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WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

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Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#331

Post by ahtu123 »

culturestate wrote: post #264
cmac2992 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite literally his campaign invented the tactic of scraping your friends list as a way to persuade voters. The important difference was CA used data that was gathered under the misleading guise of a personality quiz. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campai...

They were the first to deploy it on such a massive scale, but I can assure you they did not invent that concept.

Cambridge Analytica had 200 clients. Now not all of those are major elections but CA is also not the only player who's been doing this. Governments and shady organizations have been perfecting media-based mass manipulation for decades/centuries.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#332

Post by thirdsun »

propman wrote: post #26

I don't get what changed? We've knows Facebook tracks everything, we've known Google does the same thing. If you've ever developed anything in messenger even today, it's amazing how much information is given. We know all these sites track everything you do outside of Facebook too. Everyone has been trying to get them to stop, we know it's illegal to build a profile on someone but Facebook gets around that by building…

To be honest I was not aware that Facebook invited anyone to take out that data merely asking them to delete it shortly after. That's the part that's new and offending to me.

Meanwhile I tolerate political campaigns using targetted advertising. I just wish people were showing more competence when it comes to media consumption and the ability to distinguish between truthful reporting and obvious lies. The media illiteracy is the real problem I see with this issue.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#333

Post by mrtksn »

robinwassen wrote: post #322
mrtksn wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? People were not happy with Wikileaks revelations and Obama was forced to end or strip down some NSA programs. Also, your whole argument says “People are not happy with what’s going on only because they are facing the consequences of it”. Duh? It was never easy to explain why privacy matters, the argument that if you are not doing anything bad then you don’t have anything to hide was good enou…

The outleash regarding collecting personal data for election fiddling started with Trump and Brexit. Obama's campaign team bragged openly about doing the same thing, nobody cared. For example: "mined an Obama backer’s Facebook network in search of friends the campaign wanted to register, mobilize, or persuade." https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-us... (2012)

>The outleash regarding collecting personal data for election fiddling started with Trump and Brexit

Definitely false, Apple even built business model around it and actively promoting it's privacy as a selling point over Android.

But surely Trump amplified it because, unlike Obama, he is very divisive.

Anyway, if you happen to have a time machine I will happily jump in with you and go back in time and warn against the dangers of data hoarding and privacy violations but I doubt that it will be effective because it's Obama and his campaign wasn't divisive so we will end up with the argument that if you didn't do anything wrong there's nothing to hide.

We wouldn't be able to demonstrate that with privacy violations you can divide a continent(Brexit) or make Trump a president.

Besides, I'm really not happy to approach the problem from the "What about Obama" angle. Is "what about" even a useful argument? What's to be achieved if you are right that Obama indeed did the exact same thing? Should we just go ahead and fill out the missing information on our Facebook profiles because Obama did it too?

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#334

Post by ctchocula »

kyrra wrote: post #95
HenryBemis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google absolutely harvests all info they can get. They scan gmails, they monitorig everything on all Android phones, even when you disable something [1]. It's just that Google maybe be a bit hesitant to sell data to 3rd parties, since they abuse them themselves :) (and this is the price of a 'free' service). [1]: https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/google-tracking-user-loca...

Google stopped scanning emails 9 months ago[0]. [0] https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...

The exact quote is "Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change." I know they still scan my emails, because airbnb reservations will magically pop up on my calendar.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#335

Post by ahtu123 »

threeseed wrote: post #23
gnicholas wrote: post #11

If we use Twitter to announce that people should #deletefacebook, what social network do we use in the event that it becomes necessary to #deletetwitter?

It's the wrong question. Social networks are nothing more than a reflection of our society. Blaming Facebook and Twitter is easy but the hard part is dealing with the polarisation in politics, the intransingence of Russia, the inability of people to know who to trust and what is real or not and the slow disintegration of our institutions. The real question is how do you fix society ?

Having access to the detailed user data of billions of users is definitely something new and it's being used for efficient propaganda worldwide. FB has again completely naively unleashed a beast they had no intention or intuition on how to control. Anyone who remembers Facebooks early days should not be the least bit surprised that they are playing fast and loose once again.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#336

Post by 4684499 »

skybrian wrote: post #294
4684499 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More people than you think are happy to share more than passive metadata. I'm aware of that. I used to be like your friends because I love technology. Though I didn't know it's an opt-in since I haven't seen those notifications. Maybe I missed it? Even so, how do I make sure the data is not going to be misused? I practically not be able to do anything that I think I can to prevent data misuse. They collect my data…

"To determine popular times, wait times, and visit duration, Google uses aggregated and anonymized data from users who have opted in to Google Location History." [1] "Location History and Location Reporting data may be used by any Google app or service." [2] It looks like you can turn it on or off, and delete your location history. I don't see a way to use Location History without having it also be anonymously used f…

Thanks for the links, although deleting data from Google doesn't sound like a relief/solution to me because they keep all the data.[1][2] From my experience, after you deleted your gmail account, you are not allowed to register with the same address anymore. They claim it's due to security reasons. Such claim sounds reasonable and I believe them. Anyway, they have the ability to keep the data you think you deleted for whatever reasons, which is enough for me to have doubts. I have no methods to prove that other kinds of data are kept or deleted, i.e. I don't know how to check if they deleted my location history completely, or just archived it for future use. Even the data has been anonymized, it still can be used for statistic purposes, which possibly could be used to influence elections.

I wonder if most of users would read through ToS and support articles before they started using those features. It's just much easier to click on "I agree." I won't call it a trap, but it's pretty close. As a result, users are signing contracts they don't even bother reading. And eventually, users are the ones who get blamed by the company for not paying attention.

And again, we are not sure about how they are actually using our data. Before this FB scandal, some people might still believe FB wouldn't do things like this.

[1]: https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/google-keeps-your-data-...

[2]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/google-keeps-you...

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#338

Post by JohnTClark »

propman wrote: post #26

I don't get what changed? We've knows Facebook tracks everything, we've known Google does the same thing. If you've ever developed anything in messenger even today, it's amazing how much information is given. We know all these sites track everything you do outside of Facebook too. Everyone has been trying to get them to stop, we know it's illegal to build a profile on someone but Facebook gets around that by building…

The thing is that now people see a real consequence of that data harvesting, like voting manipulation.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#339

Post by fabianhjr »

gnicholas wrote: post #11

If we use Twitter to announce that people should #deletefacebook, what social network do we use in the event that it becomes necessary to #deletetwitter?

Scuttlebutt, a decentralized social network. ( http://scuttlebutt.nz/ )

> I do miss the mad west of the IRC/NNTP days

Plus, a lot of new people on there have described it like that. https://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25WJZGMingRgdlOTrZJjOz7GHnS1D9...

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#340

Post by ghthor »

WA wrote: post #323
ghthor wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial independence is more important. Once you attain that you can seriously fight back, it's about picking your battles. With the money he made in the sell he can do some SERIOUS investment into what he believe's in that's going to create magnitudes more mass in the direction he wants to go then piddling around without it. FI should be everyone's primary goal, because only then can you put your effort to what yo…

So where do you draw the line? What if your way to achieve financial independence turns out to outweight the positive effects you could posssibly achieve later with FI?

That's a tuff line to find, but I'd say it probably relates mostly towards age. The older you become FI the less potential you have to effect a larger change using your FI. This isn't 100% though, because the age would pay dividends with wisdom and networking. I don't know what evidence I'd need to see to change my opinion here. My main idea is based on once you achieve FI you are only reporting to yourself, thus you can now set your goals first and foremost and don't have to do the song and dance of aligning your goals with your funder/employer and seems so freeing.
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