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

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#541

Post by castratikron » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

RyanZAG wrote: post #522

matchbok wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Obama did was very, very different. The fact that you don't know this (or ignored it) tells a lot about how biased you are. And yes, there should be backlash against conservatives. They just elected a Nazi in Illinois.

> They just elected a Nazi in Illinois. I know nothing about American politics or what's going on in Illinois. But that you jump straight on calling someone you disagree with a "Nazi", while also saying how different what Obama did with no explanation and a lot of insults, does not give me much confidence in what you are saying here. Just letting you know in case you were trying to convince anyone of your viewpoint.

He actually is a Nazi. That is not hyperbole. His name is Arthur Jones.

He just won his party's primary, which means he has been elected to be on the ballot as a member of his party. Not anyone can run as, e.g., a member of the Republican Party. You need to be nominated first, and you do that by winning a primary. The position is in US Congress.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/us/politics/arthur-jones-...

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#542

Post by chasing » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

cloverich wrote: post #534

matchbok wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Obama did was very, very different. The fact that you don't know this (or ignored it) tells a lot about how biased you are. And yes, there should be backlash against conservatives. They just elected a Nazi in Illinois.

So I'm uninformed on the subject -- what are the differences between what Obama and Trump campaigns did with Facebook?

I'll be honest: There's plenty of information out there that will help you make that comparison. But I don't think it's super-useful unless your goal is to participate in these pointless "but Obama/Hillary did it" debates.

It's happening now and it happened during the Trump campaign (and others -- one massive difference is that Cambridge Analytica used this data for elections around the world). And you should be questioning whether that sort of exploitation of personal data is something that's a good or bad force in the world, whether it scares you or whether you're okay with it.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#543

Post by heedlessly2 » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

dingo_bat wrote: post #163

After selling his customers to Facebook for $20 billion. Cool story bro!

let's be honest, everyone would like to become a billionaire.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#544

Post by aylmao » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

chasing wrote: post #518

noetic_techy wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its purely Trump hatred driving this. Because Obama doing this in 2012 = Genius. Trump doing this in 2016 = Scandal. I'm a libertarian and yes I threw my vote away on Gary Johnson, but looking at the media landscape, there truly is a backlash against conservatives going on in social media, and this is just part of that. Donald Trump won because fake news... no wait, it was Russia and their abysmal social media spendi…

Obama's campaign didn't do what Cambridge Analytica is accused of doing.

It didn't do what _Cambridge Analytica_ is accused of doing, but it did do what a lot of people are freaked out Facebook can do; namely provide third parties with detailed user information.

Using this information in 2012 was lauded as a great idea that helped drive Obama to success. _Cambridge Analytica_ did it in a more slezy way that violated Facebook's Terms of Use-- they lied to Facebook in terms of what the data was used for and the fact they were harvesting it to form a database.

Yet Facebook is not painted as a victim here, because now the idea of using your "likes" to target ads is not applauded, its frowned upon. And yes, Obama also did the whole whole "friends who didn't explicitly use the app" thing (which has since been disabled from Facebook's APIs, I think since v2.0 in 4/30/2014):

> The campaign boasted that more than a million people downloaded the app, which, given an average friend-list size of 190, means that as many as 190 million had at least some of their Facebook data vacuumed up by the Obama campaign — without their knowledge or consent.[1]

[1]: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-...

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#545

Post by abiox » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

cabaalis wrote: post #134

culturestate wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only real difference between what was done here and then was how it was represented to the users. That is an incredibly important distinction. There is a vast gulf between "these people asked for my data and I consented to its use" and "these people surreptitiously collected my data for purposes other than those which they disclosed."

A couple issues with that statement: (1) The issue is not getting the data of the people who used the app, it's the millions of their friends who were included. This is what's being implied should be thought of as a "breach" (with the media trying its darndest to make it look like Trump himself downloaded all the data into a big CSV file while laughing) (2) Regardless of the reason for the permission being asked, the…

> (2) Regardless of the reason for the permission being asked, the resulting dataset was collected in both instances. So I equate the outcome in my mind.

this just seems like being reductive for convenience - stripping away context in the pursuit of finding some broad way to describe two things and propose some false equivalence.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#546

Post by Tannic » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

hycaria wrote: post #465

Tarks wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not interesting enough that anyone will come for me specifically anyways. No single raindrop believes it's responsible for the storm. They don't care about you specifically, if you can profile people accurately they have a much easier time of adjusting perspectives for your own aims. You've likely already seen the results of this with the latest American election. It's gone far beyond getting you to buy more m…

And ? Did the world crash, the USA's GDP sink, did people starve and die by thousands ? No, nothing happened.

The world did crash in 2008, and people did die and starve. The surveillance regime and the consolidation of media together are being used to trick normals into saying exactly what you said in your comment, even as our environment crashes before our eyes and our governments pursue war all over the world, and as finance and corporatism continue to dismantle and exostentially threaten the global economy.

Just because it isn’t in your backyard doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. The networks of power are diverse and enormous, and the surveillance regime is only in its infancy. It’s role has increased dramatically in only the last five years and that will only continue, particularly as we see the consolidation of power on the internet(behemoths like google and amazon who have sidestepped all reasonable notions of antitrust will continue to grow and their gravity only gains strength).

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#547

Post by mcintyre1994 » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

pteredactyl wrote: post #373

wnevets wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CA sold stolen data and bragged about blackmailing politicians. Gonna need a citation of Obama being even remotely involved in something like that. Classic deflection.

Look at Wikileaks and Assange's tweets today. The screenshots are more concrete evidence ( fake or not ) than I've seen related to this CA thing.

If the most concrete evidence you've seen for either accusation is screenshots then you should check out the Channel 4 videos.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#548

Post by m52go » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

iliketosleep wrote: post #31

It's quite ironic that this is the man who sold WhatsApp and its enormous userbase to facebook, creating a total lock in to the facebook ecosystem for many who do not even use facebook. He would have known what kind of a company facebook is, so I don't understand the contradiction between selling Whatsapp to them and now caring about these issues. Anyway, I am still glad he's getting behind the #deletefacebook moveme…

While I agree with you, he's exponentially more powerful now to champion privacy now beyond WhatsApp with the billions he got from that sale.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#549

Post by anarchy8 » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

noetic_techy wrote: post #500

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…

Its purely Trump hatred driving this. Because Obama doing this in 2012 = Genius. Trump doing this in 2016 = Scandal. I'm a libertarian and yes I threw my vote away on Gary Johnson, but looking at the media landscape, there truly is a backlash against conservatives going on in social media, and this is just part of that. Donald Trump won because fake news... no wait, it was Russia and their abysmal social media spendi…

Please don't spread lies. What the Obama campaign was doing in 2012 was nothing compared to what Cambridge Analytica did for Trump.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#550

Post by ionised » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

gadders wrote: post #454

jiggliemon wrote: post #87

All of this Facebook hubub and broad public outcry is really all owed to the election of Trump. If Trump handnt leveraged CA, we’d still all be happy and fat on out individual bliss boxes – patting ourselves on the back – because our side [a la Obama] was smart enough to use this technology to our advantage. Now when the enemy has (and use) the same technology, we’re forced to cry foul. Demand oversight. Demand regul…

Let's not forget that Facebook gave the Obama campaign privileged access to data because they agreed with them politically: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5520303/Obama-campai...

Please don't cite the Daily Mail as a source. It is not at all credible.