If people want to use snazzy services but don't want to pay, and then outlaw collecting private information, presumably the owner of the snazzy service will find some more complicated or secret way to monetize its users?
“How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
161–170 of 319 posts
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> deleted every chat Whatsapp never stores the chat history anywhere. All conversations are encrypted end to end.
False, you can store it locally and/or in the cloud. End-to-end my ass.
>You can store it
I didn't say you can't, I said Whatsapp doesn't store it. I meant to say that it won't automatically backup and restore your stuff when you change phones.
You have to backup the data yourself in an sd card or a cloud service that you choose. It isn't stored in Facebook's servers.
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's nice to live in a world where everything is simple. I wish I did.
I wish it too. But it's your choice. Also don't write stuff like this.... > Put another way, we find ourselves in a situation where a single, rather secretive corporation mediates the interactions of a significant fraction of the species, and has already been known to manipulate the perception of its users in ways which might be to its benefit. When I was a kid, this would've been no more than fodder for third-rate d…
I think it's adorable how you just casually assume I have a Facebook account and I'm speaking in purely theoretical terms here.
It's not that I don't want to see Facebook killed with an axe. I'm just not so foolish as to imagine that browbeating people will make that more likely. Don't confuse the two.
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author of Signal (Moxie Marlinspike) seems actively hostile to not only federation efforts but also compatibility with other clients, even one that only removed the dependency of Signal on Google Play Services: http://news.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/posts/signal-lock-in.ht...
Federation and security is a hard problem. The code is there for anyone to use, but it's an entirely reasonable and prudent security decision to announce your lack of support for a forked version using the same servers. (Also, does Telegram have a version without Google Play Services?)
The XMPP ecosystem has federation, security and almost every client can talk to almost every server. If Moxie Marlinspike claims that interoperability does not work well in the context of instant messaging, I see this as him trying to manipulate the users so they do not judge him for his behaviour.
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#165My problem with whatsapp is that there's no way to use it without giving access to my entire contact list to the app. And that's out of the question for me.
On iOS you can actually deny access when the OS prompt comes up and WhatsApp will still work. You just have to start conversations using a phone number instead of a name/contact. I use it this way, and it is a little inconvenient but I feel better not uploading my phone book.
While this is noble of you, I guess 99% of your (and mine) contacts won't do the same. So you're protecting your friends, while your own number is still shared with Facebook.
This is what annoys me the most. I can't control what people put in their address book about me (physical address, email, photo, phone number, maybe even more infos) and who they share my info with.
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#166This is an incredibly ugly dark pattern. The 'share information with Facebook' nugget is hidden behind a toggle at the bottom of the screen, and will be guaranteed to be missed by the 99% of users who just want to talk to their friends. Then, once you've agreed to the terms and conditions, you've got a completely arbitrary 30 days to read an online article which tells you what you've signed up for before WhatsApp is…
Making this an opt-in is automatically illegal in the EU anyway, which makes the fact that they rolled it out like this very surprising.
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Don't use these tools if you value privacy" is not that far off from "If you have nothing to hide, why are you afraid of surveillance?" An observed life is not a free life. Many people have to use social media to communicate with family, work associates, etc... In many cases, facebook messaging has replaced methods of communication that did not rely on the content or metadata of messages for profit. All that really…
Is email not sufficient to communicate with family, work associates, etc.?
I've thought about building something that gives a social network type experience that is built on top of email. Any status update would get sent out to an email list of your connections, and all the emails could be put in a specific mail folder using standard rules. A front end app would then scan that folder and give you a personalized page that represents the latest status based on what it sees in that folder. The raw messages themselves may contain various control messages (such as "friend requests" and "drop requests", but otherwise can be directly viewable too. But the main interface would be from a front-end app that runs on the user's PC or mobile device.
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#168> the discussions are large and come from three different perspectives The discussions have ballooned, but having read the other two in the morning, this one just feels like a rehash of the same privacy concerns folks have raised. And for anyone reading about possible solutions to their concerns, they'd have to jump between 2-3 different threads now. I'm glad there's at least WhatsApp thread is on front page for ever…
Fair enough, but I don't see a clearly better solution. Do you?
Since this is a bit meta I've detached the subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12361031 and marked it off-topic.
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's your fault too, you know? Why give the fault to a corporation when we are giving them pieces of our lives? Fights aren't easy, but this fight is important for our society and our children. > Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. This is a fight, our fight. For freedom, free speech and privacy. > I mean, yeah, that's easy to say and a…
It's nice to live in a world where everything is simple. I wish I did.
Please be careful about rationalisation of things. Its easy to build up argument for why you need to have Facebook. We all know how dark the waters of Facebook are (with all the tech knowledge, monetising schemes and smelly dark patterns). Yet very few actualy at least try to do something about it. Its part addiction, part fear and well i dont know what. I think that least everyone here should do is to think about the problem hard and try to be honest with yourself. I bet you believe in net neutrality and open-source. Well Facebook is in direct opposition of that. It realy is, we all know it. Even though they make open-source software they would love to see world where Facebook is the net (look at India and Facebook net).
Who else should stop using the Facebook than the people who actualy understands how it works.
I am saying this becuase over a year ago i deleted FB. It was more for the fact that i started to measure how i use FB and i realized i was giving it quite bit of my focus. It wasnt taking much of my time but it was constant distraction. So i stopped. After 14 days i never felt urge or need to use facebook again. Seriously it was like some spell. And outcome? All the worries about not being able to reach foreing friends or see what are my friends up to. Well the interesting people luckily found another way to contact me and since then all the important stuff was much more focused. Other people started to talk with me, they had a reason to talk with me in a pub because they got something new i didnt know about. And leaving fb became theme for conversations because people wondered why i did it.
And its not only me, there are 4 people i know around me who came to the same conclusion. None of us came back.
Btw when you will try to actualy delete your fb account, its a minefield of dark patterns. First you need special link, because you can only deactivate from settings. Then you will have to go through pile of emotionaly draining photos of friends with claims that they will mis you and you wont be able to see what they are doing with their lives. Then few traps with agreeing about deletion with switched meanings of buttons. In the end you wont actualy be deleted. You will be put to deactivate mode for 14 days, if your browser accidentaly auto logins then you have to do it again. After 14 days you are sent email and if you miss it and wont acept it in certain time - you wont be deleted. Of course since 1. 1. 2014 it realy doesnt matter because facebook keeps your data even if you delete account. (i deleted it just before 1. 1. 2014 and i still think they kept all the shit, because how would anyone know).
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Federation and security is a hard problem. The code is there for anyone to use, but it's an entirely reasonable and prudent security decision to announce your lack of support for a forked version using the same servers. (Also, does Telegram have a version without Google Play Services?)
The XMPP ecosystem has federation, security and almost every client can talk to almost every server. If Moxie Marlinspike claims that interoperability does not work well in the context of instant messaging, I see this as him trying to manipulate the users so they do not judge him for his behaviour.
The XMPP ecosystem doesn't have security anywhere comparable to what we're talking about (well-implemented, end-to-end, forward-secure, multi-device messaging).