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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

#361
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you log in to AirBnB using Google credentials? Perhaps they use an undocumented feature to broadcast the dates to GCal without mail harvesting.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#362
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…

It's weird. Almost surreal.

We've known all this stuff for ages.

People say that a lot of what you read is just reporters not understanding what they're talking about, flitting from one subject to another with the herd, and perhaps that's true. But hell, anybody that's paid more than a modicum of attention to this issue should know that BigTech tracks people like lab rats. (Small tech too, they just don't have the user base)

I'm all for getting the word out. It's just an odd way that change is happening. It feels a lot like the internet has turned us all into one big mob, carrying our pitchforks and torches from one outrage to the next. That's probably a problem much bigger than what to do with Google/Facebook/Apple/Amazon/Comcast

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#363

Instead of requiring Facebook and google to improve their ways, if we all started using ad-blockers more aggressively, setting up things like pihole for our family members and friends, wouldn't this solve the problem since companies won't have any incentive of collecting the data? It seems to me to be a much better idea that expecting multi-billion corporations to act against their interests.

Not really, the companies would then start asking for the information they want directly from the users. Take for example the quizzes you see posted on your facebook feed. "Find out what kind of potato are you?" and if you wanted to know a user's name, ask a question like, "if one potato year is 10 human years how old are you now?". I mean ask the question disguised as something else, in this case a stupid joke. Ad-blockers alone wont fix this issue. I think its us developers who created this problem and its us devs who has to come up with an answer to this.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you log in to AirBnB using Google credentials? Perhaps they use an undocumented feature to broadcast the dates to GCal without mail harvesting.

Nope, using Facebook credentials. That's definitely a possibility.

Maybe I'm cynical, but whenever I see qualifiers around a verb I get suspicious. Something like "hey, we're not lying when we said we stopped scanning emails for ad purposes, but we are still scanning to improve other Google ecosystems tools like Calendar".

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#365
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…

It's weird. Almost surreal. We've known all this stuff for ages. People say that a lot of what you read is just reporters not understanding what they're talking about, flitting from one subject to another with the herd, and perhaps that's true. But hell, anybody that's paid more than a modicum of attention to this issue should know that BigTech tracks people like lab rats. (Small tech too, they just don't have the us…

It's not that tracking that finally put the fox among the chickens, it's the use to which the data was put. I think to the extent that most people thought about it at all they assumed that they'd just get more invasive advertising. Maybe the read about a girl's parents finding out she was pregnant or something like that.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#366

My extended family is "well distributed", living in three different countries around the world. Facebook has been an essential tool for keeping in touch and keeping track. What do I tell them all to use instead? Migrating to anything else, even if we all agreed, would be a huge pain.

Telegram or Signal for messages, create a "Family" group there and proceed to receive inspirational quotes from your aunt there.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#367
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…

Yea "we've" known about it for ages. "We've" even known or suspected it well before the Snowden leaks ( 2013 ).

But the general ( non-thinking, sadly ) public really has no idea. And is ironically now catching on because the media's been cramming the whole Russian thing down their throats since the election.

On the subject of the media and general public, has anyone recently heard anything about the southern statue madness from last year, or of police shootings? No, because the general public follows whatever the media says. And forgets about whatever they said the minute they stop talking about it.

2 biggest issues in America: 1) current mainstream media 2) uneducated populace

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#368

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…

Lot's of engineers work their asses off for far less than $100M.

What's the point of working hard if you aren't even going to be paid $100 million?

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#369
post #58
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…

What's more, I suspect that if this exact same thing had been done by a company working for Obama's or Hillary's campaigns, nobody would have batted an eyelash. PS - the reason that the regs wont happen during the trump years has nothing to do with the collusion investigation. He's put a mandate in place that for every reg to go into the federal register, two have to come out. His administration is in general very an…

Exactly, I'm pretty sure Assange tweeted Sheryl Sandberg's emails to Podesta and the Clinton campaign stating the exact thing:

1. "Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO to Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, June 6, 2015" --https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/790713289311387648 2."Facebook let us "suck out the ENTIRE social graph" because "they were on our side" -- Obama campaign team leader for 2012 " https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/975847209387380737

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird. Almost surreal. We've known all this stuff for ages. People say that a lot of what you read is just reporters not understanding what they're talking about, flitting from one subject to another with the herd, and perhaps that's true. But hell, anybody that's paid more than a modicum of attention to this issue should know that BigTech tracks people like lab rats. (Small tech too, they just don't have the us…

It's not that tracking that finally put the fox among the chickens, it's the use to which the data was put. I think to the extent that most people thought about it at all they assumed that they'd just get more invasive advertising. Maybe the read about a girl's parents finding out she was pregnant or something like that.

I agree, but I think you're stopping well short of the natural conclusion here that seems inevitable for anybody thinking more than 10 seconds about the issue.

Data is (mostly) free, ubiquitous, and permanent. When you capture data for any reason, it's logically impossible for you to be able to know or control what to what use that data will be put.

I keep seeing situations where extreme examples are used to make the case that data collection is good, healthy, and makes our world a better place. If you were kidnapped, wouldn't you want police to know where you were based on tracking associated with your cell phone? But for every one good example, the universe is literally the limit for the number of ways that same data capture can be used in bad and harmful ways.

Over my lifetime I've consumed a lot of fiction around how people interact with tech. There are a lot of good people who have instrumented up the general public in ways science fiction writers would have never dreamed of only a few decades ago. It seems to me that anybody who's watched The Matrix would think that all of this has gotta have more societal impact than more intrusive advertising.

Perhaps you're right. Perhaps even though they realized what was being captured, they never put together the deep implications, instead thinking it was just about better dancing iphone ads. I don't understand how that could be so, but people seem to have an incredible ability not to see things they don't want to see -- and they love something for nothing.

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