Slashdot Mirror
Facebook's Plan To Merge WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger Sounds a Privacy Alarm (technologyreview.com)
Facebook's new plan to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger will lead to more data about users being shared between them, a new report warns. The effort to make it easier for people to participate in conversations across its various messaging platforms sounds harmless, but it raises issues about how data will be shared across the platforms, and with third parties. The good news is that the apps will all be required to use end-to-end encryption. MIT Technology Review reports: Facebook says it wants to make it easier for people to communicate across its "ecosystem" of apps. But the real driver here is a commercial one. By making it easier to swap messages, Facebook can mine even more data to target ads with, and come up with more money-spinning services. There's another potential benefit: by integrating its messaging apps more tightly, Facebook can argue it would be harder to spin one or more of them off, as some antitrust campaigners think it should be forced to do.
Yeah... legitimate!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
No. Messaging is a service. They don't provide any content.
In an ideal world the messaging protocols would be open. Maybe that should be the focus of any antitrust case.
You're using these FB products and you're worried about PRIVACY, like, at all!?!? Hahahahaha, morons. The fuck out of here with this, anyone who gives a fuck wouldn't touch FB with anything but a subpoena.
In an ideal world the messaging protocols would be open.
They are... Facebook has no monopoly of any kind outside their site.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
They can also tap into users that don't use all of those platforms. e.g. I used WA for a few years before FB bought them. I abandoned Instagram several years ago, and have never used FB. BUT - now they will be able to more accurately track me, because they will have access to my WA data in FB. I am sure this will be done in a straight-forward way with an amended TOS that I may or may not ever see.
Yes, I can see the efficiencies of combining the back-ends from an operational perspective, but that is only a very small piece of the pie. Being able to more completely track people's information and triangulate on them is much more valuable.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
if you used any of these. I think I still have a BookFace account. I log into it once in a while to check to make sure my friends aren't dead. Inst and WA? Never signed up for either. F BookFace and it's analytics.
What users want this again? And why do I want to be msg'd by some facebook fag when I'm on whatsapp? I don't. I'm on whatsapp for THAT, and only that, functionality. I deleted my facebook account 5 years ago.
Somebody believes they aren't doing this with everything already?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Definitely not a railroad, closer to a phone company...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System/
It's going from 150 dB to 153 dB. But it was already pretty loud to begin with...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
We should be asking that
1. All the central messenger servers be placed under the rotating (5 year?) control of a non-profit organization such as Mozilla, Apache, or Wikipedia.
2. All protocols utilize end-to-end encryption.
3. Protocol must be published as an open standard.
Users can be free to use any (well behaved) third-party client to connect to those services. The producers of those clients will be strongly encouraged (not to mention incentivized to donate to the organization that is running the central server).
Not even. Closer to a TV show that you can tune out
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I only use WhatsApp because it's not integrated with Facebook. I shut my FB account years ago. Time to look for a WhatsApp replacement..
The advertisers are the paying customers. What you want doesn't matter.
If a particular surveillance product stops producing quality data (for a low cost of acquisition), it will get merged or even shit-canned.
It is toxic and getting more so. Also, you really do NOT need it.
Folks, I quit WhatsApp for Telegram when all this was announced. I haven't looked back. Please join me.
I agree. That's the first thing I thought upon seeing the headline. "Who thinks they haven't been doing this since they day they bought these companies"? And, "How can I find these people, because I have a bridge to sell them."
I don't respond to AC's.
Absolute nonsense. You can use email and a phone to convince your friends to use a different messenger service. There are many of them, with better security and privacy than facebook. People stay with facebook by choice. Nobody is forcing them, or you.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Is their plan.
Steal information.
Eliminate privacy
Make Zuckerberg rich!
Corporatism != Free Market
Do yourself a favor and don't comment when you don't know about a subject.
At least then it won't be so PAINFULLY OBVIOUS that you're quite stupid..
Unless it's your intention, that may have the opposite effect than the one your looking for.
"People double down ... Especially when people feel threatened or if they are being treated as if they are stupid." -from another slashdot story
Some are using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp for different groups of people. Like Facebook are for talking to your grandparents and don't mix them. :)
L'Idiot
If I invite a passerby into my house every day, and freely give them all of by valuables every day, sometimes every hour - who is to say that person has stolen anything?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Now, if it could be proven that facebook conspired to get ISPs to prohibit the poor class from operating servers of their own, then I'll give you antitrust.
Heh, the ISPs conspire amongst themselves in that arena. This is the only way the internet "giant" can exist.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
WhatsApp is promoted as a private, encrypted messaging app. Messenger is part of the Facebook advertising platform, which is almost the polar opposite. Instagram is like Twitter for cat pics, or something, I'm not sure how that fits in there.
Well, to me it's a "trust" issue. Everything owned by facebook is part of their advertising platform. Personally, I think it's better if you don't trust them (certainly not in their promotional material), and work with that while looking for something more acceptable. The government has no place here. Content is none of their business.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I think this is super awesome news. Creepy Facebook is going to shut down all the actually-popular services they bought, and try to force the userbase onto some shitty, hacked together new platform that no one actually wants. They're going to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs!
One good thing about Creepy Facebook and Big Brother Google turning openly/brazenly evil: at the same time they are also turning bureaucratic and stupid. Faceboot in particular may yet destroy it's own business before Uncle Sam gets around to banning their data rape-based business model.
https://telegram.org/ has a huge advantage over WhatssApp: your phone number is not shared with all members of a group (I avoid to participate in WhatsApp groups just for this)
Check out Matrix, it does the same as Telegram but is FOSS and distributed also on server side. Telegram is closed and owned by a Russian company. Matrix also supports bridging TG channels to Matrix side quite easily so existing communities can be merged. Telegram is not as evil as WhatsApp or others, but Matrix goes all the way. I closed my telegram clients a couple months ago and haven't looked back since.
"The good news is that the apps will all be required to use end-to-end encryption. ... By making it easier to swap messages, Facebook can mine even more data to target ads"
how can it be end-to-end encrypted while allowing mining of data for targetted ads?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Whoever you add on Whatsapp will almost immediately show up on your Facebook friend suggestions, it would be extremely stupid of them to spend billions buying Whatsapp and not mine that data. Pretty sure everything you say on Whatsapp is already tracked by Facebook
End to end enceyption just means they cant view your messages in transit. They own the app. That means they can still view the message at either end point, plus display whatever ads they want in the chat window. I have no evidence that they DO spy on us at the endpoints, but they certainly CAN.
That's why the protocol isn't open. If I could write my own app to use the WhatsApp protocol they would lose all ability to spy on me or advertise to me. Even if they're not doing it now, they definitely want to have the option in the future.
Facebook should learn from the food industry. If every single product Kraft, Unilever, or Nestle owned had their name in bold letters with what the name of the product was underneath it would sound alarm bells. FB's brand obviously is one of mistrust now so by folding them into each other is pure folly.
The EU clearly said WA and FB could not be merged. Interesting what will happen.
The thing is we don't have to use WhatsApp's protocol. We just have to convince people to use the better mousetrap. It's the old *lead a horse to water* cliche. That's not facebook's fault. We don't need the government for any of that, except maybe a central consumer report type thing where you can find advice on the best messengers.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You needn't get all emotional about it. None of that matters. They are not an internet service provider. They can't cut your wire or make you pay more if you use a different service. Until they can, there is no anti-trust issue, and there you would have to go after the ISP.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
That would be ideal, yes. Matrix, fpr example, has a lot of promise as a secure distributed platform not controlled by active. The issue as always is momentum. Same reason we still have POTS.
I'm aware of the shadow profile concept. I simply meant that this would "round out" their tracking so they can get more meat on those they can't directly track.
I would bet what they know about me isn't very complete. Many of my friends don't use FB, and if they do it doesn't have anything to do with me. I don't go out to eat very often, my friends don't take pics of me and put them online - and if they did, I don't have an account for them to tag.
It does concern me how willing everyone else seems to be about sharing the inane details of their lives online, including the details about everyone around them.
I can't stop it and I know it happens, but I do what I can to avoid just offering up my private information to companies that have no right to have that information.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
End to End Encryption doesn't even mean that. Just means encryption is used along the path. if they have a key that can read it, all the encryption in the world wont help you