7 ms·

"The Myanmar issues have, I think, gotten a lot of focus inside the company. I remember, one Saturday morning, I got a phone call and we detected that people we

by chvid 9y ago

"The Myanmar issues have, I think, gotten a lot of focus inside the company. I remember, one Saturday morning, I got a phone call and we detected that people were trying to spread sensational messages through — it was Facebook Messenger in this case — to each side of the conflict, basically telling the Muslims, “Hey, there’s about to be an uprising of the Buddhists, so make sure that you are armed and go to this place.” And then the same thing on the other side." Ok. So Facebook monitors Messenger (not just your public "wall" of Facebook) which has the appearance of being private person to person communication and detects that there are encouragements of violence in Myanmar (written I assume in some language other than English). That is some impressive operation they have going on. No wonders that the Chinese did not let get them inside their country.

zghst 9y ago
The largest, most rich intelligence service in the history of man and people happily hand their shit over
mtgx 9y ago
Facebook has been actively monitoring Messenger messages for years. https://mashable.com/2012/07/12/facebook-scanning-chats/ https://mashable.com/2012/07/12/facebook-scanning-chats/ Skype does it, too, by the way, in case that's also a surprise. Probably most of the ones that don't use end-to-end encryption by default do. And now that Brian Acton left WhatsApp, you should be very careful with what you saw in WhatsApp's end-to-end encrypted chats, too.
- theyinwhy 9y ago
  > And now that Brian Acton left WhatsApp, you should be very careful with what you saw in WhatsApp's end-to-end encrypted chats, too. Why?
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    There have been numerous reports about the insecurities of WhatsApp over the years. For instance: http://www.information-age.com/whatsapp-can-read-users-encrypted-messages-123463970/ http://www.information-age.com/whatsapp-can-read-users-encry...
    - tao_oat 9y ago
      The Guardian, that initially published this “insecurity”, has been heavily criticized by security experts for their article: https://mashable.com/2017/01/20/experts-demand-guardian-retract-whatsapp-article/#.amEcLQX3qqx https://mashable.com/2017/01/20/experts-demand-guardian-retr... If there are other insecurities, please post them here - I haven’t heard of others than this one.
      - KozmoNau7 9y ago
        There's also this: http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/whatsapp-draws-criticism-for-passing-users-information-to-facebook-3040766/ http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-techno... And this: http://www.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-security-2014-2?r=US&IR=T&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-security-2014-2?r=US... The fact that it is owned by Facebook is enough to make me stay away.
        tao_oat 9y ago
        > The fact that it is owned by Facebook is enough to make me stay away. That’s fair, but I think it’s important to be very explicit if that’s the criticism. It’s true that Facebook can see your contacts list if you share it with WhatsApp but no one ever claimed that they couldn’t. This isn’t a security vulnerability as such. The second article you linked is from before WhatsApp’s move to the Signal protocol. Yes, it’s owned by Facebook and yes, it’s closed source, but WhatsApp has brought end-to-end encryption to over a billion people. For the vast majority of use cases it’s a huge security improvement.
    - theyinwhy 9y ago
      I was just wondering why the leave of Brian Acton would change anything significantly. Besides that I would never touch WhatsApp. The fact that they hand your phone number over to facebook is one of many reasons to stay far away of this messenger.
boreas 9y ago
I am pretty sure that property is required for Chinese messaging services, not discouraged.
- chvid 9y ago
  Yeah. They probably went: Let's have the local police look thru that stuff. Not some big American corporation.
orbifold 9y ago
The only thing I'm really amazed by is how the European countries still allow them to operate, they should be fined until they exit the market and their operation made illegal. Probably they provide sufficiently useful information to the security services that governments don't do anything. In effect they are a privatised Stasi.
- emilsedgh 9y ago
  I don't think European people are OK with their politicians taking Facebook from them.
  - baq 9y ago
    That's what zuck is desperate to preserve. Change is in the air. I wouldn't mind.
  - collyw 9y ago
    Actually I would be more than happy. I am ready to make the move to a service where users are more in control, but its going to take a massive kick up the arse to get my friends to move. They whined about having to use Telegram rather than Whatsapp when I had an Ubuntu phone.
  - orbifold 9y ago
    Nothing that can't be fixed by a bit of Psi Ops. Pretty much none of the traditional media companies like Facebook and in most of Europe at least one TV station per country is state controlled. So all that needs to happen is ~6-12 months of negative press in the tabloids and constant negative coverage in national television. I think that could easily be arranged. To paint a picture here are some headlines by BILD (largest German tabloid): "ZUCKERBERG SCANDAL: So verdient Facebook mit Ihren Daten Geld", (ZUCKERBERG SCANDAL: This is how Facebook earns money with your data), article based on a report by German national television (ZDF) "„SCHADEN FÜR DIE DEMOKRATIE“ 60 Prozent der Deutschen fürchten Facebook" (DAMAGE TO DEMOCRACY, 60 Percent of Germans fear Facebook)
    - s3r3nity 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
askafriend 9y ago
What's your take on Gmail then?
ksk 9y ago
>Ok. So Facebook monitors Messenger (not just your public "wall" of Facebook) which has the appearance of being private person to person communication and detects that there are encouragements of violence in Myanmar (written I assume in some language other than English). Or, to take another reading of it - Facebook actively monitors nothing. They get a call that people are abusing the service, and they open the hatch and proceed to take a look.

by chvid 9y ago

zghst 9y ago

The largest, most rich intelligence service in the history of man and people happily hand their shit over

mtgx 9y ago

Facebook has been actively monitoring Messenger messages for years. https://mashable.com/2012/07/12/facebook-scanning-chats/ https://mashable.com/2012/07/12/facebook-scanning-chats/ Skype does it, too, by the way, in case that's also a surprise. Probably most of the ones that don't use end-to-end encryption by default do. And now that Brian Acton left WhatsApp, you should be very careful with what you saw in WhatsApp's end-to-end encrypted chats, too.

theyinwhy 9y ago
> And now that Brian Acton left WhatsApp, you should be very careful with what you saw in WhatsApp's end-to-end encrypted chats, too. Why?
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  There have been numerous reports about the insecurities of WhatsApp over the years. For instance: http://www.information-age.com/whatsapp-can-read-users-encrypted-messages-123463970/ http://www.information-age.com/whatsapp-can-read-users-encry...
  - tao_oat 9y ago
    The Guardian, that initially published this “insecurity”, has been heavily criticized by security experts for their article: https://mashable.com/2017/01/20/experts-demand-guardian-retract-whatsapp-article/#.amEcLQX3qqx https://mashable.com/2017/01/20/experts-demand-guardian-retr... If there are other insecurities, please post them here - I haven’t heard of others than this one.
    - KozmoNau7 9y ago
      There's also this: http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/whatsapp-draws-criticism-for-passing-users-information-to-facebook-3040766/ http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-techno... And this: http://www.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-security-2014-2?r=US&IR=T&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-security-2014-2?r=US... The fact that it is owned by Facebook is enough to make me stay away.
      - tao_oat 9y ago
        > The fact that it is owned by Facebook is enough to make me stay away. That’s fair, but I think it’s important to be very explicit if that’s the criticism. It’s true that Facebook can see your contacts list if you share it with WhatsApp but no one ever claimed that they couldn’t. This isn’t a security vulnerability as such. The second article you linked is from before WhatsApp’s move to the Signal protocol. Yes, it’s owned by Facebook and yes, it’s closed source, but WhatsApp has brought end-to-end encryption to over a billion people. For the vast majority of use cases it’s a huge security improvement.
  - theyinwhy 9y ago
    I was just wondering why the leave of Brian Acton would change anything significantly. Besides that I would never touch WhatsApp. The fact that they hand your phone number over to facebook is one of many reasons to stay far away of this messenger.

boreas 9y ago

I am pretty sure that property is required for Chinese messaging services, not discouraged.

chvid 9y ago
Yeah. They probably went: Let's have the local police look thru that stuff. Not some big American corporation.

orbifold 9y ago

The only thing I'm really amazed by is how the European countries still allow them to operate, they should be fined until they exit the market and their operation made illegal. Probably they provide sufficiently useful information to the security services that governments don't do anything. In effect they are a privatised Stasi.

emilsedgh 9y ago
I don't think European people are OK with their politicians taking Facebook from them.
- baq 9y ago
  That's what zuck is desperate to preserve. Change is in the air. I wouldn't mind.
- collyw 9y ago
  Actually I would be more than happy. I am ready to make the move to a service where users are more in control, but its going to take a massive kick up the arse to get my friends to move. They whined about having to use Telegram rather than Whatsapp when I had an Ubuntu phone.
- orbifold 9y ago
  Nothing that can't be fixed by a bit of Psi Ops. Pretty much none of the traditional media companies like Facebook and in most of Europe at least one TV station per country is state controlled. So all that needs to happen is ~6-12 months of negative press in the tabloids and constant negative coverage in national television. I think that could easily be arranged. To paint a picture here are some headlines by BILD (largest German tabloid): "ZUCKERBERG SCANDAL: So verdient Facebook mit Ihren Daten Geld", (ZUCKERBERG SCANDAL: This is how Facebook earns money with your data), article based on a report by German national television (ZDF) "„SCHADEN FÜR DIE DEMOKRATIE“ 60 Prozent der Deutschen fürchten Facebook" (DAMAGE TO DEMOCRACY, 60 Percent of Germans fear Facebook)
  - s3r3nity 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

askafriend 9y ago

What's your take on Gmail then?

ksk 9y ago

>Ok. So Facebook monitors Messenger (not just your public "wall" of Facebook) which has the appearance of being private person to person communication and detects that there are encouragements of violence in Myanmar (written I assume in some language other than English). Or, to take another reading of it - Facebook actively monitors nothing. They get a call that people are abusing the service, and they open the hatch and proceed to take a look.