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Ask HN: Have you accepted the TOS that give FB access to your WhatsApp data?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Have you accepted the TOS that give FB access to your WhatsApp data?

#161

Post by pacomerh »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #114
DitheringIdiot wrote: post #51

We have a moral obligation to stop using facebook products. Ask yourself where do you draw the line? If you don’t think facebook has crossed it, then you don’t know enough about facebook.

We have no such moral obligation. Facebook is no better and no worse than a multitude of other companies that trade in attention and data. They've suffered an onslaught of bad PR lately, largely due to their singular success rather then being singularly evil or (on balance) harmful to the world. A lot of this moral panic about Facebook's effect on society is just a projection of our general angst the democratization…

Then pick one and do something about it. Just because there's more than one company doing bad things doesn't mean you get to do nothing about it.

Re: Ask HN: Have you accepted the TOS that give FB access to your WhatsApp data?

#163

Post by oezi »

dgellow wrote: post #27
londgine wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is "island"?

I believe it's this https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oasisfeng....

What kind of API is this using? What kind of risk is it to run this app by Oasis Feng?

Re: Ask HN: Have you accepted the TOS that give FB access to your WhatsApp data?

#164

Post by oneplane »

rg111 wrote: post #17
ItsBob wrote: post #12

Nope, I still click the "X" in the top corner every time I open it. However, I use WhatsApp sparingly - my mum and one friend, that's it. At some point I'll remove it completely.

Migrated completely from WhatsApp to Signal and Telegram. I still run WhatsApp for the people I absolutely have to. For that, I am using an old, and almost bust phone I have from 5 years ago. No spyware on my primary phone.

If your phone contains a baseband for RF communication, isn't that spyware as well?

Re: Ask HN: Have you accepted the TOS that give FB access to your WhatsApp data?

#165

Post by dang »

eganist wrote: post #158
mavhc wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. So they're working to help people avoid becoming extremists? 2. 9 years ago they tested if they were affecting people's emotions 3. Like every communications tool, people use it badly 4. There's a button to stop 3rd party tracking Blaming Facebook for your problems is hiding from your problems. If people are too stupid to avoid becoming extremists, why is that Facebook's fault, that's our fault as society for fail…

To people reading: A fair and within-guidelines reply was inappropriately brigaged with flags and killed less than 4 minutes after being posted. Turn on show-dead in your profile to read and vouch. Feel free to flag-dead mine. The comment: https://i.imgur.com/mZlmUqE.png If you're an HN regular, please participate in good faith. Nothing about this comment warranted death by a thousand flags.

It ought to be entirely clear from a review of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html why that comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29615960) was flagged. It was a noticeable step into flamewar. We don't want that type of argument on HN. It leads to dumb, nasty, predictable threads.

It also broke other site guidelines, for example with this:

> Did you read the comments? A quote for you

Btw, please don't post like you did here. It's basically doing an end run round HN's moderation system. That's not cool.

Re: Ask HN: Have you accepted the TOS that give FB access to your WhatsApp data?

#166

Post by fsflover »

dang wrote: post #165
eganist wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To people reading: A fair and within-guidelines reply was inappropriately brigaged with flags and killed less than 4 minutes after being posted. Turn on show-dead in your profile to read and vouch. Feel free to flag-dead mine. The comment: https://i.imgur.com/mZlmUqE.png If you're an HN regular, please participate in good faith. Nothing about this comment warranted death by a thousand flags.

It ought to be entirely clear from a review of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html why that comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29615960 ) was flagged. It was a noticeable step into flamewar. We don't want that type of argument on HN. It leads to dumb, nasty, predictable threads. It also broke other site guidelines, for example with this: > Did you read the comments? A quote for you Btw, pleas…

Thank you for the explanation. I will be more careful in the future. However, according to your wording the parent comment also breaks the guidelines, doesn't it? As in "a noticeable step into flamewar."

Re: Ask HN: Have you accepted the TOS that give FB access to your WhatsApp data?

#167

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #165
eganist wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To people reading: A fair and within-guidelines reply was inappropriately brigaged with flags and killed less than 4 minutes after being posted. Turn on show-dead in your profile to read and vouch. Feel free to flag-dead mine. The comment: https://i.imgur.com/mZlmUqE.png If you're an HN regular, please participate in good faith. Nothing about this comment warranted death by a thousand flags.

It ought to be entirely clear from a review of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html why that comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29615960 ) was flagged. It was a noticeable step into flamewar. We don't want that type of argument on HN. It leads to dumb, nasty, predictable threads. It also broke other site guidelines, for example with this: > Did you read the comments? A quote for you Btw, pleas…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Have you accepted the TOS that give FB access to your WhatsApp data?

#168

Post by throwawayboise »

jimkleiber wrote: post #145

I think the question is asking one thing and asserting another: - "have you accepted the TOS?" as the question - "the TOS gives FB access to (all) your WhatsApp data" as the assertion My questions: do you believe that this new TOS gives FB access to my WhatsApp data? If so, to which of my data? All of it? I personally don't believe this TOS gives FB access to all of the communication data I have on WhatsApp, and thus…

Why does anyone believe that FB is not trawling the data anyway? Is there some technical barrier preventing it?

Re: Ask HN: Have you accepted the TOS that give FB access to your WhatsApp data?

#169

Post by gertrunde »

bko wrote: post #32

Can someone give me a simple non-cynical explanation on what the update in terms is about? From my understanding, it only pertains to communications with businesses and give them some Facbeook tools to manage their communications with customers.

My understanding is the same. Facebook are providing hosting services to businesses so they can centralise their business WhatsApp messaging in one place.

This means that when a message is decrypted by a recipient, that decryption is taking place within a Facebook service, rather than on an end user device.

Unfortunately, as you say, cynicism is a problem with anything linked to a company like Facebook/Meta that has earned a certain amount of distrust.

Re: Ask HN: Have you accepted the TOS that give FB access to your WhatsApp data?

#170

Post by dang »

fsflover wrote: post #166
dang wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It ought to be entirely clear from a review of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html why that comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29615960 ) was flagged. It was a noticeable step into flamewar. We don't want that type of argument on HN. It leads to dumb, nasty, predictable threads. It also broke other site guidelines, for example with this: > Did you read the comments? A quote for you Btw, pleas…

Thank you for the explanation. I will be more careful in the future. However, according to your wording the parent comment also breaks the guidelines, doesn't it? As in "a noticeable step into flamewar."

I would say the original sin of this subthread was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29613632, because it was a snarky flamebait one-liner and not curious conversation. That comment was also flagged by users, quite correctly.
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