37 ms·

WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

1086 points by coloneltcb 9y ago

Sonnol53 9y ago
did he leave after the acquisition? or is he still involved in the company?
- mistahchris 9y ago
  > In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion, making its co-founders — Jan Koum and Brian Acton — very wealthy men. Koum continues to lead the company, but Acton quit earlier this year to start his own foundation. It's in the first two sentences. Action is one of the co-founders of WhatsApp
  - hannasanarion 9y ago
    What he was asking is the last sentence. He quit WhatsApp to help make Signal.
- tptacek 9y ago
  Acton recently donated $50MM to Open Whisper Systems (Signal) and is now involved with their board.
swyx 9y ago
technically he did start a Facebook competitor (loosely speaking), he just happened to have been bought by them!
- hannasanarion 9y ago
  And then he quit his company to work on another competitor! He gave 40 million dollars to and works on Signal, the app that WhatsApp is basically a skin of anyway.
  - hprotagonist 9y ago
    50 million, i believe.
walrus01 9y ago
I would be very curious to learn what sort of non-disparagement clauses existed in the Whatsapp/Facebook purchase contract. And how exactly they were worded.
- fancyfacebook 9y ago
  I don't think anyone at Facebook has the bandwidth to deal with a mean tweet from an old employee right now. If rumors are to be believed mass resignations are coming.
  - walrus01 9y ago
    Probably not, but it can mean a great deal if it gets media traction, and Acton would go in the category of "founder made into a billionaire" rather than "employee". It's not like he was some random engineer in a pool of a hundred engineers.
  - Alex3917 9y ago
    > If rumors are to be believed mass resignations are coming. Is this just inside knowledge, or has it been published anywhere yet?
    - fancyfacebook 9y ago
      No I have nothing to do with facebook despite this randomly generated username
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Where did you hear this, and what's the reason? Just various rats taking their millions or billions and getting out while the getting a good?
  - flylib 9y ago
    unlikely
gnicholas 9y ago
If we use Twitter to announce that people should #deletefacebook, what social network do we use in the event that it becomes necessary to #deletetwitter?
- walrus01 9y ago
  you ssh into your own trusted openbsd system, run bitchx and connect to efnet, just like the good lord intended back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth. i am only partially sarcastic here.
  - lgregg 9y ago
    you lost me after openbsd.
    - 2RTZZSro 9y ago
      One can not lose what one has never had
    - danielvf 9y ago
      Definitions: bitchx - an IRC client: http://www.bitchx.com/ http://www.bitchx.com/ efnet - one of the oldest IRC networks, founded in 1990
    - portofcall 9y ago
      IRC baby, and efnet is an old network you can connect to. Bitchx is an irc client, free last I checked. To GP, are eggdrop bots still a thing?
      - walrus01 9y ago
        I believe they are, though I haven't checked in a long time. Seems to be semi actively maintained. https://github.com/eggheads/eggdrop https://github.com/eggheads/eggdrop
    - walrus01 9y ago
chimen 9y ago
Smart tactic since Facebook is on fire and Whatsapp is directly pulled into discussions concerning privacy and whatnot. Curious if he can dish out some facts to backup that tweet or it's just a "convenient" time to shed some light over your new product which is basically another..Whatsapp
matte_black 9y ago
Don’t let billionaires tell you what to do.
- walrus01 9y ago
  the whatsapp cofounders strike me as accidental billionaires, it's not like we're talking about standard oil, jp morgan, the louis dreyfus company or a typical old money davos-attendee billionaire.
  - paulcole 9y ago
    >accidental billionaires Not sure if you were being clever but that’s the title of a book about Facebook’s history.
  - spyspy 9y ago
    You weren’t alive for the founding of any of those companies.
- deviationblue 9y ago
  Aren't we supposed to though? Because they've been anointed with HIGH!!! IQQQQ and money.
isostatic 9y ago
Jan Koum Is entertaining. He was a frequent flyer and wanted to build an app that could tell people what time zone the person they are talking to was in, that they were on a flight, etc He posted on flyertalk about it and got a "meh, you have to install something? Why bother?" response 5 years later, as a frequent flyer he was into collecting miles and using them on tickets, and he had managed to get business class flights to mobile world congress in Barcelona, but while the deal was going through to sell whatsapp to Facebook there were a couple of delays. Nothing major. He thought to himself "these are non changeable tickets, they'd better get a move on", then reflected how absurd a position he was in. 1: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology/952359-thoughts-about-my-free-iphone-app-whatsapp.html https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology/952359-tho...
- barbs 9y ago
  Hahaha, I love some of the replies when he revisted the thread 4 years later: " Isn't this one of the apps that take all your contacts from your device and upload them to a remote server? Since I have many non-contact entries in my address book (e.g. a contact card with DOB's, passport numbers, etc.), I'm reluctant to use such an app since it would indiscriminately take all this personal information and store it on a remote server. I stick with Skype b/c basically, by logging in with a distinct login/password (as opposed to a MS ID linked to my other MS programs and accounts) and saving only limited information in Skype's address book, I'm limited the amount of data Skype would have and could take and save." Odd to think some people used to believe Skype was more secure than WhatsApp, though to be fair, WhatsApp used to send (and store I believe) messages in plaintext.
  - walrus01 9y ago
    It's really funny when you look now at what are the default app permissions in a standard consumer configuration of Windows 10 Home. And what Microsoft by default allows Skype to use. It's basically fully enmeshed with peoples' contact lists, and for business users, whatever other features of Office365 they keep squeezing skype into.
- avree 9y ago
laurex 9y ago
Alert: this comment may be seen as self serving. I work on an app that has been gaining popularity precisely because it's a way to keep in touch with family and friends with no social media aspect (called Marco Polo, a video walkie talkie). I'm curious if there is going to be enough of a backlash to return to more organic face to face (and actually interactive) communication versus broadcast mode and pretending to be something that will seem impressive. That seems to be true of our users anyway.
- whalesalad 9y ago
  No. This is a fad and will blow over in a few days. No one cares that this happened outside of the security community.
  - dpwm 9y ago
    > No. This is a fad and will blow over in a few days. I'm not sure you're right. This is spilling into all areas. We don't even know if CA has done all the damage it is going to yet. > No one cares that this happened outside of the security community. This has very little to do with security and very much to do with Facebook's policies.
    - skellera 9y ago
      Policies that were ended awhile ago.
- tomrod 9y ago
  My family loves this app but I've heartily resisted due to privacy concerns. What data do you collect now, and what data do you intend to collect in the future?
- asteli 9y ago
  That was part of Snapchat's charm, I think. No pressure to perform, just do silly things with your friends. Then Snap needed to make money, so they got into the content and the advertising and added Stories and 'influencers,' and it's basically the same as any other social network now.
propman 9y ago
I don't get what changed? We've knows Facebook tracks everything, we've known Google does the same thing. If you've ever developed anything in messenger even today, it's amazing how much information is given. We know all these sites track everything you do outside of Facebook too. Everyone has been trying to get them to stop, we know it's illegal to build a profile on someone but Facebook gets around that by building a profile but not assigning it to your direct name. Regulations should have sprouted in Obama years, but the admin and tech execs were too buddy buddy and no way Trump promotes this because it makes him look like he is accepting Russia interfered and it's not politically expedient for him to do so. Same thing with Harvey Weinstein and all the metoo that was known by everyone. I mean I'm happy with all of this coming out, but why now? How is it so coordinated? Usually these guys pay journalists for fluff pr counter views or to shut down stories. Weinstein did. Is this Data just a metoo thing? Is google next?
- coolso 9y ago
  > I don't get what changed? What changed is it helped the current President get elected. The only people who really used to care about Facebook's behavior were people in niche online tech circles like HN. But then the election happened, and the media has been beating the "Facebook is evil" drum very loudly ever since.
- justboxing 9y ago
  > We've knows Facebook tracks everything Not disputing this, but when you say 'we' I think you mean the < 5% (maybe even < 1%) of techies and lawyers and journalists in the world who really really care about their data and privacy. The rest 95% either don't know, or could care less even if they know. I've told my non-techie fam and friends about data harvesting, privacy, and how facebook tracks everything, only to be ignored or outright ridiculed ("Oh you techies are so paranoid"). Many of my friends in India (where I was raised) and elsewhere used to freely post their phone # and home address on my wall asking me to call them / send them stuff from US. I don't think this 95% population really cares or gives a sh*t.
  - walrus01 9y ago
iliketosleep 9y ago
It's quite ironic that this is the man who sold WhatsApp and its enormous userbase to facebook, creating a total lock in to the facebook ecosystem for many who do not even use facebook. He would have known what kind of a company facebook is, so I don't understand the contradiction between selling Whatsapp to them and now caring about these issues. Anyway, I am still glad he's getting behind the #deletefacebook movement.
- tehlike 9y ago
  He started a company, and made a delicious exit. Him becoming a privacy advocate maybe was his secondary goal yhat now became primary. Or maybe with his founder he had disagrements but he sold anyway because what else could he do if everyone but you wants that exit?
- ACow_Adonis 9y ago
  You really don't understand? Let me spell it out for you: "Money makes people do things they might not otherwise want to do if there was no money involved. Lots of money can make people do more things than little money... Once you have a lot of money, the marginal benefit of more money becomes less, meaning the incentive trade off is lessened, and you can now spend your time talking about things further down your heirearchy of needs/value system"
- 77ko 9y ago
  He owned 20% of Whatsapp, so its possible he didn't want to sell to FB. Only 50.1% of the shareholders presumably had to want to sell to overrule the others. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Acton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Acton
  - efuquen 9y ago
    I think if he was against the sale he would have said that.
- apotheothesomai 9y ago
  Jan's commitment to privacy motivated WhatsApp. Jan and Acton always have believed in it strongly. That said, if your company has 50 people, and FB offers nearly $20B. How exactly do you tell those people that you refused an acquisition that huge, because you personally feel that FB is bad. Could you deprive an engineer who has worked his ass off for 4 years >$100M? Anyway, I was contracting for WhatsApp, when the acquisition happened. Conversations took place, but I'm not going to quote anyone.
hnaccy 9y ago
I'll take it but I'm still somewhat confused about how sudden this pushback against facebook has been. What did people think they did before now...
- tlarkworthy 9y ago
  The effect on democratic processes ceased to be hypothetical.
odammit 9y ago
Will deleting Facebook actually remove your data though? I’ve deleted mine a few times and then inevitably have had to use OAuth for some random site I’d auth’d to and lo-and-behold it works and all my data is back. Last time I went through that flow was maybe a year ago. I always assumed they did some sort of paranoid delete or “anonymized” the data.
- bassman9000 9y ago
  Nope The only way to win is not to play
  - pervycreeper 9y ago
    Not even. They create shadow profiles for non-users.
  - criddell 9y ago
    I think it actually does delete your data now. They added that in response to upcoming GDPR regulations.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  I never signed up for it and they probably have a profile on me simply because of the connections to people who have FB. That always creeped me out. Wonder if there is something in the GDPR legislation to get all the info they have on me and make them erase it.
  - odammit 9y ago
    I only originally signed up because I was single and dating and girls found it “creepy” I didnt have a Facebook. Peer pressure, man.
    - newyankee 9y ago
      You know it is almost impossible to get arranged married in India without a fb profile as average joes think i have something to hide when i do not have an active profile, i have not even deleted it completely yet i am apparently 'suspect' in the eyes of the urban society that overshares
deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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sqdbps 9y ago
That is ungrateful on his part. Much like #deleteuber this #deletefacebook tantrum is about Trump. Facebook was roundly lauded for helping Obama get elected.
avs733 9y ago
With the way they create shadow profiles for non-users, I'm a strong believer that the opportunity with facebook is to feed them as much bad data as possible and let them deal with filtering it out.
meri_dian 9y ago
As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the vast majority of people really don't care what data Facebook collects. Addresses, phone numbers, etc are all publicly available already. Products you like, your political affiliations, etc, not a big deal to most people, not because they aren't aware, but because they don't care. So ask yourselves, if the vast majority don't care, perhaps it's not really that big of a deal. And maybe, just maybe, Cambridge Analytica has a target painted on its back because it helped get Trump elected, and we're being manipulated into hating them now by media that is engaged in all out war with the Trump administration.
- pmlnr 9y ago
  > So ask yourselves, if the vast majority don't care, perhaps it's not really that big of a deal. That's not the question to ask. They question to ask is how do we make them care?
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    Why should they care? I'll be honest, it doesn't bother me much. Why should I care?
axd 9y ago
If this isn't the opportunity for Diaspora* to become a thing in the public's mind, I don't know what is. We have to use this in order to move to a better platform for social media.
- criddell 9y ago
  Diaspora is a non-starter. Look at their getting started page. Step one - choose a pod. You just lost 90% of the people that might be interested. They need to get rid of that step.
  - noarchy 9y ago
    This would likewise affect Mastodon. One of its arguable strengths is also a weakness, in that regard.
fareesh 9y ago
Despite the barrage of negative stories that would have ended nearly every other Presidential campaign - ranging from accusations of racism, misogyny, treason, incompetence, mental instability - despite all of it, tens of millions of Americans absolutely love President Trump. I cannot imagine how utterly frustrating it must be for them to watch the media bounce from story after story in some convoluted attempt to explain why they voted the way they did - from Russian hacking to white supremacy to Facebook ads to Facebook data. This is just one more in a long line of justifications when the most likely reasonable explanation is that he is beloved by millions, not just in the USA but around the world. The same goes for Brexit. "Your side won because the Russians and this data company and Facebook made you vote that way. We're going to make sure this never happens again!" It's unfortunate that in the aftermath of polarizing and controversial decisions like these, this kind of rhetoric will now drive people further apart, because one side refuses to accept the reality of the other's opinions, and dismisses them with conspiracy theories. Today people are pretending to be shocked that Facebook shares data with apps through the developer API. Most of the permissions being talked about were removed a long time ago. What is happening now is basically vindictive hatred for Facebook from the tens of millions who feel wronged and cheated by electoral results that they lost fair and square.
- aptwebapps 9y ago
  The election was won by a very slim margin. The core of Trump's support may have been with him regardless but they weren't enough to win. It's the actions on the margin that matter here. Also, as other's have pointed out, there are a lot of other problems with social media in general and Facebook in particular. Russian meddling in the election is the spark that is lighting the fire but the fuel was already there. (That last sentence optimistic to an extent that might not be warranted).
  - foxh0und 9y ago
    Exactly, he won the election thanks to 80000 votes in three states. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/donald-trump-will-be-president-thanks-to-80000-people-in-three-states/?utm_term=.827af77a0a2d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...
jiggliemon 9y ago
All of this Facebook hubub and broad public outcry is really all owed to the election of Trump. If Trump handnt leveraged CA, we’d still all be happy and fat on out individual bliss boxes – patting ourselves on the back – because our side [a la Obama] was smart enough to use this technology to our advantage. Now when the enemy has (and use) the same technology, we’re forced to cry foul. Demand oversight. Demand regulation. The greater public is OK with this technology. They’re Ok with sweeping data collection (Snowden Files). They’re OK with mining personal data (Facebook, Google, etc). Thy’re OK with 1984, so long as it’s their sides version of 1984. It takes a Trump for your side to realize how shitty things got while you were enamored with charisma on your bliss box. Edit: typing on my phone. Fixing grammar.
- cabaalis 9y ago
  I think the best thing that has come out of the election of Donald Trump is that many people are now excited about the idea of constitutionally limiting the power of the executive branch. That idea seemed to have been forgotten for the past few administrations. Even when I agreed with Obama or Bush, I was very disappointed when they would use innovative methods to single-handedly override the will of congress or the judiciary.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    I wasn’t. If Congress is being obstructionist and petty, as they undoubtedly were during the Obama years, the executive branch still needs to do its job, which is to lead the country forward. That said, I agree with the spirit of your post, which is that every now and then we should scale that power back.
  - dmfdmf 9y ago
    The courts need to reign in the use of Executive Orders.
    - Helmet 9y ago
      And the Congress needs to reign in the Courts' legislative activism.
sn41 9y ago
I guess maybe it is time to re-evaluate Web 2.0? User-generated content was supposed to be empowering. But we have ignored the powerful amplifying effects of positive feedback and "echo chambers" artificially induced by such "customised news". Maybe it is a bad idea to present customised news, what we need are diverse views. Maybe it is a bad idea to tack on voting systems and like buttons with every comment and tweet.
RyanShook 9y ago
Calling out the company that made you a billionaire is such a brave move... inspiring.
samstave 9y ago
Serious question, the US constantly states what side of a vote some lame senator or rep is on, but you never here anything about who is the makeup of the electoral college in msm - what their tax returns look like and who is paying them off. Why? So, have one electoral college rep release their finances, and then you know the true state of politics
- learc83 9y ago
  > but you never here anything about who is the makeup of the electoral college in msm - what their tax returns look like and who is paying them off. Why? Because electors are temporary and almost completely symbolic. In the vast majority of states if the Republican candidate wins, electors nominated by the Republican party go to D.C. If the Democratic candidate wins, Democratic electors go. The respective parties pick hardcore supporters who will almost certainly vote for the party that nominated them, and in 29 states they are legally obligated to do so. No one cares about them because they never change the outcome. There have been a handful of times when electors have voted against the will of their states, but they've only changed the outcome once, in 1834. The Democratic nominee for Vice President should have won that year, but 23 electors chose not to vote for VP, so it went to the Senate, who voted for the Democratic nominee anyway (so the electors didn't actually alter the outcome).
77ko 9y ago
Brian Acton's post[0] about the Signal Foundation[1] makes it sound like they could play in the same space as Facebook: > Of course, this is just the beginning. There is a lot of work to be done to make our dream a reality and we will continually be asking our peers, our community, and ourselves if there are more effective ways to serve the public good. In the immediate future we are focused on adding to our talented-but-small team and improving Signal Messenger. Our long-term vision is for the Signal Foundation to provide multiple offerings that align with our core mission. That will come in time. The tagline on the foundations splash page, To develop open source privacy technology that protects free expression sounds like it could mean a facebook type thingamajig, since what is FB but providing free expression to the masses? [0]: https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/ [1]: https://signalfoundation.org/ https://signalfoundation.org/
- bitxbitxbitcoin 9y ago
  That would be an interesting pivot.
- pteredactyl 9y ago
  Facebook has been using Signal Foundation's protocol in Whatsapp since last April https://www.fastcompany.com/3067468/why-open-whisper-systems-is-one-of-the-most-innovative-companies-o https://www.fastcompany.com/3067468/why-open-whisper-systems...
- 1337biz 9y ago
  At this point I am sceptical that any communication platform can succeed beyond niche communities unless they go after the teenager market.
gexla 9y ago
There's a group of rich people mentioned in this post and now they are telling their followers to delete FB _after_ getting rich. If we were to ask them how FB plans on making money when they started their involvement with the company, then monetizing user data would have been the answer. This is something the world will just have to get used to. We're past the point of no return. As individuals, we can do a lot to protect our privacy, but it's a lot of work.
fzeroracer 9y ago
So I want to cut off an argument at the pass here. Specifically: "Everyone knows Facebook already gathers all of your data." We, as people here both on HN and people in the tech world take for granted the fact that we both know and understand how our systems work (mostly). We know that companies package and sell our data, that if something is 'free' the real subscription fee is what they collect on us during each use. But there is a significant population that simply doesn't know, think it's too much of a 'conspiracy theory' or don't care. My parents, as much as I love them, are absolutely hair-tearingly bad at anything related to computers. They've had issues with scammers and Microsoft phoning them up so that they can upgrade their computer's ram. When I tell them about what kind of things Facebook does, they don't understand. They don't get why their data is so valuable ('well so what they get my phone number not like it affects me') and a lot of the time they have trouble understanding what they actually do. Breaking stories like this is not necessarily surprising no, not to us. But it raises awareness and makes people wonder what companies actually are doing with their data. I doubt it'll result in the bubble that is Facebook finally popping but opportunities like this are always great times to pull aside your family and let them know why things like this matter. And in this current environment people are hyper-aware of things like this possibly more than ever before. So I don't think the argument should be based around normalizing this sort of behavior by Facebook and other companies but rather revealing it to those that might not be aware.
- TarpitCarnivore 9y ago
  To add onto this, I believe a large amount of consumers of these products assumed they were only accessing their own data. This story is highlighting how these companies further connect dots between you _and_ all your connections. This is where I feel people didn't recognize the larger scale of all of this, especially with progmatic programming for ads. Any time you try to outline how ad networks work w/r/t to "FB is recording us" you're met with "yeah buts". I think a lot of people didn't want to believe this was possible, but now have no choice but to accept it is very much happening.
dingo_bat 9y ago
After selling his customers to Facebook for $20 billion. Cool story bro!
- Double_a_92 9y ago
  How could he have denied that much money?
- heedlessly2 9y ago
  let's be honest, everyone would like to become a billionaire.
lovelearning 9y ago
While I agree with the co-founder, I wish he'd also suggested deleting WhatsApp given that it's become a tool for many people spreading lies, disinformation, propaganda, faked photos, fake videos and hatred.
exolymph 9y ago
Crossposting what I said on Twitter: > My contrarian impulse is that I want y'all to stop dunking on Acton for this tweet. (Context: One of the WhatsApp cofounders who sold to Facebook and made lots of money.) People's views change over time and it can take years for a conviction to form and then crystalize. > It's very possible that Acton is burning bridges with that tweet. Don't assume that he loses nothing by speaking up now.
- jonbarker 9y ago
  This is true. He could have just sailed off on his social media yacht and laughed at everyone.
luckydude 9y ago
This will get downvoted but whatever. I predicted all of this a decade ago and I refused to be part of it. All my friends laughed at me and said I was crazy. Maybe I am but I don't do all that social media shit because if you don't know where they are making money, they are making it off of you. And that's creepy. I'm willing to pay for value, but I'm not on board with them making money by looking over my shoulder. It's not about me doing something illegal, I don't do that, I'm fine, it's just creepy. That social media stuff is like dopamine, feels good, but is not good for you.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  It's funny seeing the New York Times and others rail against Facebook like this and yet they still don't have the conviction to #deletefacebook. Many of the excuses read like those of drug addicts.
knowThySelfx 9y ago
Delete Facebook? Then what about WhatsApp? Isn't it owned by FB now ;)
thetruthseeker1 9y ago
Every company has its ups and downs. Some downs or negative things warrant their demise. I don’t think what FB did here is worth calling burn the witch on them or actively trying to kill them, and I do hope FB are able to learn from this and change for the better. Now, that said, I do think there is an underlying point others ops have alluded to: The disdain for Trump and everything that could have helped him win ( legitimately or illegitimately ) which I am not sure is the best way to react. I think that approach is not a very rational one. What needs to be done there w.r.t Trump is probably worth a separate discussion, but I disagree with knee jerk reaction here from the whatsapp founder.
knowThySelfx 9y ago
I guess what Snowden said is true. FB is a surveillance company under the guise of social network. FB is not the only one in this case. All companies which store info could be suspect.
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
I find it very hypocritical of all these people who already have vested their shares in Facebook coming out and criticizing the company. As someone else mentioned on this thread, this is the guy who contributed to the concentration of all things social into Facebook by selling Whatsapp. I'm pretty sure most people are not fond of Facebook basically monopolizing people's private data and monetizing, but you don't get to criticize if you are the one who contributed to creating it, no matter how detached you are from the company anymore. And if you really cared about this, why didn't you just come out and say it before all this? I see this with the recent trend of all these "former early Facebook employees" who obviously got to where they are now by working for Facebook and made tons of money by exploiting users. Now that their shares have all vested, they criticize Facebook about how they're so "unethical", etc. If you really care about user privacy, just shut up and start your own company and see if you can fix it from scratch, instead of using the fame you gained by working for the company you're criticizing. It's hypocrisy at worst.
- ghthor 9y ago
  Financial independence is more important. Once you attain that you can seriously fight back, it's about picking your battles. With the money he made in the sell he can do some SERIOUS investment into what he believe's in that's going to create magnitudes more mass in the direction he wants to go then piddling around without it. FI should be everyone's primary goal, because only then can you put your effort to what you truly believe in and be able to back it up no matter what.
  - WA 9y ago
    So where do you draw the line? What if your way to achieve financial independence turns out to outweight the positive effects you could posssibly achieve later with FI?
    - ghthor 9y ago
      That's a tuff line to find, but I'd say it probably relates mostly towards age. The older you become FI the less potential you have to effect a larger change using your FI. This isn't 100% though, because the age would pay dividends with wisdom and networking. I don't know what evidence I'd need to see to change my opinion here. My main idea is based on once you achieve FI you are only reporting to yourself, thus you can now set your goals first and foremost and don't have to do the song and dance of aligning your goals with your funder/employer and seems so freeing.
IzzFizz 9y ago
like all my mom does on her phone is facebook
IzzFizz 9y ago
HI
amrx101 9y ago
Why the hell are my non tech friends and acquittances so surprised by this? What did they think? That Facebook will not sell their data for profit? How can people be so fucking naive?
maephisto 9y ago
I just tried to delete the Facebook app on my Samsung Galaxy S8 and it looks like that's impossible. It's so embedded in the OS that it cannot be deleted, but only disabled.
LeoPanthera 9y ago
My extended family is "well distributed", living in three different countries around the world. Facebook has been an essential tool for keeping in touch and keeping track. What do I tell them all to use instead? Migrating to anything else, even if we all agreed, would be a huge pain.
- orbifold 9y ago
  Telegram or Signal for messages, create a "Family" group there and proceed to receive inspirational quotes from your aunt there.
  - lambdadmitry 9y ago
    Telegram collects your messages just the same by default (and inevitably collects them if you want a group), it just doesn't monetize the data in the open. Yet.
  - josinalvo 9y ago
    this. it is easier and more intuitive to have a telegram family group than facebook. The interface is cleaner, the messages are clearer. Your aunts and uncles will (might?) thank you
- switch007 9y ago
  For keeping in touch and keeping track, what's wrong with e-mail?
  - CannisterFlux 9y ago
    I used to think this way, but I've realised that email is crap! It's the minimum, but it has so much friction. People click "reply" instead of "reply all" so others get cut out of the conversation, attaching photos on a phone is a pain. You have to fill out all those fields (subject, To, CC). The subject is always garbage ("Hi" or just empty). Then you have the message buried 2 clicks in, with random chunks of quoted reply appearing again - and this is with everyone on gmail, that mostly clears up the quoted text problem. And if someone dares to change email address, forget it. That's it, you may as well give up trying to contact them because you'll never get the right address any more. And there's all this old-skool formality that people expect with email ("Dear Mother, ..., regards, Derpface"). Emojis don't always render correctly, it depends on the email client on the other end. I don't use Facebook, but I do have a couple of Whatapp groups, and whenever my parents can't update Whatsapp because their ancient Android phone is out of space, and Whatsapp requires the update due to some protocol change, they end up going back to email... and it is like the stone age again.
known 9y ago
FB users are 'unknowingly' revealing sensitive info that could be detrimental to their future
DarkCrusader2 9y ago
Instead of requiring Facebook and google to improve their ways, if we all started using ad-blockers more aggressively, setting up things like pihole for our family members and friends, wouldn't this solve the problem since companies won't have any incentive of collecting the data? It seems to me to be a much better idea that expecting multi-billion corporations to act against their interests.
- malikNF 9y ago
  Not really, the companies would then start asking for the information they want directly from the users. Take for example the quizzes you see posted on your facebook feed. "Find out what kind of potato are you?" and if you wanted to know a user's name, ask a question like, "if one potato year is 10 human years how old are you now?". I mean ask the question disguised as something else, in this case a stupid joke. Ad-blockers alone wont fix this issue. I think its us developers who created this problem and its us devs who has to come up with an answer to this.
  - DarkCrusader2 9y ago
    But what are they going to do with this information if they can't show us ads based on them. Collect and target all you want, I am not seeing any ads. If 60-80% users does this, what will be the point of collecting data anymore.
    - malikNF 9y ago
      They can sell the data to a 3rd party. This 3rd party can be an unethical company that doesn't care about undermining democracy.
TaylorAlexander 9y ago
Random comment but I see so many people talking about regulation. Why do we want to hold the wolf by the ears here, continuing to use a service that doesn’t respect us while trying to force them to act like they do, when instead we could be advocating the use of user friendly services that truly respect our freedom? Why if Facebook has proven to be focused on things we don’t want (deep profiling), would you think any regulation (from politicians who are seemingly all bought by campaign donations) would somehow redeem Facebook? For those advocating regulation, why do you advocate that over the development of services that genuinely respect user freedom? Thanks all who comment thoughtfully.
- pteredactyl 9y ago
  Cynically, it's beyond comprehension or willingness to learn for most. They'd rather complain to the Government than do something about it. Unfortunately, we've found ourselves in this situation. And why people look to the Government as some panacea of trust and integrity is beyond me.
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    >And why people look to the Government as some panacea of trust and integrity is beyond me. Blind allegiance to authority and the government is indoctrinated on us from an early age by state mandated school curriculum, the media, implicit fear, and other factors.
Angostura 9y ago
Is this the Same WhatsApp that demands unfettered access to your entire contacts list before it will work?
throwaway613834 9y ago
I wonder if the Americans freaking out about this whole foreign influence thing have any idea what their nation has done to other countries' (both democracies and otherwise). What's happened here is a complete joke in comparison, and everyone is losing their head. Do people have any idea what the modern world has been like?
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  Strong nationalism implies hypocrisy towards the rest of the world.
- yters 9y ago
  It's mostly a way of targeting Trump. No one bats an eyelid when Clintons have Russian ties.
  - chasing 9y ago
    Because Trump's ties are legitimately scary while Clinton's are trumped up bullshit. Which you should know, Donald Trump, Jr. You were in some of the meetings.
dasyatidprime 9y ago
To repurpose what I was thinking of posting as an Nth-level comment, and leaving this long because I don't have time to shorten it (and because I'm trying to phrase it with so many preemption pieces that it won't immediately attract some kinds of detractors which I want to try to advance this argument beyond/around), yada yada: Making it purely up to the individual to decide these things when they have to decide in a coordinated way or else connections break down results in unhappy situations. Right now, we have enough coordination anarchy in digital social networks that it leads to some combination of entrenchment, pseudorandomness, and fashion cycles (at least as far as I can see). In the US, mail became a regulated monopoly, and the telephone network has regulation to try to give newcomers a better playing field and avoid capture effects (not that this always works—but things like “in this metro area, all ten digits must always be dialed so that the new numbers being introduced don't become the lower-class numbers that everyone fights to avoid anyway” have happened). Structure and usage regulations for physical shared community spaces have enough difference in focus and constraints that they don't seem to get applied the same way, and the localization and nature of enforcement mean they don't have the same kind of massive leverage. It is my strong suspicion that the lack of a single consensus “physics” in shared digital spaces (and attendant shared approach/instinct; cultural differences and training aside, human bodies have substantially similar baseline physical capabilities and constraints across the world) means that even with arbitrarily “benevolent” (whatever that means) government intervention, the idea of a level field doesn't work the same way to start with, and there's a panoply of little technical decisions that have “already been made” that combine to make things amazingly awkward on that level as well. We've tried “just stop using it!” since Stallman started saying it ages ago, and it doesn't work in practice for a lot of people (“because not everyone does it!” is of course the exact coordination problem I'm calling out above). Regulation seems almost untenable from this position, at least assuming pace-of-advancement continues to be a serious concern and expectations haven't globally converged, though I wouldn't be surprised if some particularly fluid kind of regulation popped up (especially from the European sphere) that would break logjams better. What else can usefully be tried if we don't want to wind up in the Big Social hegemony world? One that I rarely see is “capitulate in an accelerationist manner, let them become governments, and then push to make them good ones”—interesting as a thought experiment, but I wouldn't want to try to put that in practice from here. Can we extract useful information from that, though? A related observation: to some extent, the success of Mastodon (within several communities I'm part of, enough so that I can use it as part of the primary “social network” set in the same way many people use Twitter and observe a lot of jumping ship there from Twitter along the way, even though in terms of absolute popularity it may still be far weaker) mimics what's been called the Amish-congregation government model to me (you are heavily bound by your choice of instance but it generally remains practical to switch), and instance leaders seem to be taking a much more active and community-centered role than Big Social allows. But that's still ultimately based enough on the Twitter model of interaction that there are lingering social problems (at least I find them to be problems) from that, and the currents of code changes are still a coordination/effort problem of their own, though that's partly mitigated by several instances running interesting forks already while leaving interoperability intact. I'll be very curious to see how that evolves.
StreamBright 9y ago
Deleted it long time ago on my mobile devices. It is not enough though. Facebook javascript is everywhere.
- ironjunkie 9y ago
  Tech companies should bear responsibilities to NOT embed facebook javsascript on any of their websites. More shame need to come when those javascripts get embedded somewhere.
Hendrikto 9y ago
I deleted my facebook accounts years ago, and never looked back. Nobody in my fried group even really uses it anymore. Most people just check in once a day for 3-5 minutes.
- tzfld 9y ago
  >Most people just check in once a day for 3-5 minutes Actually, that's a huge thing.
timvisee 9y ago
I've fallen in a deep, deep hole. One I can't get out of (meaning, deleting my Facebook account), because I've used "Login with Facebook" on quite a few sites and platforms. What do others recommend in a situation like this?
- gpmcadam 9y ago
  Consider whether any of those associated sites are still useful. You can enumerate these on Facebook itself, it shows you which sites have access to your account. Secondly, make a list of these sites. Ask yourself: "if I lost access to these sites today, would I care?" - remove the ones you don't care about. Lastly, separate each one from Facebook one-by-one. Some will be easy, log-in, set a password, unlink Facebook. Done. Some will probably require getting in contact with the site's support team. Don't worry about doing this over night. Just rest in the knowledge that every step you take, is getting a bit more control over your data. Eventually the list will shrink, and then you can start the mammoth task of doing the same things with: * Your post history * Your likes * Your check-ins * Your reviews * Your event history * Your employment history * Your photos * Your wall posts * etc. Good luck!
- donttrack 9y ago
  Keep deleting it after you enable it to login to whatever site and the delete it again after you changed your credentials on said site. Eventually it will stay deleted/disabled and lost at some point. Thats what I did and the Facebook account is gone now. Haven't encountered any problems so far.
- OfficerGuac 9y ago
  If you go to https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications you can see a list of everything you've signed up for using Facebook OAuth, then determine from there what sites you still use and adjust logins as necessary
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
objectiveariel 9y ago
This is probably the most pathetic PR move we've seen this year so far. Acton sold off his userbase to Facebook in 2014, with full knowledge of the Snowden revelations of 2013 where we learned about Facebook's involvement in PRISM.
powerapple 9y ago
We are in the connected world. News can be generated by anyone and travel very very fast. That's the reality. In the fast you have to talk to people knowing what they think, now you can do it quickly and at massive scale. We will have more and more information out there anyway, regardless how many researchers working on cyber security and other problems. The only way to go back is to unplug electricity grid? Really? There is nothing wrong with Facebook. And that's how technology can empower people to do both good and bad things. Yes, US people are not happy with the election, journalists now have a revenge, but blaming technology? really?
hutzlibu 9y ago
The big problem with the whole post-privacy thing is in my opinion, that it is asymetrical. I mean, if everybody (could) know everything about everybody else, ok, strange, but fine. But the big powerful players know much more about the private lives of the average citiciens(or also politican), than the Gestapo and KGB could ever dream of, but we know not so much about them. This is very dangerous. As it gives the people with all that (potential dark) information much power. Especialy when there are so many ridiculous laws around, disconnected from reality, like that Marihuana is still mostly illegal. And while for most it would not matter, but someone working in health sector for example, can get in serious trouble(at least in germany), if he would found guilty of smoking sometimes. This makes people vulnerable to blackmailing etc. I can only hope, that there are also enough righteous people, like Snowden, involved, to blow the whistle, when things get overhand. But I believe there is something fundamentaly wrong, with the current direction.
- yters 9y ago
  Yes, but that is all of modern tech, and people give them their data willingly for the convenience. No one is stopping that any time soon.
intrasight 9y ago
For several years, I've been pontificating the somewhat abstract idea that a software app will one day hack the human psyche on a massive scale. And by "hack", I mean to do us harm by tapping into the same pleasure mechanisms as addictive drugs. It never occurred to me until today that perhaps Facebook is this app.
- imtyler 9y ago
  "Pontificate" implies a pompous demeanor, I think you meant pondering?
  - intrasight 9y ago
    Both. My friends hear it as potification ;)
- disease 9y ago
  I personally have always viewed Facebook as being in the business of mind control and have said as much to anyone that would listen.
aangela318-41 9y ago
How sweet can we be don't you just wish we all be half full.(^^)
dotsh 9y ago
Deleted comment.
- niravs 9y ago
  that's a scam and a fake account.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
pretty_dumm_guy 9y ago
I quite remember the day when my name appeared on the comments section of a website I visited (through facebook widget I believe). I freaked out. But when I discussed about this with my friends back then almost every one seemed to have a cavalier attitude towards this(meaning they were completely fine with it). I wouldn't be surprised if my friends still have the same attitude. People are okay with sharing their information online if it provides them convenience. Facebook provides them with the convenience of staying in touch with people. This combined with "I have nothing to hide anyway" & "so what if?" thought processes and monetary benefits on corporate side seems to have led to this huge data bank that is Facebook today. I am really glad people are talking more about this. Never too late. People need to completely understand their actions online have consequences.d
EnderMB 9y ago
The main thing I don't get from this approach is the idea that deleting Facebook somehow frees you from this level of data mining. In reality, it's well-known (not just by techies, but everyone) that when you "delete" Facebook, you're only really deactivating that account. Your data has already been mined, your data has already been sold and moved onto another server, and even if Facebook wanted to get rid of you, the Channel 4/Guardian expose has illustrated that data has been sold. The damage has already been done. Instead of trying to get people to leave, there should be pressure on sanctions from affected governments. The only way to stop this level of data misuse is to ensure that Facebook is fined adequately. Instead of trying to crash the stock price, fine them $10k for every user breach, to the tune of several billion. My biggest worry from this scandal is that the anger will die down, and the world will be told that you can get away with this level of data breach. Equifax have largely got away with their breach, but if Facebook and CA can get away with outright giving data away for profit then all we'll see is that the line hasn't been crossed yet.
josinalvo 9y ago
In calm seriousness: Can sb compare the technical feats and the scope of the data collection by the obama campaign and the trump campaign?
Cyberspy 9y ago
In May, once GDPR becomes mandatory, we'll all be able to issue data requests to the likes of Facebook and Cambridge Analyitica etc, to find out just what they know about us. The requests are free, so with social media, you could almost mount a denial of service attack against a business if enough people make a request!
pers0n 9y ago
So many bloody apps and websites require or ask for fb accounts to sign up, tinder, coffee meets bagel, bumble, etc etc. everyone empowered them. Note I never got a fb account, so some sites I just can’t use.
paynebutler01 9y ago
My husband was so smooth at hiding his affairs so I had no proof for months, I was referred to a hacker and decided to give him a try.. the result was incredible because all my cheating husband's text messages, whatsapp, facebook and even phone conversations was wired directly to my cellphone. deephacking17 helped me put a round-the-clock monitoring on him and I got concrete evidence of his escapades..if your spouse is an expert at hiding his cheating adventures Contact: deephacking17-at-gmail-dot-com

1086 points by coloneltcb 9y ago

Sonnol53 9y ago

did he leave after the acquisition? or is he still involved in the company?

mistahchris 9y ago
> In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion, making its co-founders — Jan Koum and Brian Acton — very wealthy men. Koum continues to lead the company, but Acton quit earlier this year to start his own foundation. It's in the first two sentences. Action is one of the co-founders of WhatsApp
- hannasanarion 9y ago
  What he was asking is the last sentence. He quit WhatsApp to help make Signal.
tptacek 9y ago
Acton recently donated $50MM to Open Whisper Systems (Signal) and is now involved with their board.

swyx 9y ago

technically he did start a Facebook competitor (loosely speaking), he just happened to have been bought by them!

hannasanarion 9y ago
And then he quit his company to work on another competitor! He gave 40 million dollars to and works on Signal, the app that WhatsApp is basically a skin of anyway.
- hprotagonist 9y ago
  50 million, i believe.

walrus01 9y ago

I would be very curious to learn what sort of non-disparagement clauses existed in the Whatsapp/Facebook purchase contract. And how exactly they were worded.

fancyfacebook 9y ago
I don't think anyone at Facebook has the bandwidth to deal with a mean tweet from an old employee right now. If rumors are to be believed mass resignations are coming.
- walrus01 9y ago
  Probably not, but it can mean a great deal if it gets media traction, and Acton would go in the category of "founder made into a billionaire" rather than "employee". It's not like he was some random engineer in a pool of a hundred engineers.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  > If rumors are to be believed mass resignations are coming. Is this just inside knowledge, or has it been published anywhere yet?
  - fancyfacebook 9y ago
    No I have nothing to do with facebook despite this randomly generated username
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mistermann 9y ago
  Where did you hear this, and what's the reason? Just various rats taking their millions or billions and getting out while the getting a good?
- flylib 9y ago
  unlikely

gnicholas 9y ago

If we use Twitter to announce that people should #deletefacebook, what social network do we use in the event that it becomes necessary to #deletetwitter?

walrus01 9y ago
you ssh into your own trusted openbsd system, run bitchx and connect to efnet, just like the good lord intended back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth. i am only partially sarcastic here.
- lgregg 9y ago
  you lost me after openbsd.
  - 2RTZZSro 9y ago
    One can not lose what one has never had
  - danielvf 9y ago
    Definitions: bitchx - an IRC client: http://www.bitchx.com/ http://www.bitchx.com/ efnet - one of the oldest IRC networks, founded in 1990
  - portofcall 9y ago
    IRC baby, and efnet is an old network you can connect to. Bitchx is an irc client, free last I checked. To GP, are eggdrop bots still a thing?
    - walrus01 9y ago
      I believe they are, though I haven't checked in a long time. Seems to be semi actively maintained. https://github.com/eggheads/eggdrop https://github.com/eggheads/eggdrop
  - walrus01 9y ago

chimen 9y ago

Smart tactic since Facebook is on fire and Whatsapp is directly pulled into discussions concerning privacy and whatnot. Curious if he can dish out some facts to backup that tweet or it's just a "convenient" time to shed some light over your new product which is basically another..Whatsapp

matte_black 9y ago

Don’t let billionaires tell you what to do.

walrus01 9y ago
the whatsapp cofounders strike me as accidental billionaires, it's not like we're talking about standard oil, jp morgan, the louis dreyfus company or a typical old money davos-attendee billionaire.
- paulcole 9y ago
  >accidental billionaires Not sure if you were being clever but that’s the title of a book about Facebook’s history.
- spyspy 9y ago
  You weren’t alive for the founding of any of those companies.
deviationblue 9y ago
Aren't we supposed to though? Because they've been anointed with HIGH!!! IQQQQ and money.

isostatic 9y ago

Jan Koum Is entertaining. He was a frequent flyer and wanted to build an app that could tell people what time zone the person they are talking to was in, that they were on a flight, etc He posted on flyertalk about it and got a "meh, you have to install something? Why bother?" response 5 years later, as a frequent flyer he was into collecting miles and using them on tickets, and he had managed to get business class flights to mobile world congress in Barcelona, but while the deal was going through to sell whatsapp to Facebook there were a couple of delays. Nothing major. He thought to himself "these are non changeable tickets, they'd better get a move on", then reflected how absurd a position he was in. 1: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology/952359-thoughts-about-my-free-iphone-app-whatsapp.html https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology/952359-tho...

barbs 9y ago
Hahaha, I love some of the replies when he revisted the thread 4 years later: " Isn't this one of the apps that take all your contacts from your device and upload them to a remote server? Since I have many non-contact entries in my address book (e.g. a contact card with DOB's, passport numbers, etc.), I'm reluctant to use such an app since it would indiscriminately take all this personal information and store it on a remote server. I stick with Skype b/c basically, by logging in with a distinct login/password (as opposed to a MS ID linked to my other MS programs and accounts) and saving only limited information in Skype's address book, I'm limited the amount of data Skype would have and could take and save." Odd to think some people used to believe Skype was more secure than WhatsApp, though to be fair, WhatsApp used to send (and store I believe) messages in plaintext.
- walrus01 9y ago
  It's really funny when you look now at what are the default app permissions in a standard consumer configuration of Windows 10 Home. And what Microsoft by default allows Skype to use. It's basically fully enmeshed with peoples' contact lists, and for business users, whatever other features of Office365 they keep squeezing skype into.
avree 9y ago

laurex 9y ago

Alert: this comment may be seen as self serving. I work on an app that has been gaining popularity precisely because it's a way to keep in touch with family and friends with no social media aspect (called Marco Polo, a video walkie talkie). I'm curious if there is going to be enough of a backlash to return to more organic face to face (and actually interactive) communication versus broadcast mode and pretending to be something that will seem impressive. That seems to be true of our users anyway.

whalesalad 9y ago
No. This is a fad and will blow over in a few days. No one cares that this happened outside of the security community.
- dpwm 9y ago
  > No. This is a fad and will blow over in a few days. I'm not sure you're right. This is spilling into all areas. We don't even know if CA has done all the damage it is going to yet. > No one cares that this happened outside of the security community. This has very little to do with security and very much to do with Facebook's policies.
  - skellera 9y ago
    Policies that were ended awhile ago.
tomrod 9y ago
My family loves this app but I've heartily resisted due to privacy concerns. What data do you collect now, and what data do you intend to collect in the future?
asteli 9y ago
That was part of Snapchat's charm, I think. No pressure to perform, just do silly things with your friends. Then Snap needed to make money, so they got into the content and the advertising and added Stories and 'influencers,' and it's basically the same as any other social network now.

propman 9y ago

I don't get what changed? We've knows Facebook tracks everything, we've known Google does the same thing. If you've ever developed anything in messenger even today, it's amazing how much information is given. We know all these sites track everything you do outside of Facebook too. Everyone has been trying to get them to stop, we know it's illegal to build a profile on someone but Facebook gets around that by building a profile but not assigning it to your direct name. Regulations should have sprouted in Obama years, but the admin and tech execs were too buddy buddy and no way Trump promotes this because it makes him look like he is accepting Russia interfered and it's not politically expedient for him to do so. Same thing with Harvey Weinstein and all the metoo that was known by everyone. I mean I'm happy with all of this coming out, but why now? How is it so coordinated? Usually these guys pay journalists for fluff pr counter views or to shut down stories. Weinstein did. Is this Data just a metoo thing? Is google next?

coolso 9y ago
> I don't get what changed? What changed is it helped the current President get elected. The only people who really used to care about Facebook's behavior were people in niche online tech circles like HN. But then the election happened, and the media has been beating the "Facebook is evil" drum very loudly ever since.
justboxing 9y ago
> We've knows Facebook tracks everything Not disputing this, but when you say 'we' I think you mean the < 5% (maybe even < 1%) of techies and lawyers and journalists in the world who really really care about their data and privacy. The rest 95% either don't know, or could care less even if they know. I've told my non-techie fam and friends about data harvesting, privacy, and how facebook tracks everything, only to be ignored or outright ridiculed ("Oh you techies are so paranoid"). Many of my friends in India (where I was raised) and elsewhere used to freely post their phone # and home address on my wall asking me to call them / send them stuff from US. I don't think this 95% population really cares or gives a sh*t.
- walrus01 9y ago

iliketosleep 9y ago

It's quite ironic that this is the man who sold WhatsApp and its enormous userbase to facebook, creating a total lock in to the facebook ecosystem for many who do not even use facebook. He would have known what kind of a company facebook is, so I don't understand the contradiction between selling Whatsapp to them and now caring about these issues. Anyway, I am still glad he's getting behind the #deletefacebook movement.

tehlike 9y ago
He started a company, and made a delicious exit. Him becoming a privacy advocate maybe was his secondary goal yhat now became primary. Or maybe with his founder he had disagrements but he sold anyway because what else could he do if everyone but you wants that exit?
ACow_Adonis 9y ago
You really don't understand? Let me spell it out for you: "Money makes people do things they might not otherwise want to do if there was no money involved. Lots of money can make people do more things than little money... Once you have a lot of money, the marginal benefit of more money becomes less, meaning the incentive trade off is lessened, and you can now spend your time talking about things further down your heirearchy of needs/value system"
77ko 9y ago
He owned 20% of Whatsapp, so its possible he didn't want to sell to FB. Only 50.1% of the shareholders presumably had to want to sell to overrule the others. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Acton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Acton
- efuquen 9y ago
  I think if he was against the sale he would have said that.
apotheothesomai 9y ago
Jan's commitment to privacy motivated WhatsApp. Jan and Acton always have believed in it strongly. That said, if your company has 50 people, and FB offers nearly $20B. How exactly do you tell those people that you refused an acquisition that huge, because you personally feel that FB is bad. Could you deprive an engineer who has worked his ass off for 4 years >$100M? Anyway, I was contracting for WhatsApp, when the acquisition happened. Conversations took place, but I'm not going to quote anyone.

hnaccy 9y ago

I'll take it but I'm still somewhat confused about how sudden this pushback against facebook has been. What did people think they did before now...

tlarkworthy 9y ago
The effect on democratic processes ceased to be hypothetical.

odammit 9y ago

Will deleting Facebook actually remove your data though? I’ve deleted mine a few times and then inevitably have had to use OAuth for some random site I’d auth’d to and lo-and-behold it works and all my data is back. Last time I went through that flow was maybe a year ago. I always assumed they did some sort of paranoid delete or “anonymized” the data.

bassman9000 9y ago
Nope The only way to win is not to play
- pervycreeper 9y ago
  Not even. They create shadow profiles for non-users.
- criddell 9y ago
  I think it actually does delete your data now. They added that in response to upcoming GDPR regulations.
rdtsc 9y ago
I never signed up for it and they probably have a profile on me simply because of the connections to people who have FB. That always creeped me out. Wonder if there is something in the GDPR legislation to get all the info they have on me and make them erase it.
- odammit 9y ago
  I only originally signed up because I was single and dating and girls found it “creepy” I didnt have a Facebook. Peer pressure, man.
  - newyankee 9y ago
    You know it is almost impossible to get arranged married in India without a fb profile as average joes think i have something to hide when i do not have an active profile, i have not even deleted it completely yet i am apparently 'suspect' in the eyes of the urban society that overshares

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sqdbps 9y ago

That is ungrateful on his part. Much like #deleteuber this #deletefacebook tantrum is about Trump. Facebook was roundly lauded for helping Obama get elected.

avs733 9y ago

With the way they create shadow profiles for non-users, I'm a strong believer that the opportunity with facebook is to feed them as much bad data as possible and let them deal with filtering it out.

meri_dian 9y ago

As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the vast majority of people really don't care what data Facebook collects. Addresses, phone numbers, etc are all publicly available already. Products you like, your political affiliations, etc, not a big deal to most people, not because they aren't aware, but because they don't care. So ask yourselves, if the vast majority don't care, perhaps it's not really that big of a deal. And maybe, just maybe, Cambridge Analytica has a target painted on its back because it helped get Trump elected, and we're being manipulated into hating them now by media that is engaged in all out war with the Trump administration.

pmlnr 9y ago
> So ask yourselves, if the vast majority don't care, perhaps it's not really that big of a deal. That's not the question to ask. They question to ask is how do we make them care?
- meri_dian 9y ago
  Why should they care? I'll be honest, it doesn't bother me much. Why should I care?

axd 9y ago

If this isn't the opportunity for Diaspora* to become a thing in the public's mind, I don't know what is. We have to use this in order to move to a better platform for social media.

criddell 9y ago
Diaspora is a non-starter. Look at their getting started page. Step one - choose a pod. You just lost 90% of the people that might be interested. They need to get rid of that step.
- noarchy 9y ago
  This would likewise affect Mastodon. One of its arguable strengths is also a weakness, in that regard.

fareesh 9y ago

Despite the barrage of negative stories that would have ended nearly every other Presidential campaign - ranging from accusations of racism, misogyny, treason, incompetence, mental instability - despite all of it, tens of millions of Americans absolutely love President Trump. I cannot imagine how utterly frustrating it must be for them to watch the media bounce from story after story in some convoluted attempt to explain why they voted the way they did - from Russian hacking to white supremacy to Facebook ads to Facebook data. This is just one more in a long line of justifications when the most likely reasonable explanation is that he is beloved by millions, not just in the USA but around the world. The same goes for Brexit. "Your side won because the Russians and this data company and Facebook made you vote that way. We're going to make sure this never happens again!" It's unfortunate that in the aftermath of polarizing and controversial decisions like these, this kind of rhetoric will now drive people further apart, because one side refuses to accept the reality of the other's opinions, and dismisses them with conspiracy theories. Today people are pretending to be shocked that Facebook shares data with apps through the developer API. Most of the permissions being talked about were removed a long time ago. What is happening now is basically vindictive hatred for Facebook from the tens of millions who feel wronged and cheated by electoral results that they lost fair and square.

aptwebapps 9y ago
The election was won by a very slim margin. The core of Trump's support may have been with him regardless but they weren't enough to win. It's the actions on the margin that matter here. Also, as other's have pointed out, there are a lot of other problems with social media in general and Facebook in particular. Russian meddling in the election is the spark that is lighting the fire but the fuel was already there. (That last sentence optimistic to an extent that might not be warranted).
- foxh0und 9y ago
  Exactly, he won the election thanks to 80000 votes in three states. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/donald-trump-will-be-president-thanks-to-80000-people-in-three-states/?utm_term=.827af77a0a2d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...

jiggliemon 9y ago

All of this Facebook hubub and broad public outcry is really all owed to the election of Trump. If Trump handnt leveraged CA, we’d still all be happy and fat on out individual bliss boxes – patting ourselves on the back – because our side [a la Obama] was smart enough to use this technology to our advantage. Now when the enemy has (and use) the same technology, we’re forced to cry foul. Demand oversight. Demand regulation. The greater public is OK with this technology. They’re Ok with sweeping data collection (Snowden Files). They’re OK with mining personal data (Facebook, Google, etc). Thy’re OK with 1984, so long as it’s their sides version of 1984. It takes a Trump for your side to realize how shitty things got while you were enamored with charisma on your bliss box. Edit: typing on my phone. Fixing grammar.

cabaalis 9y ago
I think the best thing that has come out of the election of Donald Trump is that many people are now excited about the idea of constitutionally limiting the power of the executive branch. That idea seemed to have been forgotten for the past few administrations. Even when I agreed with Obama or Bush, I was very disappointed when they would use innovative methods to single-handedly override the will of congress or the judiciary.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  I wasn’t. If Congress is being obstructionist and petty, as they undoubtedly were during the Obama years, the executive branch still needs to do its job, which is to lead the country forward. That said, I agree with the spirit of your post, which is that every now and then we should scale that power back.
- dmfdmf 9y ago
  The courts need to reign in the use of Executive Orders.
  - Helmet 9y ago
    And the Congress needs to reign in the Courts' legislative activism.

sn41 9y ago

I guess maybe it is time to re-evaluate Web 2.0? User-generated content was supposed to be empowering. But we have ignored the powerful amplifying effects of positive feedback and "echo chambers" artificially induced by such "customised news". Maybe it is a bad idea to present customised news, what we need are diverse views. Maybe it is a bad idea to tack on voting systems and like buttons with every comment and tweet.

RyanShook 9y ago

Calling out the company that made you a billionaire is such a brave move... inspiring.

samstave 9y ago

Serious question, the US constantly states what side of a vote some lame senator or rep is on, but you never here anything about who is the makeup of the electoral college in msm - what their tax returns look like and who is paying them off. Why? So, have one electoral college rep release their finances, and then you know the true state of politics

learc83 9y ago
> but you never here anything about who is the makeup of the electoral college in msm - what their tax returns look like and who is paying them off. Why? Because electors are temporary and almost completely symbolic. In the vast majority of states if the Republican candidate wins, electors nominated by the Republican party go to D.C. If the Democratic candidate wins, Democratic electors go. The respective parties pick hardcore supporters who will almost certainly vote for the party that nominated them, and in 29 states they are legally obligated to do so. No one cares about them because they never change the outcome. There have been a handful of times when electors have voted against the will of their states, but they've only changed the outcome once, in 1834. The Democratic nominee for Vice President should have won that year, but 23 electors chose not to vote for VP, so it went to the Senate, who voted for the Democratic nominee anyway (so the electors didn't actually alter the outcome).

77ko 9y ago

Brian Acton's post[0] about the Signal Foundation[1] makes it sound like they could play in the same space as Facebook: > Of course, this is just the beginning. There is a lot of work to be done to make our dream a reality and we will continually be asking our peers, our community, and ourselves if there are more effective ways to serve the public good. In the immediate future we are focused on adding to our talented-but-small team and improving Signal Messenger. Our long-term vision is for the Signal Foundation to provide multiple offerings that align with our core mission. That will come in time. The tagline on the foundations splash page, To develop open source privacy technology that protects free expression sounds like it could mean a facebook type thingamajig, since what is FB but providing free expression to the masses? [0]: https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/ [1]: https://signalfoundation.org/ https://signalfoundation.org/

bitxbitxbitcoin 9y ago
That would be an interesting pivot.
pteredactyl 9y ago
Facebook has been using Signal Foundation's protocol in Whatsapp since last April https://www.fastcompany.com/3067468/why-open-whisper-systems-is-one-of-the-most-innovative-companies-o https://www.fastcompany.com/3067468/why-open-whisper-systems...
1337biz 9y ago
At this point I am sceptical that any communication platform can succeed beyond niche communities unless they go after the teenager market.

gexla 9y ago

There's a group of rich people mentioned in this post and now they are telling their followers to delete FB _after_ getting rich. If we were to ask them how FB plans on making money when they started their involvement with the company, then monetizing user data would have been the answer. This is something the world will just have to get used to. We're past the point of no return. As individuals, we can do a lot to protect our privacy, but it's a lot of work.

fzeroracer 9y ago

So I want to cut off an argument at the pass here. Specifically: "Everyone knows Facebook already gathers all of your data." We, as people here both on HN and people in the tech world take for granted the fact that we both know and understand how our systems work (mostly). We know that companies package and sell our data, that if something is 'free' the real subscription fee is what they collect on us during each use. But there is a significant population that simply doesn't know, think it's too much of a 'conspiracy theory' or don't care. My parents, as much as I love them, are absolutely hair-tearingly bad at anything related to computers. They've had issues with scammers and Microsoft phoning them up so that they can upgrade their computer's ram. When I tell them about what kind of things Facebook does, they don't understand. They don't get why their data is so valuable ('well so what they get my phone number not like it affects me') and a lot of the time they have trouble understanding what they actually do. Breaking stories like this is not necessarily surprising no, not to us. But it raises awareness and makes people wonder what companies actually are doing with their data. I doubt it'll result in the bubble that is Facebook finally popping but opportunities like this are always great times to pull aside your family and let them know why things like this matter. And in this current environment people are hyper-aware of things like this possibly more than ever before. So I don't think the argument should be based around normalizing this sort of behavior by Facebook and other companies but rather revealing it to those that might not be aware.

TarpitCarnivore 9y ago
To add onto this, I believe a large amount of consumers of these products assumed they were only accessing their own data. This story is highlighting how these companies further connect dots between you _and_ all your connections. This is where I feel people didn't recognize the larger scale of all of this, especially with progmatic programming for ads. Any time you try to outline how ad networks work w/r/t to "FB is recording us" you're met with "yeah buts". I think a lot of people didn't want to believe this was possible, but now have no choice but to accept it is very much happening.

dingo_bat 9y ago

After selling his customers to Facebook for $20 billion. Cool story bro!

Double_a_92 9y ago
How could he have denied that much money?
heedlessly2 9y ago
let's be honest, everyone would like to become a billionaire.

lovelearning 9y ago

While I agree with the co-founder, I wish he'd also suggested deleting WhatsApp given that it's become a tool for many people spreading lies, disinformation, propaganda, faked photos, fake videos and hatred.

exolymph 9y ago

Crossposting what I said on Twitter: > My contrarian impulse is that I want y'all to stop dunking on Acton for this tweet. (Context: One of the WhatsApp cofounders who sold to Facebook and made lots of money.) People's views change over time and it can take years for a conviction to form and then crystalize. > It's very possible that Acton is burning bridges with that tweet. Don't assume that he loses nothing by speaking up now.

jonbarker 9y ago
This is true. He could have just sailed off on his social media yacht and laughed at everyone.

luckydude 9y ago

This will get downvoted but whatever. I predicted all of this a decade ago and I refused to be part of it. All my friends laughed at me and said I was crazy. Maybe I am but I don't do all that social media shit because if you don't know where they are making money, they are making it off of you. And that's creepy. I'm willing to pay for value, but I'm not on board with them making money by looking over my shoulder. It's not about me doing something illegal, I don't do that, I'm fine, it's just creepy. That social media stuff is like dopamine, feels good, but is not good for you.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago
It's funny seeing the New York Times and others rail against Facebook like this and yet they still don't have the conviction to #deletefacebook. Many of the excuses read like those of drug addicts.

knowThySelfx 9y ago

Delete Facebook? Then what about WhatsApp? Isn't it owned by FB now ;)

thetruthseeker1 9y ago

Every company has its ups and downs. Some downs or negative things warrant their demise. I don’t think what FB did here is worth calling burn the witch on them or actively trying to kill them, and I do hope FB are able to learn from this and change for the better. Now, that said, I do think there is an underlying point others ops have alluded to: The disdain for Trump and everything that could have helped him win ( legitimately or illegitimately ) which I am not sure is the best way to react. I think that approach is not a very rational one. What needs to be done there w.r.t Trump is probably worth a separate discussion, but I disagree with knee jerk reaction here from the whatsapp founder.

knowThySelfx 9y ago

I guess what Snowden said is true. FB is a surveillance company under the guise of social network. FB is not the only one in this case. All companies which store info could be suspect.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago

I find it very hypocritical of all these people who already have vested their shares in Facebook coming out and criticizing the company. As someone else mentioned on this thread, this is the guy who contributed to the concentration of all things social into Facebook by selling Whatsapp. I'm pretty sure most people are not fond of Facebook basically monopolizing people's private data and monetizing, but you don't get to criticize if you are the one who contributed to creating it, no matter how detached you are from the company anymore. And if you really cared about this, why didn't you just come out and say it before all this? I see this with the recent trend of all these "former early Facebook employees" who obviously got to where they are now by working for Facebook and made tons of money by exploiting users. Now that their shares have all vested, they criticize Facebook about how they're so "unethical", etc. If you really care about user privacy, just shut up and start your own company and see if you can fix it from scratch, instead of using the fame you gained by working for the company you're criticizing. It's hypocrisy at worst.

ghthor 9y ago
Financial independence is more important. Once you attain that you can seriously fight back, it's about picking your battles. With the money he made in the sell he can do some SERIOUS investment into what he believe's in that's going to create magnitudes more mass in the direction he wants to go then piddling around without it. FI should be everyone's primary goal, because only then can you put your effort to what you truly believe in and be able to back it up no matter what.
- WA 9y ago
  So where do you draw the line? What if your way to achieve financial independence turns out to outweight the positive effects you could posssibly achieve later with FI?
  - ghthor 9y ago
    That's a tuff line to find, but I'd say it probably relates mostly towards age. The older you become FI the less potential you have to effect a larger change using your FI. This isn't 100% though, because the age would pay dividends with wisdom and networking. I don't know what evidence I'd need to see to change my opinion here. My main idea is based on once you achieve FI you are only reporting to yourself, thus you can now set your goals first and foremost and don't have to do the song and dance of aligning your goals with your funder/employer and seems so freeing.

IzzFizz 9y ago

like all my mom does on her phone is facebook

IzzFizz 9y ago

amrx101 9y ago

Why the hell are my non tech friends and acquittances so surprised by this? What did they think? That Facebook will not sell their data for profit? How can people be so fucking naive?

maephisto 9y ago

I just tried to delete the Facebook app on my Samsung Galaxy S8 and it looks like that's impossible. It's so embedded in the OS that it cannot be deleted, but only disabled.

LeoPanthera 9y ago

My extended family is "well distributed", living in three different countries around the world. Facebook has been an essential tool for keeping in touch and keeping track. What do I tell them all to use instead? Migrating to anything else, even if we all agreed, would be a huge pain.

orbifold 9y ago
Telegram or Signal for messages, create a "Family" group there and proceed to receive inspirational quotes from your aunt there.
- lambdadmitry 9y ago
  Telegram collects your messages just the same by default (and inevitably collects them if you want a group), it just doesn't monetize the data in the open. Yet.
- josinalvo 9y ago
  this. it is easier and more intuitive to have a telegram family group than facebook. The interface is cleaner, the messages are clearer. Your aunts and uncles will (might?) thank you
switch007 9y ago
For keeping in touch and keeping track, what's wrong with e-mail?
- CannisterFlux 9y ago
  I used to think this way, but I've realised that email is crap! It's the minimum, but it has so much friction. People click "reply" instead of "reply all" so others get cut out of the conversation, attaching photos on a phone is a pain. You have to fill out all those fields (subject, To, CC). The subject is always garbage ("Hi" or just empty). Then you have the message buried 2 clicks in, with random chunks of quoted reply appearing again - and this is with everyone on gmail, that mostly clears up the quoted text problem. And if someone dares to change email address, forget it. That's it, you may as well give up trying to contact them because you'll never get the right address any more. And there's all this old-skool formality that people expect with email ("Dear Mother, ..., regards, Derpface"). Emojis don't always render correctly, it depends on the email client on the other end. I don't use Facebook, but I do have a couple of Whatapp groups, and whenever my parents can't update Whatsapp because their ancient Android phone is out of space, and Whatsapp requires the update due to some protocol change, they end up going back to email... and it is like the stone age again.

known 9y ago

FB users are 'unknowingly' revealing sensitive info that could be detrimental to their future

DarkCrusader2 9y ago

Instead of requiring Facebook and google to improve their ways, if we all started using ad-blockers more aggressively, setting up things like pihole for our family members and friends, wouldn't this solve the problem since companies won't have any incentive of collecting the data? It seems to me to be a much better idea that expecting multi-billion corporations to act against their interests.

malikNF 9y ago
Not really, the companies would then start asking for the information they want directly from the users. Take for example the quizzes you see posted on your facebook feed. "Find out what kind of potato are you?" and if you wanted to know a user's name, ask a question like, "if one potato year is 10 human years how old are you now?". I mean ask the question disguised as something else, in this case a stupid joke. Ad-blockers alone wont fix this issue. I think its us developers who created this problem and its us devs who has to come up with an answer to this.
- DarkCrusader2 9y ago
  But what are they going to do with this information if they can't show us ads based on them. Collect and target all you want, I am not seeing any ads. If 60-80% users does this, what will be the point of collecting data anymore.
  - malikNF 9y ago
    They can sell the data to a 3rd party. This 3rd party can be an unethical company that doesn't care about undermining democracy.

TaylorAlexander 9y ago

Random comment but I see so many people talking about regulation. Why do we want to hold the wolf by the ears here, continuing to use a service that doesn’t respect us while trying to force them to act like they do, when instead we could be advocating the use of user friendly services that truly respect our freedom? Why if Facebook has proven to be focused on things we don’t want (deep profiling), would you think any regulation (from politicians who are seemingly all bought by campaign donations) would somehow redeem Facebook? For those advocating regulation, why do you advocate that over the development of services that genuinely respect user freedom? Thanks all who comment thoughtfully.

pteredactyl 9y ago
Cynically, it's beyond comprehension or willingness to learn for most. They'd rather complain to the Government than do something about it. Unfortunately, we've found ourselves in this situation. And why people look to the Government as some panacea of trust and integrity is beyond me.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  >And why people look to the Government as some panacea of trust and integrity is beyond me. Blind allegiance to authority and the government is indoctrinated on us from an early age by state mandated school curriculum, the media, implicit fear, and other factors.

Angostura 9y ago

Is this the Same WhatsApp that demands unfettered access to your entire contacts list before it will work?

throwaway613834 9y ago

I wonder if the Americans freaking out about this whole foreign influence thing have any idea what their nation has done to other countries' (both democracies and otherwise). What's happened here is a complete joke in comparison, and everyone is losing their head. Do people have any idea what the modern world has been like?

wu-ikkyu 9y ago
Strong nationalism implies hypocrisy towards the rest of the world.
yters 9y ago
It's mostly a way of targeting Trump. No one bats an eyelid when Clintons have Russian ties.
- chasing 9y ago
  Because Trump's ties are legitimately scary while Clinton's are trumped up bullshit. Which you should know, Donald Trump, Jr. You were in some of the meetings.

dasyatidprime 9y ago

To repurpose what I was thinking of posting as an Nth-level comment, and leaving this long because I don't have time to shorten it (and because I'm trying to phrase it with so many preemption pieces that it won't immediately attract some kinds of detractors which I want to try to advance this argument beyond/around), yada yada: Making it purely up to the individual to decide these things when they have to decide in a coordinated way or else connections break down results in unhappy situations. Right now, we have enough coordination anarchy in digital social networks that it leads to some combination of entrenchment, pseudorandomness, and fashion cycles (at least as far as I can see). In the US, mail became a regulated monopoly, and the telephone network has regulation to try to give newcomers a better playing field and avoid capture effects (not that this always works—but things like “in this metro area, all ten digits must always be dialed so that the new numbers being introduced don't become the lower-class numbers that everyone fights to avoid anyway” have happened). Structure and usage regulations for physical shared community spaces have enough difference in focus and constraints that they don't seem to get applied the same way, and the localization and nature of enforcement mean they don't have the same kind of massive leverage. It is my strong suspicion that the lack of a single consensus “physics” in shared digital spaces (and attendant shared approach/instinct; cultural differences and training aside, human bodies have substantially similar baseline physical capabilities and constraints across the world) means that even with arbitrarily “benevolent” (whatever that means) government intervention, the idea of a level field doesn't work the same way to start with, and there's a panoply of little technical decisions that have “already been made” that combine to make things amazingly awkward on that level as well. We've tried “just stop using it!” since Stallman started saying it ages ago, and it doesn't work in practice for a lot of people (“because not everyone does it!” is of course the exact coordination problem I'm calling out above). Regulation seems almost untenable from this position, at least assuming pace-of-advancement continues to be a serious concern and expectations haven't globally converged, though I wouldn't be surprised if some particularly fluid kind of regulation popped up (especially from the European sphere) that would break logjams better. What else can usefully be tried if we don't want to wind up in the Big Social hegemony world? One that I rarely see is “capitulate in an accelerationist manner, let them become governments, and then push to make them good ones”—interesting as a thought experiment, but I wouldn't want to try to put that in practice from here. Can we extract useful information from that, though? A related observation: to some extent, the success of Mastodon (within several communities I'm part of, enough so that I can use it as part of the primary “social network” set in the same way many people use Twitter and observe a lot of jumping ship there from Twitter along the way, even though in terms of absolute popularity it may still be far weaker) mimics what's been called the Amish-congregation government model to me (you are heavily bound by your choice of instance but it generally remains practical to switch), and instance leaders seem to be taking a much more active and community-centered role than Big Social allows. But that's still ultimately based enough on the Twitter model of interaction that there are lingering social problems (at least I find them to be problems) from that, and the currents of code changes are still a coordination/effort problem of their own, though that's partly mitigated by several instances running interesting forks already while leaving interoperability intact. I'll be very curious to see how that evolves.

StreamBright 9y ago

Deleted it long time ago on my mobile devices. It is not enough though. Facebook javascript is everywhere.

ironjunkie 9y ago
Tech companies should bear responsibilities to NOT embed facebook javsascript on any of their websites. More shame need to come when those javascripts get embedded somewhere.

Hendrikto 9y ago

I deleted my facebook accounts years ago, and never looked back. Nobody in my fried group even really uses it anymore. Most people just check in once a day for 3-5 minutes.

tzfld 9y ago
>Most people just check in once a day for 3-5 minutes Actually, that's a huge thing.

timvisee 9y ago

I've fallen in a deep, deep hole. One I can't get out of (meaning, deleting my Facebook account), because I've used "Login with Facebook" on quite a few sites and platforms. What do others recommend in a situation like this?

gpmcadam 9y ago
Consider whether any of those associated sites are still useful. You can enumerate these on Facebook itself, it shows you which sites have access to your account. Secondly, make a list of these sites. Ask yourself: "if I lost access to these sites today, would I care?" - remove the ones you don't care about. Lastly, separate each one from Facebook one-by-one. Some will be easy, log-in, set a password, unlink Facebook. Done. Some will probably require getting in contact with the site's support team. Don't worry about doing this over night. Just rest in the knowledge that every step you take, is getting a bit more control over your data. Eventually the list will shrink, and then you can start the mammoth task of doing the same things with: * Your post history * Your likes * Your check-ins * Your reviews * Your event history * Your employment history * Your photos * Your wall posts * etc. Good luck!
donttrack 9y ago
Keep deleting it after you enable it to login to whatever site and the delete it again after you changed your credentials on said site. Eventually it will stay deleted/disabled and lost at some point. Thats what I did and the Facebook account is gone now. Haven't encountered any problems so far.
OfficerGuac 9y ago
If you go to https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications you can see a list of everything you've signed up for using Facebook OAuth, then determine from there what sites you still use and adjust logins as necessary

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

objectiveariel 9y ago

This is probably the most pathetic PR move we've seen this year so far. Acton sold off his userbase to Facebook in 2014, with full knowledge of the Snowden revelations of 2013 where we learned about Facebook's involvement in PRISM.

powerapple 9y ago

We are in the connected world. News can be generated by anyone and travel very very fast. That's the reality. In the fast you have to talk to people knowing what they think, now you can do it quickly and at massive scale. We will have more and more information out there anyway, regardless how many researchers working on cyber security and other problems. The only way to go back is to unplug electricity grid? Really? There is nothing wrong with Facebook. And that's how technology can empower people to do both good and bad things. Yes, US people are not happy with the election, journalists now have a revenge, but blaming technology? really?

hutzlibu 9y ago

The big problem with the whole post-privacy thing is in my opinion, that it is asymetrical. I mean, if everybody (could) know everything about everybody else, ok, strange, but fine. But the big powerful players know much more about the private lives of the average citiciens(or also politican), than the Gestapo and KGB could ever dream of, but we know not so much about them. This is very dangerous. As it gives the people with all that (potential dark) information much power. Especialy when there are so many ridiculous laws around, disconnected from reality, like that Marihuana is still mostly illegal. And while for most it would not matter, but someone working in health sector for example, can get in serious trouble(at least in germany), if he would found guilty of smoking sometimes. This makes people vulnerable to blackmailing etc. I can only hope, that there are also enough righteous people, like Snowden, involved, to blow the whistle, when things get overhand. But I believe there is something fundamentaly wrong, with the current direction.

yters 9y ago
Yes, but that is all of modern tech, and people give them their data willingly for the convenience. No one is stopping that any time soon.

intrasight 9y ago

For several years, I've been pontificating the somewhat abstract idea that a software app will one day hack the human psyche on a massive scale. And by "hack", I mean to do us harm by tapping into the same pleasure mechanisms as addictive drugs. It never occurred to me until today that perhaps Facebook is this app.

imtyler 9y ago
"Pontificate" implies a pompous demeanor, I think you meant pondering?
- intrasight 9y ago
  Both. My friends hear it as potification ;)
disease 9y ago
I personally have always viewed Facebook as being in the business of mind control and have said as much to anyone that would listen.

aangela318-41 9y ago

How sweet can we be don't you just wish we all be half full.(^^)

dotsh 9y ago

Deleted comment.

niravs 9y ago
that's a scam and a fake account.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

pretty_dumm_guy 9y ago

I quite remember the day when my name appeared on the comments section of a website I visited (through facebook widget I believe). I freaked out. But when I discussed about this with my friends back then almost every one seemed to have a cavalier attitude towards this(meaning they were completely fine with it). I wouldn't be surprised if my friends still have the same attitude. People are okay with sharing their information online if it provides them convenience. Facebook provides them with the convenience of staying in touch with people. This combined with "I have nothing to hide anyway" & "so what if?" thought processes and monetary benefits on corporate side seems to have led to this huge data bank that is Facebook today. I am really glad people are talking more about this. Never too late. People need to completely understand their actions online have consequences.d

EnderMB 9y ago

The main thing I don't get from this approach is the idea that deleting Facebook somehow frees you from this level of data mining. In reality, it's well-known (not just by techies, but everyone) that when you "delete" Facebook, you're only really deactivating that account. Your data has already been mined, your data has already been sold and moved onto another server, and even if Facebook wanted to get rid of you, the Channel 4/Guardian expose has illustrated that data has been sold. The damage has already been done. Instead of trying to get people to leave, there should be pressure on sanctions from affected governments. The only way to stop this level of data misuse is to ensure that Facebook is fined adequately. Instead of trying to crash the stock price, fine them $10k for every user breach, to the tune of several billion. My biggest worry from this scandal is that the anger will die down, and the world will be told that you can get away with this level of data breach. Equifax have largely got away with their breach, but if Facebook and CA can get away with outright giving data away for profit then all we'll see is that the line hasn't been crossed yet.

josinalvo 9y ago

In calm seriousness: Can sb compare the technical feats and the scope of the data collection by the obama campaign and the trump campaign?

Cyberspy 9y ago

In May, once GDPR becomes mandatory, we'll all be able to issue data requests to the likes of Facebook and Cambridge Analyitica etc, to find out just what they know about us. The requests are free, so with social media, you could almost mount a denial of service attack against a business if enough people make a request!

pers0n 9y ago

So many bloody apps and websites require or ask for fb accounts to sign up, tinder, coffee meets bagel, bumble, etc etc. everyone empowered them. Note I never got a fb account, so some sites I just can’t use.

paynebutler01 9y ago

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