[HN Gopher] "Metadata of the metadata" informs product design wi...
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       "Metadata of the metadata" informs product design without allowing
       backdoors
        
       Author : walterbell
       Score  : 50 points
       Date   : 2021-11-12 23:53 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
        
       | pcmaffey wrote:
       | Just a note that Meta data now can also refer to everything
       | Facebook collects...
        
         | woah wrote:
         | Meta's data
        
       | account-5 wrote:
       | On an E2E encrypted chat how are these companies able to track
       | what is being shared, by how many, and how much? Surely that's no
       | visible ? Admittedly I'm no expert on these platforms or
       | cryptography, but as a layperson I would expect the content of my
       | E2E encrypted chat to be opaque to outside observers including
       | the company who offers it.
        
       | sharemywin wrote:
       | Isn't the cat already out of the bag?
       | 
       | Are you going to outlaw E2E?
        
       | mindslight wrote:
       | > _Real-time, encrypted chat apps ... these same conditions that
       | have fueled abusive and illegal behavior, disinformation and hate
       | speech, and hoaxes and scams; all to the detriment of the vast
       | majority of their users._
       | 
       | I reject their framing. From the centralized perspective of Big
       | Tech it's awfully convenient to blame user freedom. But while
       | individuals can propagate disinformation among themselves, what
       | really spreads it is for-profit men-in-the-middle "driving
       | engagement". Social media especially has hijacked our sense of
       | social proof. It would take a lot of social capital to directly
       | message your friends with say Covid conspiracy theories ("you
       | really believe this shit?"). Whereas with social media you can
       | lazily broadcast it and the "algorithm" will emphasize it to
       | people who seem receptive while hiding opposing opinions from
       | them. Creating these isolated memetic bubbles practically
       | guarantees a healthy breeding ground for disinformation.
        
         | girvo wrote:
         | I also reject their framing: the most common platforms used for
         | disseminating some horrible info within various groups aren't
         | actually encrypted (E2E) at all.
        
       | skinkestek wrote:
       | It was beginning to be a while since the last hit piece against
       | encrypted messaging, but here we had it all.
       | 
       | Of course this is _very bad_. Only journalists should be allowed
       | to manipulate the public since they will always do it in a Good
       | Way (TM).
        
       | Gargyle wrote:
       | What an egregious mislabeling.
       | 
       | Data -> Chats and actual Identity
       | 
       | Metadata -> Who with whom and when from where,...
       | 
       | They construe payment info, PII and similar except chat contents
       | as metadata and say metadata of metadata was that which is
       | normally called metadata. And that it was safe to share despite
       | this obviously being not true.
       | 
       | Everyone remembers https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-
       | kill-people-base...
       | 
       | ?
       | 
       | How does one understand the authors motivation?
        
         | koolba wrote:
         | One man's metadata is another's data.
        
         | bronzeage wrote:
         | Their motivation is to obviously control the public narrative.
         | That's hard to do when facts contradicting the narrative
         | spread. So you call the dissent misinformation, you pump
         | propaganda which crates distrust of non mainstream media. You
         | also create such articles calling for even more control of the
         | discourse.
         | 
         | The true misinformation is miss-information: the information
         | mainstream media intentionally misses.
        
         | yorwba wrote:
         | > Data -> Chats and actual Identity
         | 
         | > Metadata -> Who with whom and when from where,...
         | 
         | Metadata of the metadata: "aggregated datasets showing how many
         | users a platform has, where accounts are created and when, how
         | information travels, which types of messages and format-types
         | are fastest to spread, which messages are commonly reported,
         | and how (and when) users are booted off."
         | 
         | That information should be safe to share if aggregated over all
         | users.
        
       | randomhodler84 wrote:
       | Nah. The future is random static, where the signal is
       | indistinguishable. Any framing of metadata of matadata as some
       | kind of way of avoiding backdoors is a subversive back door play.
       | 
       | In the future you will see and hear nothing, and you will be
       | happy.
        
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       (page generated 2021-11-15 23:02 UTC)