[HN Gopher] Europeans' health data sold to US firm run by ex-Isr...
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Europeans' health data sold to US firm run by ex-Israeli spies
https://archive.ph/1c0ED
Author : Fnoord
Score : 577 points
Date : 2025-12-14 12:15 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ftm.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ftm.eu)
| jack_tripper wrote:
| It's always companies run by Unit 8200 ex-Israeli spies that are
| running these telemetry-/ad- surveillance dragnets, and there's
| never any retaliatory action against them.
|
| Like how about a call to Benny's office saying "hey buddy, reign
| your dogs in, our citizens are off limits"?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Online scamming and malware are Israel's most cherished
| national industry, they've been specializing in this stuff for
| nearly 30 years:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download_Valley
|
| > _Download Valley is a cluster of software companies in
| Israel, producing and delivering adware to be installed
| alongside downloads of other software.[1] The primary purpose
| is to monetize shareware and downloads. These software items
| are commonly browser toolbars, adware, browser hijackers,
| spyware, and malware. Another group of products are download
| managers, possibly designed to induce or trick the user to
| install adware, when downloading a piece of desired software or
| mobile app from a certain source._
|
| > _Although the term references Silicon Valley, it does not
| refer to a specific valley or any geographical area. Many of
| the companies are located in Tel Aviv and the surrounding
| region. It has been used by Israeli media[2] as well as in
| other reports related to IT business.[3]_
|
| Getting an Israeli extradited is almost impossible, their in-
| group ethnic bias is so strong that they even fight the
| extradition of rapists. The Israeli government would rather see
| a jewish rapist escape justice in Israel than face justice in a
| gentile nation. Extraditing some businessmen who merely scam
| and destroy people's computers? Fat chance in hell.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malka_Leifer_affair
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-jewish-american-pedophiles-...
| pricechild wrote:
| Could the same not be said about the US?
|
| I suspect it'd have a different spin put on it.
| ipaddr wrote:
| No the US has no issue with extradition.
| kakacik wrote:
| I am having extremely hard time believing this, I don't
| mean that on paper chance exists but out there in real
| world, especially with current government. Checking for
| 2024 the number can be counted on all fingers and toes
| and all were special high profile cases.
|
| US has a law that they will invade International court of
| justice if ever any US personnel is tried there (ie for
| war crimes, that one would be easy to pull on thousands
| of US citizens). That's the US mindset against other
| jurisdictions.
|
| Israel would be an exception of course.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| ICC, not ICJ - the so-called Hague invasion act.
| anonym29 wrote:
| I remember when the IDF guy did this right after getting
| arrested at DEFCON earlier this year!
|
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/senior-israeli-cyber-
| official-...
|
| https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-865532
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/19/how-was-an-
| alleged-...
| tdeck wrote:
| Hey now. Isn't it more likely that the cops spent months
| preparing this sting, caught the suspect red handed and
| arrested him, got a confession from the suspect in an
| interview, and everyone involved just honestly completely
| forgot to take his passport or impose any sort of travel
| restrictions?
| dmix wrote:
| Based on your wiki almost all of those are from 2010 era and
| shut down long ago
|
| The US has always had a number of grey market scammy
| businesses like those too. Lots of countries do.
| gosub100 wrote:
| https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/israeli-official-
| plea...
|
| this alleged sex offender just appears remotely for his court
| appearances lol. I wonder if he will attend prison remotely
| too? Maybe an RC robot will serve his sentence and he can
| look out the bars through a camera and VPN from Israel.
| ishi wrote:
| It isn't a "telemetry-/ad- surveillance dragnet". Kitenet's
| product is a "Private Data Network (PDN) to control, monitor,
| and secure data exchanged between people, machines, and systems
| across user collaboration, automated workflows, and enterprise
| AI".
|
| It stands to reason that ex-cryptographers from Unit 8200 would
| use the expertise they gained to launch legitimate companies
| that provide cybersecurity solutions.
| stocksinsmocks wrote:
| I think it's much more likely they're creating honeypots as
| contractors. There is a lot more money in surveillance than
| privacy
| ishi wrote:
| Is there any factual basis to this claim, or just your
| personal opinion? It's like claiming Oracle's real business
| isn't a database, but rather stealing customers data which
| was stored in Oracle's databases. Or practically any other
| company that has access to customers data.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Are you sure such claims about Oracle are completely
| unfounded?
| ishi wrote:
| It's easy to make baseless accusations that are
| impossible to disprove, that's exactly my point.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Come on. The CIA was Oracle's first customer.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| This framing is a cheap rhetorical trick. Restated this
| leads to the statement "all companies by default are in
| the business of capturing customer data, all other claims
| about their product and smoke screens to hide that."
|
| Which is something you can believe but it falls into the
| extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence category.
| But by claiming it about Oracle or Israeli cyber firms or
| whatever you swap the evidence burden to the person who
| has the not extraordinary claim, that most businesses are
| doing what it claims on the tin.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Books such as:
|
| "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism"
|
| and
|
| "Stand Out of Our Light"
|
| might not change your mind, but you're likely to end up
| realizing customer data hovering is more of a driver of
| modern business decisions than you realize. To say
| nothing of the assets such activities provide the
| intelligence communities.
|
| This is happening. Please don't dismiss it as conspiracy
| theory.
| coliveira wrote:
| It's not just a rhetorical trick. Amazon collects most of
| their data in Virginia, right at the doorsteps of a well
| known "intelligence" org in the USA. These companies that
| handle data all around the world are authorized to exist
| for some reason...
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Then the argument should be that. Not "hey commenter you
| must prove a never ending set of 'now do Oracle', 'now do
| Amazon'".
|
| Say the words "I believe all companies exist as an
| extension of the US intelligence apparatus" and claim the
| burden for yourself.
| cluckindan wrote:
| That is a strawman argument.
|
| Oracle gets its name from a codename of a 1977 project
| for the Central Intelligence Agency, Oracle's first
| customer.
|
| In 2004, then-United States Attorney General John
| Ashcroft sued Oracle Corporation to prevent it from
| acquiring a multibillion-dollar intelligence contract.
| After Ashcroft's resignation from government, he founded
| a lobbying firm, The Ashcroft Group, which Oracle hired
| in 2005. With the group's help, Oracle went on to acquire
| the contract.
|
| Following the beginning of the Gaza war in 2023, Oracle's
| top executives, including Safra Catz and Larry Ellison,
| publicly aligned the company with Israel's military
| operations. They issued statements of solidarity, paid
| double salaries to Israeli employees, and donated to
| organizations connected to Israel's wartime response.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| See. Thats a good comment. "Your use of Oracle is a bad
| counter factual because..."
|
| Switching to that is commenting in good faith. It
| educates and argues the point and makes it clear that you
| aren't in fact claiming that all companies are
| surveillance state apparatus. Note that other commenters
| ran with the "but they are actually argument" because the
| door was opened.
| Fnoord wrote:
| > Is there any factual basis to this claim
|
| Please feel free to translate and read the Dutch version
| of this article. On the bottom, several security
| researchers found vulnerabilities in Zivver [1]
|
| [1] https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/vertrouwelijke-zaken-te-
| grabbel...
| ishi wrote:
| So Zivver created a product with security
| vulnerabilities, Kitenet bought Zivver (probably for
| their customer base), and it's all some sort of
| conspiracy to steal personal data?
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| To be fair, it's not a conspiracy if it actually happens.
| It's surprising how often this type of reasoning is still
| so common.
| dlubarov wrote:
| What are you saying actually happened? It sounds like the
| concern is that in a certain context, messages are cloud
| hosted instead of client-side e2e encrypted? Did anyone
| even claim otherwise?
|
| How is this different from suggesting Netflix was all a
| secret plot by Stanford to spy on Europeans' TV binging?
| Fnoord wrote:
| Two anonymous security researchers working at Dutch
| government found the data is send plaintext [1]. One
| independent security researcher was able to verify their
| claim.
|
| This should be a concern if the company is owned by Dutch
| people, but more so if it is owned by a company with
| questionable jurisdiction. Which unfortunately the USA
| and Israel are these days.
|
| [1] https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/vertrouwelijke-zaken-te-
| grabbel...
| Fnoord wrote:
| We merely _bought_ the honeypot, Your Honor! We didn 't
| know what we were buying!
|
| Perfect cover story /slowclap
|
| Secret services use companies as cover all the time.
| Nothing new there.
|
| The conspiracy is that it is a dragnet for the data, and
| given the data is first send plaintext to Zivver (see the
| Dutch FTM article I already linked), it isn't far-
| fetched.
|
| Looking at the current geopolitical situation, it _also_
| isn 't far-fetched. It even fits in the Israeli secret
| services' M.O.
|
| Actually, _anyone_ who uses Zivver can find these
| vulnerabilities. I was worried about this, and reported
| it to my former employer (while still employed), but alas
| I did not have a PoC and they had a lot of other security
| related incidents so this was low priority. Also, this
| was at a time when the company was still privately owned
| by the Dutch founders. My hypothesis is that someone
| working for such an organization passed it to the Israeli
| secret service, who then got motivated to buy this
| honeypot.
|
| Chinese do something similar: release some piece of
| technology, never provide any meaningful updates to the
| product, and voila it is insecure as hell (yet 'we didn't
| know' provides plausible deniability). I saw this first-
| hand with KRACK vulnerability.
|
| Also... Kiteworks [1] is the name of the company. Not
| sure why you keep calling it Kitenet.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiteworks
| SilverElfin wrote:
| There's really nothing concrete in this "article". It's
| basically vague insinuations and conjecture and
| conspiracy theory, all in support of putting out content
| with something nefarious implied about all Israelis. In
| other words, it's propaganda.
| nunobrito wrote:
| It is an obvious and recurring phenomenon to anyone
| minimally following cybersecurity topics. This isn't the
| first time, nor the second, nor the third, nor the last.
|
| This is the same as claiming that water isn't wet until
| someone here on HN brings you 10 articles and news
| proving otherwise. This particular topic was never really
| denied, nor even by the authors themselves as you can
| read on the article.
| coliveira wrote:
| Do you understand that Oracle has real features used
| daily by clients other than "securing" their
| communications?
| diydsp wrote:
| It's not inevitable. It's up to us in a shared world to
| decide how to govern ourselves and live our lives. Not to be
| at the whims of a small group of powerful strangers.
| foundddit wrote:
| It's really, truly strange just how intertwined the US is with
| Israeli spies at all levels. If people affiliated with The
| Netherlands or Rwanda had this much influence in the US, nobody
| would tolerate it.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| It helps when majority of US congress is composed of highly
| convicted Zionists or on AIPAC payroll because they don't
| wanna risk being JFKd.
| coliveira wrote:
| At this point it's all a i-controlled spy operation
| everywhere in the US. Just check where the main "cyber-
| security" firms come from. They're just fronts for spy
| operations.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Why would you assume the said counties _wouldn 't_ want their
| citizens surveilled? "But they will know what our citizens
| do..." yeah unfortunately 5 eyes proves otherwise.
|
| Govt surveillance is a big club, and you ain't in it.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I am... really not sure why this comment is getting
| downvoted? It's not really a conspiracy theory so many years
| after Snowden now, is it?
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| acting like they arent already controlling gov politician
| jdietrich wrote:
| Unit 8200 hand-picks the best and brightest young Israelis and
| trains them in computer science. You might as well say "It's
| always MIT" - _of course_ an elite educational institution
| produces a lot of successful startups.
|
| If you're looking for a sinister plot, look no further than In-
| Q-Tel.
| Fnoord wrote:
| MIT students have different loyalty than to a fascist
| government like Trump's administration. The political
| situation in USA is also not like the one in Israel (which
| country is a direct result of the outcome of WWII and hatred
| by nazi-Germany, who are in constant fight with their
| neighbors). It isn't a fair comparison. One should also take
| into account that Mossad's way of operating is aggressive.
|
| The English article doesn't mention this, but vulnerabilities
| were found in Zivver. See my comment elsewhere in the thread
| referring to the Dutch version of the article.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| There's something very visceral in being attacked by
| Jihadists, rockets and ballistic missiles which makes
| Israelis quite enthusiastic about taking on the fight.
| sa501428 wrote:
| There's something very visceral in being attacked by
| Zionists, rockets, and bombs (for 70+ years) which makes
| some folks quite enthusiastic about resisting ethnic
| cleansing and genocide in their homeland.
| zappb wrote:
| Keep on digging your grave, Hitler.
| leoh wrote:
| It's largely because military service is mandatory and 8200 is
| like the MIT or Stanford of Israel.. not some nefarious
| bullshit about intelligence
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| TL;DR: An EU health data firm run by ex-military cryptographers
| offers a _web portal_ for encrypting documents, which inherently
| exposes unencrypted documents to the company and US national
| security laws. The media outlet incidentally also doubts the
| trustworthiness of military veterans from Israel.
|
| Even following the "if there's smoke there's fire" model, unclear
| there's a strong scent of "smoke" here. One could write a similar
| guilt-by-historical-association article concerning anyone, in the
| same position, really. Obviously if you're uploading a file to a
| 3d party website, the vendor has some technical access, this
| should be warned.
| pareidolia wrote:
| The bigger problem is that this model is inherently flawed.
| Even if end-to-end encryption with browser crypto were
| implemented, there is never any security since the code in the
| browser can simply be swapped with compromised code that
| diverts the plaintext somewhere.
|
| I've been forced to use this service, by way of healthcare
| professionals just disclosing correspondence to this service
| without asking for my consent.
|
| Smeerlappen.
| _el1s7 wrote:
| Security is an illusion.
| pareidolia wrote:
| Then reply with your passwords.
| sallveburrpi wrote:
| ******
|
| Luckily HN automatically detects when you post your
| password and obfuscates it with * - try it out yourself!
| pareidolia wrote:
| You think I was born yesterday :P
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| hunter2
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Doesn't look obfuscated to me.
| throw310822 wrote:
| It only obfuscates it for others :)
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Thats the genius of it, to us it looks like **** but you
| see hunter2. Its an automatic replace.
| tucnak wrote:
| > there is never any security since the code in the browser
| can simply be swapped with compromised code that diverts the
| plaintext somewhere.
|
| This is not the case in the land of DICE-like key derivation;
| see TKey protocol for example. You can download and run an
| actual rv32 program on actual FPGA over WebUSB without having
| to worry about its provenance. If the program is modified,
| firmware will derive a completely different key.
| pareidolia wrote:
| Zivver is a web application. The javascript that comes with
| the webpage can change at any time for any reason, as
| Zivver sees fit.
| tucnak wrote:
| I'm simply pointing out that web standards allow for
| secure end-to-end communication, and more, in fact they
| happen to allow arbitrary cryptographic constructions--as
| long as the program itself never changes.
| pareidolia wrote:
| But this requires special hardware right?
| SilverElfin wrote:
| It looks to me like the article is using "Israel" in its title
| for inflammatory discrimination. The person who submitted it
| probably knew full well what they were doing.
| yonixw wrote:
| LOL
|
| Next one: Cloudflare has an edge in Israel. And has workers
| who were in Unit8200 before 1991 (per linkedin) and ISRALIES.
| Who uses Cloudflare? MANY MEDICAL ORGS. Also, Cloudflare is
| just like MITM (CDN SSL termination). So does ISRAEL SPIES
| read all your MEDICAL data?
|
| > "To think otherwise is completely naive" (real qoute from
| the article btw = no proof)
|
| What a sham article. Trump's TruthSocial level. But hey, most
| upvoted today (440+ points). And no point on reporting to
| mods also, I just get copy paste reply.
| rr808 wrote:
| Do Europeans care if their health data is secret or not? I feel
| in the US its a big deal that people dont want insurance
| companies to measure them and deny coverage to those who need it
| most, but in most of the world that isn't an issue.
| zapkyeskrill wrote:
| Isn't an issue yet.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Why would they not?
|
| You still wouldn't necessarily want a life insurance company to
| know stuff they haven't formally asked to know, you still have
| health information that could be used to blackmail you or whose
| reveal would be humiliating or upsetting.
| leviliebvin wrote:
| Of course we do. And for exactly the same reasons, too.
| fuomag9 wrote:
| As an European, I HATE when my data is mishandled or leaked
| (and this is basically the entire point of the GDPR)
| Propelloni wrote:
| > Do Europeans care if their health data is secret or not?
|
| Can't speak for all Europeans, but in my neck of the wood,
| Germany, they do very much.
| setopt wrote:
| Yeah we do. For many reasons:
|
| Privacy is privacy. I ideally don't want any of my data sold to
| anyone, but health data is even more vulnerable.
|
| In my country it was even a big deal when they allowed
| different doctors to access your health data via a common
| system, as there were e.g. concerns that the information
| recorded by one doctor might bias another doctor, so some felt
| that it should be your choice what data to share between
| different parts of the public health system (except for
| explicit referrals).
|
| Moreover, most European countries do have private doctors,
| private hospitals, and private health insurance - it's just way
| less used than the public system. Those would have the same
| concerns as in the US.
| dgellow wrote:
| For sure, yes!
| Fnoord wrote:
| I mean, of course? This is why I opposed electronic health
| record ( EPD (elektronisch patientendossier)) back in the days.
| Even then, SSL (TLS) downgrade attack existed and was known to
| NSA. IIRC EPD was started as opt-in, then opt-out, then
| mandatory.
|
| I received my daughter's ASD diagnosis via Zivver. This
| included very personal details about her life. No parent would
| want that to be public. For adults it is worse: they become
| vulnerable to extortion, and Mossad is known to go very far for
| the cause.
| polytely wrote:
| Deeply
| troupo wrote:
| > Do Europeans care if their health data is secret or not?
|
| Do Europeans care if their private and personal data is secret
| or not? What kind of question is that?
| amelius wrote:
| Of course they do, don't ask silly questions.
| dgellow wrote:
| Actually, please do ask silly questions! The overwhelming
| response has been interesting
| amelius wrote:
| The response is overwhelming because the question is almost
| insulting.
| dgellow wrote:
| Yes, I completely agree, I did feel insulted by it. There
| is a real anti-European/EU narrative in the US, with
| European countries described as collapsing, failed, etc
| (which is pretty obvious bullshit). if people are on the
| fence and ask stupid questions I think it's ok? I hope
| they will be corrected, like happened here.
|
| Of course there is no way for me to know if the poster
| was trolling or pushing an agenda. Some other commenters
| in this whole comment section are more obvious to
| identify
| muzani wrote:
| Health data is usually the highest level protected data under
| most laws. It's not about just insurance. Part of the problem
| is once data is out there, it can be used by any shady person.
|
| You can be discriminated against a job based on health records.
| Scary diseases like AIDS and TB make it hard for unskilled
| labor to land a job since it's so easy to discriminate.
| Pregnancy history may hurt women who are in countries with more
| generous maternity leave.
|
| Mental health history will hurt just about everyone - who wants
| a worker who can claim ADHD, depression, anxiety, etc as
| reasons to be unproductive?
|
| Then people will simply deny getting diagnosed for fear that
| they may uncover something that puts their jobs at risk. That
| hurts the medical system as a whole.
|
| Combine with weird stuff like eugenics. What if we identify a
| possible rapist gene and neuter them in advance? Or bar people
| with a klepto gene from working in finance? You may live in
| happy, sane, democratic societies today, but it may not be the
| case 30 years from now.
| exasperaited wrote:
| I once had to threaten to resign from a job (in the EU, pre-
| Data Protection Act) over the data handling of evidence of
| one of the things in your comment.
|
| I think this has been something people have had an instinct
| about forever, and the only reason I had to threaten to quit
| was because of a misunderstanding of the level of data safety
| involved; put simply it was not common knowledge that socket
| connections could be snooped and that targeting a popular
| service would be easy for a malicious person to do. (This was
| before SSL was efficient or easy to manage, and in the days
| when only payment screens were encrypted).
|
| Once the message was across, everyone's objectives were
| aligned again.
|
| Health information is deeply private because disease is
| entangled with shame/weakness/vulnerability/taboo/intimacy.
| jijijijij wrote:
| > You can be discriminated against a job based on health
| records.
|
| Just to make this clear, probably EU-wide, you can't legally
| be discriminated against. However, it's gonna be hard to
| prove leaked data won't be illegally integrated in e.g. ATS
| models, or was attributed as skill issue when it popped up
| during manual background checks.
|
| Although, infectious disease like HIV or dystopian scenarios
| like eugenics are probably the classical discrimination
| examples for these privacy implications, I don't think they
| are very likely to be discriminated against (outside of jobs
| where discrimination is legal and require disclosure anyway,
| e.g. health workers, food industry etc.). It's easy to
| dismiss those worries, since most people aren't affected. But
| common issues with mental health (e.g. depression), hidden
| disabilities and chronic disease (e.g. PMS), or potentially
| severe recurring disease (e.g. cancer) realistically are
| going to be much more impactful. Everything which
| statistically increases chances to fall out the work force
| due to health reasons - especially in combination with strong
| labor protections.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| I've never seen Zivver used in German Healthcare.
|
| Also Germany uses and is already Rolling out a Matrix-based
| Messenger and S/MIME-Mail with End-to-End-Encryption for
| Communication between Healthcare Professionals.
|
| So at least for Germany this is not a problem.
|
| More problematic was our prior health Minister who wanted to make
| data accessibile to OpenAI et al for "research". That's also why
| I opted out of the electronic health record
|
| https://www.heise.de/news/Lauterbach-zu-Gesundheitsdaten-Goo...
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> I've never seen Zivver used in German Healthcare._
|
| How would you even be sure of this just from what you can see
| from the outside? That doesn't mean your health insurance
| company isn't using Zivver internally same how they use Office
| 365 or SAP. It's not like they tell you all the SW they use.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| Why would they use it internally?
|
| Internally, you have the Hospital Information System where
| you can look up all the informations you need.
|
| I can just say I know the inside of one of Germany's biggest
| Hospitals, since I'm a Doctor. And requesting Patient Data or
| giving it out to other Parties is unfortunately a Task that
| Doctors still have to do on their own
|
| And for communication with the outside world it's down to
| Fax, Phone or Letter.
|
| And that will be replaced with KIM in the future
| user_7832 wrote:
| > Fax, Phone or Letter
|
| That's interesting because in The Netherlands most of my
| doctor's communications come through email (and zivver),
| followed by snail mail.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| Theoretically they could already send this via S/MIME
| encrypted Mail (KIM) to the family doctor, but most
| Hospitals haven't rolled out this service yet.
|
| They just started installing Card Readers for the Doctor
| Identity Cards, so they can issue electronic
| prescriptions
|
| For communication with Patients some Hospitals have Web
| Portals/Apps for getting/sending information.
| user_7832 wrote:
| That's pretty interesting. We have electronic
| prescriptions too (though it goes straight to the
| pharmacy however - we don't see it).
|
| As far as I know, I don't think the hospital portal has
| ever been used for communication like that. An email
| seems more "obvious" perhaps to the docs, and that's what
| they use most of the time.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| The Hospitals in NL that use Epic as EHR also have
| Patient Portals. But I don't know how much they get used
|
| https://www.umcutrecht.nl/en/login-patient-portal
| sallveburrpi wrote:
| I don't think you can opt out of the electronic health record
| long term. We should instead elect officials that can deal with
| the "Neuland" of the digital age and have some technical chops
| and don't immediately cave in when there is some money to be
| made (in no way implying that you don't already do this)
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| Right now, you can and should do it.
|
| See https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/themen/digita
| lis...
|
| > We should instead elect officials that can deal with the
| "Neuland" of the digital age and have some technical chops
| and don't immediately cave in when there is some money to be
| made
|
| Yes, but I don't think this will happen during our lifetimes.
| Especially since the Gematik has shown again and again that
| they can't be trusted with it
| lwn wrote:
| I used to get multiple Zivver messages a week from the health
| providers I work with. However, I haven't received a single one
| since the announcement of the takeover a while ago.
| sva_ wrote:
| > The CEO of the American tech company is a former cyber
| specialist from an elite unit of the Israeli army, as are several
| other members of its top management.
|
| This is about Unit 8200? The 'cybersecurity' unit that Israelis
| can join instead of doing their mandatory military service on the
| gun? I think this acquisition could indeed be problematic, but
| this seems like a weird framing. The article could give more
| context than that.
| xenospn wrote:
| 8200 is mandatory military service.
| everdrive wrote:
| It's not an opt-out in the literal sense. Everyone is
| conscripted, and then based on ability people are placed into
| different units. If you were talented, wouldn't you try to
| avoid getting put on patrol in Gaza or the West Bank?
| barbazoo wrote:
| "If you were a Russian soldier wouldn't you rather work in
| administration in Moscow than invade and murder Ukrainians."
|
| Sure but the real answer is try what you can to get the fuck
| out of there so you don't have to do harm to someone you
| don't even know.
| everdrive wrote:
| A fair point but in that situation it should would be nice
| to be a desk job while I was waiting for my visa to come
| through.
| tokai wrote:
| Russian soldiers are volunteers. They sign a contract. When
| money are involved many many people don't care about
| inflicting harm to others.
| codedokode wrote:
| Also convicts who can get out of jail early.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Volunteers?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Russia
| vanviegen wrote:
| The ones at the Ukrainian front are volunteers.
| konart wrote:
| Some of them. Some of them were mobilised.
| codedokode wrote:
| People in EU buy Russian natural gas and see no problem
| with it. What are you talking about.
| 127 wrote:
| "People in EU" are Hungary and Slovakia for pipeline gas
| and crude oil. Belgium, France and Netherlands for LNG.
| Most see a huge problem with it and pledge to phase it
| out by 2027.
|
| Source: https://energyandcleanair.org/june-2025-monthly-
| analysis-of-...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| So EU nationals can't even phase out their fully
| voluntary usage of gas for 5+ years because it would cost
| a bit more despite financing Ukrainian deaths, but
| conscripted soldiers are blameworthy because they didn't
| abandon their home and everything they know to become a
| fugitive of their state rather than get conscripted?
| codedokode wrote:
| To be fair, conscripted people did not take part in a
| war. The ones who take part are those involuntarily
| mobilized in 2022, well paid volunteers and convicts who
| get a pardon after serving for a certain time.
| vanviegen wrote:
| > cost a bit more
|
| It's not (only) a matter of cost, but availability.
| People need fuel to heat their houses. In order to fully
| replace Russian gas, other facilities (like LNG container
| terminals) need to be built. That has been done and is
| being done, but is complex and not instant.
|
| Should it have been done before February 2022? Yeah,
| probably.
| immibis wrote:
| This is whataboutism. They're both bad.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Good point, I'll accept that conscripts are similarly
| blameworthy as gas consumers in Europe
| codedokode wrote:
| > pledge to phase it out by 2027
|
| When the war hopefully will be over, sanction lifted and
| there will be no problem with trading with Russia anyway.
| codedokode wrote:
| There are also countries which buy Russian resources
| indirectly, via Turkiye and other countries.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I see a huge problem that the annexation of crimea
| started in 2014, escalated in 2022 to a full war and
| invasion, and eu countries can't be bothered to move off
| Russian gas before 2027.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The notion that everyone conscripted into a war is guilty
| by default is absurd, but always inevitably comes out to
| play during the height of moral outrage.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| right guys, it's only like 80% of that population that
| has the ideology we don't like
|
| and in the other 20%, many of them don't get conscripted
| due to a religious exemption that includes being in a
| totally different ideology that has always disagreed with
| the other
|
| odds not looking good, speaking as a betting man, not one
| with any actual opinion just need my prediction market
| bet to hit
| whimsicalism wrote:
| What is the ideology we don't like? I think it is easy to
| throw stones when the reality is that if your nation
| suffered a similar attack, many many people would get
| swept up in anger and outrage and retaliatory madness.
|
| What Israel is doing is wrong, but I don't think it would
| be unique among developed states experiencing something
| similar.
| Swizec wrote:
| Yes most people would fight back against foreign
| occupation
| barbazoo wrote:
| Zionism and violence against Palestineans predates the
| October attacks by a couple of decades.
| cess11 wrote:
| More like a century.
| HappyPanacea wrote:
| Palestinians violence predates Israeli violence (1929
| attacks) and Modern Zionism (1834 progrom). The Zionist
| had a policy of non-violence ( Havlagah
| -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havlagah ) in respond to
| Arab attacks.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| This game--who hurt whom first--doesn't work outside the
| new world. It particularly fails in parts of the world
| that were prehistorically settled.
| ori_b wrote:
| Zionism, as in the belief that Jews deserve self-
| determination as a nation?
| barbazoo wrote:
| I can see how it would be controversial but how is it
| absurd?
|
| Especially in a first world country like Israel where
| people aren't shackled by their poverty.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Blameworthy in a similar way to how Vietnam vets are
| blameworthy.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Maybe we should be thinking differently about those too
| then. Or maybe the environment is different where one
| generation should "know better", having lived through
| another 50 years of human development and ubiquitous
| access to information.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| I don't think your comparison works because Israel does
| not have a comparable anti-war movement that the US had
| during the Vietnam War. In fact, if the media is to be
| believed, there has been enthusiasm on the part of
| Israelis to take part in the fighting.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Wouldn't that only make vietnam vets more blameworthy?
| There was a whole movement against it and they still
| chose to not give up their home/family and choose exile
| even when it was less stigmatized to do so.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| That's an interesting point, and if we follow that logic,
| we move the blame from the Israeli soldiers and place it
| in totality on Israeli culture.
| HappyPanacea wrote:
| Your comparison doesn't work because Vietnam War didn't
| start with Vietnam attacking USA, holding many hostages,
| the group leading the charge having religious ideology
| viewing Americans as second class citizens as well as
| people to ethnically cleanse, all while bordering USA.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| I'm a little confused as to which country Vietnam is in
| your comparison.
| megous wrote:
| 10s of thousands of scum flew from all around the world
| from their comfy lives to Israel to enjoy participating
| in an attempt at total destruction of a nation composed
| in half from children, by starving them, bombing them,
| shooting them, and burying them alive.
|
| These were not conscripted in any way whatsoever. These
| 10s of thousands deserve full blame, and fuck them all.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how is it absurd?_
|
| Humans build identities around their homes. It's why any
| plan that involves relocation implicitly or explicitly
| requires violence.
|
| It's absurd to suggest Israelis should effectively "self
| deport" from their homes. It's unrealistic to the point
| that it's effectively dismissing the problem instead of
| honestly engaging it.
| throwfaraway135 wrote:
| Most movies and games about WW II, do depict killing
| German soldiers as justified, even in horrendous ways.
| derektank wrote:
| You can think killing someone is justified without
| thinking they are morally culpable. There's a reason the
| laws of war don't endorse summary execution of
| surrendering combatants, beyond the practical benefits of
| encouraging more humane conduct towards your own troops.
| immibis wrote:
| There isn't a single country on earth that doesn't despise
| refugees with every fiber of its metaphorical being.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Calling a population that you forcibly displace from
| their homes "refugees" is certainly a choice. Not a
| correct one, but certainly a choice nonetheless.
| Jensson wrote:
| In what way aren't they refugees? People forcibly
| displaced from their homes are refugees.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Pretty sure military aged males aren't allowed to just
| leave Russia at this point without prior approval. And
| sometimes are forcibly conscripted on the street
| myth_drannon wrote:
| It's the opposite, the most talented in every sense volonteer
| to fight in combat units in Gaza. Everyone who ends up in
| 8200 or any other non combat unit has some sort of reason
| health or family. Later there is some selection, so smart but
| most importantly extremely valuable experience that acts as a
| spring board into the startup world later on(cybersec or
| anything else).
| bigyabai wrote:
| Considering how violently the Knesset is fighting over
| conscription, I seriously question this narrative you're
| presenting.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > everyone
|
| The details around that are a significant source of friction.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Israel
| dundarious wrote:
| They do more than cybersecurity, they collect and _analyze_
| signals intelligence. Tom Clancy 's Jack Ryan in the CIA would
| be in Unit 8200 if he was Israeli -- the unit is not at all
| purely "techy" in nature. They are also significantly
| responsible for "analysis" such as target selection, as covered
| here https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
| debarshri wrote:
| I know a thing or two about zivver as i used to hangout with an
| early eng who was a scala dev.
|
| Idea was end to end encryption. So technically, the new org
| should not have access to customer data. Company hit gold in the
| netherlands during covid whe reports had to sent out to users
| digitally and was always encrypted in EU due to regulations.
|
| It could be different behind the scene. It does not look good for
| the netherlands where digital sovereignty is the key topic these
| days.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| Do you know if the encryption scheme covers metadata? For
| instance, who sends something to who.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Ex-Israeli or ex-spies?
| engineerhead wrote:
| Pretty concerning. Even if a service is EU-based, a foreign
| acquisition can expose sensitive data to other jurisdictions.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| American tech companies have been pushing the needle on privacy
| ever since Google. Then Facebook. They've gradually normalised
| that privacy does not exist, all for their own capital gain.
|
| There are European alternatives but they need support.
|
| IMHO it requires conscious choices by European citizens to choose
| more carefully which online services they dedicate their time and
| money to. Or expect unintended consequences.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| IMO European countries, especially France/Germany are more of
| "I don't allow other countries to take privacy data of EU
| citizens but I want backdoor accesses/whatever I need", which
| is fine though.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Europe's (really Ireland's) lacklustre enforcement of GDPR
| means it has hurt European companies (which at least try to
| comply) without even meaningfully improving privacy. Subject
| access requests are fun at least.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Yes gdpr could be good. But instead it's a cookies warning.
| moi2388 wrote:
| No, those two are completely separate laws
| qwertox wrote:
| Cookie warnings are a sign of companies not willing to
| accept that they cannot just collect data on you and
| monetize it.
|
| How does that make the EU regulation something bad? The bad
| thing is that the companies are willing to bombard us with
| the worst possible cookie banners, in order to monetize our
| visits.
|
| Maybe the next EU regulation should be to prohibit those
| banners and allow companies to add a small toggle somewhere
| on their site so _we_ can toggle it to _allow_ them to set
| 3rd-party cookies.
| petcat wrote:
| > The bad thing is that the companies are willing to
| bombard us with the worst possible cookie banners, in
| order to monetize our visits.
|
| The EU's _own government websites_ [1] are littered with
| the same cookie banners. They want the visitor data just
| as bad as everyone else.
|
| > Maybe the next EU regulation
|
| We don't need anymore EU regulations seeing how bad and
| thoughtless they already are.
|
| [1] https://european-union.europa.eu/
| eps wrote:
| > _We_ don't need anymore EU regulations seeing how bad
| and thoughtless ...
|
| Try and speak for yourself. No need to speak on
| everyone's behalf, this is disingenuous.
| qwertox wrote:
| -> [Accept all cookies] [Accept only essential cookies]
| at the bottom of the page.
|
| Sure, I don't understand why they don't remove it if they
| know that an average-iq'd person would accept only
| essential cookies, but that cookie banner belongs to the
| top 5% of friendly cookie banners.
|
| I was talking about those you find on the typical
| website, usually news sites, who make them as annoying as
| possible.
| CalRobert wrote:
| It's bad because they're not enforcing it. Have the law
| and enforce it or don't have the law.
| jwr wrote:
| GDPR has nothing to do with cookies, in spite of the
| commonly spread false narrative.
| juliangmp wrote:
| I never understood the crying about the cookie banners
|
| They're not the problem, they never have been. It's the
| fact that so many parts of the modern internet rely on
| selling user data to make a profit, not the regulation that
| they now have to do the outrageous thing and (gasp) ask for
| consent first.
| immibis wrote:
| The problem with GDPR and cookie banners is that GDPR
| allows the cookie banners to be worded so indirectly. "To
| improve our service we share collected information with
| 5723 partners..."
|
| If the law would force them to say "Do you want Larry
| Ellison to get richer by looking through your webcam?
| [Yes] [No]" it would be a good law.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Ideally it would just be like the Do Not Track flag, with
| one flag for each category of opt-out tracking, but
| actually enforced (even if on by default) so no popups
| would be needed at all.
| CalRobert wrote:
| It doesn't. That's violating gdpr. But you can break gdpr
| without consequences.
| ascorbic wrote:
| Cookie warnings are from the ePrivacy directive.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Cookie warnings predate gdpr actually. (Random discussion
| from 16 years ago -
| https://www.theregister.com/2009/11/25/cookie_law/) The
| funny thing is 99% of cookie dialogs are illegal anyway (it
| should be opt in, not opt out)
| hexbin010 wrote:
| I wonder why Ireland has such lackluster enforcement of
| GDPR...
|
| Oh, aren't many of big tech's EU HQs in Ireland?
| omnimus wrote:
| It's not only about GDPR. It's even more about profit
| shifting and low taxation of big tech. Ireland has been
| selling out EU on digital front for over a decade.
| af78 wrote:
| Taxation is only part of the picture. Quoting from
| https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/13/uncle-sucker/:
|
| In the EU, they've had the GDPR - a big, muscular privacy
| law - for nine years, and all it's really done is drown
| the continent in cookie-consent pop-ups. But that's not
| because the GDPR is flawed, it's because Ireland is a
| tax-haven that has lured in the world's worst corporate
| privacy-violators, and to keep them from moving to
| another tax haven (like Malta or Cyprus or Luxembourg),
| it has to turn itself into a crime-haven. So for the
| entire life of the GDPR, all the important privacy cases
| in Europe have gone to Ireland, and died there:
|
| https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/01/erin-go-blagged/#big-
| tech...
|
| Now, again, this isn't a complicated technical question
| that is hard to resolve through regulation. It's just
| boring old corruption. I'm not saying that corruption is
| easy to solve, but I am saying that it's not complicated.
| Irish politicians made the country's economy dependent on
| the Irish state facilitating criminal activity by
| American firms. The EU doesn't want to provoke a
| constitutional crisis by forcing Ireland (and the EU's
| other crime-havens) to halt this behavior.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| Wow he did NOT mince his words. I've not seen the
| situation described like that ever. Thanks for sharing
| snickerbockers wrote:
| How enforceable is GDPR against foreigners anyways? FANGs are
| motivated to comply because any sufficiently large
| corporation will inevitably have assets that the EU can
| freeze, but otherwise it's just a limp-dick attempt at
| exerting sovereignty well beyond their borders which will get
| laughed out of any court.
| bacr wrote:
| GDPR isn't enforceable against foreign companies. It is
| enforceable against subsidiaries registered within the EU.
| Living in Germany means you are doing business with Google
| GmbH (or likely, the Irish subsidiary). Don't want to
| comply with German law? Then Google GmbH must exit the
| German market.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I'm an eu citizen in Europe concerned with data practices
| of European entities so I don't care about how it might be
| limited outside the EU.
| spwa4 wrote:
| What EU governments are doing goes a lot further than mere
| lackluster gpdr and other privacy law enforcement. They are
| _forcing_ citizens to give their private information to US
| firms, nothing less.
|
| > IMHO it requires conscious choices by European citizens to
| choose more carefully which online services they dedicate their
| time and money to. Or expect unintended consequences.
|
| You mean, European citizens "need to" expect to, and pay for,
| basic internet services like search, mail, ... and, let's be
| honest, pay for worse services than are available free.
|
| Imho proton is about the best available, it's just mail and
| office, and it's 5 euros per month for just mail and basic
| office, essentially Google's free tier.
|
| Obviously, this will never happen. So either the government
| makes such services, and makes them well enough to seriously
| compete or implements a "great firewall of Europe"
| Chinese/Russian style and forces the change.
|
| Instead, governments are introducing dependency after
| dependency on FANG companies. Is there any place left in the EU
| where you can even do your taxes without identifying through
| Google/Android or Apple/IOS on Chinese made hardware? Any at
| all? How about all of Europe? There was a row in the
| Netherlands about efforts to force homeless people to pay for
| cell phones ... and the government is _refusing to back down_.
| It 's just incredible.
|
| Even if the EU kicked out the FANGs with a "great firewall of
| EU", to force people to pay, it would decimate the gig economy
| and show that EU unemployment, especially among young people,
| is really double or perhaps even more the figure it appears to
| be. Plus I don't think it would work. Too many people would
| choose to simply stop interacting with the government under
| such a situation. And while the government can deal with 1 or
| 1000 people not doing their taxes, they cannot hope to deal
| with 10% not doing their taxes.
|
| The only solution is that all European governments force
| themselves to ONLY work through "sovereign" channels not
| dependent on American companies. Right now they are all doing
| the opposite, and in fact not just encouraging EU citizens to
| give their information to FANGs, but actively forcing them to
| do so.
|
| And you're right. This can only end in disaster. But it's
| _slightly_ cheaper now. And the disaster is tomorrow.
|
| Didn't Charlie Munger say "you young people ... tomorrow's
| politicians will make you wish Trump had eternal life"? If it's
| not Trump, sooner or later _someone_ will blow up relations
| with the EU, and even within the EU, on either side.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| wow, you all are having some crazy nationalistic thing going
| on it seems.
|
| best of luck
| ricardo81 wrote:
| You've said a lot so excuse myself if I don't address all
| your points or address them enough.
|
| >proton
|
| Yes, probably 'good enough' at the scale they have as an
| alternative.
|
| >Obviously, this will never happen.
|
| Hard sell for sure vs the status quo.
|
| >Obviously, this will never happen. So either the government
| makes such services, and makes them well enough to seriously
| compete or implements a "great firewall of Europe"
| Chinese/Russian style and forces the change.
|
| Consumer change of habits but obviously having alternatives
| count.
|
| >Is there any place left in the EU
|
| Is definitely a problem wrt dependency. Also outages from
| Cloudflare etc suggest further dependency and its all about
| convenience.
|
| >The only solution is that all European governments force
| themselves to ONLY work through "sovereign" channels not
| dependent on American companies.
|
| They don't. The US companies have gradually pushed the
| envelope and unfortunately EU reaction has resulted in time
| wasting cookie modals etc for front end users. There is
| surely a measure of lost EU business opportunity vs what is
| actually happening, a wholesale copyright and privacy
| override. Google was bad enough before AI but now it's just
| wholesale stealing of everyone's everything.
| esbranson wrote:
| > either the government makes such services, and makes them
| well enough to seriously compete
|
| Europeans have already made open source versions of quite a
| few things as side projects without any funding. The issue is
| a lack of transparency (by American standards) that hides
| just how hideously incompetent and outrageous (even by
| American standards) member state governments are. (PACER is a
| big reason how Americans know what Europeans are ignorant
| about.) I do believe an EU member state could otherwise
| create any service that American companies already proved are
| desirable, make it free for nationals and residents and
| require payment for others, and use EUDI as the login and
| verification, probably for quite cheap.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >which online services they dedicate their time and money to.
|
| Ain't nobody dedicating their money to anything.
|
| That's exactly why these enormous tech giants are privacy
| nightmares. How many people complaining about Google have used
| their services extensively for decades now, and never have once
| given a cent to Google? Probably over 90%.
|
| People were _offended_ when Google launched YouTube Premium
| because it encroached on their right to "free" everything from
| Google. Even today people still chain themselves to the hill of
| "I will never give youtube a penny", despite them probably
| using a couple percentage points of their entire waking life on
| google products.
|
| Europe is in a tough, if not impossible spot, of having
| (relatively) heavy privacy protections, while also having a
| population that is largely offended by the idea of having to
| pay for something that "has always been free!".
|
| Maybe they can launch a taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| Have consumers ever been offered the ability to pay Google to
| opt out of advertisements _and_ to opt into privacy?
| tensor wrote:
| Somewhat. You can pay for workspace to keep your email
| private and ad free.
| dizhn wrote:
| Guarded by a "privacy policy". This is Google. How come
| this "if you're not paying for it, you're the product"
| crowd doesn't get that it doesn't matter if you're paying
| or not, you're always the product?
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| I don't like this argument since this is can be applied
| to everything and You expect people to roll out their own
| service for everything since everything is a product in
| some form or another
|
| its okay to depends on some product because they are just
| good, for example people free to use Office alternative
| which is free btw but people literally dont choose that
| because MS Office is just better
|
| all of this deep talk discussion is irrelevant since User
| want an working product that they expect them to
|
| its just that
| beambot wrote:
| Id be shocked if the freemium privacy policy &
| obligations for, say, Gmail is the same as the corporate
| privacy policy under GSuite/Workspace...
|
| With the latter, there's a direct contractual
| relationship since you're paying Google for services
| earthnail wrote:
| It's the same in all consumer marketplaces. Free or
| freemium has won. It's not Google specific.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The vast majority of peope put very little value on their
| time and attention and sense of aesthetics (even if they
| might say otherwise). It's the only explanation for why
| advertising is as pervasive as it is.
| woobar wrote:
| Facebook offered paid subscription for ad-free experience
| in Europe.[1] First, europeans complained it is too
| expensive. After a price cut, they EC still wanted a free
| version with less personalization.[2]
|
| If google offers something similar, I am pretty sure
| Europeans will find something else to complain about.
|
| [1] https://about.fb.com/news/2024/11/facebook-and-
| instagram-to-...
|
| [2] https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-will-let-
| facebook...
| LtWorf wrote:
| ad-free and "we won't sell your data" are two different
| things.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Meta was recently fined 200MEUR for offering that choice.
| Seems unfortunate, but maybe I misunderstood.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/03/meta_ec_dma_sulk/
| buran77 wrote:
| The law defines what companies can or cannot do around
| privacy. So Meta can't go around telling users to pay to
| get the privacy the law affords them anyway or
| conversely, if users don't pay they don't get the
| privacy.
|
| The root of the issue is probably the "freely given
| consent" that the law defines. If Meta charges users
| unless they consent to something, then the consent isn't
| freely given.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| About a decade ago google trialed a program where you could
| pay monthly to "buy out" ad spaces. So you wouldn't get
| served ads, or you would get served fewer ads, and the
| money would be deducted from what you allotted per month.
|
| Of course
|
| "What kind of dumbass would pay to not see ads when uBlock
| Origin is free? lololol"
|
| It didn't ever get traction or last very long before being
| canned. This is the mentality that money-compensation-
| business-plan tech companies would have to face; "What kind
| of dumbass would pay for your product?"
| martin-t wrote:
| Because it's extortion just like paying the mafia for
| "protection" from themselves.
|
| See, ads are not a pro-social service. Their fundamental
| goal is not to inform and facilitate mutually beneficial
| exchange of goods/services. Their goal is to allow
| companies who spend ad-money to gain an advantage over
| competitors who don't, regardless of quality of the
| product.
|
| Ads are a fundamentally anti-competitive practice.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| while I agree that Ads is sucks as a whole but how can
| you generate revenue from free service ?????
|
| I mean its not like paid service that dont have ads and
| giving privacy is non existent either, we have proton
| mail for example
| martin-t wrote:
| You can't. So don't advertise it as free. It's just
| lying, simple as that. People either pay with their data,
| their attention or their money.
|
| Companies should be required to be transparent about how
| much revenue each of these sources generates.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| The more you're willing to pay to opt out of ads the more
| valuable the ads are. Also the ads are auctioned and in
| opting out you're all ways going to be the highest
| bidder. Additionally how would you know the other bidders
| were real, it's a massive information asymmetry that's
| open to abuse. And I'm pretty sure they have abused it in
| the past.
|
| I use substack and patreon and I wish we had micro
| transactions that'll enable more of this model for
| content.
|
| Now much of the same info is recycled via AI, instead of
| reading blogs / stack overflow etc I just ask AI and so
| far I can use AI without ads. I do pay for a subscription
| to Gemini.
| wafflemaker wrote:
| >People were offended when Google launched YouTube Premium
| because it encroached on their right to "free" everything
| from Google.
|
| Nope. At least I was offended, because YT Premium wanted $15
| from me for hosting other people's videos. That's more than
| streaming services that pay for production of TV shows and
| movies.
|
| Don't think they really need THAT much to cover hosting
| costs. Not when they operate on that scale and in addition
| can hover up and profit on all the usage data.
|
| If YT Premium costed $3 or $5, I'd pay and I'd bully any
| friends and family that watch YT and don't pay into
| supporting the service. As it is now, my appraisal skill says
| "SCAM" and I pirate YT with clean conscience.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Youtube has a 60/40 revenue share with creators for long
| form video (inverse for shorts). 60% to creators 40% to
| youtube. It's also dependent on watch time and split evenly
| among channels (unlike spotify where big names get all the
| money and small guys get nothing). Youtube premium viewers
| are the juiciest viewers for creators, by a large margin.
|
| Also blocking-ads/pirating on youtube provides the creators
| with nothing. I'm not sure how people justify this besides
| the established internal conditioning that anything on the
| internet must be free. Also conversion rates for "watches
| all their content" to "pays for their patreon" are <1%.
| meanwhile ad-blocking/pirating rates are around 40-60%
| depending on your audience.
|
| At some point the internet has got to have a reckoning with
| reality if they want things to improve.
| afiori wrote:
| It depends if Google ranks all users' watch time the same
| or less profitable users are weighted less in the
| "algorithm"
|
| If all users' are ranked the same then loyal adblocking
| users can still help a lot
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| It's weighted on the individuals watch time, not all of
| YouTube's watch time. That's why it's so good for small
| channels. The most amount of your money goes to whatever
| channels you watch the most, regardless of their size.
| kyboren wrote:
| In a free and competitive market, the price of any good
| trends towards the marginal cost of production.
|
| Producing _de novo_ some valuable information--a YouTube
| video, blog post, software program, news article, song,
| etc.--has a real cost that must be paid for each new
| information good created.
|
| But making _copies_ of information in our digital world
| with gigabit networks and terabyte disks is now very
| nearly free, so the marginal cost of production of copies
| of any piece of information is very nearly zero.
|
| This is why centralization and scale are such powerful
| strategies for IP-based industries: They offer enormous
| leverage. And it's also why they are so dependent on
| government intervention to ensure _unfree_ markets.
|
| These creators can only make a profit if they are able to
| monopolize their information goods. If a new "factory"
| opens up down on BitTorrent Boulevard literally giving
| your product away for free, how can you compete with
| that? Moreover, what incentive do you have to produce new
| goods in the first place, if anyone can just offer
| infinite copies of your product to the market for free?
|
| Thus, these creators rely on government intervention to
| make it _illegal_ to offer copies of their information
| goods. But there 's a fundamental tension between the
| twin economic realities that the marginal cost of
| production is ~zero yet the marginal price of consumption
| is nonzero. Thus, piracy.
|
| In my opinion the copyright system is broken in the
| digital age. Instead of granting monopolies on
| information goods produced, we ought to figure out an
| alternative economic structure that incentivizes the
| production of these information goods in proportion to
| their consumption while accepting that their marginal
| cost of production is zero and abandoning any attempt to
| control the copying, transmission, creation of derivative
| works, etc.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| >money
|
| Android phone contracts seem strangely cheap.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Perhaps if the choice was "forced", it would encourage actual
| competition.
|
| I'm pissing in the wind, but I'd prefer it if the use of
| personal data - sold for adverts - was banned outright.
| Particularly for large companies.
|
| This would forced Google et al to charge for their services,
| creating the market that would stimulate competitors (Open
| Source or otherwise).
|
| People will argue against this, but online advertising that
| got us to where we are is the absolute scourge of modern
| society ... it's poisoned every decent well of humanity.
|
| Even for things like Youtube Premium, I'm certain Google are
| double dipping ... likely quadruple dipping.
| esbranson wrote:
| > taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram
|
| I believe an EU member state could create any service that
| American companies already proved are desirable, make it free
| for nationals and residents and require payment for others,
| and use EUDI as the login and verification. Probably for
| quite cheap. They're just too incompetent.
| martin-t wrote:
| How about the other perspective?
|
| The current modus operandi for tech companies is to offer
| something for free or below market price, gain a userbase,
| lock them in and destroy competitors who don't have cash to
| burn, then alter the deal.
|
| If I start using a company's offerings, I have certain
| expectations, such as the terms and conditions suddenly not
| changing from under me. Now, you can argue that they are
| required by law to inform me of any changes to the literal
| Terms and Conditions. Well, yes, except:
|
| 1) They are often worded so carefully from the beginning that
| they can start doing something exploitative at a later date,
| only after gaining goodwill and users by not doing it.
|
| 2) I can't very well stop using a service if doing so incurs
| a loss to me. Phone operators are required by law in some
| countries to allow customers to transfer their phone number
| to a competitor. I am not aware of a similar law for email
| addresses. And email is at least 1:1, what any other operator
| offers it technologically compatible due to open protocols,
| so a transfer is possible. There are services with no 1:1
| alternative.
|
| ( Hopefully Open Social will change that but we're not there
| yet: https://overreacted.io/open-social/ )
|
| ---
|
| There's also informed consent. Most countries don't allow
| people below a certain age to have sex because they might not
| understand all the implications and consequences. How many
| people do truly understand how tracking and profiling works,
| the risks of data breaches, doxxing, stalking, surveillance,
| etc? I argue informed consent cannot be formed unless people
| are aware of _exactly_ where each bit of data about them is
| stored and accessed; and also are made aware of the
| probabilities of all the possible adverse events over their
| lifetime.
| xandrius wrote:
| I would be very happy to discuss the matter with you but
| there seems to be some hostility and edge in the way you
| argue your point which makes it hard to engage with.
|
| Anyway, in short, everything you said applies to literally
| any human or even animal: if you give them something for free
| and then take it away unless they pay for it, they won't
| accept it (google maps). On the other hand, if you provide
| something for a price, and it's needed, people will pay even
| if there is an alternative (e.g. Netflix).
|
| The difference is that many/most people are ok with ads as a
| form of payment for the free services, while others
| (including Europeans) are not ok with the additional hidden
| clauses regarding how their personal data is used. Is that
| wrong? I don't think so.
|
| To make it more realistic, imagine getting a TV for free
| because it will insert ads every X minutes. The tradeoffs are
| pretty clear: Good TV for my time/attention.
|
| But if someone then started also recording from said TV the
| inside of my room, my and my family's faces to be sold to
| unknown parties for unknown uses (and sometimes even to
| antagonists) then I don't think anyone would believe it is a
| fair implementation of the original and presented "agreement"
| (even if it is stated in their 1000 pages ToS).
|
| Now, if Europeans start being vocal politically that such an
| invasion of privacy is not acceptable, does that make their
| claims invalid because there is no valid alternative to such
| services?
|
| I'm pretty sure today's tech giants would be profitable even
| without the privacy invasion and the selling of the data;
| furthermore if their premium versions did not actually show
| you ads (some show you ads even if you pay), I'm sure people
| will slowly start gravitating there as they stop being ok
| trading their attention/time for money.
|
| But if Facebook explicitly told you "pay us X/mo or we will
| sell your personal data to Russia", would people actually pay
| them or, perhaps, would they start considering other saner
| alternatives? I guess we'll never know.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I think the ideal solution is forcing companies to offer
| privacy focused ad-free options as a subscription, with a
| cost calculated from the average revenue per fully
| tracked/ad-riddled user, maybe plus some small premium.
|
| Of course, this would likely receive a lot of blow-back in
| the form of "Looks like now you have to be rich to not get
| your life sold to third parties" and "Google used to be
| equal for all and now they are just going to prey on the
| most vulnerable in society"
|
| The only way to win in this situation is for people to
| understand that things cost money. They probably cost more
| than you expect, and you probably will want your ads and
| tracking back once you see the true cost. After all, at the
| end of the day, the downside to these decades of tracking
| to most people has been "Damn, how does google know I buy
| Tide detergent!".
| xandrius wrote:
| This is a false dichotomy: it's not a given that
| companies must make money out of personal data.
|
| There are things which shouldn't be for sale, and I
| believe personal information is one of those.
|
| Even though we don't have another universe to compare
| ours to, I believe companies started selling personal
| data not because people didn't want to pay for their
| services (since they do that even if you DO pay for them)
| but mainly because it is profitable. End of the story.
|
| I am always surprised why people here attach so much
| humanity and conventional logic to huge international
| for-profit VC-backed companies: they will do literally
| anything if at the end of the day they come out in the
| green (aka profitable). Even illegal things, if the
| expected payout is lower than profits created.
|
| I also believe that if literally killing people made some
| company $X and their analysts predict having to pay $Y to
| governments (with $Y substantially lower than $X) once in
| a while, someone would eventually decide to do that. And
| such a company wouldn't have trouble finding shareholders
| and employees.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I've been party to exactly these types of policy
| discussions in Europe and elsewhere for a couple decades
| now.
|
| The consistent political pushback against mandatory paid
| options that are ad-free is that it excludes people that
| can't afford them. It is unfair because it only advantages
| people with money. Therefore "free" is the only valid
| policy choice because there is always someone who can't
| pay. This limits what is possible as a practical matter.
|
| The obvious alternative to an ad-funded model within these
| constraints is for the government to pay the companies for
| the service on condition that they remove ads from their
| country. Needless to say, the idea of paying "taxes" to
| Google et al to remove the ads is offensive to many of the
| same people.
|
| So we are stuck with the status quo of "free" ad-funded
| services because people aren't willing to accept the
| necessary tradeoffs to change the situation.
| Jaygles wrote:
| If services offered a paid version that guaranteed privacy,
| such that I stay anonymous and only data points that are
| strictly necessary to provide the service are persisted in
| the company's servers, I would happily pay.
|
| And I mean guaranteed in a way that I would have legal
| recourse against the company if they go back on their word or
| screw up
| amunozo wrote:
| You will, most people won't.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Because they know that even if you pay it's very unlikely
| that they will respect the deal anyways.
| iepathos wrote:
| What specific legal recourse beyond what exists? You can
| already sue for breach of contract if a company violates
| their privacy policy. The real problems are: (1) detecting
| violations in the first place, and (2) proving/quantifying
| damages. A 'guarantee' doesn't solve either.
| allenrb wrote:
| > Maybe they can launch a taxpayer funded EuroTube and
| EuroGram.
|
| Ok, but only if one of them is called "EuroVision".
| robotnikman wrote:
| This really is a major issue imho. Many of the people here
| and those who are more tech savvy would be willing to pay for
| such a thing, but we are a very small minority. 90% of people
| don't care, or are unable or unwilling to understand the
| consequences of having all their data vacuumed up by
| corporations like Google and Facebook. Its a Tyranny of the
| majority type of situation. I'm not sure what the solution to
| this would be other than maybe better educating the populace.
| lazide wrote:
| Most of these things are emotionally driven. Education
| won't do shit unless it's coupled with some kind of
| training action. People will just laugh it off or accept
| it. Most people have literally come to accept their phone
| is listening to them for ads!
|
| Either regulation, or it needs to get so shitty and painful
| that people get a reflexive avoidance thing going on.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The real problem is that all the downsides of the
| "tracking and advertising" tech world are largely
| hypotheticals and/or so subtle and divorced from day to
| day life as to be almost imperceptible.
|
| There hasn't really been a "reap what you sow" moment for
| people who threw privacy caution to the wind for free
| stuff.
| lazide wrote:
| Yup, though the current US gov't is working hard to make
| that happen, near as I can tell. We'll see what happens!
| prewett wrote:
| Maybe accepting that they do not agree with you?
| lazide wrote:
| Dons psychic hat - and EuroTube and EuroGram will be widely
| ignored because most people are not only apparently fine with
| getting taken advantage of if it's shiny and they don't
| notice it.
|
| The reason for all the data/lack of privacy stuff is because
| most people get something from it - the next shiny
| manipulative BS thing, or shiny gadget or whatever.
| intended wrote:
| >People were offended when Google launched YouTube Premium
| because it encroached on their right to "free" everything
| from Google.
|
| Markets outcomes are not a prophecy.
|
| If it was so simple - why put the unsubscrube or privacy
| rules behind UI/UX features that required A/B testing and
| behavioral analysis to make it as onerous as possible?
|
| People aren't happy that they to sell their privacy, and had
| to be reassured that this is the best option.
|
| Not to mention, this was during an era of camraderie between
| the US and Europe, not a potential opponent. The idea of a
| taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram or CountryThing will
| pick up steam. Why have your information farmed by a nation
| which acts in a hostile manner to its erstwhile allies?
| an0malous wrote:
| Apple has been a great privacy advocate but doesn't get
| mentioned in comments like these and gets dragged through the
| mud for having proprietary cables and particular UI aesthetics.
| It's interesting to observe who it's fashionable to hate and
| the double standards this community applies to tech companies.
| submeta wrote:
| You mean the Apple that gets targeted by Israel spyware firms
| constantly? The Apple iPhone used by a Saudi journalist named
| Adman Khasoggi whose iphone was hacked with Israeli spyware,
| targeted and murdered? Just one example.
|
| Apple devices aren't secure either.
| an0malous wrote:
| I mean the Apple that refuses to build government backdoors
| in spite of intense pressure from possibly the most
| powerful entity in the world, the US military intelligence
| community.
|
| You're also conflating security with privacy, a security
| hole is unintentional it's not like they were selling their
| customer's information. No system is perfectly secure.
| Apple has done more to address those issues than any other
| tech company. They're targeted because they're popular,
| maybe your antagonism should be directed towards the
| country that openly sells such software to murderous
| authoritarian regimes or the government that condones it
| from their alleged "greatest ally"
| bigyabai wrote:
| Refuses is not the right word, there is no way to audit
| Apple's refusal or hold them accountable here.
|
| US Senator Ron Wyden whistleblew how iOS Push
| Notifications are collected by US intelligence, which is
| concerning when you consider how much iMessage relies on
| it:
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/06/apple-governments-
| surve...
|
| https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/imessage_push_notifica
| tio...
| jfindper wrote:
| This is a silly take unless you believe that Apple
| facilitated its devices being hacked.
|
| Privacy and security are two different things.
|
| " _It's interesting to observe who it's fashionable to hate
| and the double standards this community applies to tech
| companies_ " Indeed....
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| you mean Apple that scans all your photos to send to police?
| _despite_ all the flak it got after first attempt at doing
| so?
| an0malous wrote:
| source?
| zwnow wrote:
| You mean Apple that said they'd never spy on their users only
| to be caught spying on their users?
| an0malous wrote:
| source?
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| >American tech companies have been pushing the needle on
| privacy ever since Google. Then Facebook. They've gradually
| normalised that privacy does not exist, all for their own
| capital gain.
|
| Great subthread to remind that your HN data (comments and maybe
| more) is shared and licensed with all Y Combinator startups.
| It's also impossible to delete your own data, either on HN or
| data shared with the Y Combinator startups (except by some
| 'beware of the leopard' email procedure).
|
| This is not being made clear when registering a new account.
| datahungrydang wrote:
| seconded. even if you happen to figure out where to send your
| email they just refuse and say its unfair to them and others
| to ask for it to be deleted. its pretty shameless. if I ever
| hit it big one of my expenditures will be suing to force them
| to honor deletion requests.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| I was the admin of a small social network for many years,
| and I understand the message @dang was trying to convey.
|
| If you were actively commenting, you are basically asking
| to break the flow of discussion among many participants.
| And yes, this is unfair to others.
|
| My rule of thumb was to honor the deletion requests for
| those who were little involved in the community.
|
| For others I would disable their account, anonymize their
| login name and remove sensitive details in discussions.
|
| This is how it worked until toxic behaviour, facebook and
| telegram made my little social network redundant.
| ifdefdebug wrote:
| well I AM aware that my comments here are shared with the
| whole world, which Y Combinator startups are a subset of...
| realitysballs wrote:
| I already assumed that. But maybe I'm the minority. Unless
| someone explicitly says they are privacy focused, I assume
| the worst and anonymize
| epolanski wrote:
| > it's also impossible to delete your own data, either on HN
| or data shared with the Y Combinator startups (except by some
| 'beware of the leopard' email procedure).
|
| This violates EU's GDPR article 17 I believe, at the very
| least, thank you for raising the point.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The GDPR "right to erasure" has been widely misinterpreted.
| It is not a universal right to force companies to delete
| anything about you. It has a lot of carve outs for things
| like freedom of expression and public interest. When
| someone posts publicly on a publicly website that's
| archived across the internet, it's hard to argue that it
| checks all the boxes for deletion without any of the
| carveouts and exceptions.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> your HN data [...] is shared and licensed with all_
|
| TBH, if a service doesn't _explicitly_ say what data I expose
| to it _won 't_ be shared, I assume it will be immediately and
| repeatedly.
|
| Though also if a service _does_ explicitly say the data won
| 't be shared, I still assume that it will eventually be given
| to the highest bidder, then the next highest, and the next,
| and so on. If not deliberately, it will at some point be
| hacked from without or unofficially exfiltrated from within.
|
| And on a public site like HN all bets are off as the
| information is probably being scraped by everyone, their
| dogs, and their dogs' fleas, even more so now LLMs are such a
| big thing.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > your HN data (comments and maybe more) is shared and
| licensed with all Y Combinator startups.
|
| HN comments are public and are available through several
| archives and datasets.
|
| Deleting old comments wouldn't stop anyone from having access
| to them, but it would make old HN threads frustrating to
| read. Old Reddit threads are becoming painful to read on the
| Reddit website due to all of the people posting and then
| overwriting their old comments with scripts.
| tobr wrote:
| Fitting HN, that seems to follow the Silicon Valley mindset
| perfectly - we'll ignore laws and trample on people's
| rights in the name of reducing some absolutely trivial
| "pain".
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| Was it done so illegally? If so who will prosecute the people who
| sold it?
| inshard wrote:
| Strange that a 9th October article shows up at the top of the
| feed given the events of the day in Sydney.
| beAbU wrote:
| What happened in Sydney?
| underdeserver wrote:
| https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/bondi-beach-
| gunshots...
| beAbU wrote:
| Terrible event. How is this relevant to HN and its topics
| of discussion?
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Is a CEO of a company serving in the military 40 years
| ago relevant?
| bar000n wrote:
| maybe the "data sold to" part
| Fnoord wrote:
| Typical ad hominem diversion. I listened to the related podcast
| episode of FTM yesterday evening on Spotify, and today decided
| to search more information and read the coinciding articles. I
| have no control about what gets upvoted here, since I don't
| work for an agency or troll farm. Look at my submission
| history. Another article I submitted related to Israel
| (Correllium getting acquired by Cellebrite) got no uptake
| whatsoever. It was never discussed here, at all.
|
| I oppose civilians being targeted by terrorism, and that also
| obviously includes Israelians. For example, I was very much
| shocked by Oct 7.
|
| I also do have a problem with Israel's alleged genocide by the
| current government.
|
| I don't believe any of the above makes me antisemite. It is
| very typical of agents of a certain agency to frame like that
| though.
| tome wrote:
| > I don't believe any of the above makes me antisemite. It is
| very typical of agents of a certain agency to frame like that
| though.
|
| An astonishing pair of sentences.
| Fnoord wrote:
| So astonishing there's a Wikipedia article about the
| phenomenon [1].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaponization_of_antisemitism
| tome wrote:
| I see. So who are these "agents of a certain agency"
| you're referring to? Can you be specific?
| bar000n wrote:
| Agency is what those people you call trolls don't have. Leave
| them be, you don't want to end up lynched.
| weatherlite wrote:
| > Israelians
|
| Israelis
| newspaper1 wrote:
| This is a tech article and has nothing to do with Sydney.
| dang wrote:
| This was probably random, as are most things like this on HN.
|
| That is terrible news.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Archive link: https://archive.ph/Se55J
| altoid wrote:
| this article forces you to create an account, just delete the
| "quickSubscribe" class in the html and remove the popup, you will
| be able to scroll free.
| altoid wrote:
| this page forces you to create an account. Just delete the
| "quickSubscribe" class in the html and remove the popup to te
| able to scroll for free.
| nikoomilana wrote:
| or just find the archived link in the comments?
| epolanski wrote:
| I always find it absurd how good Israelis are at security and
| intelligence yet failed miserably on October 7th.
| storus wrote:
| Is there any way to opt out? Or did European Comision just make a
| package deal without asking its populace for some reason?
| fithisux wrote:
| It gets better and better.
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