Comment by hypeatei
1 year ago
Big tech and telecommunications companies are effectively miniature arms of the U.S. government at this point.
As seen by the "Protect America Act" of 2007[0], the government will retroactively cover their own ass and your companies' ass if deemed important enough to the intelligence apparatus. There isn't a chance in hell that Meta would be brought criminal charges for wiretapping.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_America_Act_of_2007
I think The Onion nailed it in 2011:
https://www.theonion.com/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-...
Which is clearly a red flag operation so that whenever someone serious tries to tout this, they'll be rebuffed as it's an article in the Onion. Those clever bastards!
That, or scathing satire has been a mainstay at The Onion longer than political consternation.
I'm assuming they were doing it for the federal government at this point. There's no reason for them to spy on another app, they can hire almost any developer they want.
Hiring another dev does not give them access to the raw numbers. It's not the same thing at all