14 ms·

Waze, a google owned app for the past 4 years, crashes because of the FB app. WhatsApp, a Facebook owned app, will not give you read access to your own chat da

Waze, a google owned app for the past 4 years, crashes because of the FB app. WhatsApp, a Facebook owned app, will not give you read access to your own chat database - it’s encrypted. But they have an arrangement with Google where it’s will back up unencrypted to your Google account (though, Google won’t let you retrieve it ... only the WhatsApp app can) Everything about this duopoly, their cooperation and lack of competition stinks to high heaven.

AlexandrB 6y ago
> WhatsApp, a Facebook owned app, will not give you read access to your own chat database - it’s encrypted. On android? On iOS you can get a tarball of all your chats.
- alias_neo 6y ago
  I just had to check this; the Android app has "Request account info" and specifically mentions "which you can access or port to another app". As much as I'm happy to pile on Google, Facebook and WhatsApp, this appears to be untrue.
  - soziawa 6y ago
    That is just what WhatsApp stores about you on their servers i.e. contacts and groups. But you can export all chats one by one.
  - beagle3 6y ago
    It also specifically mentions that doesn't contain all the messages, and takes up to 3 days. You can export individual chats as texts, but not all the attachments, metadata, etc - and you have to specifically select each one. The statement that "Facebook gives an unencrypted copy of your chat database to Google but will not give it to you" is true; I'm referring to the SQLite database. You can back it up locally, but it's encrypted and Facebook will not willingly give you the key under any circumstance (though it is possible to trick them by impersonating the app). However, the Google Drive backup is unencrypted. But Google won't let you download it directly either (although, again, you can trick them by impersonating the app).
    - bsaul 6y ago
      isn't whatsapp using e2e ? if that's the case then facebook can't "give you" the key, because they don't have it, it's supposed to be on your phone and only there.. Is there something i'm missing here ?
      - beagle3 6y ago
        It's using e2e during transmission. On your local device, it is plaintext. They make a copies of that plaintext database for backup purposes: One on google drive (not mandatory, but it IIRC by default), which is still plaintext but not accessible to yourself. One on your local SD card (if you ask for it), which is encrypted with a key that's on your phone but was sent down from FB servers. If you switch your phone, and try to restore that database, it will contact FB servers to retrieve the key. > if that's the case then facebook can't "give you" the key, because they don't have it, it's supposed to be on your phone and only there.. Regardless of the backup encryption, e2e doesn't mean that they don't have the key; it just means that it leaves one phone encrypted and enters the other encrypted without being decrypted along the way -- unlike, e.g. regular email, which is usually encrypted in transit by TLS, but gets decrypted and re-encrypted at every stop along the way.
    - alias_neo 6y ago
      Thanks for clarifying, makes sense. This sort of behaviour really gets my goat. Just like trying to get my 2FA keys out of Authy so I could switch to Aegis involved having to use a third party tool written in Golang on my PC, to extract them using the API, or use some js hack on the deprecated Chrome extension to write them to the console. Recently I was trying to switch my wife away from the free Keeper app to the one I use and backup to our own storage, they make it impossible to get your passwords without paying them or rooting your phone. I hand copied them one by one from her old to new phone. Honestly, screw any company that does this.
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  I think this is incomplete (it doesn’t represent replies or media properly) and the parent comment was talking about the SQLite database containing all messages
- skocznymroczny 6y ago
  On android you can select "export chats", select contacts and then send it to where you want it.
  - soziawa 6y ago
    You can do that on iOS as well. That has been a feature for a long time.
    - beagle3 6y ago
      Yes, individual chats, and not a complete record last time I tried (no "when received / when read" times; no attachments). There's a simple SQLite file containing everything; They upload it to google drive unencrypted, but neither google nor facebook will give you an unencrypted copy. When you make a local backup, it is encrypted, and Facebook doesn't think you deserve a copy of the key or an unencrypted copy.
cerberusss 6y ago
Also, you can't migrate WhatsApp between iPhone and Android. There's a utility called BackupTrans, which follows an extremely convoluted process including a step where they install an old version of WhatsApp. It seemed to work but it trips some wire and WhatsApp put me in an hour-long timeout state, twice. Since I very much depend on WhatsApp, I dare not use it anymore.
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  You can still download the history as a text file though - I did that.
  - anonms-coward 6y ago
    Isn't that just for one chat? Can you download all combined?
  - doersino 6y ago
    Not in Germany: https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat-history https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat... Don't ask me what's leading WhatsApp's legal department to believe that this feature doesn't comply with German privacy laws. It's quite puzzling. (I would've rather expected a feature like this to be mandated by EU laws.) As of now, there's no non-hacky way of exporting chats for German users. (Hacky ways include: dubious third-party software, copying each message individually, taking screenshots.)
    - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
      Can you obtain that same information via a GPDR request for all of the information they have about you?
      - doersino 6y ago
        Messages and associated media aren't permanently stored on WhatsApp's servers, so sadly this wouldn't help much with chat export.
wccrawford 6y ago
I'm pretty sure that's the same agreement that every developer has with Google just by writing an android app and using Google APIs. You can store data on Google Drive that isn't accessible from Google Drive and only that app can read or write it.
- moolcool 6y ago
  Is that a GDPR violation?
  - TomMarius 6y ago
    I would guess this is actually done by many to conform to the regulation.
- beagle3 6y ago
  > I'm pretty sure that's the same agreement that every developer has with Google just by writing an android app and using Google APIs. But why would WhatsApp store it unencrypted on Google Drive, and encrypted (without giving you any access to the key) on your own SD card or local backup? It makes no sense. Except ... Google and Facebook have agreed that WhatsApp stores the database unencrypted, and in return Google doesn't count it against the user's quota. Everybody wins! Facebook get to have free backup for users, Google gets to see all user messages and metadata. And the user gets rid of this pesky privacy thing! [0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/about-google-drive-backups/ https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/about-google-drive-ba... - "WhatsApp backups no longer count against your Google Drive storage quota." and "Media and messages you back up aren't protected by WhatsApp end-to-end encryption while in Google Drive."
  - nemothekid 6y ago
    So, Facebook is willing to give up data on its users, it’s highest competitive advantage, to its largest competitor, in exchange for... some commodity backup disk space?
    - 6y ago
musha68k 6y ago
Yes, it's definitely time for some slightly enhanced armchair activism! Convert all active whatsapp contacts to signal? 80%? 50%? Same for Facebook messenger! It needs to be uncomfortable enough - if they want to communicate with us and are minimally tech savvy ("click link to install app") they have to switch to signal. That's it. I'm starting to send out messages over my morning coffee. Let's do this together: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007060592-Invite-friends-to-join-Signal https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007060592-In...
- AtHeartEngineer 6y ago
  I've been converting people to signal for years, I've got everyone in my life to switch except for my parents and 2 coworkers.
  - berkes 6y ago
    Ive done that too. But I've experienced a lot of people removing it again. The result is uncomfortable, since Signal never knows the other side removed it, so messages land in thin air. Several times did I have awkward moments when someone was angry "I thought you'd let me know if it was cancelled" - "I did - I sent you a text about that two days ago! On Signal!"
  - levosmetalo 6y ago
    I gave up after realizing that Signal will not deliver message for a couple of days and that message notification doesn't work. Why wasting personal credit on something that is clearly inferior from the usability point of view. And after it started insisting on creating a PIN each time I start Signal, I finally deleted it from my phone. You can forget about security if you can't get a seamless user experience.
    - zrobotics 6y ago
      Oh God, the PIN creation is so annoying. Whatever possessed them that that was a good idea? Note that even after creating the PIN the app doesn't quit nagging you, it 'helpfully' continues to remind you to re-type it so you don't forget. Plus, it's just a terrible UX for a SMS client. I really wanted to like it, but it's just too obnoxious to use. I've certainly not recommended it, I've had better luck switching relatives to Linux mint (seriously, I am not exaggerating). Creating a group MMS is annoying, and there's a nag screen if you try to call someone from a message within the app. I understand that most of these problems are due to the secure nature of the app, but trying to use it as your full-time SMS client is just too much of a pain. I'll likely still keep it installed, as the 1 thing it does do is make it really easy to transfer files/send messages between devices (send messages to yourself, then download them using the client's for other OS's).
gorgoiler 6y ago
You can download your chat backups as a readable archive file. If you have iCloud mounted, these files can be found in your iCloud folders. Or do you demand that any file under your control that contains chat should be accessible, rather than just one of them?
- beagle3 6y ago
  On Android, this used to be the case, but then Facebook and Google reached an agreement in which the WhatsApp backup goes unencrypted, and doesn't count against your Google Drive quota. You can't download it without impersonating the WhstsApp app. Do you know if the icloud backup is encrypted or not?
- kalium-xyz 6y ago
  I have managed to extract the files from icloud but found that they are encrypted SQLite files. How do you access unencrypted whatsapp files?
ed312 6y ago
I really wanted to like Signal and switch, but it seems to require a phone #. Are you OK with tying private conversations to an identifiable ID or did you find a work around?
- Vinnl 6y ago
  They're working on that: https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1281353119369097217 https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1281353119369097217
- im3w1l-alt 6y ago
  I'm ok with tying some conversations to phone #. Others, not so much
anonms-coward 6y ago
While I definitely disagree with the way drive doesn't give access to users for their own data, I think giving access has it's own problems, as you might land in another Cambridge analytica type situation. 1. Shady addictive game requires full access to drive. 2. Shady game downloads all your chats with all contacts 3. FB is on fire since they allowed access to people's chats with others, even those who didn't download the game. 4. People get mad on FB/Google for not protecting their data.
- beagle3 6y ago
  The same list you gave already applies to data already readable on Google Drive - most people have data that can be used against them on those drives. Also, many apps ask for (And get) permission to read contacts and messages on your phone. Claiming that this is the reason is sort of like rearranging the chairs on the deck of the titanic when you can see the iceberg. Much more likely it is to stop import/export to a competing app. The fact they will let you keep a local encrypted copy, but not an unencrypted one under any circumstances, is telling.
  - anonms-coward 6y ago
    The number of people who use whatsapp is an order of magnitude or more than the number of people who consciously use Google drive, as in people who know google drive exists. Even the people who have google drive, most of them have much less intimate data on it than in their private messages on WhatsApp. If we are to take the position that all users are tech literate and should be fully in charge of how their data is used, then even Cambridge analytica wasn't bad. People explicitly gave it access to data that was accessible to them. However, the uproar proves otherwise. People don't like it when they click yes yes and some random app has access to their social media data or messages. This is why Gmail also started requiring independent audit for all gmail apps.
    - beagle3 6y ago
      And you are still avoiding the equivalence that everything you describe is already happening with sms messages at least, and generally much more. None of your arguments carry any weight especially since they don’t explain why it’s ok for data to be unencrypted on your google drive in the first place.
faeyanpiraat 6y ago
Had to restart my iPhone 7, now waze works again. Haven’t seen anything like this before.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
with all the daily (justified) outrage against FB/Google I struggle to understand why the community here is happy to applaud these companies for its innovation on specific projects or the work of specific engineers, ... whether it's project-zero or some fb framework we seem to be OK with praising their employees while at the same time hating how they use that innovation. some serious cognitive dissonace is going on - either that or it's the effects of the news-cycle making us blind to it. Maybe we should think twice before applauding FAANG engineers in future posts because Technology isn't neutral. note: a company can't be evil. it's just a group of people who can be evil and who hide behind the facade of the "legal person" statute. I'm happy to celebrate individual breackthroughs but let's not forget that without (metaphorically) nailing the culprits to the cross who are responsible for ICE contracts or privacy invasive tech there isn't even a point in complaining about all the horrid stuff these people (working for these companies) do.
- ckmiller 6y ago
  Both companies are huge and contain multitudes; they can easily do praise-worthy and scorn-worthy things at the same time. It's worth calling them out separately rather than trying to unilaterally love or hate the whole mess at once. That said, with FB/Google these days the bad weighs more than the good.
  - DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
    the problem with "huge companies" reasoning is they require huge civil courage and a large sacrifice from the public to be set straight once they mess up. big companies = big damage. just because we made the mistake to let them become this big without giving them criticism doesn't justify why we should continue treat them with gloves. quite the opposite. they shouldn't feel comfortable at all in their position - they should feel like they're being held accountable (and act accordingly whether with rebelling internally or by leaving depending on the size of their spine)
  - smolder 6y ago
    That right there is why runaway consolidation and Monopoly building is a very bad thing even if they don't jack up prices like Ma Bell. If the leaders of these megacorps have no scruples, the public has little choice but to take the bad with the good. We've lost the ability to vote with our money when it turns out buying a mobile phone or joining a social club which makes use of a social network ends up funding antisocial and even evil behavior by other parts of those companies.

AlexandrB 6y ago

> WhatsApp, a Facebook owned app, will not give you read access to your own chat database - it’s encrypted. On android? On iOS you can get a tarball of all your chats.

alias_neo 6y ago
I just had to check this; the Android app has "Request account info" and specifically mentions "which you can access or port to another app". As much as I'm happy to pile on Google, Facebook and WhatsApp, this appears to be untrue.
- soziawa 6y ago
  That is just what WhatsApp stores about you on their servers i.e. contacts and groups. But you can export all chats one by one.
- beagle3 6y ago
  It also specifically mentions that doesn't contain all the messages, and takes up to 3 days. You can export individual chats as texts, but not all the attachments, metadata, etc - and you have to specifically select each one. The statement that "Facebook gives an unencrypted copy of your chat database to Google but will not give it to you" is true; I'm referring to the SQLite database. You can back it up locally, but it's encrypted and Facebook will not willingly give you the key under any circumstance (though it is possible to trick them by impersonating the app). However, the Google Drive backup is unencrypted. But Google won't let you download it directly either (although, again, you can trick them by impersonating the app).
  - bsaul 6y ago
    isn't whatsapp using e2e ? if that's the case then facebook can't "give you" the key, because they don't have it, it's supposed to be on your phone and only there.. Is there something i'm missing here ?
    - beagle3 6y ago
      It's using e2e during transmission. On your local device, it is plaintext. They make a copies of that plaintext database for backup purposes: One on google drive (not mandatory, but it IIRC by default), which is still plaintext but not accessible to yourself. One on your local SD card (if you ask for it), which is encrypted with a key that's on your phone but was sent down from FB servers. If you switch your phone, and try to restore that database, it will contact FB servers to retrieve the key. > if that's the case then facebook can't "give you" the key, because they don't have it, it's supposed to be on your phone and only there.. Regardless of the backup encryption, e2e doesn't mean that they don't have the key; it just means that it leaves one phone encrypted and enters the other encrypted without being decrypted along the way -- unlike, e.g. regular email, which is usually encrypted in transit by TLS, but gets decrypted and re-encrypted at every stop along the way.
  - alias_neo 6y ago
    Thanks for clarifying, makes sense. This sort of behaviour really gets my goat. Just like trying to get my 2FA keys out of Authy so I could switch to Aegis involved having to use a third party tool written in Golang on my PC, to extract them using the API, or use some js hack on the deprecated Chrome extension to write them to the console. Recently I was trying to switch my wife away from the free Keeper app to the one I use and backup to our own storage, they make it impossible to get your passwords without paying them or rooting your phone. I hand copied them one by one from her old to new phone. Honestly, screw any company that does this.
dan-robertson 6y ago
I think this is incomplete (it doesn’t represent replies or media properly) and the parent comment was talking about the SQLite database containing all messages
skocznymroczny 6y ago
On android you can select "export chats", select contacts and then send it to where you want it.
- soziawa 6y ago
  You can do that on iOS as well. That has been a feature for a long time.
  - beagle3 6y ago
    Yes, individual chats, and not a complete record last time I tried (no "when received / when read" times; no attachments). There's a simple SQLite file containing everything; They upload it to google drive unencrypted, but neither google nor facebook will give you an unencrypted copy. When you make a local backup, it is encrypted, and Facebook doesn't think you deserve a copy of the key or an unencrypted copy.

cerberusss 6y ago

Also, you can't migrate WhatsApp between iPhone and Android. There's a utility called BackupTrans, which follows an extremely convoluted process including a step where they install an old version of WhatsApp. It seemed to work but it trips some wire and WhatsApp put me in an hour-long timeout state, twice. Since I very much depend on WhatsApp, I dare not use it anymore.

heavenlyblue 6y ago
You can still download the history as a text file though - I did that.
- anonms-coward 6y ago
  Isn't that just for one chat? Can you download all combined?
- doersino 6y ago
  Not in Germany: https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat-history https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat... Don't ask me what's leading WhatsApp's legal department to believe that this feature doesn't comply with German privacy laws. It's quite puzzling. (I would've rather expected a feature like this to be mandated by EU laws.) As of now, there's no non-hacky way of exporting chats for German users. (Hacky ways include: dubious third-party software, copying each message individually, taking screenshots.)
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    Can you obtain that same information via a GPDR request for all of the information they have about you?
    - doersino 6y ago
      Messages and associated media aren't permanently stored on WhatsApp's servers, so sadly this wouldn't help much with chat export.

wccrawford 6y ago

I'm pretty sure that's the same agreement that every developer has with Google just by writing an android app and using Google APIs. You can store data on Google Drive that isn't accessible from Google Drive and only that app can read or write it.

moolcool 6y ago
Is that a GDPR violation?
- TomMarius 6y ago
  I would guess this is actually done by many to conform to the regulation.
beagle3 6y ago
> I'm pretty sure that's the same agreement that every developer has with Google just by writing an android app and using Google APIs. But why would WhatsApp store it unencrypted on Google Drive, and encrypted (without giving you any access to the key) on your own SD card or local backup? It makes no sense. Except ... Google and Facebook have agreed that WhatsApp stores the database unencrypted, and in return Google doesn't count it against the user's quota. Everybody wins! Facebook get to have free backup for users, Google gets to see all user messages and metadata. And the user gets rid of this pesky privacy thing! [0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/about-google-drive-backups/ https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/about-google-drive-ba... - "WhatsApp backups no longer count against your Google Drive storage quota." and "Media and messages you back up aren't protected by WhatsApp end-to-end encryption while in Google Drive."
- nemothekid 6y ago
  So, Facebook is willing to give up data on its users, it’s highest competitive advantage, to its largest competitor, in exchange for... some commodity backup disk space?
  - 6y ago

musha68k 6y ago

Yes, it's definitely time for some slightly enhanced armchair activism! Convert all active whatsapp contacts to signal? 80%? 50%? Same for Facebook messenger! It needs to be uncomfortable enough - if they want to communicate with us and are minimally tech savvy ("click link to install app") they have to switch to signal. That's it. I'm starting to send out messages over my morning coffee. Let's do this together: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007060592-Invite-friends-to-join-Signal https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007060592-In...

AtHeartEngineer 6y ago
I've been converting people to signal for years, I've got everyone in my life to switch except for my parents and 2 coworkers.
- berkes 6y ago
  Ive done that too. But I've experienced a lot of people removing it again. The result is uncomfortable, since Signal never knows the other side removed it, so messages land in thin air. Several times did I have awkward moments when someone was angry "I thought you'd let me know if it was cancelled" - "I did - I sent you a text about that two days ago! On Signal!"
- levosmetalo 6y ago
  I gave up after realizing that Signal will not deliver message for a couple of days and that message notification doesn't work. Why wasting personal credit on something that is clearly inferior from the usability point of view. And after it started insisting on creating a PIN each time I start Signal, I finally deleted it from my phone. You can forget about security if you can't get a seamless user experience.
  - zrobotics 6y ago
    Oh God, the PIN creation is so annoying. Whatever possessed them that that was a good idea? Note that even after creating the PIN the app doesn't quit nagging you, it 'helpfully' continues to remind you to re-type it so you don't forget. Plus, it's just a terrible UX for a SMS client. I really wanted to like it, but it's just too obnoxious to use. I've certainly not recommended it, I've had better luck switching relatives to Linux mint (seriously, I am not exaggerating). Creating a group MMS is annoying, and there's a nag screen if you try to call someone from a message within the app. I understand that most of these problems are due to the secure nature of the app, but trying to use it as your full-time SMS client is just too much of a pain. I'll likely still keep it installed, as the 1 thing it does do is make it really easy to transfer files/send messages between devices (send messages to yourself, then download them using the client's for other OS's).

gorgoiler 6y ago

You can download your chat backups as a readable archive file. If you have iCloud mounted, these files can be found in your iCloud folders. Or do you demand that any file under your control that contains chat should be accessible, rather than just one of them?

beagle3 6y ago
On Android, this used to be the case, but then Facebook and Google reached an agreement in which the WhatsApp backup goes unencrypted, and doesn't count against your Google Drive quota. You can't download it without impersonating the WhstsApp app. Do you know if the icloud backup is encrypted or not?
kalium-xyz 6y ago
I have managed to extract the files from icloud but found that they are encrypted SQLite files. How do you access unencrypted whatsapp files?

ed312 6y ago

I really wanted to like Signal and switch, but it seems to require a phone #. Are you OK with tying private conversations to an identifiable ID or did you find a work around?

Vinnl 6y ago
They're working on that: https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1281353119369097217 https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1281353119369097217
im3w1l-alt 6y ago
I'm ok with tying some conversations to phone #. Others, not so much

anonms-coward 6y ago

While I definitely disagree with the way drive doesn't give access to users for their own data, I think giving access has it's own problems, as you might land in another Cambridge analytica type situation. 1. Shady addictive game requires full access to drive. 2. Shady game downloads all your chats with all contacts 3. FB is on fire since they allowed access to people's chats with others, even those who didn't download the game. 4. People get mad on FB/Google for not protecting their data.

beagle3 6y ago
The same list you gave already applies to data already readable on Google Drive - most people have data that can be used against them on those drives. Also, many apps ask for (And get) permission to read contacts and messages on your phone. Claiming that this is the reason is sort of like rearranging the chairs on the deck of the titanic when you can see the iceberg. Much more likely it is to stop import/export to a competing app. The fact they will let you keep a local encrypted copy, but not an unencrypted one under any circumstances, is telling.
- anonms-coward 6y ago
  The number of people who use whatsapp is an order of magnitude or more than the number of people who consciously use Google drive, as in people who know google drive exists. Even the people who have google drive, most of them have much less intimate data on it than in their private messages on WhatsApp. If we are to take the position that all users are tech literate and should be fully in charge of how their data is used, then even Cambridge analytica wasn't bad. People explicitly gave it access to data that was accessible to them. However, the uproar proves otherwise. People don't like it when they click yes yes and some random app has access to their social media data or messages. This is why Gmail also started requiring independent audit for all gmail apps.
  - beagle3 6y ago
    And you are still avoiding the equivalence that everything you describe is already happening with sms messages at least, and generally much more. None of your arguments carry any weight especially since they don’t explain why it’s ok for data to be unencrypted on your google drive in the first place.

faeyanpiraat 6y ago

Had to restart my iPhone 7, now waze works again. Haven’t seen anything like this before.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

with all the daily (justified) outrage against FB/Google I struggle to understand why the community here is happy to applaud these companies for its innovation on specific projects or the work of specific engineers, ... whether it's project-zero or some fb framework we seem to be OK with praising their employees while at the same time hating how they use that innovation. some serious cognitive dissonace is going on - either that or it's the effects of the news-cycle making us blind to it. Maybe we should think twice before applauding FAANG engineers in future posts because Technology isn't neutral. note: a company can't be evil. it's just a group of people who can be evil and who hide behind the facade of the "legal person" statute. I'm happy to celebrate individual breackthroughs but let's not forget that without (metaphorically) nailing the culprits to the cross who are responsible for ICE contracts or privacy invasive tech there isn't even a point in complaining about all the horrid stuff these people (working for these companies) do.

ckmiller 6y ago
Both companies are huge and contain multitudes; they can easily do praise-worthy and scorn-worthy things at the same time. It's worth calling them out separately rather than trying to unilaterally love or hate the whole mess at once. That said, with FB/Google these days the bad weighs more than the good.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  the problem with "huge companies" reasoning is they require huge civil courage and a large sacrifice from the public to be set straight once they mess up. big companies = big damage. just because we made the mistake to let them become this big without giving them criticism doesn't justify why we should continue treat them with gloves. quite the opposite. they shouldn't feel comfortable at all in their position - they should feel like they're being held accountable (and act accordingly whether with rebelling internally or by leaving depending on the size of their spine)
- smolder 6y ago
  That right there is why runaway consolidation and Monopoly building is a very bad thing even if they don't jack up prices like Ma Bell. If the leaders of these megacorps have no scruples, the public has little choice but to take the bad with the good. We've lost the ability to vote with our money when it turns out buying a mobile phone or joining a social club which makes use of a social network ends up funding antisocial and even evil behavior by other parts of those companies.