Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#71

Post by bubble_talk » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:40 AM UTC

Facebook engineers know exactly what is going on, and I don't think they actually care.

If you want to see exactly how creepy the whole thing is going to get in the future, you just have to take a look at the transcripts from the Software Engineering Daily podcast where a group of engineers from FB were interviewed recently. The interviewer never once mentioned the word privacy in the entire interview across all the five interviews (with pretty senior FB folks who have been there for quite a while). Or for that matter, there wasn't really a single question across all the five interviews which left me thinking "Well, at least there is someone inside Facebook who disagrees at least minimally with company policies".

You can search for this in the transcripts yourself.

https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019...

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#72

Post by dwighttk » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:43 AM UTC

Good. This sort of thing why I don’t have Facebook on my phone.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#73

Post by philliphaydon » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:46 AM UTC

codeulike wrote: post #19

I've noticed something sneaky about Facebook on my phone. I refuse to install their apps but I do use Facebook a bit so I use it via the phone Browser (in my case, Chrome on Android). I've noticed that sometimes Facebook shows a fake 'youve got a message' icon to try and trick you into installing their messenger app. To re-produce this behaviour: (this works best if you dont get a lot of facebook messages. Also you n…

I had that icon too and was confused because I couldn’t find any message. On the desktop Facebook site it turned out I did have a new message from someone who wasn’t a Friend. I changed the settings to disallow messages from people who aren’t friends. And never had the issue again. But I just checked and I can’t find that setting now...

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#74

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:50 AM UTC

makomk wrote: post #46

acdha wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with end-to-end encryption: they’re abusing the VoIP feature to stay running in the background, which is trading battery life for better surveillance of your activities. Apple is doing it to _protect_ privacy by closing one of the ways unscrupulous app developers keep trackers running.

It has everything to do with end-to-end encryption. Prior to iOS 10, the only way to display notifications for end-to-end encrypted chat without giving Apple a plaintext copy of everything in the notification was to abuse the VoIP feature. More specifically, the "PushKit VoIP API" Facebook's spokesperson mentioned allowed services to push down an opaque blob of data and have their apps immediately wake up in the back…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#75

Post by icpmacdo » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:51 AM UTC

ballmers_peak wrote: post #34

rwc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice, thank you! And thank you to The Information for sharing quality journalism with the HN community.

No problem!

It seems like a smart win win situation for you. I bet if the WSJ ect. did the same it would drive non trivial growth

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#76

Post by 2arrs2ells » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:53 AM UTC

usefulcat wrote: post #70

charlesju wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What voice assistant features do you miss? I've never used Android so I'm curious.

I use it all the time to set reminders. "Ok Google. At 2 PM next Tuesday remind me to ".

Siri works just fine for setting reminders.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#77

Post by sib » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 3:55 AM UTC

usefulcat wrote: post #70

charlesju wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What voice assistant features do you miss? I've never used Android so I'm curious.

I use it all the time to set reminders. "Ok Google. At 2 PM next Tuesday remind me to ".

I use Siri to do the same. Is it an issue of better ASR or NLP that makes the difference for you?

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#78

Post by jacobsenscott » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 4:02 AM UTC

2arrs2ells wrote: post #76

usefulcat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it all the time to set reminders. "Ok Google. At 2 PM next Tuesday remind me to ".

Siri works just fine for setting reminders.

"Siri, remind me to buy milk tomorrow." - "Ok. Calling mom" or some other random action is more typical of siri.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#79

Post by shakna » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 4:04 AM UTC

SeanBoocock wrote: post #67

shakna wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time they collected phone numbers for express reason of 2FA, and then began using them to lookup and connect contacts?

Do you have any links with contemporaneous public messaging from Facebook about that? I am curious because the OP made a strong claim: that Facebook deliberately and specifically misled the public; and that there have been so many instances of this exposed that any journalist who fails to cite them is negligent.

Gizmodo [0] did the original reporting on what I've mentioned, based on the work of Alan Mislove amongst others.

Facebook's official statement when 2FA numbers started being made available for other purposes was:

> “We outline the information we receive and use for ads in our data policy, and give people control over their ads experience including custom audiences, via their ad preferences,” said a spokesperson by email. “For more information about how to manage your preferences and the type of data we use to show people ads see this post.”

They saw no reason to deny it. Any information handed to Facebook may be used for any purpose, even if it is not apparent to the user that they will exploit data given under one function for another unrelated function.

As a sibling has pointed out with several sources - this isn't new behaviour for Facebook.

[0] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/09/facebook-is-giving-advert...

[1] https://mislove.org/publications/PII-PETS.pdf

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#80

Post by tjpnz » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 4:08 AM UTC

bubble_talk wrote: post #71

Facebook engineers know exactly what is going on, and I don't think they actually care. If you want to see exactly how creepy the whole thing is going to get in the future, you just have to take a look at the transcripts from the Software Engineering Daily podcast where a group of engineers from FB were interviewed recently. The interviewer never once mentioned the word privacy in the entire interview across all the…

>Facebook engineers know exactly what is going on, and I don't think they actually care.

I know of founders who would need to think carefully about even interviewing someone with Facebook on their resume. And I totally get these concerns given the attitude Facebook has towards the privacy of users.