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WhatsApp Co-Founder Tells Everyone To Delete Facebook, Further Fueling the #DeleteFacebook Movement (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the call-to-arms dept.

"In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion, making its co-founders -- Jan Koum and Brian Acton -- very wealthy men," reports The Verge. "Koum continues to lead the company, but Acton quit earlier this year to start his own foundation." Today, Acton told his followers on Twitter to delete Facebook. From the report: "It is time," Acton wrote, adding the hashtag #deletefacebook. Acton, who is worth $6.5 billion, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did Facebook and WhatsApp. It was unclear whether Acton's feelings about Facebook extend to his own app. But last month, Acton invested $50 million into Signal, an independent alternative to WhatsApp. The tweet came after a bruising five-day period for Facebook that has seen regulators swarm and its stock price plunge following concerns over data privacy in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica's misuse of user data. Acton isn't the only one taking to Twitter to announce their breakup with Facebook. The #DeleteFacebook movement is gaining steam following the New York Times' report about how the data of 50 million users had been unknowingly leaked and purchased to aid President Trump's successful 2016 bid for the presidency. For many users, the news "highlighted the danger of Facebook housing the personal information of billions of users," reports SFGate. "And even before the Cambridge Analytica news, Facebook has been grappling with its waning popularity in the U.S. The company lost 1 million domestic users last quarter -- its first quarterly drop in daily users."

9 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. The only way to actually "delete Facebook" is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...to get yourself hard-banned.

    So that they do not want you in their graph data set anymore. So that your are poison to their data and "community"!

    Which is surprisingly easy: Just give yourself an offensive fake name, and change as much of your profile as you can to fake offensive shit.
    They will then ban you, block your profile, and demand that you prove that your fake name is real with personal documents that they would never ever get, even if your name was real. Like a copy of your passport, or personal bank statements or utility invoices. So you can’t go back, even if you wanted. And they can' use your profile like that.

    And other "deleting" will still result in a continuing shadow profile.

    If you live in the EU, remember that you have a right to get ALL data they have about you. Make sure you get that if you want it, before doing the changes.

  2. A Billionaire from a Chatting App by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    There's nothing sensible about having become a billionaire from making a chatting app. Nothing.

    This is just some dude who got lucky. His opinion is worthless; a broken 12-hour clock is correct twice a day.

  3. Facebook's business model? by jbmartin6 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This is ridiculous:

    the data of 50 million users had been unknowingly leaked and purchased to aid President Trump

    Facebook's business is *knowingly* providing access to those data. The only reason Cambridge Analytica was dinged was because Facebook didn't get their cut.

    --
    This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
    1. Re:Facebook's business model? by nine-times · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well it's not quite that simple. Whether it's because of explicit terms of service or it's users making assumptions, people had some expectations of how the data that they'd given to Facebook would be shared. Cambridge Analytica "got dinged" because they mislead people by claiming they were performing academic research and because they violated Facebook's terms of service.

      Also because their behavior was unethical and disturbing in any case. It doesn't help that they'd been approached by Putin's stooges to influence American elections, and then went to work on the Trump campaign, thereby creating yet another suspicious tie between Trump and Putin.

    2. Re:Facebook's business model? by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Allegedly, in addition to misusing the data Facebook had knowingly provided (albeit under false pretenses of academic research), Cambridge Analytica also went above and beyond the accepted methods of acquiring the profile data using techniques that are skating a thin line between whether they are actually legal or not. Facebook was quite right to ding them. Political partisanship aide (yes, Obama did it too, and FWIW I found that usage rather disturbing as well, although the techniques used now seem to be on a whole other level), it's absolutely unethical and if not squashed now then you can bet that $party_you_dont_approve_of will using it come the next election.

      Psychologically, that angle is also rather interesting - people don't like admitting they were scammed / maniupulated, and often get overly defensive as a method of coping with the subconcious knowledge that it has probably happened to them - it's one of the classic stages of acceptance. The reality is that advertisers, politicians, and other shills do this to us Every. Single. Day. and if you step back from the political partisanship it's pretty clear that a lot of voters on all sides got manipulated and had their well-targetted buttons pushed in the US election, the Brexit referendum, and several other elections Cambridge Analytica was supposedly involved in. Do we *really* want to leave that tool in their box unchecked, and continuing to become more and more effective?

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  4. So: by ledow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So:

    "We sold you all out to them years ago, including all your data, for money to become billionaires. Now we are telling you that you shouldn't ever give them your data and should delete your account with them immediately."

    Tell me a) why I should listen to you, b) how you think this makes you the hero?

  5. Re:Facebook-free by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Trouble with deleting your profile is that somebody can trivially impersonate you by creating a new profile in your name.

    Your shadow profile still exists too... everyone who has you in their contacts likely uploaded your phone number, email and possibly home address, your face is in people’s photos, the exif data puts you at specific places at specific times, etc.

    All your old measages still exist in the profiles of the people you communicated with. Your social media footprint is still in their database.

    Better to keep the profile and lose your login.

  6. Re:The only way to actually "delete Facebook" is.. by Spamalope · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes! Poisoning the database is the best way.

    Won't someone make a plugin that peer to peer shares your advertising stalking cookies to randomize them? It'd be tougher for them to filter out genuine cookies to keep the poison out. For bonus points report that it's being done 6 months to a year later. Later publicly ask whether they're disclosing this or get quotes for an ad buy to see.

  7. Re:What about the other side doing the same? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What do you mean, "the other side doing the same"? What is the same about it? From your own link:

    In 2012, the Obama campaign encouraged supporters to download an Obama 2012 Facebook app that, when activated, let the campaign collect Facebook data both on users and their friends.

    According to a July 2012 MIT Technology Review article, when you installed the app, "it said it would grab information about my friends: their birth dates, locations, and 'likes.' "

    So your complaint is that, as opposed to a firm that hid their true intent and then used that data for other purposes, Obama got his info from an Obama branded app that explicitly stated what info it would be gathering? Oh yes, tottally the same thing. Just like when I asked my buddy if I could borrow a $10, it was exactly the same thing as mugging him and taking his wallet, right?

    And then the article talks about

    More important, the campaign could deliver carefully targeted campaign messages disguised as messages from friends to millions of Facebook users

    but then says

    the team blitzed the supporters who had signed up for the app with requests to share specific online content with specific friends simply by clicking a button.

    . So the messages might have been sent by the campaign, but it was the people's friends that specifically took the action to authorized sending on their behalf.

    The only difference, as far as we can discern, between the two campaigns' use of Facebook, is that in the case of Obama the users themselves agreed to share their data with the Obama campaign, as well as that of their friends.

    The users that downloaded the Cambridge app, meanwhile, were only told that the information would be used for academic purposes. Nor was the data to be used for anything other than academic purposes.

    Yeah, so the only difference between them is the HUGE FUCKING DIFFERENCE WHICH INVALIDATES THE ENTIRE ARGUMENT. But yeah, other than that....

    +4 Insightful, my ass