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> I'm having trouble pinpointing a reason why it's bad … $20 per month is pretty substantial compensation But Facebook's competitors did not consent to their
by anjc 8y ago
> I'm having trouble pinpointing a reason why it's bad … $20 per month is pretty substantial compensation
But Facebook's competitors did not consent to their traffic being spied on and had a reasonable expectation that their traffic would remain safe from this type of intervention on iOS devices. Ignoring the ethics of paying users for data and so on, this seems like a straight up case of industrial espionage. The article says that this is how FB spotted the rise of WhatsApp, and presumably informed the offer. They would have known exact usage information, this is espionage via surveillance.
- Wowfunhappy 8y agoWhy do Facebook's competitors get a say in it? Facebook is only getting access to user-visible data; if the users decide to give that away (in exchange for compensation), it's their right. Amazon users aren't Amazon employees—they didn't sign an NDA and are free to share what they know.
- anjc 8y agoAt an individual level that may be so, but if they're doing it en-masse then they essentially had secret/sensitive competitor information when they made an offer to buy WA, daily active users, usage-by-demographic etc. On top of that they would have had access to message formats, headers, encryption protocols and so on, things that are potentially trade secrets. This isn't user-visible data and app owners shouldn't expect that competitors can access it directly from a user's phone.
- Wowfunhappy 8y agoBy that logic, is the NPD collecting trade secrets by tracking game sales? We know a lot of publishers would prefer that information is unknown. Combining legally-obtained data to come to a conclusion is not illegal or immoral.