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Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

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Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#351

Post by kingofhdds »

leereeves wrote: post #349
kingofhdds wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think that this "organize and manipulate hundreds of millions of people globally" thing is a very blurry fear-laden sensationalist wording, which practically implies that social platforms possess some kind of hypnotic power to drive humans to do something on orders from secret circles?

Not at all. People are rather easy to manipulate, if you control the flow of information. Hypnotic power is not required. The formula is simple: promote emotionally powerful events that support your agenda, ignore events that inspire feelings counter to your agenda, deify supporters, demonize opponents, censor and ostracize anyone who speaks against the agenda. That formula has led nations to war, sent innocent peopl…

Well, with your formula you have just described work of media since invention of printing press. However, it doesn't work as easy as you described. Almost every political campaign tries to utilize this playbook, and absolute majority of of them fail. In fact, looking for the best historical examples fitting your argument one may find they generally comes from countries which strictly regulated their media.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#352

Post by anthonybrian890 »

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Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#353

Post by leereeves »

kingofhdds wrote: post #351
leereeves wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. People are rather easy to manipulate, if you control the flow of information. Hypnotic power is not required. The formula is simple: promote emotionally powerful events that support your agenda, ignore events that inspire feelings counter to your agenda, deify supporters, demonize opponents, censor and ostracize anyone who speaks against the agenda. That formula has led nations to war, sent innocent peopl…

Well, with your formula you have just described work of media since invention of printing press. However, it doesn't work as easy as you described. Almost every political campaign tries to utilize this playbook, and absolute majority of of them fail. In fact, looking for the best historical examples fitting your argument one may find they generally comes from countries which strictly regulated their media.

For full effect, it requires control of the flow of information. It has indeed often failed in America and other countries where people had relatively free access to information.

But with digital information replacing newspapers, magazines, and TV, and with access to digital information being filtered through a handful of companies, those companies have immense power approaching that of governments that strictly regulate the media.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#354

Post by nojvek »

Fiahil wrote: post #222
OliverJones wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the largest part of the Facebook users has not even > realized the scandal in full scale. Exactly. That's why they must be regulated. Pharma companies, food companies, and airlines, to mention three, have the same sorts of characteristics in their businesses. Examples: Airlines have regulations because the typical user has no way to evaluate maintenance regimes or navigation procedures. The big information-hooverin…

Regulation come in many forms, and I believe the first step will be GDPR.

GDPR is a god send. It would never have come out of the US, the corporate funded politicians would have just ate it alive.

But because European politicians have some integrity left and internet is inherently global, most internet companies need to do these for everyone.

Yes, it’s not perfect, but a great first step.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#355

Post by sridca »

srslack wrote: post #246
antoineMoPa wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is signal decentralized? If it is decentralized, how is the network effect built? (Is everyone isolated on their server with a subset of all signal users, or is there a way to communicate with someone using another signal sever?).

It can be federated (and was in the past) but Moxie has complained about federation holding development back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Federation

> It is unlikely that we will ever federate with any servers outside of our control again, it makes changes really difficult. https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

So doesn't that mean a single party will control Signal? What prevents them from becoming the next Facebook?

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#356

Post by on_and_off »

cpv wrote: post #140
on_and_off wrote: post #33

I remember working on integrating facebook with an app I was working on several years ago. It was in the pre-M days, so Android was still using the old install time permission system. As soon as facebook would be installed without even running the app, it would access the contact database and do network operations (very probably uploads .. ). For this reasons, well among many others, I never installed the facebook ap…

This is an issue for other messaging clients as well, having the "Sync contacts" enabled by default. So by the time you get in the settings to disable, your contacts might on a server already.

Yeah, it always made me frown when at the time people were using the hidden API to remove permissions manually after install .. (and complain when Google removed that testing tool before shipping proper incremental permissions in the next release). That's just not how it works.

Thankfully now that permissions are incremental, this issue is solved.

Except some apps still target an old API in order to keep install time permissions .. like SnapChat.

This will soon no longer be possible since Google will force apps to target the last API level.

Still, people don't seem to realize what giving an app access to 'contacts' or 'SMS' means.

I am not sure how to solve that tbh :/

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#357

Post by qwerty456127 »

pishpash wrote: post #310
qwerty456127 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nor do I ever acquire unlockable devices. Do you mean non-unlockable?

Yes, that's what I meant!

As far as I know the selection of officially unlockable phones is extremely humble. Unlocking a phone usually means using hacks voiding warranty and/or violating licenses. I absolutely support the people choosing to go this way morally (and am one of them myself) yet I think it's sad that people are forced to do illegal-ish hackery to configure their phones a reasonable way and protect their privacy. I have also heard about a man that was put in prison for hacking his nintendo so the whole thing gets scarier and scarier.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#358

Post by soziawa »

czechdeveloper wrote: post #260
soziawa wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Signal is nice it's rather worrying that it's free. I'd rather use a paid alternative like Threema.

Good luck convincing your friends to buy any sort of IM application. It's already difficult now to convince them "just for privacy".

Easy. I respond on Threema within 30 minutes and on WhatsApp within half a week.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#359

Post by soziawa »

gault8121 wrote: post #317
soziawa wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Signal is nice it's rather worrying that it's free. I'd rather use a paid alternative like Threema.

They are now in the process of becoming a nonprofit and recently won a $50m grant.

They haven't won anything. It was given to them by the cofounder of WhatsApp because he dislikes Facebook.

Nonprofit doesn't mean the developers don't have to eat. Money has to come from somewhere.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#360

Post by vanderZwan »

jimmaswell wrote: post #346
vanderZwan wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if explicitly consenting to a popup isn't good enough then I fear that's the path we'd be headed down. If the pop-up does not adequately convey the consequences of agreeing, it cannot reasonably be considered a form of consent.

If someone sells me a car, and I paint it pink, and they're mad after the fact because they hate pink, did I fail to adequately convey the consequences of their agreeing to sell me the car? I don't think so; they agreed to sell me the car and that should be enough.

I fail to see how your analogy maps to the current situation.
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