It's not because
| they are pushy that I dislike them but because they are
| unbidden. An unsolicited ad is a door-to-door salesperson
| -- even if it is for a thing I wanted.
|
| When I _want_ something, I feel I should be the one to act
| to seek the thing out. The truth is, I likely consume more
| than I should and prefer that there be friction.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Facebook thinks I like rock music, but I really like house
| music. Facebook thinks I eat meat, but I am a vegan. Facebook
| thinks I like cars, but I don 't even drive. There's no way of
| telling Facebook what my tastes and lifestyle preferences even
| are._
|
| Advertisers can also choose to target you via Facebook, even if
| you aren't in their apparent target demographic. I think this
| issue is a combination of both innaccurate and accurate
| targeted advertising.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Someone in your network, Ethernet sort, likes those things.
| Either at home or at work.
|
| Lots of targeting is based on IP Adresss not device.
| dirkmode2 wrote:
| Funny that for an "ad" company, I do not see a single ad on their
| frontpage nor on any pages that require me to create a facebook
| account.
| rietta wrote:
| Why not simply display generic ads to people and be done with it.
| Use more specific ads on certain pages/groups. Content tracking
| should not be necessary and is creepy.
| ndkwj wrote:
| Can someone explain this? How can they not know what I'm talking
| about on WhatsApp if they show me targeted ads?
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I'm not very well versed in encryption but I know many here are
| and wanted to see if how I imagined this has any merit -
|
| is this something where WhatsApp could encrypt messages word by
| word instead of by message, and keep a list of the hashes of top
| sent words and their counts somewhere, then facebook would send
| some ads directory to WhatsApp clients, where they'd encrypt each
| keyword in the dictionary, and then compare the dictionary hashes
| to the top send word hashes, and try to make a match on the
| client side for specific ads to show?
|
| Or is this more that full encrypted messages would be scanned for
| some type of needle in the haystack that could infer some value
| about what's being sent?
| elromulous wrote:
| I am not a cryptographer.
|
| At a quick inspection this kind of thing would result in pretty
| bad encryption. A hash of each word (unless salted with a
| different salt each time, defeating the purpose) is easily
| broken, even if the hash is a cryptographic hash. I.e. I can
| build up a dictionary by hashing the top 100k most common
| words. This kind of attack is why every encryption needs some
| randomness (or something that's changing) injected to it. It's
| also unprotected against replay attacks, etc. And I'm probably
| just scratching the surface.
|
| You really have to encrypt full messages. And sending the same
| message twice has to result in different ciphertexts. And you
| need nonces. And probably many other things. Cryptography is
| hard.
| weex wrote:
| This would only be possible if the same encryption key was used
| for every message. But I don't think that's the case. So the
| same plaintext word is encrypted differently every time.
| danuker wrote:
| > Update: Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, has tweeted in
| response to The Information's report that WhatsApp is not
| exploring the use of homomorphic encryption. Cathcart states that
| there should be skepticism of "technical claims that apps like
| ours could see messages in "good" cases only."
|
| There is no way to match advertising keywords in encrypted
| content without also allowing matches of arbitrary keywords, at
| which point the encryption is broken.
| derefr wrote:
| > There is no way to match advertising keywords in encrypted
| content
|
| Complete tangent, since this has nothing to do with what
| Facebook are looking into here, but:
|
| If you control both ends of the connection (like Facebook does
| in WhatsApp), you _can_ match on advertising keywords securely.
| By doing it client-side, after the text is decrypted.
|
| As I understand it, this is essentially what Apple's iAds
| framework does: all possible advertising content that could be
| run in an iAd view gets pre-cached on the client; the iAds
| framework--running inside the _client 's_ address space--then
| chooses what to show the user, selecting ads based on
| demographic/interest information it has available locally on
| the device, never leaked outside. The iAd framework then
| collects _just_ the impression metrics -- how many times each
| ad was shown to a given user -- and then every-so-often batches
| those metrics out to Apple 's servers. Apple then reports re-
| groups and anonymizes these metrics, and reports them to the
| advertiser / charges the advertiser for them.
|
| Of course, this means that advertisers need to be able to trust
| Apple's impression reporting; and to do that, they need to
| trust that Apple has set up iOS devices so that iAd selection +
| reporting is basically inviolable, such that nobody on the
| client end is generating false impressions. (Or, at least, that
| devices generating such impressions can be detected as being
| jailbroken through some mechanism, and so their iAd impression
| reports culled from the corpus.)
| MikeUt wrote:
| > The iAd framework then collects just the impression metrics
| -- how many times each ad was shown to a given user -- and
| then every-so-often batches those metrics out to Apple's
| servers.
|
| If Apple knows how many times you were shown each ad, and
| which keywords are associated with that ad, then they are
| able to reconstruct which keywords appeared in your encrypted
| chat, and how often.
| make3 wrote:
| that's why they're pre-cached in theory, so they don't have
| to know.
|
| if you're saying you can't trust the closed source
| implementation, then yeah
| MikeUt wrote:
| "and then every-so-often batches those metrics out to
| Apple's servers" means they _do_ know, even if we trust
| the implementation.
|
| For example, if you publish an ad that only matches the
| word "fnord", and the metrics reveal that you were shown
| that ad at least once, Apple can work out that "fnord"
| appeared in your chat.
| derefr wrote:
| I _believe_ the iAd platform offers fine-grained "eyeball"
| targeting, but _not_ fine-grained context targeting. The
| iAds framework knows a lot about the device and its owner;
| but it doesn 't/can't directly read the content of the app
| the iAd gets embedded into (the "host" app) -- only the
| host app's barest metadata, e.g. the App Store category the
| host app is published under (e.g. Games vs. Productivity
| vs. Travel, etc.)
|
| In the case of some apps, e.g. Apple's own News app, the
| app _may opt to_ feed the iAds framework a "context clue"
| about the content currently being viewed -- telling it the
| _category_ of content being displayed (e.g. is this a
| Business News story? An Entertainment story? etc.) But this
| is just a high-level, categorical identifier attached to
| the metadata of the item being displayed, with no ability
| for specific content within the viewport to trigger
| specific ads.
|
| Apple has a page for exactly what the iAds framework
| does/doesn't use as an input for its targeting algorithm:
| https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT205223
|
| One interesting thing I figure I should highlight from that
| page, for the sake of people who don't bother to click:
|
| > We create segments, which are groups of people who share
| similar characteristics, and use these groups for
| delivering targeted ads. Information about you may be used
| to determine which segments you're assigned to, and thus,
| which ads you receive. To protect your privacy, targeted
| ads are delivered only if more than 5,000 people meet the
| targeting criteria.
|
| This is, I believe, a move to combat "seemingly-innocent"
| targeting rules that nevertheless de-anonymize someone,
| just because that person is weird. For example, if you're
| the _only_ Tagalog speaker in Cuba, just plain-old
| Region+Language targeting that every platform supports
| would be enough to target+track you specifically. So Apple
| just won 't allow "Cuba+Tagalog" unless there are at least
| 5000 Tagalog speakers in Cuba with iOS devices.
| slg wrote:
| >Of course, this means that advertisers need to be able to
| trust Apple's impression reporting;
|
| And that is why it won't work for Facebook. They have already
| been caught lying about impressions in a way that ended up
| destroying companies.
|
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-
| news/fac...
| failuser wrote:
| Nice to assume that would be a problem for Facebook.
| slg wrote:
| Fool me once...
| blensor wrote:
| I think Telegram does that. I had someone send me a message
| about our video call we had that day and in the same minute I
| suddenly received a message from Telegram about their video
| call features
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Unless you were using a secret chat, telegram isn't e2e
| encrypted. So there's no need for them to implement keyword
| detection on the client side.
| blensor wrote:
| No secret chat that I was aware of. It just caught me by
| surprise that I got an "ad" based on a 1:1 conversation
| [deleted]
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| What's that quote again from that early engineer? The smartest,
| highest paid engineers, and they fucking work on making you view
| more ads.
|
| We're living in an embarrassing era of massively misallocated
| resources.
| inciampati wrote:
| This is even more true today, with a decade of research into
| the ROI of advertising showing that it isn't even making money
| for those who buy it. What a sad waste of energy and
| imagination. We can do better.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Can we?
|
| As Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government
| -- except for all the others which have been tried.
| Similarly, capitalism is the worst form of economics --
| except for all the others which have been tried. I mean, it's
| obvious to an external observer that a prisoner's dilemma,
| sub-optimal Nash equilibrium, or other coordination problem
| can best be solved by all sides cooperating. But the reason
| they're called dilemmas and problems is that there's no clear
| way for participants in the system to solve them.
|
| It's not like anyone actually likes the system. But no one
| has (nor could be trusted to use) the power to coordinate an
| action of the sort that could end it. This is just the state
| of the world right now, we opened Pandora's box with web
| technology and pulled out the undesirable factoid "It's
| lucrative to run individual profiling and sell ads." Society
| has a limited ability to push an agenda against incentives;
| pushing past tech giant privacy invasion and attention abuse
| is not something we are capable of doing right now.
|
| I think the only thing that can be hoped to change this
| equilibrium is to change the playing field. Change
| technology, improving adblockers, anti-tracking tools, and
| encryption. Educate kids and those willing to listen about
| the harms of advertising. The current generations of adult
| Americans grew up with roadside, TV, and radio ads, they view
| web ads as an extension of that and don't think about the
| privacy implications of that, but a kid who grows up in the
| Internet era aware that their activity is tracked and
| profiled (unless they use particular encryption tech and
| VPNs) will have a very different attitude, and perhaps
| eventually this abuse will be unprofitable.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Early in his term, Trump flirted with the idea of changing
| quarterly earnings reports for public companies to be
| biannual instead. I think that potentially could have had
| the largest shift in corporate behavior ever seen.
| Potentially force companies to think more long term...or it
| could have been the same rat race, just 3 months longer.
| Who knows. Too bad that nothing came of it.
| monetus wrote:
| I think about how we live in an era of information, not
| communication, frequently. Have you heard of pol.is or
| vtaiwan?
|
| https://pol.is/home https://info.vtaiwan.tw
|
| I have a lot of hope, as well as paranoia, that
| implementations of semantic analysis in those direct
| referendum/republic programs will generate more rational
| collective action.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I had not heard of those, thanks for sharing. I agree
| that informative tech that allows more rational
| collective action is the way forward, but I also share
| your paranoia that semantic analysis will be another
| hazard that empowers actors with misaligned goals.
| Lammy wrote:
| Advertising is a way to backdoor surveillance in a post-
| Snowden era when people are wise to TLSing All the Things.
| The dollars were never a real concern imo.
| villgax wrote:
| They'll do something like FLOC but right before it's being sent
| lol
| gentleman11 wrote:
| See also: Facebook Wanted NSO Spyware to Monitor Users, NSO CEO
| Claims
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28001207
| paxys wrote:
| People are discussing a lot of advanced encryption in this
| thread, but the much more simpler explanation is that they will
| do the ad processing client side where the messages are already
| in plain text.
| est31 wrote:
| Also people forget that facebook gets all the metadata. The
| encryption leaves the length of the messages intact as well as
| the identities of both parties. A conversation with someone who
| is known to be a hairdresser is likely about making an
| appointment, so maybe the person is interested in ads about
| hair products. A conversation with a midwife might yield in ads
| for baby products.
| satysin wrote:
| Exactly. They don't have to "break" the E2EE design. Simply
| make use of the "end device" to analyse the contents and feed
| that into their advertising profile for the user(s).
|
| TBH I am surprised they're not already doing that?
| anthony_r wrote:
| How about decrypting the messages on the device and then
| sending them for ad classification to a remote service?
| Sounds like a no-brainer.
| andai wrote:
| Wouldn't that still be a privacy violation? The messages
| themselves would be protected, but advertising companies
| would receive a constant stream of keywords or categories
| over time.
| satysin wrote:
| IMHO yes it would be a violation but WhatsApp would
| _technically_ still be end to end encrypted.
|
| Do all the data mining and pattern matching on the device
| then upload some blob of data whenever needed to better
| shape the advertising profile.
|
| Like I said I am honestly surprised this is not what
| Facebook have been doing since the day they bought
| WhatsApp. I thought this was the _reason_ they bought them.
| Sure the messages are all encrypted in the air and on their
| servers (theoretically anyway) but on the device is free
| rein and always has been.
|
| I can see (at least) two potential issues doing this
| though.
|
| First is obviously the resources of a phone vs the super
| clusters they have chugging away in Facebook data centers.
|
| Second is it would mean their precious data mining
| algorithms would need to be built into the app and on the
| device. This may be a _huge_ intellectual property concern
| for them as it wouldn 't take long for people to extract
| that no matter how obfuscated they try to make it. Of
| course that also depends on if it is even possible to get
| it onto a phone in the first place in a useful way.
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| Still big red flag to me! If I'm secretly talking to someone
| about health concerns I might have, the last thing I want is
| facebook sending me ads for medicine about that concern.
|
| "But we didn't read you messages, only took keywords" sounds
| like a child's excuse for bad behavior
| [deleted]
| LightG wrote:
| I'm just about still on Whatssap because my network are on it and
| I'm assured that messages are encrypted.
|
| The moment ads arrive, I'm done.
|
| I get the need to make money but this isn't it. *
|
| * look at what Google did to Youtube for an abject demonstration
| in how to ruin your own platform ... 6 second ads because longer
| and longer, became multiple ads became full screen ads, became
| un-skippable, became ... all completely blocked or piped in
| separately now otherwise I'd go bananas.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| While from a technology point of view this is very interesting, I
| would really prefer an option to pay a reasonable subscription
| fee to have adverts turned off for me.
|
| Before Facebook bought WhatsApp it actually used to require a
| small annual fee, but it was removed.
|
| Alas, I fear that as tends be the case with advertising
| companies, they know that the willing to pay users are the most
| valuable advert audience, so are unlikely to give anyone an
| option to opt out.
|
| On an unrelated note, I wish that YouTube offered a "no adverts"
| subscription option, I don't want to have to pay the full price
| for their premium package when I watch very little YouTube and
| the only thing I want from it is the lack of adverts.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| YouTube seem to be testing it in Europe.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/2/22605455/youtube-premium-l...
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| If you're on android then NewPipe is fantastic for watching
| YouTube without adverts, in a hovering window or even just
| listening to the audio with the screen off.
|
| It does not tie into your YouTube account (so no watch history
| or recommended vids) which may or may not work for you, but
| it's a fantastic resource.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Visually seeing ads is usually not the biggest problem,
| although there are issues with too many ads (bandwidth, bad UX)
| and the security risk of malicious stuff embedded in ads.
|
| The issue (for me), and I think for many people, is the
| quantity and nature of the data that is collected, and the
| total lack of oversight for its sharing and usage.
|
| Also, no company will ever remove you from the tracking/data
| pool just because you're a paying customer. Why would they? Now
| they can extract revenue from you in _two_ ways!
| the-dude wrote:
| uBlock origin.
| nounaut wrote:
| There's Youtube Premium Lite now which just stops the ads.
| [deleted]
| nostromo wrote:
| If you use the Brave browser on iOS and ad block on your
| laptop, you'll never see an ad on YouTube.
| paxys wrote:
| I keep telling people that YouTube Premium is the most cost
| effective membership there is, and they look at me like I'm
| crazy. Since I got it YouTube has become a service I genuinely
| love.
| judge2020 wrote:
| This is a bigger thing on reddit it seems, where I assume
| more readers are teenagers with little/no income.
| [deleted]
| rvbissell wrote:
| I cancelled mine, because the ads provide enough friction to
| keep me from spending too much time there.
| fjert wrote:
| Definitely worth it. I'm glad to have had my YT Red / Google
| Play Music subscription grandfathered into YT Premium / YT
| Music Premium for the original price.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| This. No ads is great, but the big surprise was the ability
| to download videos on my device and bring it with me when
| traveling. It's one of those features I didn't know I wanted
| until I had it, now I can't see myself not having it.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| RpFLCL wrote:
| Why they can't just use ads without the targeting...
| [deleted]
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