Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices • Hacker News Board

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#241

Post by FridayoLeary » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:20 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #155

swat535 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m another Iranian but I’m not actively living in Iran. I agree with others here that regime really needs to go but I of course share your fear of what could happen to Iran once the central government is weakened. Currently there are multiple tiers of special forces keeepinf various groups in check, however once this is gone, things could get ugly. I worry about my family living there, we have been having a hard tim…

You may know more about this than I do, but what happened in Iraq was that the first military governor held together the same people who were under Saddam in a semi-stable arrangement, but was replaced with someone else that had instructions from Washington to conduct "De-Ba'athification," for some reason. This lead quickly to the collapse of the state due to the persecution of everyone who had any authority, and the…

i don't get that. Saddam Hussain was a genocidal, fascist lunatic. The world is certainly a better place with him gone. Even if America didn't handle the subsequent occupation too well, i would argue (and you are free to disagree) that Iraq was still better off.

But an American occupation isn't even on the table. Nobody is interested in that. The most anyone wants at the moment is for the US to drop a MOAB on fordo and mop up the rest of Irans military from the air.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#242

Post by whodidntante » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:21 AM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #60

gspencley wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are we toppling all these foreign governments I don't want to speak to the other foreign governments, and I think there is a LOT of room for healthy criticism of how the USA handles its foreign policy, past & present. But to answer the question directly with respects to Iran, specifically: the leadership has been repeatedly chanting "Death To America" for its 45 year history and have been actively trying to dev…

> have been actively trying to develop a nuclear weapon program The US Director of National Intelligence testified to congress a few weeks ago that no US intelligence agency believes that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb, and that they believed Iran was at least 3 years away from having the ability to build a nuclear bomb even if they tried. What you are saying directly contradicts what US intelligence agencies have…

So, is Tulsi Gabbard now considered a reliable source of intelligence ?

And that it should be no one's concern about a regime that is stretched for resources yet has over a dozen very expensive facilities working on militarizing nuclear technology that also publicly and repeatedly calls for the destruction of not just Israel but also America ?

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

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Post by bdangubic » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:22 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #201

bdangubic wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never understand how anyone in their right mind can use any product owned by Meta…

Easily. The alternatives are also probably up to the same sketchy shit, so your choices are to be a hermit, or accept that your services will spy on you. If you want to participate in society, you have to either trust a very large list of untrustworthy people... Or acknowledge that they are untrustworthy, and mitigate accordingly. Part of that mitigation is accepting the possibility that if the Mossad want to murder…

don’t use any alternatives. I have been off social media for years now and my life and health and relationships and career and … have improved so much I cannot put it in words. even if one says “well that’s crazy, I must get my dopamine through an “app” on my phone meta is on another level of insanity to even consider infesting your life and especially your loved one’s life

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#244

Post by bdangubic » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:23 AM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #216

bdangubic wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never understand how anyone in their right mind can use any product owned by Meta…

Signal lagged so far in polish and features that getting friends and family to use it was doa. So I can choose to communicate with friends and family on the apps they use, or I make it very difficult for them to communicate with me. That ends with them mostly not communicating with me, not with them switching apps.

don’t your friends and family have phone numbers? I have right now 12 active groups on my text messages. why on earth do you need “app”??! I am lost …

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#245

Post by lxgr » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:25 AM UTC

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #240

lxgr wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but users can compare fingerprints (sure, most probably don't, but it's definitely a deterrence against MITMing all conversations by default), receive warnings whenever fingerprints change etc. There's also supposedly a key transparency service deployed (similar to Certificate Transparency), but I haven't looked into that in detail.

Sharing private keys gets around all that.

That would require explicit code to do so, which would probably be extremely hard to explain away.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#246

Post by lukan » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:26 AM UTC

bdangubic wrote: post #236

Cheer2171 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the entire rest of society has wrapped itself around Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram. It is easy to be a free software purist until you need to know if your child's school has a snow day. Websites and mailing lists are dead. I cannot be involved in my child's school or any of the informal social networks around the parents and teachers without using Meta's platforms. I cannot volunteer at a non-profit I car…

I have same situation and: - tell parents and teachers I can be reached at xxx-xxx-xxxx if they need anything - absolutely never had meta-requirement to volunteer. if I did I would 100% know my time there is better spent elsewhere I am not going to suggest you anything except to tell you that you can live a beautiful live outside of the meta-world. it is super easy

"I am not going to suggest you anything except to tell you that you can live a beautiful live outside of the meta-world. it is super easy"

Great it is super easy for you, but why do you think your individual experience is valid for other people (who might be thousands of km away in a very different setting)?

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#247

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:30 AM UTC

lordofgibbons wrote: post #147

> WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, meaning a service provider in the middle can’t read a message. I wish this meme that "whatsapp is secure because it uses e2e encryption" would die. Why does it matter if the messages are e2e encrypted if the messages are managed on the two ends of the channel by a closed source binary that does who-knows-what. The whatsapp app itself sees the clear text message. What it does wit…

[deleted]

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#248

Post by lenerdenator » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:30 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #163

lenerdenator wrote: post #152

All of this to avoid saying "We'd be fine with you existing within your pre-1967 borders."

Do you see an out for Khamenei et al ? They can’t credibly dismantle their nuclear deterrent and expect to keep their heads. Israel and America cannot accept it, particularly now that its conventional defences have been shown ineffective. The classic approach, airlifting the Ayatollah to a dacha in Moscow while the IRGC saves face and plots a forever path to new elections, falls apart when you consider how Iran’s int…

> Do you see an out for Khamenei et al? They can’t credibly dismantle their nuclear deterrent and expect to keep their heads. Israel and America cannot accept it, particularly now that its conventional defences have been shown ineffective

Honestly, I don’t think the American people have the stomach for another Middle Eastern war, and Israel has shown in the past that if you recognize their right to exist in some form, they’ll leave you the hell alone - see Egypt, Jordan, etc.

So if he pulled back from those two rivalries, I doubt that hurts him much. I’d see it as riskier because of internal power struggles and possibly from regional rivals, but who knows.

Guy’s in his mid 80s and there’s a decent chance Mossad knows exactly where he is. He’s got one foot on a banana peel and the other foot in the grave regardless.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#249

Post by pvg » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:32 AM UTC

lordofgibbons wrote: post #147

> WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, meaning a service provider in the middle can’t read a message. I wish this meme that "whatsapp is secure because it uses e2e encryption" would die. Why does it matter if the messages are e2e encrypted if the messages are managed on the two ends of the channel by a closed source binary that does who-knows-what. The whatsapp app itself sees the clear text message. What it does wit…

If the messages are managed on the two ends of the channel by a closed source binary that does who-knows-what.

The meme/trope is that you can't possibly know what such an app does without the source. It just isn't true. There'd be no meaningful phone vulnerability research if it was.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#250

Post by blintz » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:34 AM UTC

rdrd wrote: post #7

I find the wordsmithery on Meta's statement the most interesting: “We do not track your *PRECISE* location, we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging and we do not track the *PERSONAL* messages people are sending one another," it added. “We do not provide *BULK* information to any government.”

This isn’t some conspiracy, it’s just CYA. They know your general location from your IP and device APIs, they don’t encrypt business messaging, and they comply with subpoenas.