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

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

#181

Post by spot5010 »

tomerv wrote: post #77

People seeing this post are split to 2 groups: - Those who didn't accept the new terms are glad to use the opportunity to virtue-signal. - Those who accepted the new terms are afraid to admit so. I'll bite the bullet: I accepted the terms. If you want more honest opinions, you should probably post an anonymous poll.

I’m in a third category where I have not accepted just because I still have an option not to. Waiting to see what happens.

I depend on WhatsApp heavily to keep in touch with friends and family and cannot imagine not using it (it would require everyone switching to signal enmasse).

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

#182

Post by meribold »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #179
meribold wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess not since both platforms use centralized protocols. With the Signal client being FOSS [1] and WhatsApp being proprietary, I also think that me using Signal to message someone on WhatsApp would still downgrade my privacy because I don’t know what the WhatsApp client is really doing with my message. [1] In reality I don’t know that the Signal app on my phone is actually built from the publicly available code.

Why not build yourself from source?

I'm on iOS and I believe I'd have to pay Apple an annual fee for the privilege of building Signal myself and/or installing the compiled app. (Maybe I'd also have to buy a Mac or MacBook?) I also think I would have to reinstall my own build every few weeks and it wouldn't have access to my current chat history.

But I've never tried. I'd love to learn about any misconceptions.

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

#183

Post by mikewarot »

No, I haven't installed WhatsApp, nor any Facebook app/program on my laptop.

I always use Facebook via the web, in reverse chronological order. If I suddenly see a stream of old/very interesting stuff, I know I've accidently let the algorithm into my brain, and click on the url again to get back to sanity.

https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

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

#184

Post by codethief »

humpydumpy wrote: post #118
rg111 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> No spyware on my primary phone. May I ask how you achieved this? I would be interested in that setup, maybe I could then get over the hump and start using signal (though I don't like centralized communication platforms, nor do I like phone numbers as identifiers). Last time I checked, signal required android or ios, so only usable with built-in spyware.

> Last time I checked, signal required android or ios, so only usable with built-in spyware.

You might be interested in https://grapheneos.org/ . I run it on my primary phone and it works great.

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

#185

Post by codethief »

InsomniacL wrote: post #85

Nobody is talking about how ridiculous it is that none of these messaging apps talk to the other. everyone i know uses whatsapp and nothing else, no real choice until the apps talk to each other.

How would, say, Signal "talk" to WhatsApp/Facebook/Instagram/Telegram/… without compromising its security guarantees?

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

#186

Post by TrianguloY »

shawnz wrote: post #117
TrianguloY wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure outside Europe, but here last time I checked it basically said that whenever you talk with a business account you are basically talking with Facebook, otherwise nothing else changes. Still will be nice to have another opinion.

As I understand it merely allows businesses to use tools hosted by Facebook if they want .

I had the impression it means all WhatsApp business accounts, no matter if they use the Facebook backend or not (because for a WhatsApp business account you need to use the WhatsApp business app, which is the one providing the service and possibly the Facebook backend itself).

But I couldn't find any confirmation. There is a WhatsApp business API that is from Facebook, but apparently you don't necessarily need to use it.

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

#187

Post by sgt »

DeathMetal3000 wrote: post #175
sgt wrote: post #71

Honestly, I saw some dialog and clicked Accept, despite not reading it. I don't use WhatsApp for anything critical. I use iMessage for that and I have a lot of trust in Apple to do the right thing.

iMessage could be great except it falls back to SMS when the other phone is Android or there is no data network available. Also you lose the privacy once your messages are backed up to iCloud.

If they are not on iMessage, you will see that before even sending a message to them. At that point I'll go and see if they have some other means of Instant Messaging like WhatsApp or Telegram.

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

#189

Post by jeltz »

rescbr wrote: post #176
jeltz wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is using a library an operations challenge? Especially in the era of package managers like npm and maven. This seems to me like FB is incompetent and cannot write a good library for bot use.

It’s not a library. It’s a distributed multi-node WhatsApp client that handles the proprietary parts and interacts with your chatbot application using webhooks/REST APIs. Not trivial to setup and operate, as it was designed for high-throughput scenarios. It’s very understandable that smaller customers wouldn’t want to handle that little monster.

That is exactly what I thought which is why I suggested that FB should replace their ugly hack with a normal library. But the person who I replied claimed they have a library which sounded weird to me because then there would be no ops problem.

I feel FB is solving a technical problem by alienating a bunch of their users with a terms change. Why not instead just build the right technical solution?

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

#190

Post by shawnz »

TrianguloY wrote: post #186
shawnz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it merely allows businesses to use tools hosted by Facebook if they want .

I had the impression it means all WhatsApp business accounts, no matter if they use the Facebook backend or not (because for a WhatsApp business account you need to use the WhatsApp business app, which is the one providing the service and possibly the Facebook backend itself). But I couldn't find any confirmation. There is a WhatsApp business API that is from Facebook, but apparently you don't necessarily need to use…

The WhatsApp business app uses E2E encryption just like the consumer app, so I don't see how that could be the case.
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