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E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after 8 May

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Re: E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after 8 May

#131

Post by john_strinlai »

gzread wrote: post #125
john_strinlai wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one thing to consider is how just the optics of major players using e2e was an overall benefit. people who otherwise would have gone their entire lives without ever hearing about encryption were exposed to the term and the marketing convinced them that encryption and privacy was a valuable thing, even if they didnt fully understand the mechanisms or why e2e might not necessarily be very effective in specific circumst…

If someone's given the choice between say Instagram and IRC, and chooses Instagram because they heard it has E2EE, that's a loss.

perfect is the enemy of good, etc etc.

between signal and plain text, it is easier to convince friends to use signal if they see positive marketing about encryption on other popular apps they use. it is easier to convince them to encrypt their backups before uploading them to their google drive. hell, its just a good conversation starter to introduce encryption/online privacy to people that never really think about it. that type of thing.

those same friends are not going to use irc regardless. not really a loss if it was never even on the table.

Re: E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after 8 May

#132

Post by toxik »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #129
mc32 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels to me Europe and the UK, in the western world, are further ahead on the legal road to surveillance than the US.

Someone pointed out something to me and it's really struck a chord with me. In the USA, we hate the government collecting information on us, but shrug our shoulders when corporations do it. In Europe, it's the exact opposite. They created GDPR to restrict how corporations collect and share data about you, but they shrug their shoulders at government doing it. Obviously, this is incredibly reductive and over-simplifie…

Sorry, this is just not true. Stasi was a government agency, and it was from this kind of thing that European privacy advocacy sprung up.

Re: E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after 8 May

#133

Post by arlort »

mvrckhckr wrote: post #118

The only reason I can think of for this change is governmental pressure. I don’t see how it benefits the platform itself (nor its users).

I can think of a few reasons why a company built on profiling (and advertising to) user interests might be interested in the private conversations of their users

Re: E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after 8 May

#134

Post by pjc50 »

davorak wrote: post #85
pjc50 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure people realize that HN is already at the most libertarian end, and all the discourse spaces which are much closer to actual power and legislation are much less pro-privacy.

Historically, like 10-20 years ago, libertarian would be staunchly pro privacy. Is this no longer the case? If libertarians have dropped this stance, since it is so close to what was the core beliefs, I really have no mental model of the philosophy/politics for libertarians any more. Any primer/link on what current libertarians believe is welcome.

Yes, but there's really not very many libertarians left who haven't cast their lot in for Republican support, resulting in the present situation. Not that there were many to begin with.

Re: E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after 8 May

#135

Post by cucumber3732842 »

dheera wrote: post #102
peyton wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a California resident I request to download my personal data from every service I can, and I’m constantly surprised. We each have scores for all kinds of things. The local power company keeps a “Green Ideology” score on me.

How do they know your ideology? Are they scraping your social media or running sentiment analysis on your customer service chats?

They probably don't care. It's probably a mostly BS number. But they probably have to have it and have it at least look like they're trying to be serious about generating it in order to qualify for preferential treatment on some sort of permitting or write off some class of investment in a slightly better way at tax time or something.

I'm not sure if this is better or worse than them doing it because they believe in it.

Re: E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after 8 May

#136

Post by nunobrito »

Sayrus wrote: post #23
nunobrito wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars nowadays are packed with microphones and permanently connected to the internet on daily basis so that drivers can have remote assistance when the car breaks once every 5 years or so.

I keep hearing this one. But at least for EU, the eCall system requires external communication to be disabled until activated during serious accident. It cannot be used for tracking the vehicle in real-time. Some parts of the legislation ( https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32... ): > 2. The personal data processed pursuant to this Regulation shall only be used for the purpose of handling the e…

Kindly read point number 2 slowly.

There are two definitions: a) Personal Data and b) Emergency Situations

What is an emergency situation and how can a car determine it is one? These are "smart" cars which aren't nowadays smart enough to process all your data locally, so that data is sent to servers elsewhere which process if either points a) or b) apply.

It is your choice to believe that voice data is ever deleted once acquired by governments and entities thirsty to benefit from that information.

For security experts this is just another "I told you so" within a few years.

Re: E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after 8 May

#137

Post by caconym_ »

everdrive wrote: post #36

There's a general trend right now against privacy and in a more general sense against freedom. More and more companies are on board with it. I'm not sure if anyone in HN has any useful advice in this regard. I feel like I don't know what to do about the internet for the next 5-10 years. Does this particular measure matter very much? No, but it's another brick in the wall.

> I'm not sure if anyone in HN has any useful advice in this regard.

Self host. It's still possible to buy computer hardware and install FOSS replacements for most/all of the services you need, and plumb it all through to your mobile devices using wireguard/tailscale. If you're behind a CGNAT you can proxy it through a cheap VPS that won't fuck you on bandwidth costs. Thanks to Proxmox, I probably have better uptime on my services than e.g. Github these days.

When it becomes impossible to get open PC hardware, I don't know. I like to think I will just stop using the internet for anything besides the bare minimum NPC type activities that are required to engage with the institutions of society.

Re: E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after 8 May

#138

Post by wolttam »

rurp wrote: post #130
Spooky23 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is building out the infrastructure for a police state. The people who control the consolidated tech platforms are either spearheading or collaborating with that process. Privacy as a concept isn't even in the cards. You need to be prepared to avoid saying naughty things on the internet. Otherwise, perhaps someone will figure out that you great-great grandfather didn't sign in the right spot in 1897 and you're…

Just want to clarify that "naughty" doesn't at all mean "bad" or "immoral". It means "Anything any current ot future regime will dislike"

Pretty safe to say that you pointing that out counts as naughty.

And so does my response to your comment.

But I do wonder if self-censure is really the best strategy.

Re: E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after 8 May

#139

Post by subscribed »

fsflover wrote: post #108
trinsic2 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like e2ee on phones with OSes from the big two is a lost cause. I'll bet this is the year where open hardware/bios starts getting more popular, hopefully. So we can have open hardware/software.

GNU/Linux phones already exist. See: Librem 5 and Pinephone.

If you like privacy without security then yeah .

Re: E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after 8 May

#140

Post by abnercoimbre »

caconym_ wrote: post #137
everdrive wrote: post #36

There's a general trend right now against privacy and in a more general sense against freedom. More and more companies are on board with it. I'm not sure if anyone in HN has any useful advice in this regard. I feel like I don't know what to do about the internet for the next 5-10 years. Does this particular measure matter very much? No, but it's another brick in the wall.

> I'm not sure if anyone in HN has any useful advice in this regard. Self host. It's still possible to buy computer hardware and install FOSS replacements for most/all of the services you need, and plumb it all through to your mobile devices using wireguard/tailscale. If you're behind a CGNAT you can proxy it through a cheap VPS that won't fuck you on bandwidth costs. Thanks to Proxmox, I probably have better uptime…

If you don't know where to start check out the Linux Prepper [0] podcast. (I'm not affiliated, just a listener who enjoys the show.)

[0] https://podcast.james.network/@linuxprepper/episodes

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