181–190 of 289 posts
Most of the time tech companies have their fans and detractors. In virtually any discussion about tech companies, you’ll find people for the company in question, and others against, Apple and Google are great examples. I find it interesting that I don’t think I’ve ever come across any discussion about Facebook (and I read a lot of them) where anyone is defending them. Either people are strongly against the company, o…
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Nobody seems to remember the time back when FaceBook forced everyone on the platform to use their real name... It was exactly the point their plan to gather data matured I believe. This is also why many sites and apps offer verification programs as well in my understanding... Verifying a user's ID has been a practices for ages now, but it did nothing to stop the growth of disinformation because that's not what verifi…
> An unregulated private company asking you for official government documentation and your real name is definitely tracking you in my opinion. This is nothing unusual? It’s extremely common for a private company to request identify verification
The same is the case with social media. They don't need your government ID, and they're not authorized to demand it like the health care industry is.
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Messaging clients tend to be regional. WhatsApp is massive in Europe. From what I gather WeChat is dominant in mainland China but Hong Kong still used WhatsApp (though I think they might be coming round to Signal?) and the US, who have a higher ratio of Apple users vs the rest of the world, tend to use iMessage a lot more.
> WhatsApp is massive in Europe. You're completely right that messaging clients is regional, but it's even more regional than just "Europe". I'm always confused when people claim that WhatsApp is huge in Europe, because I know literally only two people who use it. They only use WhatsApp because they have friends outside Europe. I think we need to think in terms of single countries when talking messaging apps. Again t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody seems to remember the time back when FaceBook forced everyone on the platform to use their real name... It was exactly the point their plan to gather data matured I believe. This is also why many sites and apps offer verification programs as well in my understanding... Verifying a user's ID has been a practices for ages now, but it did nothing to stop the growth of disinformation because that's not what verifi…
> An unregulated private company asking you for official government documentation and your real name is definitely tracking you in my opinion. This is nothing unusual? It’s extremely common for a private company to request identify verification
Edit: I thought of two more: airlines and banks. But I assume both of those industries are required to by regulation.
The situation is quite interesting here. - Imagine, you're living outside of USA/UK/Europe. - Formally, it's possible to proceed with "Permanently delete my account". - You will even receive email assuring you that two weeks later profile would be completely deleted. - Then, couple years later you'll occasionally seen email from facebook that someone tried to log in into your ("permanently deleted") account. - You'll…
//Imagine, you're living outside of USA/UK/Europe. Are you saying that Facebook doesn’t enable full account delete outside of countries that require it by law?
I got rid of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp about 4 years ago. Facebook and Instagram was easy, but people who have WhatsApp really think you’re weird for not having it. Deleting WhatsApp, while annoying for me personally, has resulted in many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent. If you don’t want to have a conversation about why you deleted WhatsApp, si…
Maybe I'm just old or out of it? I've never used WhatsApp and don't see why I would need any chat apps other than just normal texting on my iPhone.
WhatsApp first value proposition has been to enable cheap ("free") messaging while, at least here in Argentina, SMS would still cost a lot of money. The Android SMS experience is bad, too - or at least it's not a nice one.
Add groups, multimedia, audio calls with no long-distance fee, or even video calls (I don't think the phone system offers an alternative, at least here), and all of that being "cross-manufacturer" (we have 92% Android users here, so you still don't want to leave your two iOS friends out) and it's pretty much clear why WhatsApp works best.
Signal & Telegram could have make it, too - but WhatsApp was probably first, and they offered support for some feature phones back then when they still were around.
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Messaging clients tend to be regional. WhatsApp is massive in Europe. From what I gather WeChat is dominant in mainland China but Hong Kong still used WhatsApp (though I think they might be coming round to Signal?) and the US, who have a higher ratio of Apple users vs the rest of the world, tend to use iMessage a lot more.
Interoperability between these systems should be a public policy goal. I don't have to buy an AT&T phone anymore to call my friends; not sure why I have to buy iOS to chat with them.
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> An unregulated private company asking you for official government documentation and your real name is definitely tracking you in my opinion. This is nothing unusual? It’s extremely common for a private company to request identify verification
Is it? Maybe its my unconscious avoidance of industries with that practice, but the only other private corporation I can think of that has requested my ID is Costco. I can't think of a single software service or social media that has wanted my ID for anything. On the other hand, Facebook has never asked for my ID either, I assume because I have an old enough account that I was grandfathered in. Edit: I thought of two…
I always chose to never use my real name on any social media accounts, if it was required I'd probably elect to not sign up, but their EULAs frequently are revised to serve whatever purpose they want because there is no meaningful regulation in place to limit their data mining practices on pretty much anyone because others post info about you in some way over time, even if you don't have an account.
People have sleepwalked into a nightmare and nobody is really honest enough to admit it. Banana republics pretending their are sophisticated and caring societies.
The irony here that it's harder to delete your HN account and all your comments
Unlike Facebook, Hacker News has no Personally Identifiable Information on you, didn’t ask for any, and isn’t trying to gather any. Email address might be the lone exception, but you can use any throwaway email you want. So you might have chosen to share some, but other than email, HN has no way to index it or even know that it’s personal to you. There’s no network, no photos, no credit cards. There are no ads that HN is selling your PII to. Unlike FB, HN doesn’t do any EU specific business or target EU residents in any way, so combined with the complete lack of PII, it’s very likely GDPR does not apply to HN. Comments aren’t enough, they don’t act as a catalog of PII.
That said, have you tried emailing HN to see if they’ll happily delete your comments? If there was a legitimate problem that you needed to erase, if your identity become known against your will, I’d bet the mods here would be happy to help you.