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> outside of the West you probably mean outside of the USA, it's huge in Europe/UK (which doesn't contradict your main point)
I’m not sure that’s true. I’m fairly certain UK, France, AU, Canada WhatsApp is not vastly more popular than the blue bubble alternative. At least I believe this was the case a few years ago, based on data I’d seen.
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Not sure this is correct - alaq said the messages are e2e, so not visible at all by anyone other that the participants of the conversation. The meta->data<- however IS visible by them and can and is likely to be used for advertising.
Of course the meta data is visible. Its probably more useful than the actual content of the conversation too. I mean from an ML perspective how would you even make features out of conversation that help with CTR ? That too without creeping the users out. I'd imagine its the same reason why meta doesnt (likely) listen in on mobile mics. Why go through the whole shebang of running always on transcription when simple fe…
If it results in a new billion-dollar penalty, maybe it would've saved money to move him quietly to a cushy rest-and-vest advisory position, in which he's not allowed to see, do, or say anything.
> In his whistleblower complaint, Baig is requesting reinstatement, [...]
I don't understand the "reinstatement" part. Does he actually want to go back, and think that it wouldn't be a toxic dynamic?
(He already talked about retaliation. And then by going public the way he did, I'd think he burned that bridge, salted the earth for a mile around bridge, and then nuked the entire metro area from orbit.)
Or is "reinstatement" simply something the lawyers just have to ask for, to ostensibly make him whole, but they actually neither want nor expect that?
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It is huge in Latin America. USA is special because it is the (only?) country where iPhone has more users than Android.
Yeah, huge in Latin America in the sense that a lot (most?) business only have a number that they use with Whatsapp (you can't call or even text them). Is it the same in Europe? Since I am from Latin America I never know if people from other continents use Whatsapp as much as we do, and if when I ask them to use Whatsapp I am imposing a new app or it's what they regularly use.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure that’s true. I’m fairly certain UK, France, AU, Canada WhatsApp is not vastly more popular than the blue bubble alternative. At least I believe this was the case a few years ago, based on data I’d seen.
I'm in the UK, I don't even know what 'the blue bubble alternative' is (Signal? Telegram?), everyone's on WhatsApp.
What a trash company Meta has consistently been. From enabling genocide in Myanmar, to interfering with elections, to giving user data to third parties in violation of its own daya policies, to straight up weird stuff like pirating/torrening books to train their steaming pile of garbage called llama, to having sex chatbots be weird to children. And then there is the even weirder decisions of zuck, the biggest loser o…
He sunk tens of billions.
Estimates (because we don't have "Reality Labs" broken out before 2019) put Zuck's Metaverse Misadventure & Boondoggle about $75B in the hole ($10B revenue on $85B spend) with no signs of a turnaround in revenue.
There are plans to turn things around with AR spectacles but decent ones are years off and will require entirely new investment with little re-use of that $75B Metaverse nonsense (Oculus acquisition, 5 generations of Quest R&D, Horizon Worlds, partnered and sponsored games and content, etc.)
The only real ROI will be the experience and staff gained. The rest will almost certainly land in the dustbin.
That's rather surprising about the accessing user data bit. When I was at Meta, the quickest way to get fired as an engineer was to access user data/accounts without permission or business reason. Everything was logged/audited down to the database level. Can't imagine that changing and the rules are taught very early on in the onboarding/bootcamp process.
The privacy violations and complete disregard for user data are too numerous to mention. There's a Wikipedia article that summarizes the ones we publicly know about.
Based on incentives alone, when the company's primary business model is exploiting user data, it's easy to see these events as simple side effects. When the CEO considers users of his products to be "dumb fucks", that culture can only permeate throughout the companies he runs.
So much for that e2e encryption that HN claimed was so good and that META couldn’t possibly use what’s app messages to do advertising from.