Slashdot Mirror
WhatsApp Co-Founder Tells Everyone To Delete Facebook, Further Fueling the #DeleteFacebook Movement (theverge.com)
"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."
It's never to late to act sensibly.
I have a new tag: #idontwantsocialmedia. Now I am going to post this tag everywhere!
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Billionaire wants you to use his new app.
...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.
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.
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.
The young people are no longer there anyway, only meemaw and peepaw are staying there and they don't vote anyway.
Delete all you want but FB still retains all the information you shared.
I've been using Signal for a year or so, it's much better than it was and is built to be secure (no back doors)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/03/19/the-problem-isnt-cambridge-analytica-its-facebook/#385336e658a5
The problem isn't Cambridge Analytics. Obama's campaign was much worse about digital snooping. (Getting DVR viewing history? Seriously?)
But neither of them has abused their power nearly as much as has Facebook internally. The part about FB researching depressed early teen Australians for advertising purposes is probably just one of many extreme examples.
Time for FB / Google / Amazon to be broken up using the old trust busting laws.
This movement is so influential that I'm going to finally break down and sign up to claim my facebook shadow account just so I can delete it! Sure, it won't actually be deleted and they'll probably get more info on my than ever but damn it will feel good! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
https://www.investors.com/poli...
I deleted my Facebook account back in the beginning of November 2017. I am now 120 days free from the bullshit! There is no way I will ever go back. I hope more people join the movement to delete Facebook and lead richer, fuller lives.
What FB has on you pales in comparison to what Apple & Google have stored about you via your phone & internet use. Looks like it is back to desktop phones and encyclopedia!
WhatsApp is just as guilty as Facebook
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
WhatsApp Co-Founder Tells Everyone To Delete Facebook
Friend of mine proudly told me one day that he deleted Facebook, but to my great disappointment, the next day I was still able to ping it.
I hope someone manages it though.
But people who know they should #delete FB don't have FB in the first place.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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?
I deleted my Facebook account back in the beginning of November 2017. I am now 120 days free from the bullshit! There is no way I will ever go back. I hope more people join the movement to delete Facebook and lead richer, fuller lives.
Let me guess. You still have a Twitter account though. At worst Facebook is super annoying, but you can make a case that Twitter is actually doing real harm to human society, yet which of the two do you still probably have? Yeah.
Yes, Signal is open source:
"Free for everyone. Signal is made for you. As an Open Source project supported by grants and donations, Signal can put users first. There are no ads, no affiliate marketers, no creepy tracking. Just open technology for a fast, simple, and secure messaging experience. The way it should be."
Works with Android, iPhone, Linux, and Windows.
"Stay private. Signal messages and calls are always end-to-end encrypted and painstakingly engineered to keep your communication safe. We can't read your messages or see your calls, and no one else can either."
Better yet, poison the well. You know, friend random people, have no ties with most of actual friends, post random shit, like some pages you doesn't really care about... Generally speaking hide your genuine activities in a noise. And do all of this from Virtual Machine. And setup a script uses this VM's browser to go to random pages to generate fake footprints. As they shadow profile you anyway, you may as well take some advantage of their infrastructure giving nothing in return.
What is best in life? Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.
Why not just have a real profile with fake data?
Having valid information is good. Having bogus information that you know is bogus is also ok. Having bogus information you cannot tell from valid information is death to a database.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why is "Twitter is actually doing real harm to human society" ?
how is twitter different than day to day life for you ? just asking.
I don't use Facebook; it makes no sense to me.
As far as I can tell, it just offers a way for people to pretend having an enviable life.
#DeleteFacebook
Ok
#DeleteWhatsapp
Ok
#DeleteTwitter
Ok
#DeleteInternetAccess
?!? No Twitter account
cat "#DeleteInternetAccess" >/dev/lpt
Ok
It would be a good idea for people to create a few fake profile and donate it to some activist group that can create a series of fake posts, fake news etc and dilute the value of the data anyone still using facebook.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You mean there aren't dozens of other narcissistic platforms....
He sold his soul to FB for $19B. That's an obscene amount of money so I certainly can't blame him. But don't come at us like you're the Pied Piper of privacy protection.
I can't possibly imagine anything useful for the users of Facebook that couldn't be done in a better and safer way.
Let's start with good old email and for texting and phoning without leaving a fat trail there is Signal.
If you really insist on exposing your oh so interesting life on the net you can use one of the blogging platforms, for regular text there is usenet.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
They won't let you pick a fictional place to live. I kept trying to pick Arrakis and it was not accepted.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
His net worth went from 6.6B to 5.5B just this month. Sounds like he still held a good amount of FB stock, as you would expect. Wonder if he dumped it all to people buying the dip and is now able to speak freely (and also is a touch bitter from just having lost $1B over it).
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.
And it's even cuter that you think that "setting up your own mail server" matters a bit when the vast majority of those you email to you will be using gmail or another equivalent data mining service. Even most of the companies you might email have their domains hosted on gmail.
GMail *owns* email now.
with just a few edits:
There is nothing wrong with your phone or computer. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. Sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear while building troves data about your location, contacts, personality, religion, politics, interests and most important your trigger points while testing all your reactions. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your phone or computer set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches in to your inner mind and feeds it to us - The Facebook.
Facebook is billions of individual "Skinner Boxes." And if you use it you are the pigeon!
When you create a facebook app, if you want to access user information such as date of birth or current location, you need to jump through hoops and even upload a video demonstrating how you will use the data.
However, you automatically get access to the person's friends list, with no specific authorization required from Facebook. This is where much of the abuse is really taking place, and they need to change it.
And I ask because I deal with nonsense every day live directly from people's mouths. Don't you ? Well if you don't then I would say glass sheltered house/ivory tower.
Just look at the crap Trump spouts via Twitter, it's fodder for a 3rd world war.
No, I will not look at that because I have better things to do with my time. Why would you ever follow someone you don't like on Twitter ????
And no, in the land of grown ups that is not fodder for 3rd world war. Wars are not fought over slightly mean remarks. Please read some history and get out of your oversensitive drama bubble.
See, how Trump destroyed the innocent company? In 2012 Obama's campaign did the same thing with Facebook data about millions of users, and it was all fine — a testament to Obama's genius, in fact.
Had Hillary won, Facebook would've been just peachy as well. Damn Trump!! #Impeach!!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
They won’t accept real places either, it wouldn’t allow me to have Plato Crater, Luna. Admittedly this may be proof the “moon” we see really is fake, and the address I wanted, Moonbase Alpha, really has been blasted out of orbit...
Blank until
John Gruber of Daring Fireball had this enlightening comment:
https://daringfireball.net
"But let’s call a spade a spade. Acton’s outrage now is some of the most hypocritical bullshit I’ve ever heard. Facebook implemented the policy he’s objecting to in 2010, four years before he personally pocketed $6.5 billion of Facebook’s money. Acton knew exactly what kind of company Facebook was when he sold WhatsApp to them."
Why is this even a story? It's the stated purpose of these companies to sell your information. Eric Schmidt even stated "Google isn't free, the cost is your information".
It's simple, keep your personal information... personal.
To all you sheep who purchased Alexa, google home, or Nest.... do you really believe these things are not sending your personal behavior out to be sold, scrutinized, and monetized...
Do you know there's a HIPAA waiver you release when you accept the ELUA of FitBit or Apple smartwatch?
Come one people... think.
" but Acton quit earlier this year to start his own foundation."
It's the Second Foundation that counts.
It's taking longer than I expected for Facebook to go the way of MySpace, but it looks like it's finally going to happen. Remember, on Facebook, the product they are selling is your personal data! Google, on the other hand, is advertising supported.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
From the Wikipedia entry for Signal servers: "By default, Signal's voice and video calls are peer-to-peer."
Lots of people (like me) hate FaceBook because of the business model. But we must understand that FaceBook is a useful service. So any discussion about #DeleteFacebook needs to propose an alternative. The problem is that, in order to get around the "advertiser pays" model, people must be willing to accept some other model. Possibilities are a pay service, or a service where you host the data yourself and control it. The latter has been the way the web worked for decades. My friends and I all had "home pages" on our "web sites." There have been alternatives before, like Diaspora but none have gained critical mass. Oh wait look! Here's a list of them: Distributed social networking.
At the risk of making this a rant: Internet users today seem to have no concept that "web sites" are anything other than things that corporations buy. Some of those nice corporations let you put stuff on those sites, either for a fee or in exchange for intrusive monitoring. That's not how the web works. I've had my own web site for 20 years, and it costs me about $5/month. This idea that we should have our email addresses all at sites that record, monitor, and sell our emails is preposterous. Back in 1998, many of us predicted that everyone would have their own server in their home that ran their web site. And there would be standard protocols for exchanging social information, running something like OwnCloud. I don't know why that model changed. Is the FaceBook backlash enough to get us back onto that model?
I had a FB account for about 2 months back in 2008 or 9. Then I saw photos one one of my inebriated classmates from a party that had happened over the weekend and the potential for self destruction hit me like a ton of bricks. I figured that potential employers were going to start scraping that stuff and all it takes is a couple dumb pictures to cost you a job. I went through all photos tagged with my name (no, none of that type) and untagged them, then deleted my account and never considered going back.
Nice to see the message of what Facebook has always been seeing the light of day despite selfish hypocrisy driving it.
Also nice to see "social media" getting some love by lynch mobs they've had a hand in cultivating all these years.
How about sharing and mixing our tracking cookies? That also works with pages that have this "facebook-like-my-shit" button that does actually track you, too, even if you have no account.
Nothing's worse than a poisoned data pool. Trust your statistician.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So, they used Facebook data to help Trump win, making facebook and its owner look like idiots at best and Trump/Russian supporters at worst, making the owner toxic to run himself.
That has to be some kind of record in political efficiency.
Anyway, follow the money. Someone is selling FB short.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Tribalism and Pavlovian conditioning are a factor to be sure, but it also boils down to money. Trump is good for ratings.
..and nothing of value was lost.
If you lose your job or don't get a job because of a few dumb pictures then the company is not worth working for. Everybody does dumb things every once in a while. If they don't understand that they are not worth your time.
-- Cheers!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No one is going to say to you "you didn't get the job because of photos of you wearing a dress on FB". You'll never know why you didn't get that job, you just won't get it. Your attitude is fine as long as your parents have a basement you can live in, but if you need a job to eat and pay your bills and other things that adults do, you'll take what you can get, good company or not.
They just know that you're on the Spacing Guild's bad side and there is no way you live there.
Billionaire wants you to use his new app.
Except that the app is not his (OpenWhisperSystems, by Moxie Malinspike),
and it is not exactly new either (4 years old).
In fact, given that Signal uses an open documented protocol,
you're free to use any other compatible software (e.g.: running on Jolla's Sailfish OS).
Unlike with WhatsApp which also have switched to the same encryption protocol, but actively tries to detect and kickban 3rd party apps.
(So you *have* to run a proprietary blob and hope that they have implemented encryption protocol properly and didn't leave a giant backdoor)
---
And Signal protocol is also usable on Facebook's Messenger and Google Allo when these are switched into private or incognito mode.
But those aren't open source so there's no way to test that they don't do things behind your back.
At least facebook isn't actively hunting 3rd party apps, giving rise to stuff as purple-facebook plugin that taps into the same proprietary JSON interface as the Android app - but currently, this plugin lacks the manpower to maintain signal protocol.
And even if purple-facebook starts supporting encryption, you would need *both end-points* to be secure (thus both of them running opensource auditable apps).
There isn't a 3rd party implementation of Google Allo, for now you need to stick with the official blob (and are dependent on their honest and correct implementation of encryption).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Obama and co. asked and got consent from people to download a Facebook app that collected their user/friends/likes data. CA got the info without asking, by pretending to be an academic research app. So, like entirely the same.
Dumbass.
Just use container tabs in Firefox. They're built exactly for this purpose, or even having two accounts on the same website open simultaneously.
was they weren't properly disclosing how the data they scrapped/collected was going to be used before scrapping/collecting it. e.g. they violated FB's Ts&Cs. And they did that because if they disclosed who they were and how the data would be used people a) would opt-out and b) people would know they were being targeted and subsequent advertising efforts would be less effective.
Now that said, why the *bleep* does FB make it possible to collect that much data without clear notices? When I install an app on my droid it tells me exactly what the app is going to collect. The app author has no control over that message, it's managed by the OS.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
...you're a shill, gnick. Is that too trollish for you?
If I was having this discussion on FB, I wouldn't have seen this. None of my friends would have wasted my time with it unless the context made it funny. If somebody did post that, I could choose never to see anything from him again. Score +1 for FB. Thank you for the illustration, AC.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Yes. Abstinence.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
It's like LinkedIn, but for people you haven't worked with.
It *should* just be for connecting people. I got on it late but it still sort of fits that purpose. The snag though is that it does tons of other stuff, and evil stuff. Like ads, tons and tons of ads. That I know longer see because adblock works. And news, which is a completely pointless feature unless I'm doing it wrong; I can see 3 headlines to follow, which is dumb because I can pop up tons of headlines from lots of other websites instead. And a lot of featured links they want you to follow that will tell you the ten weird things to annoy your pet, which is really just another place to shove ads at you (also blocked by adblock). The main problem is the boatloads of monetization that facebook overlays on top of a very simple concept. (I still use google plus, and it works better with fewer ads)
But mostly it just reminds you that your friend had a birthday and you forgot to send a card.
Keybase does not seem as well organized or supported, in my opinion.
There is not much explanation about how they support themselves.
The data is not deleted from the analytics platform. Nothing ever leaves the data warehouse.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
They won't let you pick a fictional place to live. I kept trying to pick Arrakis and it was not accepted.
Don't be a meathead dingbat, everyone knows Archie Bunker lived in Queens, Alice Kramden was the one going to the moon...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Just another day in Paradise
4 years ago he sold his company to FB. Which means he's been waiting 4 years to finish collecting those billions/unloading the FB stock he got. Now that he's no longer financially/contractually tied to FB, he's speaking his mind.
Your ad here. Ask me how!