Point taken, but I feel like going into details at this stage is redundant. There have been probably hundreds of discussions on this site regarding this topic. Books have been written about Facebook's and Zuckerberg's absent moral compass. To wit, from three days ago:
"While Zuckerberg reportedly wanted to prevent "explicit" conversations with younger teens, a February 2024 meeting summary shows he believed Meta should be "less restrictive than proposed" and wanted to "allow adults to engage in racier conversation on topics like sex." He also rejected parental controls that would have let families disable the AI feature entirely.
Nick Clegg, Meta's former head of global policy, questioned the approach in internal emails, asking if the company really wanted these products "known for" sexual interactions with teens, warning of "inevitable societal backlash."
Let's assume you're right that going into details is redundant. In that case, however, so is the generic putdown.
Put differently: even if you don't owe megacorps that don't follow basic human decency better, you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
Anyone blindly believing every random allegation is also a fool, especially when the app in question has been thoroughly reverse engineered and you can freely check for yourself that it's using the same protocol as Signal for encryption
Allegations against a company who circumvented Android's security to track users?
I don't have any proof that Meta stores WhatsApp messages but I feel it in my bones that at the very least tried to do so. And if ever that comes to light, precisely nobody will be surprised.
>And if ever that comes to light, precisely nobody will be surprised.
The amount of ambient cynicism on the internet basically makes this a meaningless statement. You could plausibly make the same claim for tons of other conspiracy theories, eg. JFK was assassinated by the CIA/FBI, Bush did 9/11, covid was intentionally engineered by the chinese/US government, etc.
That raises the question of why not just use Signal and avoid a company whose founder thinks we're all "dumbfucks" and has a long history of scandals and privacy violations?
The evidence is pretty clear that Facebook wants to do everything they legally can to track and monitor people, and they're perfectly okay crossing the line and going to court to find the boundaries.
Using a company like that for encrypted messaging seems like an unnecessary risk. Maybe they're not decrypting it, but they're undoubtedly tracking everything else about the conversation because that's what they do.
They got caught torrenting unbelievable amounts of content, an act that committed even just a few times can get my home Internet shut down with no recourse (best outcome). Literally nothing happened. Combine the fact that nothing legally significant ever happens to them with zuckerburg’s colossal ego and complete lack of ethical foundation, and you have quite the recipe.
And I’m not even getting into the obvious negative social/political repercussions that have come directly from Facebook and their total lack of accountability/care. They make the world worse. Aside from the inconvenience for hobbyist communities and other groups, all of which should leave Facebook anyway, we would lose nothing of value if Facebook was shut down today. The world would get slightly better.
If you have to do a thing that obscures your act it doesn’t change the fact that there are rules for me and not them. We know for a fact they did it. Did their ISP threaten them? Did they get their internet service shut off?
Edit: they already won their first case in June against authors. I am very curious to see how that lawsuit goes. Obviously we don’t know the results yet but I would be incredibly surprised to see them lose and/or have to “undo” the training. That’s a difficult world to imagine, especially under the current US admin. Smart money is the damage is done and they’ll find some new way to be awful or otherwise break rules we can’t.
The true wealthy live by an entirely different set of rules than the rest of us, especially when they are willing to prostrate themselves to the US President.
This has always been true to some degree, but is both more true than ever (there used to be some limits based on accepted decorum) plus they just dont even try to hide it anymore.
I think the not hiding it part is what’s starting to stick in my craw. We all knew it was happening on some level, but we felt that there were at least some boundaries somewhere out there even if they were further than ours. Now it just feels like the federal government basically doesn’t exist and companies can do whatever they want to us.
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. We're trying for something different here.
Point taken, but I feel like going into details at this stage is redundant. There have been probably hundreds of discussions on this site regarding this topic. Books have been written about Facebook's and Zuckerberg's absent moral compass. To wit, from three days ago:
https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/news/meta-ceo-mark-zuckerber...
"While Zuckerberg reportedly wanted to prevent "explicit" conversations with younger teens, a February 2024 meeting summary shows he believed Meta should be "less restrictive than proposed" and wanted to "allow adults to engage in racier conversation on topics like sex." He also rejected parental controls that would have let families disable the AI feature entirely. Nick Clegg, Meta's former head of global policy, questioned the approach in internal emails, asking if the company really wanted these products "known for" sexual interactions with teens, warning of "inevitable societal backlash."
Let's assume you're right that going into details is redundant. In that case, however, so is the generic putdown.
Put differently: even if you don't owe megacorps that don't follow basic human decency better, you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Anyone blindly believing every random allegation is also a fool, especially when the app in question has been thoroughly reverse engineered and you can freely check for yourself that it's using the same protocol as Signal for encryption
Allegations against a company who circumvented Android's security to track users?
I don't have any proof that Meta stores WhatsApp messages but I feel it in my bones that at the very least tried to do so. And if ever that comes to light, precisely nobody will be surprised.
https://cybersecuritynews.com/track-android-users-covertly/
>And if ever that comes to light, precisely nobody will be surprised.
The amount of ambient cynicism on the internet basically makes this a meaningless statement. You could plausibly make the same claim for tons of other conspiracy theories, eg. JFK was assassinated by the CIA/FBI, Bush did 9/11, covid was intentionally engineered by the chinese/US government, etc.
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That raises the question of why not just use Signal and avoid a company whose founder thinks we're all "dumbfucks" and has a long history of scandals and privacy violations?
The evidence is pretty clear that Facebook wants to do everything they legally can to track and monitor people, and they're perfectly okay crossing the line and going to court to find the boundaries.
Using a company like that for encrypted messaging seems like an unnecessary risk. Maybe they're not decrypting it, but they're undoubtedly tracking everything else about the conversation because that's what they do.
They got caught torrenting unbelievable amounts of content, an act that committed even just a few times can get my home Internet shut down with no recourse (best outcome). Literally nothing happened. Combine the fact that nothing legally significant ever happens to them with zuckerburg’s colossal ego and complete lack of ethical foundation, and you have quite the recipe.
And I’m not even getting into the obvious negative social/political repercussions that have come directly from Facebook and their total lack of accountability/care. They make the world worse. Aside from the inconvenience for hobbyist communities and other groups, all of which should leave Facebook anyway, we would lose nothing of value if Facebook was shut down today. The world would get slightly better.
>an act that committed even just a few times can get my home Internet shut down with no recourse (best outcome).
No, the best (and also most likely) outcome is you using a VPN and nothing happens, like 99.9% of pirates out there.
>Literally nothing happened.
Isn't there a lawsuit in the works?
If you have to do a thing that obscures your act it doesn’t change the fact that there are rules for me and not them. We know for a fact they did it. Did their ISP threaten them? Did they get their internet service shut off?
Edit: they already won their first case in June against authors. I am very curious to see how that lawsuit goes. Obviously we don’t know the results yet but I would be incredibly surprised to see them lose and/or have to “undo” the training. That’s a difficult world to imagine, especially under the current US admin. Smart money is the damage is done and they’ll find some new way to be awful or otherwise break rules we can’t.
3 replies →
> Literally nothing happened.
The true wealthy live by an entirely different set of rules than the rest of us, especially when they are willing to prostrate themselves to the US President.
This has always been true to some degree, but is both more true than ever (there used to be some limits based on accepted decorum) plus they just dont even try to hide it anymore.
I think the not hiding it part is what’s starting to stick in my craw. We all knew it was happening on some level, but we felt that there were at least some boundaries somewhere out there even if they were further than ours. Now it just feels like the federal government basically doesn’t exist and companies can do whatever they want to us.