221–230 of 458 posts
> TikTok won't protect DMs with controversial privacy tech, saying it would put users at risk
Not sure if this was changed since first posting, I don't mind updates, but unless it'd redacting for legal purposes (which should then itself be clearly mentioned), the BBC should provide a public changelog like wikipedia
As opposed to doomscrolling and brainrot, which are not risky to expose children to at all. /s
If TikTok cared about children in the slightest, they would not exist.
TikTok is a front for government surveillance, so it's not really surprising that this is their position.
This might be off-topic but on-topic about child safety... but I'm surprised people are being myopic about age verification. Age verification should be banned, but people ignore that nowadays most widely used online services already ask for your age and act accordingly: twitter, youtube, google in general, any online marketplace. They already got so much data on their users and optimize their algorithms for those gro…
Monitoring children's DMs is the responsibility of the parents, not megacorps. If a parent wants to install a keylogger or screen recorder on their child's PC, that's their decision. But Google should not be able to. Neither should... literally anyone else except maybe an employer on a work-provided device.
Many parental controls are massive pains to get working. Apple does fairly well (although I don't get a parental pin number to unlock the phone, which is normally fine as my child will tell me, but in some circumstances it wouldn't be), but does require the parent to be on the apple ecosystem too.
EA and Microsoft however are terrible, especially as it's likely the child will be playing fortnite/minecraft and the parent won't have ever touched it. I think with minecraft we had to make something like 5 or 6 accounts across three different sites to allow online minecraft play from a nintendo switch.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Monitoring children's DMs is the responsibility of the parents, not megacorps Absolutely. But what responsibilities do megacorps have? Right now, everyone seems to avoid this question, and make do with megacorps not being responsible. This means: "we'll allow megacorps to be as they are and not take any responsibilities for the effects they cause to society". Instead of them taking responsibilities, we're collectin…
> But what responsibilities do megacorps have? Right now, everyone seems to avoid this question Clear, simple, direct: Whatever was required of The Bell Telephone Company and nothing more.
If the NYT publishes and advert or editorial, it's held accountable for the contents.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The receiver has a proven and signed bundle, that they can upload to the abuse report. So the evidence has even stronger weight. They can already decrypt the message, they can still report it.
Yes, but this leaves the only way to identify this behavior as by reporting from a minor. I'm not saying I trust TikTok to only do good things with access to DMs, but I think it's a fair argument in this scenario to say that a platform has a better opportunity to protect minors if messages aren't encrypted. I'm not saying no E2E messaging apps should exist, but maybe it doesn't need to for minors in social media apps…
Would it be a fair argument to say the police have a better opportunity to prevent crimes if they can enter your house without a warrant? People are paranoid about this sort of thing not because they think law enforcement is more effective when it is constrained. But how easily crimes can be prosecuted is only one dimension of safety.
> However, an alternative could be allowing the sharing of the encryption key with a parent
Right, but this is worlds apart from "sharing the encryption key with a private company", is it not?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's never been controversial, it's the BBC. doing it's usual job of laundering the arguments the establishment want you to hear for domestic consumption.
The thing is, it _is_ controversial. At least amongst the general public. Obviously not in somewhere like Hacker News where there’s a clear consensus, but if you asked a random sample of the UK population “should law enforcement be allowed to compel tech companies to hand over all DMs of confirmed paedophiles?”, I’d bet very good money the majority would say “yes”. The notion that “Big Tech” can absolve themselves of…
If you asked 'Would you support weakening encryption in messaging apps if it helped catch some criminals, even though it could make it easier for hackers to read your messages and steal your passwords, bank details, or personal photos?' I'd bet a large proportion of the general population would say no.
But that side never gets explored, or there's an assumption that there's some way of only letting the good guys access the information.
I don’t really understand how we are supposed to believe in e2ee in closed proprietary apps. Even if some trusted auditor confirms they have plumbed in libsignal correctly, we have no way of knowing that their rendering code is free of content scanning hooks. We know the technology exists. Apple had it all polished and ready to go for image scanning. I suppose the only thing in which we can place our faith is that it…
Perhaps your e2ee is only securing your data in travel if their servers are considered the other end.
Also one thing people seem to misunderstand is that for most applications the conversation itself is not very interesting, the metadata (who to who, when, how many messages etc.) is 100x more valuable.
I think this is... fine? Am I just totally naive. I think it's fine to say "You don't really have privacy on this app" - as long as there are relatively good options of apps that do have privacy (and I think there are). TikTok is really a public by default type of social media, there's not much idea of mutual following or closed groups. So sure, you don't have privacy on tiktok, if you want it you can move to snapcha…
Tiktok has private messaging, and it is used by hundreds of millions of people. IMO no consumer service should have private 1:1 messaging without e2e. Either only do public messaging (ie. Like a forum), or implement e2e.
It's better that they're honest about this, nobody should believe for a second that WhatsApp or FB messages are truly E2EE.
DM on social media shouldn't be used for anything remotely private. It's a convenience feature, nothing more.
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> You don't exactly get to dictate how the government implements it! Who was talking about the government implementing it? I wasn't. And also "This has been done poorly in the past so we should never attempt to do it again, better" seems an odd way to go about things. There are well put together schemes by international standards bodies in this area now. Neither of the above links followed them.
If neither follow them, why do you have such faith that anybody would...?
Because we don't believe anyone will ever use the standards in this area, despite loads of companies and government bodies actually using OIDC already?
I'm not really sure what you're driving at.