[HN Gopher] Communities Now Available
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Communities Now Available
Author : mritzmann
Score : 63 points
Date : 2022-11-03 14:23 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.whatsapp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.whatsapp.com)
| 0508014015 wrote:
| O508014015
| junga wrote:
| I don't get this. Is it a phone number? A phone number starting
| with a capital letter O, like in OOP or ORM?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Wow, folders for your group conversations, that's definitely
| gonna save the sinking Meta stock!
| soorya3 wrote:
| Wow...looks like Mark woke up now, and realized that the ad
| dollars are going to nextdoor and he wants to get it back.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I guess if you can't get people to go to Facebook anymore, you
| can always bring Facebook to the people.
|
| I'm not sure how I feel about this. I like apps with a singular
| purpose, that do one thing well. This feels like it's going to
| intrude on my peace of mind with big, distracting groups that
| broadcast low quality, high volume information.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| I'm always intrigued by the crossover point between small scale
| more intimate group chats and larger scale message boards.
|
| Does anyone have any examples or experience with platforms that
| pulled off that transition space successfully? And what were the
| key features that made the transition successful?
| schmorptron wrote:
| I'd say discord pulled that off pretty successfully. For what
| made them successful with it was maybe having a very okay
| moderation and permissions system, and the user interface
| lending itself to jump to different conversations pretty
| effortlessly.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Whatsapp took Skype's market as a free voice over and video ip
| but the value of 'communities' is hopelessly questionable. We
| already have a crowded market for gossip groups (Nextbore, etc
| etc) and you could argue this directly competes with ye olde
| facebook. Maybe they are going to do a roll up of WA & FB as part
| of the brave new Meta era?
|
| More importantly Meta owns astounding amounts of undersea cable,
| which lends credence to the idea they are the new 'cable and
| wireless'... https://fairinternetreport.com/research/facebook-
| meta-submar...
| reidjs wrote:
| How do I turn on this feature?
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| What I want from Whatsapp is:
|
| - Option to block/filter/hide people within a group. This way I
| can mute inconsiderate jerks from groups I can't leave
| (work/family);
|
| - alternatively, option to mute and hide groups forever, no I
| don't want a red dot to signal there's new message. I want it
| completely hidden until I casually remember to check it;
|
| - hide my online status
|
| These three action points would alleviate all my pain points with
| their platform.
|
| Unfortunately, I'm not confident they will give me this kind of
| control as this would be anathema to Meta core values:
| controlling their (product|user) and increasing engagement on
| their app to the expense of the user mental health.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > - alternatively, option to mute and hide groups forever, no I
| don't want a red dot to signal there's new message. I want it
| completely hidden until I casually remember to check it;
|
| You can do this by archiving the groups, they will only appear
| if you go in the archived chats tab and won't notify you.
|
| > - hide my online status
|
| You can already do this in the Privacy options.
|
| > - Option to block/filter/hide people within a group. This way
| I can mute inconsiderate jerks from groups I can't leave
| (work/family);
|
| This is honestly stupid, there's no way you will be able to
| follow a conversation where some people's messages aren't
| displayed. Leave your family groups and refuse to use WhatsApp
| for work.
| nells wrote:
| >You can already do this in the Privacy options.
|
| Whoa, that's new! Thank the Lord.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| > You can do this by archiving the groups, they will only
| appear if you go in the archived chats tab and won't notify
| you.
|
| No you can't, read again, I *don't* want a red dot
| signalyzing there's new messages on my archive.
|
| > You can already do this in the Privacy options.
|
| Unless you're in some A-B test I definetely don't have this
| option on my Privacy setting. Just Triple checked.
|
| > This is honestly stupid, there's no way you will be able to
| follow a conversation where some people's messages aren't
| displayed.
|
| The hot take is: I don't need to follow any conversation that
| includes those individuals. But I need to follow notices, and
| important information regarding my job.
|
| How about hide behind a notice: "You mutted this person,
| click here if you want to read the message anyway.". There,
| some middle ground.
|
| > Leave your family groups and refuse to use WhatsApp for
| work.
|
| I'm not even sure how to respond to this, if you're
| privilleged enough to say this, good for you. I'm definetely
| not.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > No you can't, read again, I _don 't_ want a red dot
| signalyzing there's new messages on my archive.
|
| I had never used the feature a lot so I didn't know what
| was the behavior.
|
| I just tested, there's no red dot, it just shows you the
| number of unread messages, which is really not attention
| catching (I actually had 2 unread messages there for months
| and had never noticed before).
|
| > Unless you're in some A-B test I definetely don't have
| this option on my Privacy setting. Just Triple checked.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/GRLMjGh.png
|
| Just took this screenshot. It's also not new, my girlfriend
| has been using it for years.
|
| > I'm not even sure how to respond to this, if you're
| privilleged enough to say this, good for you. I'm
| definetely not.
|
| I can't see any demographic that can't afford to leave a
| family discussion on WhatsApp, especially one with people
| that they don't want to talk to.
|
| As for work conversations, unless you work a job where
| you're not on a computer all day, which is probably less
| than 1% of the commenters of HN, there is a more work-
| appropriate tool for communication that your company is
| already using.
| olvy0 wrote:
| >> Unless you're in some A-B test I definetely don't have
| this option on my Privacy setting. Just Triple checked.
|
| > https://i.imgur.com/GRLMjGh.png
|
| > Just took this screenshot. It's also not new, my
| girlfriend has been using it for years.
|
| Can confirm this privacy option existed since I installed
| WhatsApp on my brand new LG G2 back in 2014. I turned it
| on then right away and never turned it off in all the
| years and phones I've had since.
|
| The price for people not seeing your "last seen" status,
| is that you don't see other's people's "last seen"
| status. Which is fine by me.
| rpadovani wrote:
| > Just took this screenshot. It's also not new, my
| girlfriend has been using it for years.
|
| Never seen this before - but I have it as well! It must
| have been added in the last 6 months or so for me...
| Thanks for pointing it out :-)
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I definitely feel your pain. Bite the bullet and leave those
| groups. I did, it was difficult at first but I'm better for it.
| The momentary discomfort will soon be replaced by long lasting
| peace of mind.
| netsharc wrote:
| One time I was switching between phones or restoring from
| Titanium Backup, and WhatsApp removed me from all my groups
| (maybe when I logged on from a new phone, I got a new key,
| and when I restored using TB, the new key didn't match my key
| the members knew)...
|
| If someone from one of the groups confront you/GP about
| leaving, you can always say "I was restoring from backup and
| it looked like something went wrong!"
| reitanqild wrote:
| I glanced through it and it looks like Facebook wants to copy
| Telegram while keeping law enforcement in the loop?
|
| Or is this something new?
| 0508014015 wrote:
| 00966508014015
| 0508014015 wrote:
| 00966508014015
| nimbius wrote:
| friendly reminder, whatsapp is not end-to-end encrypted. WhatsApp
| and iMessage are vulnerable to law-enforcement real-time
| searches. WhatsApp shares message metadata with law enforcement
| agencies such as the Department of Justice. If legally required,
| or at its own discretion (such as for investigating Facebook
| leaks), it can provide critical location or account information,
| or real-time data on the recipients messaged a target subject.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#FBI
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_and_criticism_of_Wha...
|
| you should use Signal.
| criddell wrote:
| If you click through the references in your links a couple of
| times, you eventually find this[1]:
|
| > The other tech giant that can be compelled by law enforcement
| to hand over potentially large amounts of sensitive messaging
| data is Apple. iMessage, Apple's text-message service, comes
| loaded on the iPhone and is used by 1.3 billion people
| worldwide. According to the FBI's "Lawful Access" guide, if
| served with a court order or a search warrant, Apple must hand
| over basic subscriber information as well as 25 days' worth of
| data about queries made in iMessage, such as what a targeted
| user looked up in iMessage and also which other people searched
| for that targeted user in the app. That doesn't include actual
| message content or whether messages were exchanged between
| different users.
|
| That doesn't sound like the police have real time access to
| Apple Messages at all. I believe they still have access to
| unencrypted backups, which is not real-time.
|
| [1]: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-
| features/what...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Signal is incredibly user-hostile, especially for a supposedly
| open source company. I don't know what alternative to
| recommend, but the decision is not so easy.
|
| As someone whose threat model does not yet involve law
| enforcement, I'll stick to my own preferred platforms, thank
| you very much.
| laurex wrote:
| What makes it "user-hostile"?
| gwill wrote:
| would you mind expanding on how Signal is user hostile? the
| only things I know of is dropping sms support on android,
| which didn't affect me, and the "enable notifications"
| message that pops up every week.
| ajvs wrote:
| Like Discord they say that 3rd-party clients are against
| their Terms and Conditions.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| SMS is also not end-to-end encrypted. At least in Brazil, the
| reason why people use whatsapp is because sms is expensive (and
| they use audio messages also)
| Markoff wrote:
| stop spreading lies, whatsapp IS end-to-end encrypted, yes they
| can see metadata but messages are E2EE
|
| some other people mention flaggging when sender or recipient
| send message for moderation, which has absolutely nothing to do
| with encryption or safety, obviously if YOU have access to
| message then you can forward it to whoever you want
| reitanqild wrote:
| Messages are usually sent E2E-encrypted it seems, but based
| on some heuristics (my guess: interesting contents as
| determined by filters, flagged, user flagged by law
| enforcement) messages are sent via a side channel to Meta.
|
| Sounds as legit as when Facebook asked people to upload nudes
| of themselves so they would know what to block :-$
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >messages are sent via a side channel to Meta.
|
| absolute and utter nonsense. WhatsApp literally uses
| Signal's encryption protocol and messages leave _your
| device_ encrypted. The only thing WhatsApp has access to is
| metadata.
|
| if you're going to make an accusation like this I suggest
| you back it up.
| reitanqild wrote:
| It is discussed widely and openly including in sibling
| threads.
|
| I also think it was in the news a few months back and I
| even think it was discussed here.
|
| Edit: note, I am not saying messages aren't always sent
| E2E-encrypted between users today, only that in some
| cases they are also sent in a side channel to Facebook
| simultaneously.
|
| Edit 2:
|
| You can try this search: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=does+w
| hatsapp+sometimes+send+messa...
|
| Or read this article:
| https://nypost.com/2021/09/07/facebook-reads-and-shares-
| what...
|
| Edit 3: this is of course on top of the fact that they
| uploaded the backups (from everyone who enabled backups)
| unencrypted to Google under terms that let Google sift
| through it.
| jdlyga wrote:
| I never expected WhatsApp to be private at all. It's a Meta
| product, even if they claim otherwise.
| [deleted]
| standardUser wrote:
| WhatsApp says they are encrypted. Some reading tells me there
| is a loophole if a message is flagged - it's then sent for
| moderation and no longer encrypted. A hell of a loophole. But
| loopholes aside, WhatsApp _is_ end-to-end encrypted and,
| without being flagged, messages are not vulnerable to real-time
| searches by law enforcement.
|
| If I'm wrong (very possible!) please explain exactly what I
| have wrong here.
|
| As for Signal, I have an account and use it with a few people.
| But until the day comes when my other several hundred contacts
| switch to Signal, I don't have much of an option.
| pixel_tracing wrote:
| I mean you can be end to end encrypted but still have master
| keys server side
| kornhole wrote:
| The content of the message is E2EE except when it is not with
| the loophole you mentioned. The major difference between
| Whatsapp and Signal is the metadata collection. Meta can
| record each message sender, receiver, time, size of message,
| length, device ID in some cases, location and more. This is
| valuable information for the authorities. Signal encrypts
| metadata and knows the first time a number connected to the
| service and last time they connected and have consistently
| only been able to provide that when given a warrant.
| theCrowing wrote:
| If the Twitter acquisition and the published whatsapp chats
| between musk and dozens of other billionaires/politicians/ceos
| and public figures showed me anything. Is that random people on
| hackernews and reddit take their communication way more serious
| than them. I don't know what your communication consists of but
| I need to activate e2e maybe 1-2 times a year. Don't get me
| wrong I get that making encryption the standard should be the
| way to go but comments like these are irrelevant for 99% of
| people and if you have the need for real secure communication
| you would host it yourself. It's the same for email 99% don't
| need PGP and if you really do you shouldn't use email in the
| first place.
| po1nter wrote:
| > whatsapp is not end-to-end encrypted.
|
| Didn't they work with the Signal team for their e2e encryption
| of messages and calls? Are you saying that they've removed that
| despite showing the opposite at the beginning of of every new
| conversation?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-
| end-...
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-
| features/what...
|
| It's whitewashed surveillance via automated loopholes
| morsch wrote:
| Neither of those says that anybody other than sender and
| recipient can access message contents. Just metadata, which
| is well understood (and from what I know, also true for
| Signal, correct me if I'm wrong).
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| In response to a subpoena, Signal foundation provided law
| enforcement with the date of account creation and last
| date of access.
|
| https://signal.org/bigbrother/central-california-grand-
| jury/
|
| The subpoena asks for "all correspondence with [these]
| users". I am not a lawyer, so I don't know if that gave
| enough wiggle room for Signal to not provide metadata, or
| if they don't store it in the first place.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| If you keep reading it says that there are automated
| flagging operations which enable third actor surveillance
| morsch wrote:
| Where does it say that? It says they could do that, not
| that they are doing it.
|
| _Although nothing indicates that Facebook currently
| collects user messages without manual intervention by the
| recipient, it 's worth pointing out that there is no
| technical reason it could not do so. [...] An "end-to-
| end" encrypted messaging platform could choose to, for
| example, perform automated AI-based content scanning of
| all messages on a device, then forward automatically
| flagged messages to the platform's cloud for further
| action._
| earthscienceman wrote:
| The nuance here lies in what a "message" is. In the
| contemporary era of smartphones, data transmission, and all
| the bits-and-bobs in between, a message is much more than
| just the word contents. The "messages" might be e2e encrypted
| but the metadata is not, and that subtle difference is
| ridiculously important. e2e encryption is used as an
| indicator that your communication is private, but while the
| messages on whatsapp may be private (well, until your partner
| in the discussion decides to send a copy to meta themselves),
| the communication is anything but. For some reason though
| this nuance is set to the side and we all bicker about the
| message contents.
|
| The reality is, sending information is a multi-layered thing.
| There's the message contents, the message metadata, and the
| network that the message is sent on. All of which are
| subjected to different levels of privacy. Each of those
| things can be used to spy on you, to abuse your rights, and
| to generally invade your life in ways that most would
| consider to be inappropriate. Which leads to the obvious
| conclusion that e2e encryption of the messages is only a
| portion of the issue. By using WhatsApp, you're trusting Meta
| corp as arbiter of _all_ of these pieces and their
| implementations. Which is obviously, given everything the
| Zuck has ever leaked from his mouth piece, is not a great
| choice.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Whatsapp has automated loopholes for revealing full message
| contents not only metadata
| earthscienceman wrote:
| I know this, you know this, and it's abhorrent. I wanted
| to skip over that detail and point at the more glaring
| issues with trusting them in general. The real point is
| that trusting Meta to be a good moderator of your
| communication and all the ways that can be misused is
| really absurd. Emphasized by your point that they can
| automagically escape their encryption routines on a whim.
| xerxesaa wrote:
| Message contents are end-to-end encrypted (but not all metadata
| is). And no, they are not sent through an unencrypted side
| channel to Meta. I've worked at Meta on a team that does end-
| to-end encryption. The company is also very clear about this
| publicly [1][2]
|
| It's super frustrating that every single time WhatsApp is
| mentioned on Hacker News, someone boldly makes a claim that
| it's not encrypted based on hearsay or hunches.
|
| 1- https://faq.whatsapp.com/791574747982248/?locale=en_US 2 -
| https://www.whatsapp.com/privacy
| mi_lk wrote:
| the takeaway for me is that it tells you how bad the Meta's
| reputation has become. Quite obvious at this point but still
| xerxesaa wrote:
| 100% agree.
| gdidhskwhei73 wrote:
| well, you are wrong.
|
| or out of date. read the terms of use for business accounts,
| which are everywhere now. it clearly says that metabook have
| access to any message exchanged with a business account on
| whatsbook.
|
| ...and I'm not sure about groups. there are data leaks for
| media in groups that were dismissed as features a while ago,
| not just metadata. well, i think they called media ids that
| identify content as metadata or something. not following
| whatsbook closely lately.
| xerxesaa wrote:
| > well, you are wrong.
|
| For someone who is "not following whatsbook closely lately"
| that is again a bold claim to make.
|
| But anyway, business messages are also encrypted.
| Businesses are allowed to designate other accounts to
| receive messages, in which case those other accounts are
| sent copies of those messages using a different key. It's
| similar to sending messages to multiple devices. This is
| disclosed [1] and needed to support things like auto
| responders.
|
| Group chats are also encrypted using a shared sender key
| and this is described in the whitepaper starting page 10
| [2]
|
| 1 - https://faq.whatsapp.com/567302067179554/?locale=en_US
| 2 - https://www.whatsapp.com/security/WhatsApp-Security-
| Whitepap...
| est31 wrote:
| It's fair to criticize the end to end encrypted claim though
| because for a long time, WhatsApp was storing unencrypted
| backups. Now that has been improved, but I doubt that most
| people opt into that. If 10% of users has turned off backups,
| and 5% has put a password on their backups, you have 85% of
| people being vulnerable. If some authority wants to know what
| has been discussed on WhatsApp, they won't ask Meta, they
| will ask Google or Apple. With the above (imaginary) numbers,
| if there is a group with 5 random Signal users and a group
| with 5 random WhatsApp users, the WhatsApp content is going
| to be available most likely to authorities that Google and
| Apple deliver content to, while the content of the Signal
| group is most likely not available. For iCloud, Apple claims
| end to end encryption but they keep a backup key around so
| it's mostly just marketing. There might be a small benefit
| from this through protection from employees side stepping
| company policies.
| xerxesaa wrote:
| Sure, that's a fair point. Backups were initially not
| encrypted, but as you mentioned, this option is now
| available.
|
| Without going into too much detail, I can tell you a huge
| challenge with encrypted backups is compliance - many
| people simply do not opt-in to using encrypted backups.
| It's a difficult line to walk because ultimately you don't
| want to pester users too much about using encrypted backups
| either. In case it's not clear, the reason it requires opt-
| in is because you (i.e., the user) control the encryption
| keys and therefore you must take some action to write down
| a key or passphrase. As you may imagine, the average
| messaging app user is not as tech savvy as the average
| Hacker News user and many simply don't want to go through
| this extra step. Even worse, if they opt-in to encrypted
| backups and lose their keys, they will end up blaming Meta
| for not giving them a way to restore their message history
| when their phone gets lost (it's not easy to explain that
| it's your responsibility as the user to keep your keys
| safely stored).
| est31 wrote:
| Definitely, this is a hard tradeoff to make. Users very
| often care more about having access to their messages
| than them being not accessible to
| authorities/advertisers/etc, and they are very often not
| very savvy. As you say they also probably don't choose
| the most secure passwords.
|
| Signal on the other hand sides on the side of security so
| much that it makes the app purposefully less useable,
| e.g. with their pin feature. But it doesn't have this
| backup problem. It's not a situation that has an easy
| solution atm.
|
| But I think it's important to note that the belief of
| many users is wrong that end-to-end encryption implies
| that message content is unavailable to governments unless
| they get unlocked access to devices of communication
| partners.
| xerxesaa wrote:
| All fair points.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _It 's super frustrating that every single time WhatsApp is
| mentioned on Hacker News, someone boldly makes a claim that
| it's not encrypted based on hearsay or hunches._
|
| You only address OP's first "bold" claim. You've sidestepped
| the rest. I wonder why.
|
| > _I 've worked at Meta..._
|
| Ah, I see. Super frustrating, indeed.
| xerxesaa wrote:
| I worked in tech, not legal. I have no idea about what is
| or isn't shared with law enforcement or anyone else. That's
| why I didn't address that part.
|
| The frustrating part is people making claims about issues
| where they don't actually have datapoints to back it up. I
| try to avoid doing that.
| manbash wrote:
| Signal offers more to the table to prove it's secure and
| respects users privacy.
|
| Whatsapp/Meta claim so, but have no proof. As with your
| comment, without proof we can't be convinced.
| xerxesaa wrote:
| That's fair. Signal is open source and that certainly
| helps.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Thanks, but no thanks. I'm all comfy here in my Telegram corner.
| Markoff wrote:
| yeah, I prefer apps which have E2EE messages by default and
| have actual user base
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >and have actual user base
|
| Telegram has about half a billion monthly active users, I
| think that qualifies as a decent user base
| Kinrany wrote:
| Neither can be trusted, but Telegram's UI and privacy track
| record have been much better so far.
| eitland wrote:
| Any sufficiently complicated messaging system or Social network
| contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow
| implementation of half of Google+.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Great more damn siloed chat nonsense masquerading as something to
| replace the forums everyone's trying to get back to.
| nikolay wrote:
| No, they are not - I have both personal and business apps up to
| date on Android plus the latest web and desktop apps - that
| feature is not available!
| mritzmann wrote:
| First paragraph:
|
| > Today (..) we've started to roll out Communities (..)
| globally and this will be available to everyone over the next
| few months.
| nikolay wrote:
| Yes, I did - maybe they started to roll out to their QA
| server!
| galbar wrote:
| It looks like they copied Element's Spaces[1]
|
| [1]: https://element.io/blog/spaces-the-next-frontier/
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Unlike Matrix's implementation, I don't think you can nest
| WhatsApp communities as easily.
|
| Instead, I think their inspiration has come from alternatives
| like Discord where multiple chat rooms within a group of people
| is part of the core app design.
|
| I'd like them to copy the spaces feature, though, because it's
| quite useful to me personally.
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(page generated 2022-11-03 23:02 UTC)