8 ms·

Calibra – Digital Wallet for Libra

100 points by alcio 7y ago

hulahoof 7y ago
Currently 404 for me, was the site up ?
- HackerBacker 7y ago
  It was for around 17 mins and then everything is returning is 404. The website, link to WP. Edit: Well, it's up now!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dfischer 7y ago
https://github.com/libra/libra https://github.com/libra/libra and https://libra.org/en-US/ https://libra.org/en-US/ Built in Rust. Interesting. Nice choice.
- dalf 7y ago
  Some other links : - White paper : https://developers.libra.org/docs/assets/papers/the-libra-blockchain.pdf https://developers.libra.org/docs/assets/papers/the-libra-bl... - What's Next? : https://developers.libra.org/blog/2019/06/18/the-path-forward https://developers.libra.org/blog/2019/06/18/the-path-forwar... - Moving Toward Permissionless Consensus : https://libra.org/en-US/permissionless-blockchain https://libra.org/en-US/permissionless-blockchain
GutenYe 7y ago
Can not open in Firefox :( but works fine with Chrome. > ReferenceError: requireLazy is not defined
- yorwba 7y ago
  Works for me using Firefox for Android, version 67.0.2
- yuliyp 7y ago
  Are you blocking some Facebook CDN domains perhaps?
  - GutenYe 7y ago
    Found the problem, Facebook Container extension blocked the js file.
- piotrkubisa 7y ago
  I guess, you might have enabled "Facebook Container" add-on while browsing this site. It is very restrictive in terms of blocking content that comes from Facebook Inc. addresses. [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont...
pmlnr 7y ago
> Imagine if cash became digital. Been there, in China, with Alipay. Absolutely no way for an EU person to pay with it: doesn't accept European phone number for sign up and since the end of 2018 one can not get a proper Chinese SIM with a passport. Don't touch cash. That's the only fallback we have for outages, when someone is without data connection (ghasp!) or for scenarios where politics or decisions make it impossible for foreigners to use it, like above. EDIT one additional thought. One of my technical issues with Alipay is that it requires data connection from both sides. With POS terminals it's only the seller who needs to have some kind of a phone line. In a foreign country, with the current state of roaming charges, this is a serious problem. I don't know if FB plans to address this issue. EDIT2 responding to some comments - even if a foreigner could/can get a full Chinese SIM, for spending 2 weeks there the need for a second, dedicated SIM is an overkill and an additional, tricky round, especially if you're not going to a Tier 1 city. Even if you succeed adding foreign bank accounts and debit cards could get tricky if I understand correctly, but I never actually got to test it.
- mike-cardwell 7y ago
  I went to a music festival last weekend. All of the vendors had machines for taking card payments, and none of them worked because there was no phone signal. Of course, I had a pocket full of cash, so didn't care, but a lot of people didn't.
- yorwba 7y ago
  Being Facebook, they probably don't have to worry about the China market, but other countries also want to have some degree of control over money crossing their borders. It will be interesting to see how Calibra plans to handle that.
- rahimnathwani 7y ago
  "since the end of 2018 one can not get a proper Chinese SIM with a passport" I took my passport to a China Unicom shop in Beijing a few weeks ago, to get a SIM for a visiting relative. The process took about 10 minutes. "Alipay is that it requires data connection from both sides" No it doesn't. If I print out my payment QR code, you can scan it and pay me even if my phone is off. When I buy vegetables at the market, the vendors have their Alipay and WeChat QR codes displayed on stickers. Some vendors have cheap bluetooth devices which announce the amount of each incoming payment, but most vendors trust the customer and don't bother to check whether a payment was made.
dgellow 7y ago
From the FAQ: > Question: How will you prevent fraud? > Anwer: All accounts and transactions are verified, and fraud prevention is built in throughout the app. Accounts are verified with government-issued ID, so you know people are who they say they are. Facebook and WhatsApp account information are also used when available to verify identity and prevent fraud. Calibra also has in-app reporting and dedicated customer service. In the rare event of unauthorized fraud, you will receive a full refund. How can they refund the money? Would that mean that they have full control on the currency? And if they do, doesn't that defeat the purpose of a blockchain?
- pmlnr 7y ago
  refund => reverse commit forward Refund is not necessarily reversing a transaction.
- croon 7y ago
  I would assume they have full control of the currency, but it doesn't negate the purpose of blockchain, but perhaps the purpose of proof-of-work, so I hope they use something different. But long and short I think is that people don't want to have the possibility of losing their wallet, meaning someone else needs to have authority over it. I dislike the slowness and transaction fees of banks, not the state backed security.
  - WAHa_06x36 7y ago
    It literally does negate all the purpose of a blockchain though. Blockchains do no not provide any value if you have a trusted party, they only make things less efficient.
- wickoff 7y ago
  You don't need to ask Facebook permission to transfer the money, but they reserve the right to intervene if you commit fraud. That's why they are using a blockchain. The governments will love it because it allows for perfect surveillance, the people will love it because it makes international payments seamless, it can erase the predatory remittance business out of existence. If they can convince merchants to accept it, they can also improve on credit card UX.
ilaksh 7y ago
This is Facebook's attempt to cash in on the cryptocurrency hype with a high tech type of bank before real cryptocurrencies can scale and become mainstream. I consider it a moral imperative for developers to stop this. In fact I will probably make some comment like that at some point on their GitHub pages. Which I expect to be removed. But this is the good fight. It's what Star Wars is really about. Defeating the evil empire.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  I agree with your first point. Calibra without the "cryptocurrency blockchain" keywords would still have the same utility. As to your second point, may I ask why you consider it a moral imperative for developers to stop this?
anentropic 7y ago
I can't believe any good will come of this
I_am_tiberius 7y ago
I think a cryptocurrency doesn't make sense if it's managed by a company.
tomglynch 7y ago
> "In the rare event of unauthorized fraud, you will receive a full refund." How?
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Presumably by giving your money back to you. That's generally how a refund works. Did you have something else in mind?
  - rahulkapil 7y ago
    That would mean they are an intermediary in the blockchain.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      They create a new transaction from their probably inexhaustible wallet to your wallet. I don't know much about Calibra, is it a public blockchain? Can anyone build a client to generate transactions and mine blocks?
- sgeisler 7y ago
  As I understand it Calibra is a custodial wallet. I'd guess that transactions between Calibra users never hit the libra blockchain, so reverting them should be possible.
themanual 7y ago
Big news. Nice to see more details. - They have GAS fees. (unlike say EOS which is free). - Not sure how they will make accounts anonymous? Knowing an account lets anyone query the account balance? - They will start with permissioned chain and transition to non permissioned
lifty 7y ago
This is their custommer commitment document which specifies some details about how they will maintain user privacy and Libra's relationship to Facebook: https://scontent-ams4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/65083631_355528488499253_8415273665234468864_n.pdf?_nc_cat=106&_nc_ht=scontent-ams4-1.xx&oh=4339de8f67aa1979272cfe937400d865&oe=5D982AC3 https://scontent-ams4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/65083631_3...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sametmax 7y ago
So the GAFAM wants to get independant from the banks. Great. But they don't want to be controled by anything, or share the power, or make it fair, or good for humanity. So they call it a cryptocoin, yet it's locked in and centralized. I'm all for taking power from the bank, giving more power to the Silicon Valley is a terrible idea.
beefield 7y ago
Can someone give something like eli5 how this works? Is the currency pegged to some currency? How is that peg supposed to hold? Is facebook a bank? Where are the assets supporting the currency ( if they exist) invested?
- tdjsnelling 7y ago
  From the whitepaper: > it will be backed by a collection of low-volatility assets, such as bank deposits and short-term government securities in currencies from stable and reputable central banks. and > The assets in the Libra Reserve will be held by a geographically distributed network of custodians with investment-grade credit rating to provide both security and decentralization of the assets. https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#the-libra-currency-and-reserve https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#the-libra-currency-and-...
laurent123456 7y ago
What's the use case for it? It looks like the point is to send money from people to people easily. But how about businesses? Currently I can pay with Contactless in shops, and on online services, paying by debit/credit card is straightforward. So I'm not seeing exactly what it will be used for.
- microwavecamera 7y ago
  More data mining?
  - laurent123456 7y ago
    Yes I don't expect Facebook to do anything for the greater good, however they still need to convince people to use it, and I'm curious what's the plan. "More data mining" won't cut it on their press release :) Well I guess at this point they can pretty much force people to use the currency (by not giving any other payment options) since people are locked into their platform and won't leave no matter what Facebook do.
josh2600 7y ago
Congratulations to Facebook for releasing code. I’m excited to see how the industry evolves. We look forward to showing the world what we’ve been working on at MobileCoin when it’s ready. Privacy matters.
LeoNatan25 7y ago
Don't use Facebook's cryptocurrency.
1in21m 7y ago
Open access? NO Decentralized? NO Censorship resistant? NO Fixed monetary policy? NO Unseizable? NO Transaction fee market? NO There's no point in FB using a blockchain for their digital payments network, other than touting it as a 'cryptocurrency'. A centralized or federated database is all they need.
xyst 7y ago
I’m skeptical, but it’s too early in the morning to deep dive into the white papers. Will save it for later. Based on what I have read though, this digital currency isn’t really a crypto coin. The users are verified through government issued identification and it appears the coin is issued by a centralized system. Seems like the companies invested into this system are trying to act like the Federal Reserve in the United States.
sgeisler 7y ago
Let's see if they will allow non-custodial wallets for libra, that might make them the catalyst that enables real world bitcoin payments. There could be a service that pays libra invoices for you if you send them bitcoins. If this happens automated/transparently in wallets that would be a big step forward. Let the POS terminal tell you which currency it wants and your wallet will send it. If they want USD send libra, if they want BTC send BTC via lightning. Switching from accepting USD to BTC would become seamless (e.g. in case of increasing inflation).
- thefounder 7y ago
  Something tells me the calibra wallet will be the only wallet authz and it will be no different than your paypal app both as functionality and flexibility. As far as bitcoin is concerned it has no place in the payments world. It's a flawed coin for payments due its volatility.
huis 7y ago
"We are working to bring Calibra to as many countries as possible, as soon as we can." I hope my country won't allow a currency controlled by a foreign company. The power of companies is already influencing democracy in a bad way.
chvid 7y ago
I am curius how refund works? Is there a "master key" that allows Facebook customer service to reverse a transaction or create a transaction from an arbitrary account? And how does this play with current financial legislation. Do they have a banking license? And where is the blockchain stored? Otherwise great news; I am looking forward to something that probably has a very good end-user experience compared to what else is out there.
krn 7y ago
> Accounts are verified with government-issued ID, so you know people are who they say they are. Facebook and WhatsApp account information are also used when available to verify identity and prevent fraud. What could be a bigger achievement for an ad company than being able to track all transactions between its users and customers? That's why your payment account will be associated with your social account. What Facebook is doing here, it's providing a lower-margin (payment processing) service for free to grow its higher-margin (ad targeting) business.
- hnarn 7y ago
  > Aside from limited cases, Calibra will not share account information or financial data with Facebook, Inc. or any third party without customer consent. For example, Calibra customers’ account information and financial data will not be used to improve ad targeting on the Facebook, Inc. family of products https://scontent-ams4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/65083631_355528488499253_8415273665234468864_n.pdf?_nc_cat=106&_nc_ht=scontent-ams4-1.xx&oh=4339de8f67aa1979272cfe937400d865&oe=5D982AC3 https://scontent-ams4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/65083631_3...
  - krn 7y ago
    > without customer consent Which every customer will give by agreeing with carefully crafted "Terms and Conditions".
woofwoofwoof 7y ago
I remember they announced reliable messaging across Facebook-owned apps (fb messenger, whatsapp, instagram), but looks like Instagram is not supported yet.
dessant 7y ago
> Accounts are verified with government-issued ID, so you know people are who they say they are. I would prefer a global payment solution that defaults to anonymity, or at least pseudonymity, especially when it comes to transferring small amounts of money, such as paying for groceries. This requirement is nothing more on Facebook's part than defaulting to the lowest common denominator in order to harvest as much data as they possibly can.
- consp 7y ago
  That would be illegal almost everywhere in the world for natural persons.
  - cyphar 7y ago
    Cash payment is an obvious counter-example. Yes, the seller needs to keep records for tax purposes. But the buyer does not. For an example of a crypto payment system (though not crytpocurrency) that attempts to provide anonymity in a way that doesn't make governments unhappy take a look at GNU Taler.
  - dessant 7y ago
    One can legally pay with cryptocurrencies for various services around the world, without submitting a government ID. https://www.lifewire.com/big-sites-that-accept-bitcoin-payments-3485965 https://www.lifewire.com/big-sites-that-accept-bitcoin-payme... https://coinmap.org/#/world/31.80289259/-82.96875000/3 https://coinmap.org/#/world/31.80289259/-82.96875000/3
    - thefounder 7y ago
      Bitcoin is a nightmare for both buyer and seller due its volatility, not to mention the difference between exchange rates. You may buy your bitcoin with a specific price but the merchant/payment processor values it differently(lower). Just check bitpay to see for yourself
      - dessant 7y ago

100 points by alcio 7y ago

hulahoof 7y ago

Currently 404 for me, was the site up ?

HackerBacker 7y ago
It was for around 17 mins and then everything is returning is 404. The website, link to WP. Edit: Well, it's up now!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dfischer 7y ago

https://github.com/libra/libra https://github.com/libra/libra and https://libra.org/en-US/ https://libra.org/en-US/ Built in Rust. Interesting. Nice choice.

dalf 7y ago
Some other links : - White paper : https://developers.libra.org/docs/assets/papers/the-libra-blockchain.pdf https://developers.libra.org/docs/assets/papers/the-libra-bl... - What's Next? : https://developers.libra.org/blog/2019/06/18/the-path-forward https://developers.libra.org/blog/2019/06/18/the-path-forwar... - Moving Toward Permissionless Consensus : https://libra.org/en-US/permissionless-blockchain https://libra.org/en-US/permissionless-blockchain

GutenYe 7y ago

Can not open in Firefox :( but works fine with Chrome. > ReferenceError: requireLazy is not defined

yorwba 7y ago
Works for me using Firefox for Android, version 67.0.2
yuliyp 7y ago
Are you blocking some Facebook CDN domains perhaps?
- GutenYe 7y ago
  Found the problem, Facebook Container extension blocked the js file.
piotrkubisa 7y ago
I guess, you might have enabled "Facebook Container" add-on while browsing this site. It is very restrictive in terms of blocking content that comes from Facebook Inc. addresses. [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont...

pmlnr 7y ago

> Imagine if cash became digital. Been there, in China, with Alipay. Absolutely no way for an EU person to pay with it: doesn't accept European phone number for sign up and since the end of 2018 one can not get a proper Chinese SIM with a passport. Don't touch cash. That's the only fallback we have for outages, when someone is without data connection (ghasp!) or for scenarios where politics or decisions make it impossible for foreigners to use it, like above. EDIT one additional thought. One of my technical issues with Alipay is that it requires data connection from both sides. With POS terminals it's only the seller who needs to have some kind of a phone line. In a foreign country, with the current state of roaming charges, this is a serious problem. I don't know if FB plans to address this issue. EDIT2 responding to some comments - even if a foreigner could/can get a full Chinese SIM, for spending 2 weeks there the need for a second, dedicated SIM is an overkill and an additional, tricky round, especially if you're not going to a Tier 1 city. Even if you succeed adding foreign bank accounts and debit cards could get tricky if I understand correctly, but I never actually got to test it.

mike-cardwell 7y ago
I went to a music festival last weekend. All of the vendors had machines for taking card payments, and none of them worked because there was no phone signal. Of course, I had a pocket full of cash, so didn't care, but a lot of people didn't.
yorwba 7y ago
Being Facebook, they probably don't have to worry about the China market, but other countries also want to have some degree of control over money crossing their borders. It will be interesting to see how Calibra plans to handle that.
rahimnathwani 7y ago
"since the end of 2018 one can not get a proper Chinese SIM with a passport" I took my passport to a China Unicom shop in Beijing a few weeks ago, to get a SIM for a visiting relative. The process took about 10 minutes. "Alipay is that it requires data connection from both sides" No it doesn't. If I print out my payment QR code, you can scan it and pay me even if my phone is off. When I buy vegetables at the market, the vendors have their Alipay and WeChat QR codes displayed on stickers. Some vendors have cheap bluetooth devices which announce the amount of each incoming payment, but most vendors trust the customer and don't bother to check whether a payment was made.

dgellow 7y ago

From the FAQ: > Question: How will you prevent fraud? > Anwer: All accounts and transactions are verified, and fraud prevention is built in throughout the app. Accounts are verified with government-issued ID, so you know people are who they say they are. Facebook and WhatsApp account information are also used when available to verify identity and prevent fraud. Calibra also has in-app reporting and dedicated customer service. In the rare event of unauthorized fraud, you will receive a full refund. How can they refund the money? Would that mean that they have full control on the currency? And if they do, doesn't that defeat the purpose of a blockchain?

pmlnr 7y ago
refund => reverse commit forward Refund is not necessarily reversing a transaction.
croon 7y ago
I would assume they have full control of the currency, but it doesn't negate the purpose of blockchain, but perhaps the purpose of proof-of-work, so I hope they use something different. But long and short I think is that people don't want to have the possibility of losing their wallet, meaning someone else needs to have authority over it. I dislike the slowness and transaction fees of banks, not the state backed security.
- WAHa_06x36 7y ago
  It literally does negate all the purpose of a blockchain though. Blockchains do no not provide any value if you have a trusted party, they only make things less efficient.
wickoff 7y ago
You don't need to ask Facebook permission to transfer the money, but they reserve the right to intervene if you commit fraud. That's why they are using a blockchain. The governments will love it because it allows for perfect surveillance, the people will love it because it makes international payments seamless, it can erase the predatory remittance business out of existence. If they can convince merchants to accept it, they can also improve on credit card UX.

ilaksh 7y ago

This is Facebook's attempt to cash in on the cryptocurrency hype with a high tech type of bank before real cryptocurrencies can scale and become mainstream. I consider it a moral imperative for developers to stop this. In fact I will probably make some comment like that at some point on their GitHub pages. Which I expect to be removed. But this is the good fight. It's what Star Wars is really about. Defeating the evil empire.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
I agree with your first point. Calibra without the "cryptocurrency blockchain" keywords would still have the same utility. As to your second point, may I ask why you consider it a moral imperative for developers to stop this?

anentropic 7y ago

I can't believe any good will come of this

I_am_tiberius 7y ago

I think a cryptocurrency doesn't make sense if it's managed by a company.

tomglynch 7y ago

> "In the rare event of unauthorized fraud, you will receive a full refund." How?

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Presumably by giving your money back to you. That's generally how a refund works. Did you have something else in mind?
- rahulkapil 7y ago
  That would mean they are an intermediary in the blockchain.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    They create a new transaction from their probably inexhaustible wallet to your wallet. I don't know much about Calibra, is it a public blockchain? Can anyone build a client to generate transactions and mine blocks?
sgeisler 7y ago
As I understand it Calibra is a custodial wallet. I'd guess that transactions between Calibra users never hit the libra blockchain, so reverting them should be possible.

themanual 7y ago

Big news. Nice to see more details. - They have GAS fees. (unlike say EOS which is free). - Not sure how they will make accounts anonymous? Knowing an account lets anyone query the account balance? - They will start with permissioned chain and transition to non permissioned

lifty 7y ago

This is their custommer commitment document which specifies some details about how they will maintain user privacy and Libra's relationship to Facebook: https://scontent-ams4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/65083631_355528488499253_8415273665234468864_n.pdf?_nc_cat=106&_nc_ht=scontent-ams4-1.xx&oh=4339de8f67aa1979272cfe937400d865&oe=5D982AC3 https://scontent-ams4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/65083631_3...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sametmax 7y ago

So the GAFAM wants to get independant from the banks. Great. But they don't want to be controled by anything, or share the power, or make it fair, or good for humanity. So they call it a cryptocoin, yet it's locked in and centralized. I'm all for taking power from the bank, giving more power to the Silicon Valley is a terrible idea.

beefield 7y ago

Can someone give something like eli5 how this works? Is the currency pegged to some currency? How is that peg supposed to hold? Is facebook a bank? Where are the assets supporting the currency ( if they exist) invested?

tdjsnelling 7y ago
From the whitepaper: > it will be backed by a collection of low-volatility assets, such as bank deposits and short-term government securities in currencies from stable and reputable central banks. and > The assets in the Libra Reserve will be held by a geographically distributed network of custodians with investment-grade credit rating to provide both security and decentralization of the assets. https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#the-libra-currency-and-reserve https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#the-libra-currency-and-...

laurent123456 7y ago

What's the use case for it? It looks like the point is to send money from people to people easily. But how about businesses? Currently I can pay with Contactless in shops, and on online services, paying by debit/credit card is straightforward. So I'm not seeing exactly what it will be used for.

microwavecamera 7y ago
More data mining?
- laurent123456 7y ago
  Yes I don't expect Facebook to do anything for the greater good, however they still need to convince people to use it, and I'm curious what's the plan. "More data mining" won't cut it on their press release :) Well I guess at this point they can pretty much force people to use the currency (by not giving any other payment options) since people are locked into their platform and won't leave no matter what Facebook do.

josh2600 7y ago

Congratulations to Facebook for releasing code. I’m excited to see how the industry evolves. We look forward to showing the world what we’ve been working on at MobileCoin when it’s ready. Privacy matters.

LeoNatan25 7y ago

Don't use Facebook's cryptocurrency.

1in21m 7y ago

Open access? NO Decentralized? NO Censorship resistant? NO Fixed monetary policy? NO Unseizable? NO Transaction fee market? NO There's no point in FB using a blockchain for their digital payments network, other than touting it as a 'cryptocurrency'. A centralized or federated database is all they need.

xyst 7y ago

I’m skeptical, but it’s too early in the morning to deep dive into the white papers. Will save it for later. Based on what I have read though, this digital currency isn’t really a crypto coin. The users are verified through government issued identification and it appears the coin is issued by a centralized system. Seems like the companies invested into this system are trying to act like the Federal Reserve in the United States.

sgeisler 7y ago

Let's see if they will allow non-custodial wallets for libra, that might make them the catalyst that enables real world bitcoin payments. There could be a service that pays libra invoices for you if you send them bitcoins. If this happens automated/transparently in wallets that would be a big step forward. Let the POS terminal tell you which currency it wants and your wallet will send it. If they want USD send libra, if they want BTC send BTC via lightning. Switching from accepting USD to BTC would become seamless (e.g. in case of increasing inflation).

thefounder 7y ago
Something tells me the calibra wallet will be the only wallet authz and it will be no different than your paypal app both as functionality and flexibility. As far as bitcoin is concerned it has no place in the payments world. It's a flawed coin for payments due its volatility.

huis 7y ago

"We are working to bring Calibra to as many countries as possible, as soon as we can." I hope my country won't allow a currency controlled by a foreign company. The power of companies is already influencing democracy in a bad way.

chvid 7y ago

I am curius how refund works? Is there a "master key" that allows Facebook customer service to reverse a transaction or create a transaction from an arbitrary account? And how does this play with current financial legislation. Do they have a banking license? And where is the blockchain stored? Otherwise great news; I am looking forward to something that probably has a very good end-user experience compared to what else is out there.

krn 7y ago

> Accounts are verified with government-issued ID, so you know people are who they say they are. Facebook and WhatsApp account information are also used when available to verify identity and prevent fraud. What could be a bigger achievement for an ad company than being able to track all transactions between its users and customers? That's why your payment account will be associated with your social account. What Facebook is doing here, it's providing a lower-margin (payment processing) service for free to grow its higher-margin (ad targeting) business.

hnarn 7y ago
> Aside from limited cases, Calibra will not share account information or financial data with Facebook, Inc. or any third party without customer consent. For example, Calibra customers’ account information and financial data will not be used to improve ad targeting on the Facebook, Inc. family of products https://scontent-ams4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/65083631_355528488499253_8415273665234468864_n.pdf?_nc_cat=106&_nc_ht=scontent-ams4-1.xx&oh=4339de8f67aa1979272cfe937400d865&oe=5D982AC3 https://scontent-ams4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/65083631_3...
- krn 7y ago
  > without customer consent Which every customer will give by agreeing with carefully crafted "Terms and Conditions".

woofwoofwoof 7y ago

I remember they announced reliable messaging across Facebook-owned apps (fb messenger, whatsapp, instagram), but looks like Instagram is not supported yet.

dessant 7y ago

> Accounts are verified with government-issued ID, so you know people are who they say they are. I would prefer a global payment solution that defaults to anonymity, or at least pseudonymity, especially when it comes to transferring small amounts of money, such as paying for groceries. This requirement is nothing more on Facebook's part than defaulting to the lowest common denominator in order to harvest as much data as they possibly can.

consp 7y ago
That would be illegal almost everywhere in the world for natural persons.
- cyphar 7y ago
  Cash payment is an obvious counter-example. Yes, the seller needs to keep records for tax purposes. But the buyer does not. For an example of a crypto payment system (though not crytpocurrency) that attempts to provide anonymity in a way that doesn't make governments unhappy take a look at GNU Taler.
- dessant 7y ago
  One can legally pay with cryptocurrencies for various services around the world, without submitting a government ID. https://www.lifewire.com/big-sites-that-accept-bitcoin-payments-3485965 https://www.lifewire.com/big-sites-that-accept-bitcoin-payme... https://coinmap.org/#/world/31.80289259/-82.96875000/3 https://coinmap.org/#/world/31.80289259/-82.96875000/3
  - thefounder 7y ago
    Bitcoin is a nightmare for both buyer and seller due its volatility, not to mention the difference between exchange rates. You may buy your bitcoin with a specific price but the merchant/payment processor values it differently(lower). Just check bitpay to see for yourself
    - dessant 7y ago