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FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

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Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#231
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what about their tracking through a huge chunk of popular websites? Shadow profiles and all kinds of shadey stuff.

Install the uMatrix extension. Blacklist anything from facebook.com and fb.com. Now their tracking pixels can't see you.

Just in case you weren't aware, uMatrix has been deprecated and will receive no further development, including fixes. It still runs fine now, but it may not in the future.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#232
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal world, I'd like both. Mandated interoperability would help a great deal—but I also don't believe Facebook should ever have been allowed to buy Whatsapp, and it's worth undoing that.

Why? WhatsApp today is a great messaging app platform with end-to-end encryption.

What exactly makes it 'great?

No password access, login through SMS which can be intercepted, no 2FA, no access from another device while you phone is dead, compresses video to 2 pixels, no real crypto auth to speak of.

It does not seem to have any features that are better than Signal, telegram, messenger, or a dozen other apps. Why is it worth any awards or special consideration, besides being popular?

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#233

I feel like instead of pushing for the companies to separate, congress should pass laws mandating [adversarial interoperability]( https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera... ). Then the data (including the social graph) really would belong to the users, and facebook would have to compete with multiple other “social network clients” that would rapidly emerge. Facebook would lose some monopoly profi…

There's no way to provide access to the social graph in a privacy preserving way. It's not okay to allow a third party to access the data your friends have shared with you without your friends consenting. Unencumbered API access to the social graph is exactly what led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and promising to restrict API access was part of Facebook's settlement with the FTC.

But you could get your own data and the list of people authorized to see it, and pass that to a third party. If you and one of your friends both move to another network, you get to see each other's data. Any problem with this?

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#234

I feel like instead of pushing for the companies to separate, congress should pass laws mandating [adversarial interoperability]( https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera... ). Then the data (including the social graph) really would belong to the users, and facebook would have to compete with multiple other “social network clients” that would rapidly emerge. Facebook would lose some monopoly profi…

There's no way to provide access to the social graph in a privacy preserving way. It's not okay to allow a third party to access the data your friends have shared with you without your friends consenting. Unencumbered API access to the social graph is exactly what led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and promising to restrict API access was part of Facebook's settlement with the FTC.

It's kind of amazing how most even tech people don't seem to understand this.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bought all the platforms people were going to jump to. The "Onvao Protect" traffic snooping VPN to identify what up and coming products people were using was one particularly shady part of this strategy.

You didn't need any traffic snooping to notice millions of Instagram and WhatsApp users. Acquisitions were no brainer for Facebook.

I would posit that you don't use that data to decide whether or not you should buy Instagram. You use that data to decide if you should clone Stories, build an events platform, etc. IOW, it's incredibly valuable to be able to see aggregate user behavior, which is why Amazon's ownership of so much of the commerce experience makes their introduction of competitive "Basics" so interesting/anti-competitive.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#236

I feel like instead of pushing for the companies to separate, congress should pass laws mandating [adversarial interoperability]( https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera... ). Then the data (including the social graph) really would belong to the users, and facebook would have to compete with multiple other “social network clients” that would rapidly emerge. Facebook would lose some monopoly profi…

There's no way to provide access to the social graph in a privacy preserving way. It's not okay to allow a third party to access the data your friends have shared with you without your friends consenting. Unencumbered API access to the social graph is exactly what led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and promising to restrict API access was part of Facebook's settlement with the FTC.

You encrypt user data and provide decryption keys to the service once a user actually signs up.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#237

Honestly, while I have my doubts about this succeeding, it nevertheless feels like the big tech suit most likely to succeed. Amazon promoting its own brands isn't much different from a supermarket offering its own brand items. Apple isn't a monopoly in phones because of Android. And Google's search is so inherently tied to selling ads as a business model that separating them is a difficult argument -- plus search com…

> Amazon promoting its own brands isn't much different from a supermarket offering its own brand items.

The huge difference here is that when you go into Walmart you don't announce to the company what you want to buy.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#238
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and known backdoors, due to their custom implementation of the Signal encryption protocol.

Known backdoors? Can you back that up with a source? Custom implementation is likely because they want to strike a balance between security and usability.

https://thehackernews.com/2017/01/whatsapp-encryption-backdo...

In short, their implementation allows to change the encryption keys of users without their consent to arbitrary, known keys. The protocol won't re-encrypt sent messages, but there is nothing in the protocol forcing the app to show a notification that your encryption key has changed, which amounts to a man-in-the-middle attack. Any subsequent messages sent or received using that encryption key will be exposed to the attacker.

Encryption keys are managed on servers controlled by WhatsApp.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#239
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, yeah Facebook probably bought Oculus thinking: -What if a lot of people use these in the future -What if they're really comfy when they get slim, and people use them all the time, even for essentially web browsing. -Later models can easily have internal and mouth facing cameras so you can smile at people in VR -Let's intimately observe the finest twitch of every expression felt by our users, peering deep into th…

Their thinking is pretty much all laid out in the 2015 Zuckerberg memo on VR/AR: https://twitter.com/lucasmtny/status/1095861887588229120?s=2...

Ava the Oculus Connect 6 keynote video on YouTube.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#240
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prior administration was very cosy with Google and Facebook, which helped even more.

Honest question: how so? I don't follow usa politics all that closely, so i'm honestly curious how specificly were they cozy?

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close...
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