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WhatsApp – Opting out of new terms doesn’t stop Facebook taking information

independent.co.uk

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Re: WhatsApp – Opting out of new terms doesn’t stop Facebook taking information

#61

Post by bad_user »

bikamonki wrote: post #47

It's too late! Have you seen another search engine make a dent in Google's market share? How about another OS challenging Windows on a PC? Another social network? It is rather obvious that: if the main purpose of a business is to grow revenue/market share, if successful, it will eventually grow to close to 100% market share. This situation, commonly known as a monopoly, cannot be reversed by free market competition a…

> Have you seen another search engine make a dent in Google's market share?

Google has been doing a good job in maintaining the technical superiority of their search engine and haven't provided a serious incentive for people to switch, even though they came close with their whole Google+ clusterfuck.

That said, Bing and DuckDuckGo did make a dent in Google's market share, it's not much, but it's significant enough that they'll still exist for some time. The problem of Bing and DuckDuckGo is that they are optimized for the US market, not for the international one. As I kept telling people, the search results of Bing and DuckDuckGo in Europe are horrible.

But Google can lose against local search engines. Baidu is the primary search engine in China, not Google. Yandex is the primary search engine in Russia, not Google.

> How about another OS challenging Windows on a PC?

OS X hasn't won a majority, but it won the market that mattered - that of professionals and software developers. At this point, for most users, Windows is nothing more than a shell for your browser, or for games distributed by Steam or through PirateBay. If it weren't for Microsoft Office & Exchange keeping it alive in enterprises, it would have been long gone.

Even so, both OS X and Windows are going to be cannibalized by Android and iOS. It's going to be a sad day for those of us that were born in an era when computing wasn't locked down in walled gardens, but make no mistake as it happens. Chrome OS has been quite successful and Google is merging it with Android. Microsoft themselves have seen the writing on the wall, hence their desperate attempts to inflate the Windows 10 numbers and make it seem a success.

> This situation, commonly known as a monopoly, cannot be reversed by free market competition

You're wrong, free market competition works, but not in the way you think it does. You can't beat big companies at their own game, since they have huge resources that you don't, but you can invent technologies that make old monopolies irrelevant. Read the "Innovator's dilemma", it happens all the time.

Re: WhatsApp – Opting out of new terms doesn’t stop Facebook taking information

#62

Post by Jtsummers »

goombastic wrote: post #35
ihowlatthemoon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've granted contacts permission to the Facebook app, it could've identified using the phone number.

This has been my experience as well. In my case Ive never ever installed Facebook on my phone. It has to be whatsapp leaking/sharing the contacts list.

Or the contact. It'd make sense for Facebook to try to connect people from both sides of the relationship.

Re: WhatsApp – Opting out of new terms doesn’t stop Facebook taking information

#63

Post by Joeboy »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #42
bad_user wrote: post #25

The irony is that I started to use WhatsApp only 2-3 months ago after learning they are doing end to end encryption. Oh well, guess it's time to uninstall it.

I made the move from Telegram to WhatsApp specifically because WhatsApp made end-to-end encryption the default. With Telegram you have to specify a conversation to be encrypted, and there's also controversy over the closed nature of the encryption used. I guess I'll try Signal this time? Don't know anything about it.

Signal replaces your SMS app, which is good because it's perfectly seamless and there's no good reason not to use it, but bad because most conversations you have with it will be unencrypted because the other user doesn't have Signal installed. Unencrypted communications look pretty much the same as encrypted ones. The strategy is to eliminate inconvenience in order to increase takeup and challenge mass surveillance. But the tradeoff is that it's not such a great solution for an individual who really wants their comms to be secure.

Re: WhatsApp – Opting out of new terms doesn’t stop Facebook taking information

#64

Post by enraged_camel »

bad_user wrote: post #61
bikamonki wrote: post #47

It's too late! Have you seen another search engine make a dent in Google's market share? How about another OS challenging Windows on a PC? Another social network? It is rather obvious that: if the main purpose of a business is to grow revenue/market share, if successful, it will eventually grow to close to 100% market share. This situation, commonly known as a monopoly, cannot be reversed by free market competition a…

> Have you seen another search engine make a dent in Google's market share? Google has been doing a good job in maintaining the technical superiority of their search engine and haven't provided a serious incentive for people to switch, even though they came close with their whole Google+ clusterfuck. That said, Bing and DuckDuckGo did make a dent in Google's market share, it's not much, but it's significant enough th…

>>That said, Bing and DuckDuckGo did make a dent in Google's market share, it's not much, but it's significant enough that they'll still exist for some time.

DuckDuckGo still doesn't appear as more than a blip on most market share charts.

As for Bing, the only reason it made a dent on Google is because Microsoft leveraged its own monopoly position on Windows to default searches to Bing. After that, it just had to be "good enough", which it is.

Re: WhatsApp – Opting out of new terms doesn’t stop Facebook taking information

#65

Post by krick »

bikamonki wrote: post #47

It's too late! Have you seen another search engine make a dent in Google's market share? How about another OS challenging Windows on a PC? Another social network? It is rather obvious that: if the main purpose of a business is to grow revenue/market share, if successful, it will eventually grow to close to 100% market share. This situation, commonly known as a monopoly, cannot be reversed by free market competition a…

> Have you seen another search engine make a dent in Google's market share? How about another OS challenging Windows on a PC? Another social network?

That might be true, but I'm just fine using ddg as my search engine and Linux as my OS. Social network is a bit more tricky: it's social and, well, a network. Even so, however it is only logical that something like this happens to WhatsApp, and I well understood this since the very beginning, I used WhatsApp only because it's painless, so why not? I don't really need it. So now I'm dropping out with a clear heart and if somebody will ask, why I'm not available anymore, I'll encourage them to install some other messenger. Telegram, perhaps. It won't be really bothersome, as most of us are using several messaging apps anyway. I believe somebody will do this as well.

So, even though WhatsApp was an undeniable success, I don't really see it as something stable. As a monopoly.

Re: WhatsApp – Opting out of new terms doesn’t stop Facebook taking information

#66

Post by patrickaljord »

dingaling wrote: post #38
patrickaljord wrote: post #5

I don't get the problem. If you don't trust them why don't you just stop using them? It's not like it's a government spying program you're being forced into and it's not like there aren't a gazillions chat apps alternatives. Also the intersection of people who use whatsapp and have no Facebook already on their phone with access to contacts must be pretty small so not sure this change is as controversial as claimed in…

> If you don't trust them why don't you just stop using them? OK, so then your phone number is still being shared with Facebook through people who use WhatsApp and have you in their contact list. How do you opt out of that? There are some Internet 'outrages' that are just sound and fury, but this one has merit. A company that gained access to one of people's most private networks, their contact list, on a guarantee o…

> on a guarantee of privacy that has been unilaterally revoked

The Whatsapp ToS also says that they can change the ToS anytime they want and however they want and people using their software knew this. This is the risk that exists with every single proprietary platform. If you don't own the code, eventually it is going to screw you, Stallman has been saying so for 40 years now and people still get surprised when it happens even though it eventually happens to every single proprietary platform. Don't want to get screwed over? Use open source platform where you control your data.

As for the ICO, they are the incompetents responsable for the cookie alert on every page simply because they don't understand how stateless network protocol work, no doubt they will do a great job "investigating" this case /s

Re: WhatsApp – Opting out of new terms doesn’t stop Facebook taking information

#67

Post by Yxogenium »

bad_user wrote: post #60
proactivesvcs wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goodness gracious, I hadn't realised adverts had gotten that bad again. You'd think with the ever-increasing backlash against web site advertisement they'd balk at such behaviour on their web site.

In the past I was against ad-blockers, thinking that websites need a business model to survive and that subscriptions can't work for everyone. But this has turned into a serious assault on privacy. So nowadays I have uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, the "Tracking Protection" in Firefox enabled by default and I'm seriously considering NoScript, too bad it wasn't available for Firefox Android last time I checked.

For your information you can get the Firefox for Android NoScript porting with the cheeky (but somewhat relevant) name NoScript Anywhere++ (NSA++) here: https://noscript.net/nsa/ It's quite experimental, the UI isn't great if you have a small phone but it works.

Re: WhatsApp – Opting out of new terms doesn’t stop Facebook taking information

#68

Post by patrickaljord »

bikamonki wrote: post #47

It's too late! Have you seen another search engine make a dent in Google's market share? How about another OS challenging Windows on a PC? Another social network? It is rather obvious that: if the main purpose of a business is to grow revenue/market share, if successful, it will eventually grow to close to 100% market share. This situation, commonly known as a monopoly, cannot be reversed by free market competition a…

> This situation, commonly known as a monopoly, cannot be reversed by free market

Actually, it can. Android and iOS are killing Windows as mobile is taking over the world and is now the #1 computer people use. Chrome dominates IE and MacOS is devs preferred OS when it used to be Windows. I think the free market is doing its job here. As for Google, they are still doing an amazing job with Search, if they start slacking and stop innovating, then this will create incentives for competition not to mention Apple who is trying to remove Google from the Search experience altogether. Same thing for Facebook.

The only real monopolies are the one maintained by the use of force by governments where competition can not flourish simply because the government makes it illegal to do so (taxi vs uber, hotels vs airbnb etc). Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook don't force you to use their services at gun point, which is why people are free to leave when better alternatives come, and they always do. Unless they make use of government force to prevent competitors from doing so (taxis vs uber etc).

Have to give to the government for doing an amazing job at making people believe they are defending you from monopolies when they are in reality monopolies biggest backers.

Re: WhatsApp – Opting out of new terms doesn’t stop Facebook taking information

#70

Post by Freak_NL »

FabHK wrote: post #69

Could everyone just please install Signal and Wire, for open-source, end-to-end encrypted communication?

Does Signal still require your mobile number as mandatory identifier? If privacy is what matters that is a deal breaker.

Last I looked it couldn't be used with third party clients either, and any desktop client requires tethering to an Android or IOS smartphone.

Wire looks a bit more sensible, but still works exclusively on their servers.

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