WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#171

Post by lgregg » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:33 AM UTC

lulmerchant wrote: post #160

foxh0und wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, he won the election thanks to 80000 votes in three states. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...

Actually, he won thanks to ~63,000,000 votes. You’re also trying to make it sound like there was something uniquely nefarious about his campaign. He used the same marketing tactics that all recent campaigns have used. The same tactics that Obama was widely praised for in 2012. He won because voters liked him more.

* he won thanks to 304 electoral votes and ~3,000,000 less popular votes.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#172

Post by freejulian » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:34 AM UTC

simula67 wrote: post #162

tree_of_item wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've established beyond a doubt by now that there was, in fact, "Russian meddling" in the election. It's incredible that someone could still deny this.

They also organized anti-Trump protests after the election : http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/16/indictment-reveal...

Who did? The Russian government? Russian citizens? How did they organize these protests? Where’s the evidence?

Also, this is a completely different claim, separate from the “Russia interferes with our election” claim.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#173

Post by SmirkingRevenge » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:34 AM UTC

mysterypie wrote: post #89

walrus01 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rest 95% either don't know, or could care less even if they know. I've told my non-techie fam and friends about data harvesting, privacy, and how facebook tracks everything, only to be ignored or outright ridiculed ("Oh you techies are so paranoid"). pretty much exactly my experience with Canadian and American family. People didn't give one iota of a fuck when the Snowden revelations came out because they just…

> People didn't give one iota of a fuck when the Snowden revelations came out because they just assumed that it was the case already. It's more complex than that. The tracking and surveillance are not visible to the average person. Point your camera at someone in a coffee shop or bar and take their picture. They'll be coming over to ask you why you took their photo. The fact that the coffee shop or bar is brimming wi…

The true data apocalypse will come when ISP logs are compromised and leaked (urls visited, dns lookups, tied to ip or even subscriber ids, etc), and there is enough leaked PII floating it out there to join it to people records.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#174

Post by Gravityloss » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:35 AM UTC

fareesh wrote: post #86

Despite the barrage of negative stories that would have ended nearly every other Presidential campaign - ranging from accusations of racism, misogyny, treason, incompetence, mental instability - despite all of it, tens of millions of Americans absolutely love President Trump. I cannot imagine how utterly frustrating it must be for them to watch the media bounce from story after story in some convoluted attempt to exp…

I'm not sure and I might be mistaken, but I think you also advocate a little about this "people have rights to their feelings" line of argumentation. But people's feelings can be manipulated with things that aren't true.

Say somebody told you that your coworker of similar skill level was earning twice as much as you, because they cheated somehow. You would get angry at them. If it then was revealed that no such thing happened, they have the same salary as you, would you still stay angry?

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#175

Post by hobs » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:35 AM UTC

fareesh wrote: post #86

Despite the barrage of negative stories that would have ended nearly every other Presidential campaign - ranging from accusations of racism, misogyny, treason, incompetence, mental instability - despite all of it, tens of millions of Americans absolutely love President Trump. I cannot imagine how utterly frustrating it must be for them to watch the media bounce from story after story in some convoluted attempt to exp…

"It's unfortunate that in the aftermath of polarizing and controversial decisions like these, this kind of rhetoric will now drive people further apart, because one side refuses to accept the reality of the other's opinions, and dismisses them with conspiracy theories."

That's the rub. The side that doesnt go with the trumpers keeps looking for justifications that dont boil down to "Those people innately agree with those policies after a reasoned and thoughtful approach to the problem."

That's because the beliefs they espouse are an anathema to their core understanding of a civil society, and the only way they can continue to humanize them is to pretend they were tricked or stupid.

Honestly, I pretty much feel the same way myself. If you earnestly understand the consequences of America's current president and you are still gung-ho, I find you to be lacking in about every important moral and ethical measure.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#176

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:35 AM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #88

apotheothesomai wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jan's commitment to privacy motivated WhatsApp. Jan and Acton always have believed in it strongly. That said, if your company has 50 people, and FB offers nearly $20B. How exactly do you tell those people that you refused an acquisition that huge, because you personally feel that FB is bad. Could you deprive an engineer who has worked his ass off for 4 years >$100M? Anyway, I was contracting for WhatsApp, when the ac…

So you’re saying they believed in privacy strongly but believed in getting rich more. Got it. Nothing wrong with that. I’d do the same.

He's saying there was social pressure both external and internal, but yeah - of the type you're talking about.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#177

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:36 AM UTC

77ko wrote: post #136

Brian Acton's post[0] about the Signal Foundation[1] makes it sound like they could play in the same space as Facebook: > Of course, this is just the beginning. There is a lot of work to be done to make our dream a reality and we will continually be asking our peers, our community, and ourselves if there are more effective ways to serve the public good. In the immediate future we are focused on adding to our talented…

That would be an interesting pivot.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#178

Post by abalone » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:36 AM UTC

fareesh wrote: post #86

Despite the barrage of negative stories that would have ended nearly every other Presidential campaign - ranging from accusations of racism, misogyny, treason, incompetence, mental instability - despite all of it, tens of millions of Americans absolutely love President Trump. I cannot imagine how utterly frustrating it must be for them to watch the media bounce from story after story in some convoluted attempt to exp…

#deletefacebook is not about "conspiracy theories". It's because their personal data was exploited to aid the election of someone they hate.

Whether it actually moved the needle enough to elect Trump is open to debate, but that's not a "conspiracy theory". Even the very idea that their personal data can be exploited this way, against their will, via friends who were tricked, is unsettling. That's more than just being mad about the election. They do not want a service that can exploit them that way in their life.

Maybe Facebook has locked down the API, or maybe there's some other way to exploit it next round. People are realizing that trusting Facebook with their personal data was a bad idea to begin with and not in their best interests.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#179

Post by fzeroracer » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:37 AM UTC

fareesh wrote: post #147

fzeroracer wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason whenever negative stories come out about Trump or about Facebook or about some political figurehead in today's environment, people drag themselves out of the woodwork to pull out the tired argument that people are just 'jealous' that Trump won. Could you explain your justification for trotting such an irrelevant point? We can argue all day that everyone knows that Facebook does all this scary stuff (a…

1) What makes you think I am from the woodwork? 2) Can you recall a time when a Facebook privacy story ever received so much media and government interest? There was a time when apps would blindly request a bunch of permissions. Users would blindly accept them. Devs would store tokens in the database. One shoddy exploit later on the application and an attacker had all their photos, friends' photos, and could post and…

Because I've noticed in many of these threads about Facebook there is constant whataboutism relating to Obama and a constant attempt to deflect discussion away from the actual contents of the article.

You've been making the unsubstantiated argument that the only reason people care about Facebook nowadays is because they're sore losers. If you're going to make a wide-reaching claim like that, I would love some citations.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#180

Post by asteli » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 3:38 AM UTC

laurex wrote: post #20

Alert: this comment may be seen as self serving. I work on an app that has been gaining popularity precisely because it's a way to keep in touch with family and friends with no social media aspect (called Marco Polo, a video walkie talkie). I'm curious if there is going to be enough of a backlash to return to more organic face to face (and actually interactive) communication versus broadcast mode and pretending to be…

That was part of Snapchat's charm, I think. No pressure to perform, just do silly things with your friends. Then Snap needed to make money, so they got into the content and the advertising and added Stories and 'influencers,' and it's basically the same as any other social network now.