WhatsApp's new privacy policy is so bad it might be illegal • Hacker News Board

Re: WhatsApp's new privacy policy is so bad it might be illegal

#161

Post by rawfan » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:22 AM UTC

tauist wrote: post #148

seanieb wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is LESS secure than WhatsApp. https://www.wired.com/story/telegram-encryption-whatsapp-set...

PRIVACY =! SECURITY

Unless privacy == security (i.e. operational security need privacy). It's laughably to take over Telegram accounts (or just join as an invisible listener) and because nothing is encrypted, you get the full message history.

Telegram has really, really great UI/UX and even DX regarding their API. Other than that it's a shit show.

I would never recommend using Whatsapp, but compared to Telegram, Whatsapp is a poster child.

Re: WhatsApp's new privacy policy is so bad it might be illegal

#162

Post by scrollaway » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:30 AM UTC

themacguffinman wrote: post #57

saagarjha wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your view of the average user is unnecessarily uncharitable and antagonistic. People want privacy, but they also want to talk to their friends: that much is given. But…to basically any normal user, an app that offers privacy but doesn't let them talk to their friends is useless. Not everyone has the time or ability to go around proselytizing their acquaintances to switch to a new app to talk to them. To be honest, a…

So how did they start using chatting to their friends with their current chat service in the first place? By that logic, few people would ever leave IRC or Skype or whatever they started using first. Users move, they just don't move for privacy. The fact that proselytization is even required to move to Signal is telling. Everyone has time and ability to make their own choices with like-minded friends. They do it for…

Whatsapp built its userbase over several years. It did so at a time where it had a clear value prop, replacing sms which cost a lot with something nearly free. It grew in popularity in eastern european countries, spread later in europe and then later in the US when Facebook acquired them.

This was a process, not a 1-day switch from skype to whatsapp. The network effects are real, and if you don't understand how difficult it is to get people to join a chat app, you won't win.

Re: WhatsApp's new privacy policy is so bad it might be illegal

#163

Post by noja » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:30 AM UTC

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #123

skrebbel wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is "this app, which promises privacy and security in ways I do not have the skills to verify, is made by people who also think cryptocurrencies are a good idea". That is a pretty compelling argument to people who think cryptocurrencies are all about scams and/or useless pollution (a sizeable portion of society). It suggests that the people behind Signal may not be as trustworthy as they're made out to be…

> It suggests that the people behind Signal may not be as trustworthy as they're made out to be. trust only works in retrospect (it can't be extended into the future to a party simply because they make a promise) all such relationships have an expiry date (since as the trusted party evolves or needs to reinvent itself to satisfy shareholders). what can prevent this are bullet-proof contracts (that's not how people ma…

> trust only works in retrospect

Nonsense. Trust provides a basis for present and future dealings.

Re: WhatsApp's new privacy policy is so bad it might be illegal

#164

Post by DyslexicAtheist » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:32 AM UTC

noja wrote: post #163

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It suggests that the people behind Signal may not be as trustworthy as they're made out to be. trust only works in retrospect (it can't be extended into the future to a party simply because they make a promise) all such relationships have an expiry date (since as the trusted party evolves or needs to reinvent itself to satisfy shareholders). what can prevent this are bullet-proof contracts (that's not how people ma…

> trust only works in retrospect Nonsense. Trust provides a basis for present and future dealings.

please get in touch by email, I have a business proposal for you.

I highly recommend Robert Cialdini before making opinionated comments on trust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence:_Science_and_Practic...

Re: WhatsApp's new privacy policy is so bad it might be illegal

#165

Post by beforeolives » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:34 AM UTC

jnxx wrote: post #157

> WhatsApp has been facing one hell of a backlash ever since it shared that it wanted to update its privacy policy with changes that would allow Facebook to aggregate all of its users' data across all of its services. I think this is bad. But also a general tendency: Accumulations of data are valuable to companies which exploit them. Larger accumulations of data are even more valuable, in a non-linear way. This is be…

> Without effective regulation, one day, Facebook's data and Google's data will probably be combined.

Can you elaborate on why you think this might happen? It doesn't seem like an obvious outcome to me.

Re: WhatsApp's new privacy policy is so bad it might be illegal

#166

Post by walterbell » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:35 AM UTC

There are three pre-requisites to escaping the messenger silo treadmill:

  1. multi-vendor, open standard protocol for E2EE group messaging
  2. reference open-source clients for web, desktop & mobile
  3. reference open-source server

Wire is contributing to #1 and they have a high-quality iOS (OSS) client and OSS server. Their Android and web clients are less stellar, but exist and can be improved. The iOS Arm client will likely be enabled on M1 Macs. Wire is free for individual consumers and has a paid offering for enterprise teams (i.e. their business model is neither data nor charity), and they do not mandate sharing your phone number or address book -- only an email address is required.

The IETF standard is MLS and it will live alongside TLS, https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mls/about/. The team behind Wire founded Skype and contributed to the first patent-free high-def audio codec (OPUS), which in turn enabled WebRTC, the protocol behind most modern video conferencing services. Matrix.org provides #2 and #3 and has stated that they will migrate to the IETF MLS standard protocol.

Since both Wire and Matrix offer both OSS clients & servers, and there is active multi-vendor development on an open standard protocol for E2EE group messaging, web & mobile developers have multiple options for open-source contribution. Matrix already supports federated servers that can be self-hosted, and they recently supported the FOSDEM online conference with ~30,000 attendees, https://matrix.org/blog/2021/02/15/how-we-hosted-fosdem-2021...

> The most unique thing about Matrix is that conversations get replicated across all servers whose users are present in the conversation, so there's never a single point of control or failure for a conversation (much as git repositories get replicated between all contributors). And so hosting FOSDEM in Matrix meant that everyone already on Matrix (including users bridged to Matrix from IRC, XMPP, Slack, Discord etc) could attend directly - in addition to users signing up for the first time on the FOSDEM server.

Re: WhatsApp's new privacy policy is so bad it might be illegal

#167

Post by themacguffinman » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #162

themacguffinman wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how did they start using chatting to their friends with their current chat service in the first place? By that logic, few people would ever leave IRC or Skype or whatever they started using first. Users move, they just don't move for privacy. The fact that proselytization is even required to move to Signal is telling. Everyone has time and ability to make their own choices with like-minded friends. They do it for…

Whatsapp built its userbase over several years. It did so at a time where it had a clear value prop, replacing sms which cost a lot with something nearly free. It grew in popularity in eastern european countries, spread later in europe and then later in the US when Facebook acquired them. This was a process, not a 1-day switch from skype to whatsapp. The network effects are real, and if you don't understand how diffi…

The network effects were real for SMS too, yet users still moved to WhatsApp because it was free (much to the chagrin of incumbent carriers), that's what users wanted.

Of course it's difficult to get people to join a chat app, and it should be. At a minimum you should need to provide something that users want and didn't have before. WhatsApp offered something new, it was an effective price tag of zero with phone number contacts. Skype offered something new and desirable (until it didn't). Snapchat offered something new and desirable. All of them had predecessors with network effects and still succeeded by giving users something they really wanted. They didn't throw their hands up and blame users.

Re: WhatsApp's new privacy policy is so bad it might be illegal

#168

Post by saddlerustle » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 10:54 AM UTC

hiq wrote: post #141

saddlerustle wrote: post #22

Bizarre story given the new privacy policy in the EU changed nothing wrt what data is shared with Facebook.

Last I checked it was a lot of words for no change at all. If the change is so small, they could have allowed EU users to opt out (and maybe miss out on some features), they would have avoided the outcry.

The point of the change is to enable business messaging, which is necessary for WhatsApp to generate any real revenue.

Re: WhatsApp's new privacy policy is so bad it might be illegal

#169

Post by busymom0 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 11:00 AM UTC

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #121

crossroadsguy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true. But there’s another problem with something like Matrix. It’s not to be adopted by the masses by design. The clients/apps are miles away from a nerd/tech savvy person would like to use and another few miles away from the UX non-nerds would want to see. So that’s dba anyway - dead before arrival.

What's wrong with the design of Element? I don't think it's anymore complicated than e-mail and even my grandpa has one of those

Design isn't the biggest issue of Element imo. The speed it. It's super slow. I used another matrix app (can't remember the name now) and that also had the same issue. And the speed wasn't the app issue I think as everything else worked fine but loading messages and sending them took forever. Has this improved recently?

Re: WhatsApp's new privacy policy is so bad it might be illegal

#170

Post by lrvick » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 11:03 AM UTC

nopato wrote: post #13

To be honest I feel a bit disenfranchised. I’ve used all my energy to convert all my friends to signal when the WhatsApp privacy policy fiasco happened and now they’re saying it was a waste of time since they don’t want anything to do with bitcoins.. I can’t blame them as I also don’t want this on my messaging app. I feel like I will just give up and use WhatsApp and assume that I only had privacy pre-internet.

Or use something open and decentralized like Matrix that no one single party can control the future of.