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WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app

• Simulacra 6y ago
  Sounds like my Oculus paperweight...
  • jordache 6y ago
    why not just create a burner FB account?
    • purplecats 6y ago
      it ceases to be a burner with usage. gaze into the abyss and the abyss gazes back into you
      • simonswords82 6y ago
        That's a really interesting point. I created a new burner FB account (I don't use FB) to go with my Quest 2. I used a fake name and a gmail burner account. However I've had to enter my credit card details to make payments so they have my real name, bank details and address information. They also know what I'm watching, what I'm buying etc So my question is - do they call me out at some point and tell me to add a real name or prove my ID. Or do they let me carry on under my burner account because they can still profit from me both from my spend on apps/games and by selling my real data?
        • wayneftw 6y ago
          Use a Visa gift card next time.
          • ve55 6y ago
            imo Facebook has enough data that if you want to use it completely anonymously there is no reasonable way to put in half of the effort, and even Visa gifts cards won't be enough.
            • bigiain 6y ago
              I'm split here between saying "Doesn't mean you need to make it easy for them." and "How 'interesting' must a completely anonymous account look inside FB?"... (The only way to win is to not play the game...)
              • ve55 6y ago
                It's very hard to say, and I would imagine it's hard to say even for the average Facebook employee too, given how large the company is. If it was a single coherent entity with its own knowledge map (which, last I checked, it still isn't, but I will check again in 2022), we could probably reason differently about it though.
    • zizee 6y ago
      Apparently this is against Facebook's ToS and it risks account suspension at any time (removing access to anything you bought in the Oculus store). I am thankful that I made the decision early on to use steam for purchases early on.
    • sneak 6y ago
      It's no longer a burner if you type in payment details to buy stuff, it's then linked to your banking identity.
      • jordache 6y ago
        However if you don't use that account for any other activities, it's a dead-end insight
  • LegitShady 6y ago
    If you've got $200 and a chip in your shoulder, Oculus' arbitration clause in their user agreement ensures that if you pay $200, Oculus will pay thousands to handle the arbitration, and case law so far says they can't "combine" arbitration cases just because its convenient for them to do so. I no longer have an oculus HMD, but Oculus no longer has any profit from me.
  • violetgarden 6y ago
    You’re telling me! I got my mom an Oculus since she wouldn’t need a beefy computer to run VR. A few weeks after getting it, they want the Oculus account switched over to Facebook. Luckily, she can use the Oculus account for a few more years, but it was still so annoying.
• himujjal 6y ago
  3 years of me and my girlfriend using signal. no problem whatsoever lol. whatsapp
• solnyshok 6y ago
  ouch. first I thought that it is about FBI, then realized it is about Facebook. They should merge sometime in future, anyway.
  • bigiain 6y ago
    Some argue this has already happened...
• iagovar 6y ago
  Telegram works fine.
• rohan1024 6y ago
  The sooner they take such actions the better it is for everyone in the long run. Someone somewhere will come up with an alternative that is better than anything we have today. And sorry but Signal is not the pinnacle of messaging. I like what Matrix is doing but they are far away from becoming mainstream. Within 2-3 years a new platform will rise and it will fix flaws of existing messaging apps. This will then be followed by social media but it might take another 6-7 years to fix that mess.
  • RHSeeger 6y ago
    Or, more likely, someone will buy it and screw it up. That's pretty much par for the course.
  • CerealFounder 6y ago
    Curious to all those family power users. What would you want to see in the next gen WhatsApp?
  • twobitshifter 6y ago
    I just installed element today (the new name for riot) It’s interesting and may have some features like rooms that will build interest outside of just being an IM tool. I do miss the days of AIM/Jabber/Google Talk/ where everything just worked. Bringing that experience to phones should be the goal rather than jumping from service to service. My friends from Europe and Brazil are locked into WhatsApp, my American friends seem to prefer FB messenger. They’re really using 2 versions of the same company’s products which are “incompatible” at this point. Facebook could make them compatible with one another and with each other only OR they could do the socially beneficially thing and use an open protocol. Unless employees at FB push for this, they’re likely to take the former route.
  • upofadown 6y ago
    >Within 2-3 years a new platform will rise and it will fix flaws of existing messaging apps. And then 2-3 years after that an entirely incompatible platform will do the same thing...
  • swiley 6y ago
• throwaway888abc 6y ago
  https://signal.org/en/ https://signal.org/en/
  • anoncake 6y ago
    https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... Moving to a different walled garden is not a solution.
• bilal4hmed 6y ago
  WhatsApp has such a strong network effect, that a wholesale move off is very difficult. I asked my immediate family to move to Signal and they agreed. Then came the question - can we talk to people on whatsapp using signal because friends, aunts, uncles, cousins who live international all live on whatsapp. Moving your network, their network and their networks network becomes quite the task.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • throwbacktictac 6y ago
    Naively it seems like the problem that will make progress at both ends with the right spark. As I image it, soon enough someone else will have already convinced part of your network to make the move. People, in general, don't have a qualm about installing another app when it's recommended by someone they trust.
    • bilal4hmed 6y ago
      Hopefully, it is however a slow process. In India, whatsapp is so dominant, I cant imagine what it would take for them to move to anything else
  • ummonk 6y ago
    While the network effects are there, I do think messaging networks are less durable than social media networks, because you can take your contact list with you across networks.
• tolbish 6y ago
  Signal users: How is quality of multi-person video calls? If it's as good, I wonder why it's still a beta feature.
  • bilal4hmed 6y ago
    The quality is good not great. If you are going to compared to Duo or Facetime, its not there yet. Ill say thats its not a show stopper though
• svckr 6y ago
  That's odd. I did not receive any notification yet? Is the privacy policy country specific?
  • simonswords82 6y ago
    I've not had it either. Perhaps it's being rolled out over time in the run up to 8 Feb switchover?
  • bilal4hmed 6y ago
    Im in the US and received it 2 days ago. Im the only one in the family and amongst my friends to have gotten it
• airstrike 6y ago
  I'll just leave this here https://epic.org/privacy/internet/ftc/whatsapp/ https://epic.org/privacy/internet/ftc/whatsapp/
• rpastuszak 6y ago
  Signal and Telegram seem to be the most commonly mentioned alternatives here. Which one do you prefer and why?
  • Barrin92 6y ago
    Signal. Open source, non-profit, very good privacy defaults. Telegram seems even worse than whatsapp to be honest because they don't even have encryption on by default.
    • AndriyKunitsyn 6y ago
      Telegram always has encryption, just no end-to-end encryption by default. This is a privacy/convenience trade-off. When chatting about groceries/memes/latest Netflix releases, you don't really need E2EE that much, and chats without E2EE are synced to all devices in Telegram, including a fully-supported desktop app.
      • bigiain 6y ago
        I get this argument, but for me, needing to moderate conversations "chatting about groceries/memes/latest Netflix releases," to make sure they don't edge into discussions I'd _really_ rather have E2E encrypted is something I just _know_ will go wrong for some of the participants in chat sooner or later. _That's_ a convenience tradeoff in favour of E2E by default for me. (But yeah, not for most people...)
      • Barrin92 6y ago
        I'm willing to bet you money that virtually nobody adjusts their privacy settings based on topic of conversation, especially not non-tech people which is almost all users. I don't think I've ever seen anyone chat with their girlfriend and go "hey, grocery talk over, switch to e2ee now". Defaults matter and I'm certain almost no telegram conversations use e2ee as a consequence, with private info or otherwise. It's important to have it as a default and to tell people why they should use an app that does.
• frereubu 6y ago
  I'd love to give up WhatsApp, but network effects are key here. I tried moving my extended family off WhatsApp onto Signal a couple of years ago and it failed miserably because the app wasn't nearly as easy to use, and they had all their friends on Whatsapp. Has anyone here had any success moving a large group of people onto something like Signal or Telegram? If so, do you have any tips?
  • srfvtgb 6y ago
    Fortunately I don't live in a place where WhatsApp is completely pervasive. I personally had luck saying "if you want to contact me use Signal, iMessage or at the very least SMS" and when people asked why, I would cite Cambridge Analytica.
    • gotem 6y ago
      Which turned out to be a bunch of hyped up marketing talk. Why does every person in SV I know seem to love the narrative that we’re being mind controlled by micro-targeted FB ads, which to be fair is what I used to believe. Everyone on HN switches between “ads don’t work and targeting is BS” to “ads are manipulating our entire country by taking our data”
      • Retric 6y ago
        Not everyone on HN is the same person. So, different people can believe each without any contradiction.
        • qznc 6y ago
          Even individuals are capable to hold contradicting opinions. > There are lots of contradictions in people’s strongly held beliefs. Someone might preach self-sufficiency in politics, but coddle their children. An individual might oppose abortion on the grounds that human life is sacred and may still support the death penalty for convicted murders. A person might argue for the freedom of individual expression in the arts but want hateful speech to be regulated. from https://www.fastcompany.com/3067169/how-your-brain-makes-you-hold-contradictory-beliefs https://www.fastcompany.com/3067169/how-your-brain-makes-you...
• tpoacher 6y ago
  Yay! I've been trying to get friends to jump onto telegram for a while now. Hopefully this might do it!
• foofoo4u 6y ago
  I'd like to move my family off of WhatsApp due to these concerns. I've used Signal before, but I am not a big fan of it. I often have to re-register my devices to sign in, syncing takes a long time, and conversations do not persist across devices. I am perfectly happy using a paid service. Does anyone here think Discord or Slack would be a suitable replacement?
  • ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
    Try Telegram. It’s as easy to use as WhatsApp for non-tech family and friends, yet has all the features you want out of an IM without too much of the bloat. It has native apps on all major platforms, and for the techies it has a solid API so you can do fun stuff like write your own bots.
    • FabHK 6y ago
      > all the features you want out of an IM without too much of the bloat. Except default E2E (which WhatsApp, Signal, Wire, Threema etc. do provide).
      • ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
        Yes but it does have e2e if you “want” it and for 99.9% of people that’s enough. The other 0.1% who “need” it are more willing to learn/adapt to Signal/Wire/etc. I use Signal with tech friends, and Telegram with family/non-tech friends. I feel like the latter using Telegram is still better than them using WhatsApp, so I’ll take what I can get.
  • bigiain 6y ago
    > or Slack would be a suitable replacement Jumping out of the Facebook frypan into the Salesforce fire doesn't seem to be a particularly winning move... (Which also raises the question, whichever alternative you choose, you probably need to evaluate the risk of Facebook (or some equally evil corp) acquiring them down the track. I wonder how likely Discord/Telegram/Signal are to be able to resist Facebook-sized acquisition offers?)
• srfvtgb 6y ago
  A lot of people mention Telegram, as far as I can tell, it's a worse Signal. What advantages does it have over Signal?
  • read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    Depending on your perspective, Signal is actually a worse Telegram. Telegram has the best UX and feature set ouf of all messaging apps, and privacy does not outweigh convenience for the vast majority of people.
    • sdfhbdf 6y ago
      I'm still confused as to why Telegram doesn't have message reactions which every other platform has. I understand that some peoeple feel like it's not needed but if they don't want they wouldn't have to use and in my workflow when talking in groups is to use them extensively and replying with stickers is a terrible experience.
  • _ink_ 6y ago
    I think the UI is better. Encryption is worse. But I like how they structured their data centers. They have sprinkled them into different countries and they claim that servers from different jurisdictions are necessary to access the data. So if an agency wants to access it, they have to get warrants from different countries. With all the war on encryption going on, e.g. forcing companies to include backdoors, I think this is the way to go.
    • bigiain 6y ago
      > They have sprinkled them into different countries and they claim that servers from different jurisdictions are necessary to access the data. So if an agency wants to access it, they have to get warrants from different countries. That's a neat trick, but not as neat as Signal's "sure, here's all the data we have - the time and ip address of their last use." (I'm sure a bunch of the "better UX, UI, and features" people like in Telegram rely on them storing more data on their servers, so that comes down to a privacy/convenience tradeoff, which as others have pointed out almost always comes down on the convenience side for 99.99% of people...)
• hyko 6y ago
  FB owned = FB. Why is that so hard to understand?
• DiederikvandenB 6y ago
  Does this also apply to European customers, given GDPR?
  • blue_box 6y ago
    Seems like, no. On their EU Privacy Policy, it says: “Today, Facebook does not use your WhatsApp account information to improve your Facebook product experiences or provide you more relevant Facebook ad experiences on Facebook.“
    • mro_name 6y ago
      prbly they're not using it to 'improve', but to e.g. worsen? That statement would be legally true. lol.
    • hyperdimension 6y ago
      That "Today," hook sure sounds rather ominous to me. "Today, I've not murdered you yet! Look at that accomplishment I've made!"
  • rusk 6y ago
    This was the very question I have. Presumably given this ultimatum they would pull out of the EU market? That’s great that solves the problem of getting my friends and family onto something else!
  • utf_8x 6y ago
    European user here - I got the notification today so... I guess it does?
    • TrianguloY 6y ago
      I also got the notification, but it's strange because WhatsApp in Europe is from WhatsApp Ireland Limited, and WhatsApp outside is from WhatsApp LLC. They are different companies with different legal requirements. I've seen some news stating that these new changes apply only to WhatsApp LLC, but the notification seem to say otherwise. Someone else with more info could explain better?
• personlurking 6y ago
  So, the part below is new, or not new? And what is "user content" exactly? All messages, images and audio? _______ >WhatsApp, according to the App Store, reserves the right to collect: Purchases Financial information Location Contacts User content Identifiers Usage data and Diagnostics
  • croes 6y ago
    Yes
• afrcnc 6y ago
  DUPLICATE: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25656993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25656993
  • Etheryte 6y ago
    I wouldn't really agree here. They are on the same topic, yes, but the Arstechnica article is actual news coverage that explains what's going on, as opposed to the linked page which is just Whatsapp's official corpospeak.
• draw_down 6y ago
  This is good, people should be forced to make these choices explicitly. And it's Apple that is forcing the matter.
• utf_8x 6y ago
  Once again - Signal[0] as an alternative. It's fully Open-Source (including the backend) and their crypto is public and independently verified[1][2][3]... [0] https://signal.org/en/ https://signal.org/en/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Encryption_p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Encryption_p... [2] https://threatpost.com/signal-audit-reveals-protocol-cryptog https://threatpost.com/signal-audit-reveals-protocol-cryptog... [3] https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf [PDF]
  • sagivo 6y ago
    How is it compared to telegram?
    • utf_8x 6y ago
      IMO it works just as well and unlike Telegram it's actually credible... The telegram crypto is an absolute disaster and they have been pretty shady and defensive when asked about it in the past. Not to mention the back-end is closed-source. Also, the desktop clients still don't support encryption, many years after it's been first requested.
      • domano 6y ago
        Do you have some links regarding their disastrous encryption? The security guys i know speak highly of telegram and AFAIK it has been open sourced recently, but i am open to new information.
        • utf_8x 6y ago
          The Telegram backend is still closed-source as far as I know. The problem with their crypto is that nobody really knows if it's secure or not because it's closed and unverified. Ever heard the first rule of encryption? "Never roll your own crypto". Well they broke the rule and they won't let anyone check if the crypto is secure or not. Not to mention encryption is off by default and your plaintext messages are stored on their servers...
• nowzarifarhad 6y ago
  That's a dumb move from facebook unless they are planning to buy every other chat applications and ask their users to share their data with Facebook. I'm amazed that they are asking for it and not doing it already.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• sneak 6y ago
  Wasn't that Facebook's main promise when they purchased WhatsApp? Forget whether or not they can, legally; if I recall correctly they explicitly promised not to. People who work for those without integrity are baffling to me.
• rusabd 6y ago
  I am hosting rocketchat for majority of communication just for my family. It has some maintenance overhead but generally works really well
• nickcw 6y ago
  How about pay $1 / year to opt out of all data sharing? I foolishly installed the Facebook app on Android for a while. When I asked for a data dump from Facebook I was amazed at the amount of data it had stolen from my phone, including full contacts list. It sounds like that is exactly what Facebook are planning with WhatsApp. I'd pay $1 / year to opt out of that and be the customer rather than the product.
  • noncoml 6y ago
    If you live in US, the number has to be probably close to $30/month to match what FB is making out of you
    • endless1234 6y ago
      How do you come to that number? $30 per month from WhatsApp alone? This source seems to think it's closer to $30 per year per user for the whole of facebook: https://www.statista.com/statistics/234056/facebooks-average-advertising-revenue-per-user/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/234056/facebooks-average...
      • noncoml 6y ago
        For US users: https://market.us/statistics/social-media/facebook/ https://market.us/statistics/social-media/facebook/ Is it per year? Per Quarter? Not clear to me. But yeah, definitely not per month, but also much higher than the $1/year the GP is offering.
        • endless1234 6y ago
          Ah true, for US users it would be a lot higher. Seems to be around $10 billion per quarter of revenue for US and Canada[1], which means around 15 per user (for around 250 million users[2]. You weren't that far off! That's definitely a lot more than what the gut feeling I had was (which is why I just googled the first stat that seemed to align with my hunch - classic mistake). 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/223280/facebooks-quarterly-revenue-in-the-us-and-canada-by-segment/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/223280/facebooks-quarter... 2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/408971/number-of-us-facebook-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/408971/number-of-us-face... + ~20 for canada
• marricks 6y ago
  Did they really do this just as the election was being certified? No one outside of tech will be talking about this for a while...
• darau1 6y ago
  Uninstalled. Signal is better.
• trulyrandom 6y ago
  Maybe these privacy policy changes are not super scary yet (honestly, it's difficult to even read the thing since its littered with legalese traps that confuse me). And at least end-to-end encryption still seems to be on the table, but where are they headed? WhatsApp is so easy to use that most people will just click "Agree" and trade their privacy for convenience. Messaging in the Netherlands almost universally runs on WhatsApp these days. Nobody uses text messages anymore, understandably, but somehow we all ended up on a platform run by Facebook. "Whatsappen" (messaging on Whatsapp) and "appje" (short for WhatsApp message) are even official words now. Need to contact a friend? Send an appje. Need support from a company? Send an appje. Need to send a message to your team at work? Send an appje in the group chat. Has anyone managed to get their contacts to switch to Signal? I can't even get tech-savvy people to switch, since they always seem to find some minor annoyance that makes them instantly dismiss the app and go back to WhatsApp.
• jonplackett 6y ago
  They’re clearly ever so worried about these anti-trust suits then...
• satellite2 6y ago
  Couldn't the EU force them to standardize the protocol and to interoperate with other client/servers? With WhatsApp becoming the new defacto sms / mms it would make sense. Could they even reuse pieces of the legislation that made it happen for usb chargers?
  • croes 6y ago
    You mean the signal protocol.
    • upofadown 6y ago
      The protocol isn't really the root issue with interoperability. It's identity. As a start you should be able to easily use your verified identities across the different systems. Signal would probably be a poor base for an interoperability standard. Which flavour would you use? Signal Messenger, Matrix, OMEMO and allegedly WhatsApp all use the Signal protocol but can not interoperate at all. Signal Protocol is also more complex than it needs to be. It has two levels of forward secrecy for example. It is basically all the crypto geekery of the last few decades packed into a instant messaging protocol. Something intended as an interconnection standard should be as simple as possible.
      • croes 6y ago
        Simple as possible? Than use email. The security of the signal protocol is necessary if you look who all wants to read the data. The EU wants to practically abolish encryption so that intelligence services and authorities can read all messages.
        • upofadown 6y ago
          In general, more complicated cryptography is less secure than simple cryptography. More stuff to attack.
          • croes 6y ago
• mro_name 6y ago
  I've never done either and feel great. Who can't?
• domano 6y ago
  I have never used WhatsApp so that anyone i know either needs to send SMS or install Signal - only started working in the last 2 years tho. Nowadays most people i know have signal installed alongside WhatsApp, i even migrated my mother.
• alexandrerond 6y ago
  For people looking to switch to Signal without Google Play services on Android (apk installation), the best way to fix the websocket battery drain is this: https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/ewp99j/disable_websockets_on_signal_android_without/ https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/ewp99j/disable_webs... Unlike Telegram, WhatsApp, Element etc. which work fine without Google, Signal devs have repeteadly refused to make improvements to the "always-awake" mode which happily eats 40% battery.
  • Krasnol 6y ago
    It seems to be some very specific bug as neither me nor my contacts seen this happen on their devices. We've been using it at work quite often with people having different devices. On mine it shows 2% battery drain atm.
  • MayeulC 6y ago
    I either do not have this issue, or it doesn't show up for me on the battery usage page. Are you sure it is widespread? (I have no GAPPS, LineageOS 17.1 -- on Galaxy S4). With that said, there is some work being done towards a FLOSS replacement for firebase [1]. Gotify can be used as a backend [2], among others ([3] too, I think). Not ready for prime-time, but almost, and development started pretty recently (mid-December). [1] #openpush:bubu1.eu (https://matrix.to/#/!ajsXAmvYUOjfmMJnGJ:bubu1.eu https://matrix.to/#/!ajsXAmvYUOjfmMJnGJ:bubu1.eu) [1] https://github.com/UnifiedPush/UP-spec/blob/main/specifications.md https://github.com/UnifiedPush/UP-spec/blob/main/specificati... [2] https://github.com/gotify/android/tree/unifiedpush https://github.com/gotify/android/tree/unifiedpush [3] https://github.com/NoProvider2Push/android https://github.com/NoProvider2Push/android
• generalizations 6y ago
  Everyone is comparing signal vs. telegram, but what about element? Far as I can tell, that might actually be secure. https://element.io/ https://element.io/
  • intricatedetail 6y ago
    No messenger is secure. You never know if the code that is being run is the same as reviewed. If you want true privacy, then you need to encrypt messages yourself (with e.g. PGP)
    • generalizations 6y ago
      Ok, fair enough. I overstated it. I'm just wondering why it's not being discussed here.
    • 29083011397778 6y ago
      Wouldn't building (& hosting) the server, building the client, and communicating only with accounts using your server be just as good? Note that this isn't just theoretical - there are governments using Matrix, but not necessarily federating with other instances.
    • 7v3x3n3sem9vv 6y ago
      Signal messenger uses reproducible builds. You can compare the source code to the app that's published to the app store to confirm that they're being honest. I don't know if any other competitors who do the same. As Signal messages are end-to-end encrypted, Even if their servers were compromised, your messages would still be secure. As they use a rotating key, unlike manually using PGP, even if one of the keys was intercepted, they would not be able to decrypt any of your other messages. Using PGP, if someone steals your private key, all your messages are now vulnerable. https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/ https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/
  • akvadrako 6y ago
    To give an idea, I think Matrix (and hence Element) borrowed the e2e design from Signal. So if they did it right it should be secure. I demoed it recently as a Slack alternative and it's not very user friendly. Our groups ended up just using Signal.
• narrationbox 6y ago
  A while back I wrote about this https://medium.com/@kloudtrader/reducing-whatsapp-digital-footprint-in-the-age-of-facebook-3e087fee0ae0 https://medium.com/@kloudtrader/reducing-whatsapp-digital-fo... Not sure if it still applies to the latest version of Android and WhatsApp but it might help. However it only mitigates certain real-time tracking and contact discovery, not to mention switching profiles is somewhat of a hassle.
• seesawtron 6y ago
  Do people still believe that Facebook doesn't collect data from the apps owned by them? Hell even the apps that is Facebook SDK send user data to Facebook even when you don't use facebook owned apps: https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_android https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_...
  • croes 6y ago
    They don't care
  • blackcats 6y ago
    They know the Facebook Mafia does, but non of their network is moving to alternatives
• m3at 6y ago
  Exactly the same thing played out for Oculus, so it we can't say that it's surprising. It is sad nonetheless
  • sharken 6y ago
    Yeah it's a sad development. On the other hand it might mean less Facebook dominance which is a win in my book.
    • croes 6y ago
      Don't count on that, most people don't care.
• Lammy 6y ago
  "How we partner with Facebook" is an amazing piece of weasel-wording.
• abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  Is there a way to sandbox android applications?
• yumraj 6y ago
  This is the straw that broke the camel's back, for me anyway.. Just started the process of notifying my connections that I'll be uninstalling WhatsApp. If not Signal, then just Phone, iMessage, SMS and email work well.. Hopefully this will drive larger adoption of Signal..
• zeruch 6y ago
  Well, delete it is then.
• lwhi 6y ago
  FB: If we're not allowed to track you across the web, we'll use your data captured via our properties to make more money from you via targetted advertising. Users: whatever.
  • seesawtron 6y ago
    fun fact: they also collect data from apps they don't own but which use Facebook SDK. eg. Opera, Duolingo, Kayak and tons of others. So deleting Facebook app and Facebook account doesn't do much as you think it's does.
    • trashburger 6y ago
      Good thing Adaway blocks Facebook hosts on a system level so I don't have to worry about the Facebook SDK so long as I keep my hosts list updated.
      • teddyh 6y ago
        Host list blocking only works as long as the apps use your host list. Very soon, every app which has something to hide will use DoT to the DoT servers of its own company to look up every host name.
• FabHK 6y ago
  Anyone have any opinion why Wire didn't take of? E2E, good functionality (chat, group chat, video chat, voice chat, GIF images emojis yadda yadda yadda), multi-device, clients for all major platforms (eg for the iPad, unlike WhatsApp), open source, phone number or email as identifier, audited, Swiss/EU servers, no profiling, no ads... Can't find any downside, really - except that few people are on it.
  • thekyle 6y ago
    Seems to cost around $5 per month according to their website. It's already a tough sell when getting someone to switch to another free chat app.
    • croes 6y ago
      That's Wire Pro for teams, Wire Personal is free.
• wheresmycraisin 6y ago
  Anyone know of a way to backup everything from whatsapp, including video and voice messages? I have 5 years of messages between me and my wife on whatsapp i'd like to preserve some how before moving off.
  • asadhaider 6y ago
    Seems to be possible unless you live in Germany, just follow this guide [0]. If in a EU country, I wonder if you could also submit a data subject access request (I'm not too familiar on GDPR). [0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat-history/?lang=en https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat...
    • marton78 6y ago
      Why wouldn't it be possible if you live in Germany?
      • AnyTimeTraveler 6y ago
        I don't know. I live in Germany and the files are also stored in /sdcard/WhatsApp/ And also the message databases are under there, ready to be copied and decrypted. You can also access the unencrypted messagestore database, if you have root access. For me, it is located at : /data/data/com.whatsapp/databases/msgstore.db
      • arthurmorgan 6y ago
        On iOS you can't export chats anymore if you're located in Germany. https://ga.de/news/digitale-welt/gericht-verbietet-whatsapp-und-facebook-in-bisheriger-form-in-deutschland_aid-47675959 https://ga.de/news/digitale-welt/gericht-verbietet-whatsapp-...
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    Video and voice should simply be on the "shared storage" ("/sdcard/" - not an actual SD card) on Android. There should also be a copy of the messages database, and I'm sure there is some open source app to decrypt it somewhere.
• Totomi 6y ago
  Ok, here it goes. I like Whatsapp, and this change seems in line with what Whatsapp always has been. Of course I'm always wary of advancements, ready to uninstall it if really bad news arrive, but in general Whatsapp has been respectful of its users, especially those that are privacy concerned. They hired a lead developer from Signal to implement E2E encryption, its functionality is almost completely transperent, which reduces the need to inspect source code to understand functionality. The most severe of privacy criticisms have amounted to "Facebook knows who you message and at what times you message", which is a very good position for a 2B user platform to be in, since it doesn't read message contents. I have tried Signal, but I cannot recommend it to family (yet), since I don't find what they do with metadata harmful, it's just a price to pay for the otherwise free app, like advertisement. Anyone who has recommended Signal so far sounded like an inflexible Stallman fundamentalist. I reserve my voice for other more serious incidents, if there is a successful warrant for message contents or if there is ad targetting based on message contents, then I will start sounding the horns, but for now: Meh.
  • MarcellusDrum 6y ago
    > its functionality is almost completely transperent, which reduces the need to inspect source code to understand functionality. Can you explain more? Without the ability to see the source code, how can you confirm that e2e encryption is actually being used correctly?
• oli5679 6y ago
  The founder of Whatsapp (1) claims that Facebook promised Whatsapp would not be monetised, and that Facebook and and Whatsapp's data would not be combined. This information was also provided to European antitrust regulators (2) missed out on $850 stock option grants vesting by quitting early over disputes with Facebook about monetisation strategy (3) promoted #deletefacebook on Whatsapp following the Cambridge Anlalytica scandal (4) Donated $50m to the non-for-profit alternative, Signal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Acton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Acton
  • PestoDiRucola 6y ago
    I mean, according to his Wikipedia page he's worth $2.85B so he's not really hurting.
    • ericmay 6y ago
      Sure but still at least he is standing on his principles here.
    • headsupftw 6y ago
      $850MM relative to $2.85B is still a lot of money.
  • samfisher83 6y ago
    Why did he think Mark wanted to pay 19 billion for whatsapp? To not make any money.
    • joshspankit 6y ago
      Maybe he thought he was one of the only ones to “get through” to Mark, and that Mark’s verbal agreements meant something
    • Lammy 6y ago
      WhatsApp was an existential threat to Facebook in every country besides the US. They had the data to prove it, obtained from real users via FB's Onavo VPN service. Facebook Messenger 3.0 was to WhatsApp as Google+ was to Facebook (the product), and when the usage numbers weren't going the right way they gave up and bought them out before the gulf got even wider. Textual messaging is a low-data-use (accessible to the cheapest phones with the smallest data packages) entrypoint to capture a person's social network so you can have other opportunities to capture them again and again with other services in the future. Facebook saw India as an especially huge burgeoning market at that time (hence Internet-dot-org / Free Basics), and afaik WhatsApp is ubiquitous there.
• amelius 6y ago
  I want to switch. But how do I migrate (or backup) my existing conversations (including images and videos)?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• irateswami 6y ago
  Other shoe, meet floor.
• kulesh 6y ago
  Ok. I’ve stopped.
• amelius 6y ago
  Our parents invented the transistor, radar, computers, operating systems, telecommunications, ... We invented social media.
• 01acheru 6y ago
  I finally deleted WhatsApp, even if here in Europe it’s the ubiquitous messaging application and maybe things will be a little complicated at first. I should’ve done this long ago, the same day it was bought by Facebook. Anyway we have so many ways to communicate with one another that if someone wants to reach me he can, probably it will be less a big deal than what most of us think. If all of your tech savvy friends disappear from WhatsApp in a matter of a couple of weeks maybe some other people might follow... I kind of hope in a domino effect right now, let’s see how it plays out!
• andred14 6y ago
  No problem see ya!
• johnchristopher 6y ago
  When will the market be ripe for people/average joe to buy or rent a block data service à la s3/minio so they can plug their app (calendar, photo sharing, blog, messages, etc.) to it instead of being forced to pay for services with their privacy ? They'd just pay for cloud storage that can be used by any apps using buckets/volumes as external storage instead of paying for dropbox like dumb storage. If I had money I would do a foundation thing to kickstart something like that. Is that a dumb idea ? edit: maybe the latency between the app and the block service would be too high to be reliable/tolerable. edit2: there used to be a lot of applications that relied on dropbox to store things but I have a feeling SSG captured the dev mindshare (or maybe Dropbox restricted the API). edit3: I just corrected `id` to `idea`, my brain does that when I am tired :D
  • lisper 6y ago
    Not dumb at all, just really hard. I've taken a couple of shots at this and been defeated by it every time.
  • holografix 6y ago
    How would you stop the app from retaining your date once they have access to it?
    • johnchristopher 6y ago
      You can revoke access to buckets (to stay in the S3 comparison).
      • holografix 6y ago
        But what if in reading the data the apps didn’t also make their own copy and store in their servers?
  • hntcz 6y ago
    No, not dumb. That's what I wrote my BSc project on.
• OJFord 6y ago
  > [The spokeswoman] said there will be no change in how WhatsApp shares provides data with Facebook for non-business chats and account data. That sounds a lot less alarming, in the third to last paragraph, than the headline or first few paragraphs? Don't get me wrong, I ditched Facebook years ago, and wouldn't use WhatsApp but for family and a pre-Corona club I wouldn't have (much at all) contact with otherwise. That quote just makes me much less annoyed than my initial reaction was. Which is of course her job, but assuming it's true...
  • dheera 6y ago
    WeChat banned me for an hour for violating the ToS, and it wasn't clear what I violated. I use LineageOS for privacy reasons, and intercept various things I consider to be privacy violations. I very much disagree with these ways of operating, for systems that monopolize human-to-human communication. We live in a bunch of walled garden communication apps, people don't use any open systems like e-mail and phone anymore, and those walled garden apps bully us into giving them data? They are all starting to behave the same way.
    • ev1 6y ago
      You're using quite literally a spy app that does continuous root and tampering/safetynet/etc checking.
  • croes 6y ago
    Could simply mean they are already sharing all data with Facebook.
    • sedatk 6y ago
      Yep, it's old news. https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/25/whatsapp-to-share-user-data-with-facebook-for-ad-targeting-heres-how-to-opt-out/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/25/whatsapp-to-share-user-dat...
• wjp3 6y ago
  Thanks for the final push I needed FB, to stop using WhatsApp.
• balozi 6y ago
  What I don't get is this, there are real-life people working at these companies. What are the managers and developers at Facebook/Whatsapp thinking? Are there hi-fives in the hallways to celebrate the impending win? I have worked on many a project in my time, and I can't think of a single instance where we knowingly screwed over users or clients. Our teams' goals have always been to make the product better. What's going on here? I am honestly curious.
  • TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    > single instance where we knowingly screwed over users or clients. Monetization often trumps customer's best interests. It certainly has at most companies where I've worked (but not all).
  • trident5000 6y ago
    You have a private conversation with the team manager in some office and explain that bonuses are on the line. And then it gets done.
  • mLuby 6y ago
    Semi-intentional compartmentalization could explain it. Ads: we could increase revenue if we had access to WhatsApp data, but that's Product and Legal's call. Product: Ads asked us to access WhatsApp data, but we're just facilitating between them and Legal. Legal: Ads and Product asked us to change the policy to allow access to WhatsApp data. Nobody being willfully malicious, just not asking certain questions, and the gaps between departments obfuscate the whole thing.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• dheera 6y ago
  Yeah so WeChat banned me for an hour for violating the ToS, and it wasn't clear what I violated. I use LineageOS for privacy reasons, and intercept various things I consider to be privacy violations. I very much disagree with these ways of operating, for systems that monopolize human-to-human communication.
• annadane 6y ago
  Is Mark Zuckerberg legitimately a sociopath? Does he get off on lying to people?
• Atariman 6y ago
  As a privacy concerned European, there's only one viable alternative: https://threema.ch/en/ https://threema.ch/en/ It's open source and very secure: https://www.securemessagingapps.com/ https://www.securemessagingapps.com/
  • 533474 6y ago
    spelling mistakes on the landing page
    • Atariman 6y ago
      Not every company is from an English speaking country, so spelling mistakes are happening. You're welcome to send them an email to with the fixes instead of grumble here.
  • 7v3x3n3sem9vv 6y ago
    I'm curious if you've looked into Signal and if you think it's a viable alternative to Threema? Specifically considering Signal is fully open source (client and servers), uses reproducible builds which allows you to verify that the source matches the app you're running, and is owned by a non-profit which can't be sold to a for-profit company.
    • Atariman 6y ago
      Signal is still US-based, so I'm not interested.
  • dbetteridge 6y ago
    'pay once, chat forever' I don't see how thats tenable with anything that requires a hosted server to relay information. Someone will need to pay for it going forward and if the users money runs out, what then?
• croes 6y ago
  And what do those who do not use Facebook or WhatsApp but are in the contacts of those who do? Facebook grants itself the right to collect data from users whose rights are held by third parties.
• croes 6y ago
  This will then be interesting for the lawsuit in Germany.
• icu 6y ago
  It's time for me to push everyone I know onto Signal and uninstall WhatsApp. I don't trust Facebook at all and this was the final straw for me.
• soupson 6y ago
  This is some mafia shit. They're holding users data hostage behind a click-through acceptance of their altered terms. You can either pray they don't alter the deal further, or get the fuck out, abandoning your chat history and social connections.
  • f430 6y ago
    They are fucking gangsters thats what! Tricked people into giving up info they trade like commodities so they can buy more useless crap in life. Fortunately, it is generally expected Harris/Biden administration will come down hard on these companies. then again they are wall street people so we will have to see if there's a recession (The simpsons predicted a global recession after Trump administration)
  • blackcats 6y ago
    Mafia is more ethical
• Zelphyr 6y ago
  It has been said that companies that build rely too heavily on the public, free API’s of another service are doomed when that service decides to monetize those API’s. See, for example, API users of Google Maps. I think we are now at the point where this applies to individuals. If a person or group of people rely too heavily on a single free service then they’re going to feel pain when that service finally decides to monetize. There are no free lunches. All these “free” products out there that seem great have Venture Capital investors waiting until the day that the service reaches a critical mass and they can flip the cash-generating switch.
  • Normal_gaussian 6y ago
    Its worth remembering that whatsapp used to have an annual charge, and it grew successfully with that. The charge was only removed once FB bought them. Personally I don't know anyone that started using whatsapp after the fb purchase, so they were all happy to pay for their use of a messaging app.
    • throwaway77_a 6y ago
      Did they have that ever on iOS? I’ve never seen it.
      • roflchoppa3 6y ago
        yes they did
      • Tijdreiziger 6y ago
        On iOS there was a one-time purchase fee. I recall there theoretically also being an annual charge, but IME this was always waived.
        • filmgirlcw 6y ago
          This is what I remember, tho I guess it’s possible they changed the terms for new users. But I bought it in late 2009, IIRC and it was either $0.99 or $2.99.
• sfinaed 6y ago
  What do people here think of Element.io (with the default matrix.org server)?
  • soupson 6y ago
    The information you put in parenthesis immediately rules it out for 99% of users. I can count on one hand the number of my family members who have any concept for what that information means.
• reimertz 6y ago
  We need to kill the idea that user growth is a replacement for a honest and legit business model. This is not just a founders problem - investors are equally compliant since they keep on throwing their money as long as they see that sweet exponential curve. Once they get tired of seeing their money being lit on fire; they give the founders one option; monetize what you have or shut down. Since users are now used to your service being free, the only thing you can do is to look at what you have; User data. At first, you just sell this info to your “trusted” partners because you want to be able to sleep at night, but as the revenue keeps on growing, your investors realize you have a money printing machine at your hands. At this point you you’ve lost your compass and forgot why you even founded the thing, being stuck at a big table discussing with investors and lawyers how to find loopholes in the new iteration of the GDPR laws, ending the meeting with deciding to funnel a big chunk of cash to lobby the law out of existence. At this point, everybody looses except from the stock owners. Or maybe you find it hard to sleep at night, because even thought you now have infinite amounts of cash, you lost a part of yourself that day when you threw your entire user base under the bus.
  • suyash 6y ago
    Yes the problem is 'adverstiting based business model' when companies seem to offer 'free services' when in reality they always plan to harvest and sell private data to advertisers. This is what is happening now with WhatsApp and FB so I'm not shocked, it was about time. What we need more urgently is better open source alternatives that allow us to port out of this wall garden apps easily, that is only way I can see my contacts and data from WhatsApp and other apps migrating out.
• Swaglord333 6y ago
  What would the smart alternative to WA be? Telegram? Line? How can I continue using the WA without giving Facebook sth to work with? Please bear with me if this doesn't belong here. Normally I wouldn't dare posting on HN (don't want it to become mainstream and have idiots like me gush out their opinions) but I really dunno who else to ask this.
  • chrisballinger 6y ago
    Signal: https://signal.org/ https://signal.org/
  • 7v3x3n3sem9vv 6y ago
    Agree with the other guy suggesting Signal. It's basically WhatsApp, owned by non-profit so that it can't be sold to a for-profit. They've been subpoenaed and the only data they could provide for a user was the phone number that was registered, the first day that number registered and the most recent day the phone number contacted their servers. I would suggest reading through their blog posts if you're curious about all the work they're putting into ensuring that they collect as little data about their users as possible. they truly are innovating in a field where nobody else seems to care about ensuring privacy first. This does come at a cost to how quickly user-facing features arrive compared to their competitors, but this is because they think through where you may leak data and engineer a way around it before allowing a feature to go through. That said, at this point it's pretty much at feature parity with WhatsApp, so moving over to it would be a great time to do so.
• gideon13 6y ago
  Congress simply needs to mandate interconnect capability to other platforms, like they did with the Bell Telephone Company. Poof problem solved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interconnection#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interconnection#United_States
• JadoJodo 6y ago
  I was a loyal (and paying) WhatsApp user who would advocate it to anyone I could find. The combination of privacy, features, and ideology was exactly what I wanted in a communication app. Then Facebook bought them for $19B and I knew that, despite any allusions to the contrary, they would want that money back. And you don't get it $5/yr/user. I switched to Telegram and never looked back.
  • cabamba 6y ago
    Either you pay to a service or the service trades you as an asset. Telegram is no exception. You are fooling yourself thinking that you escaped the trap.
• blacklight 6y ago
  I love Telegram because of the wide set of features, because of their bot API and because I can easily use it on any client I want - including Bitlbee. And I like Signal because of its built-in security, although the lack of an API, easy integration into other clients, automation and ease of use from multiple devices prevent me from using it more. But I guess that this is a trade-off to be accepted for having strong encryption and messages stored only on the device. Let's keep in mind however that these are advanced use cases, and that for 99% of the users these are just apps supposed to deliver text and media from A to B. In 2021 it's not hard to build an app like these, even with E2E encryption and 2FA. Social lock-in obviously plays a role, but I'm really appalled by the scarcity of alternatives that enables companies like Facebook to bully us into reading our private messages for advertising purpose and easily get away with it.
• jdmg94 6y ago
  I can’t believe I pard for whatsapp back in the day when it was a paid app on the app store
• hliyan 6y ago
  Perhaps messaging should once again be built into the telecommunication infrastructure (like SMS) and billed along with voice and data.
• permille42 6y ago
  Signal is better anyway. WhatsApp cooperates with the US government.
• vinay_ys 6y ago
  I don't give access to my contacts to any app. And I don't give any access permissions to Signal. Signal must make it easy to invite friends without giving access to contacts. A simple Copy invite message with a mobile install link would be great – so that I can paste it into whatever groups I'm on and as my status message.
  • bowaggoner 6y ago
    I respect that perspective, but did you know that Signal uses a private protocol so that your contacts are never sent to their servers? https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• icefo 6y ago
  Didn't the eu explicitly forbid this ? I wonder how their lawyer found a loophole. Or did they did the math and the fine is cheaper than the gains ?
• jimkleiber 6y ago
  I've been wondering if users should organize or unionize to get more rights on the platforms we use. What do you all think about something like this in this situation?
• ratsforhorses 6y ago
  Dumb question, I assume this means you have to disinstall whatsapp if you don't want Fb to have access to stuff on your phone... but is there a way to freeze and save all those conversations on whatsapp so I can go back later to search for specific stuff, memes, photos, links
  • toomuchtodo 6y ago
    https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat-history/?lang=en https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat...
• wirthjason 6y ago
  I mistakenly pressed “yes” to this. Is there anything I can do? Can I revoke it?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• elia_is_me 6y ago
  good!
• an4rchy 6y ago
  An interesting strategy from Facebook. Although the privacy related changes were somewhat expected, the timing and aggresive timeline will likely play out in Facebook's favor. While giving users a 1 month grace period to either comply (share their data) or delete their account already seems like a pretty aggressive window that limits the ability for users to fully assess options or migrate existing groups/chats to alternative platforms, the short timeline combined with the on-going pandemic, and the fact that WhatsApp has become one of the primary means of communication for many around the world will likely lead to a very limited drop in users leaving the platform as a result of this policy change. Beyond Febuary, once users have already shared their data, there is likely minimal incentive for groups or individuals to overcome the network effects and move to another platform in the short term.
  • knodi123 6y ago
    > to either comply (share their data) or delete their account Isn't WhatsApp still purportedly end-to-end encrypted? What data is "on the table" when it comes to sharing - just contact lists and phone numbers?
    • randoantimine 6y ago
      > Isn't WhatsApp still purportedly end-to-end encrypted? What data is "on the table" when it comes to sharing - just contact lists and phone numbers? It is, and same is claimed in their privacy policy and ToS. According to the original article it will include, what is already being collected: User phone numbers Other people’s phone numbers stored in address books Profile names Profile pictures and Status message including when a user was last online Diagnostic data collected from app logs Along with possibly: Purchases Financial information Location Contacts User content Identifiers Usage data and Diagnostics A little more than contact lists and phone numbers.
      • knodi123 6y ago
        Purchases and Financial Information? From WhatsApp usage?
• aste-risk 6y ago
  Must have been really hard to work at Facebook. I often see people shouting at Facebook and tagging their employees on twitter left and right shaming them publicly of their employer's actions. But how do you leave that $$$ on the table.
• vzaliva 6y ago
  Signal
• mancerayder 6y ago
  I'll take the second option. Signal works pretty well for anyone who isn't my family.
• muzani 6y ago
  "As part of the Facebook family of companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, this family of companies. We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings. This includes helping improve infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our Services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities. Facebook and the other companies in the Facebook family also may use information from us to improve your experiences within their services such as making product suggestions (for example, of friends or connections, or of interesting content) and showing relevant offers and ads. However, your WhatsApp messages will not be shared onto Facebook for others to see. In fact, Facebook will not use your WhatsApp messages for any purpose other than to assist us in operating and providing our Services." Definition of Services: "all of our apps, services, features, software, and website (together, “Services”) unless specified otherwise." Ads are the bulk of Facebook's "Services" but it's remarkable how they avoid saying it.
  • ipsum2 6y ago
    huh? it's listed: "and showing relevant offers and ads"
    • jraph 6y ago
      Sure but the fate of WhatsApp messages is unclear for me just by reading this excerpt. Do they use them for ads?
      • YetAnotherNick 6y ago
        Yes they (would)do.
    • muzani 6y ago
      Oh, you're right. It took quite a bit of digging around to get to this part, and I seem to have accidentally copied the part I was looking for, though I searched for "advertisements".
• arrty88 6y ago
  Hello telegram!
• touchpadder 6y ago
  Time to stop using LizardWare and only use Telegram and Signal. A few years ago these were pretty exotic but now most people have them.
  • raister 6y ago
    Doesn't Telegram had massive security issues in the past? Are you sure those are the only options?
• loycombinate 6y ago
  Users in Hong Kong use WhatsApp to stay out of trouble with govt. Like accidentally talking about politics. If Facebook can read msg then govt can make them turn over the msg.
  • cerved 6y ago
    the data mentioned isn't messages but phone numbers, contacts, status messages, logs etc.
    • loycombinate 6y ago
      Having phone numbers and contacts of certain people can get you into trouble.
• known 6y ago
  If you are not paying, you are the product https://archive.is/lrCEe https://archive.is/lrCEe
• Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
  My friends & relatives in India are outright offended when I say that I don't use WhatsApp and so I cannot join their groups. Businesses here have started using WhatsApp as an alternative to SMS, email for sending spam to important package tracking information (without prior permission). But I see this as the best opportunity to convert some of my contacts to Signal/Email as this stays in mainstream news for a while(but quite sure that almost all of them have clicked 'Agree' to T&C banner showed on WhatsApp when they woke up morning without giving it a thought and I'm certain that's exactly what FB intended). I do not know whether to feel fear, sadness or shame on the type of power WhatsApp/Facebook holds only my people.
  • Karupan 6y ago
    In the same boat here. I really want to get rid of WhatsApp, but almost all my contacts exclusively use it for chat and updates.
• pkamb 6y ago
  The part that creeps me out the most is WhatsApp’s aggressiveness towards getting your Contacts. Other apps want them but WhatsApp hardly works without the permission. Why hasn’t Apple introduced a private/segmented Contacts permission like they have Photos, Location, etc.?
  • twsted 6y ago
    My question, too.
  • eps 6y ago
    This has been a very long time due. An ability to give untrustworthy software an access to a sandboxed blank copy of Contacts would've been very useful. As a side note, Telegram is the same as WhatsApp. You can't start a chat on a fresh install unless you give it an access to the contacts. There's no way to manually add in-app contacts. Given how "pro-privacy" they are supposed to be, this was rather disconcerting to see.
    • patall 6y ago
      But you can start at new chat in WhatsApp via https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=XXXXXXX https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=XXXXXXX Does not work for me in Firefox, but in Chrome on Android, I can start a new chat without access to the contacts. I agree that it is weird though!
      • julenx 6y ago
        Easier to remember: https://wa.me/<number> https://wa.me/<number> Where `<number>` contains the international prefix without the `+` sign. Has worked for me in Firefox and everywhere else I've tried. This is a fb-owned domain btw.
    • pvtmert 6y ago
      You can, just deny the request and add contacts in Telegram. At least in android, I denied contact list and manually adding relevant ones to telegram.
• anupamchugh 6y ago
  Such a sham that WhatsApp's privacy policy page still says: We joined Facebook in 2014. WhatsApp is now part of the Facebook family of companies. Our Privacy Policy explains how we work together to improve our services and offerings, like fighting spam across apps, making product suggestions, and showing relevant offers and ads on Facebook. Nothing you share on WhatsApp, including your messages, photos, and account information, will be shared onto Facebook or any of our other family of apps for others to see, and nothing you post on those apps will be shared on WhatsApp for others to see. This is hypocrisy!! Edit: The word "onto" in the privacy policy is so dubious. They said we aren't sharing anything onto Facebook. Probably it didn't mean they weren't snooping our data.
  • extropy 6y ago
    IMO it reads they will not be sharing any WhatsApp messages on your Facebook profile publicly (for others to see). But says it will be used (shared) internally to target ads and product suggestions. Very weasely indeed.
• jacquesm 6y ago
  And that's why I never joined WhatsApp, and still use SMS.
• dmje 6y ago
  Literally noone I know is on Telegram or Signal. Literally everyone is on WhatsApp. Pretty much noone I know cares about privacy, and they're all on Facebook anyway. It's gonna be really hard giving it up :-/
  • AlfeG 6y ago
    I'm on opposite side. Literally no one use whatsup, only Telegram or Viber
• pmontra 6y ago
  I'm in the EU. WhatsApp showed me a screen about new term of service right now. There were two buttons, Agree and Not Now. I tapped Not Now, it kept working.
  • danieldk 6y ago
    Interesting. I am in the EU as well and got the new terms of service screen. Only an Agree button, but I could avoid agreeing (I hope) by clicking the cross (X) at the top of the dialog.
    • hutattedonmyarm 6y ago
      Same here!
    • pmlnr 6y ago
      A/B testing, probably.
  • Cocktail 6y ago
    Same story here, i think i saw a deadline mentioned at tue bottom
  • Ballas 6y ago
    Yes, but if you don't accept before 1 July, you will have to find another solution for your messaging needs.
  • ssss11 6y ago
    I’m in Australia and just recorded it. There was Agree and an X in the corner... I X’d and it kept working.
  • A_No_Name_Mouse 6y ago
    I'm in the EU and clicked agree before I realised the implications. Now I want to withdraw my consent, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do this. Am I overlooking something or is that not possible (which would violate GDPR)?
• petre 6y ago
  Apparently the EU fine wasn't enough to quell this behaviour.
• jpangs88 6y ago
  I get frustrated by things like this, these walled gardens of people I know. I wish I could just switch to signal but I've found people would rather just not talk to me than download a new messenger app I've settled for just talking to the people I can convince on different messengers and now have ~5 messenger apps on my phone.
  • godelski 6y ago
    I don't have a large friend group, but got most of them to switch after I left Facebook. I just don't tell people I have WA and only use it if I'm forced to. You might have better luck since Signal has improved a lot in the last 6 months and there is a good desktop app. But you might need better friends. Friends that might warn you about how your username suggests you're a Nazi (I assume this is unintentional and just your birthday year)[0] [0] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=88 https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=88
• submeta 6y ago
  I am in the EU, and this is what I have been presented with: „ By tapping Agree, you accept the new terms, which take effect on February 8, 2021. After this date, you’ll need to accept the new terms to continue using WhatsApp. You can also visit the Help Center if you would prefer to delete your account and would like more information. To learn more about how WhatsApp processes your data, read our updated privacy policy“ (with an Agree button underneath). I could close the window. But there is a hard deadline apparently: Feb 8th. F* you Facebook. I‘d rather stop using Whatsapp altogether. Edit: Will start using Signal app, and for the transition period I‘ll keep an old smartphone with a throwaway Sim card and WhatsApp installed on it to keep updates from absolutely necessary groups I need to be part of.
  • wuschel 6y ago
    It was always a clear business transaction: acess to a messenging service for access to meta data (and now message data). I wonder how Out of curiosity: Does anyone know how the new Whatsapp TOS differ from the Gmail TOS in regard to user data and privacy. How does the Facebook group use data differently than, say Facebook or Microsoft?
    • 0x10c0fe11ce 6y ago
      So what should self sentient person do, just lie down and accept the erosions of our blood won freedoms? No thanks. I have right now all my company talking to thousands of customers explaining this mess to them and helping those who need to switch to Signal. So yeah, fuck you FB!
      • lrvick 6y ago
        Signal is no better. You fell into one marketing trap with WhatsApp and have now fallen for another. Signal is another private entity with complete control of the servers and end client binaries. The fact they happen to open source the code is kind of moot since no services are allowed to write alternative implementations, no one can run their own servers or prove what code is running on Signals servers, nor can anyone even distribute reproducibly built binaries from said source code for accountability (e.g. f-droid). There are so many better options. I suggest Element/Matrix which can even bridge to WhatsApp and Signal as needed thanks to community contributed bridges.
• WA 6y ago
  I mean, it’s annoying, but I’m at the point where I wonder if it does matter at all. I don’t let WhatsApp access my contacts or photos. I tried very hard for a long time to not give Facebook my phone number. But if any of my contacts agrees to this, my phone number is given to Facebook (without my consent). So, what are my options really? Delete my account? And then what? My number will be given to them anyways.
  • chalst 6y ago
    I don't have a big problem with Facebook having my number, or knowing who 95% of the people are who have me in their contacts. But it is important to me that the contents of my contacts database is private so that I can be trusted by the other 5%.
• eecc 6y ago
  Many comments are about how people would love to jump ship and switch to whatever other service. Well, there’s an IM service already deployed to all mobile systems and it’s called SMS. All that’s needed is some sanity in the pricing, some modernization of support for multimedia and cross-device sharing/archiving. This whole industry exists for 1 sole reason: telco ineptitude
  • graposaymaname 6y ago
    Well, is it encrypted?
    • Ayesh 6y ago
      Answering the likely rhetorical question: No.
    • ajitkrsingh123 6y ago
      thu
  • abandonliberty 6y ago
    There really isn't (in SMS) > Message delivery is "best effort", so there are no guarantees that a message will actually be delivered to its recipient, but delay or complete loss of a message is uncommon, typically affecting less than 5 percent of messages Maybe 5g will fix something, I'm not current on the spec.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• craftydevil 6y ago
  As a part of Boycott , lot of us moved towards privacy centric ZOHO app Arattai.
• amatecha 6y ago
  Don't worry, already stopped using the app years ago when FB acquired them.
• PakG1 6y ago
  https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Whatsapp+founder https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Whatsapp+founder Writing has been on the wall for a while.
• tobyhinloopen 6y ago
  Too bad I can’t get rid of whatsapp. Clients commonly contact me via whatsapp
• notananthem 6y ago
  Time to break up Facebook
• boredatworkme 6y ago
  Can someone help and dumb this down a little bit for me so that I can then explain to some of my friends who couldn't care too much about this change in policy? For example: What should be my response to questions like: . "What kind of data can now be shared with FB versus what was shared earlier (if any)?" . "Whatsapp chats are end to end encrypted so how can my data be shared with FB?" . "As an individual, how different is Whatsapp sharing my data with FB for ad/tracking purposes versus what other networks such as Google do to serve ads? Let's say I'm interested in ice-cream and I chat with someone about it and a couple of days later, I get ads about ice-cream, but I choose to ignore those ads, then how am I impacted/affected?"
  • pojzon 6y ago
    Their infra is generating those encryption certificates, so WhatsApp can very well decode the message and store it for further processing. They will most likely share metadata about you with facebook to sell that data to push more ads into your face. They may very well sell also data to insurance companies making it harder for you to get insurance. Options are limited only by who would like to pay for info about you. Its rather a question about “How much you value your privacy?” Ps. Ppl using facebook from the go “do not care about their privacy” so I dont know how much more it will affect you.
    • cranekam 6y ago
      > Their infra is generating those encryption certificates, so WhatsApp can very well decode the message and store it for further processing. This is incorrect. The sender's device generates the key with which it encrypts outgoing messages. WhatsApp's infra cannot see the content of any messages sent. (Source: ex-WhatsApp employee)
      • cookiengineer 6y ago
        The issue I have with that statement is that it cannot be proven. There is no source code of whatsapp, so this could have been changed anytime. I mean, it's certainly possible to have an administrative backdoor that just shares the local keys. Even when that wasn't the case when you worked there, and even if we believe that you say the truth: we still cannot be certain that this won't change on February 8th. I mean, whatsapp was remotely exploitable for more than 5 years before it was discovered (just to make a point).
• SebastianKra 6y ago
  Their privacy policy is full of tricks and clever wording to confuse you, and stop you from revoking your consent to data processing. (...which they likely have, because you were already using the service before GDPR went into effect) https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-policy-eea https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-policy-eea I especially like how their email template asks you to fill out a bunch of unnecessary fields and implies that the request might be denied if you don't. I think most WhatsApp users would just give up at that point. I think both of these adresses work: - DPO-inquiries@support.whatsapp.com - Objection.eu@support.whatsapp.com However, I don't really know how to best formulate such a request. (By the way, the server might refuse to receive you mail, if they don't recognize your domain.)
• ivanstame 6y ago
  I will stop using the fucking app. It is time to change tech industry and to actually charge for a product other then to sell the users. Let's stop this!
• ngcc_hk 6y ago
  Accept it and then disable its access to contacts to see how it goes. May have to go to signal.
• banach 6y ago
  Thanks, Facebook, for the reminder to speed up transition to Signal for the rest of my social circles.
• classified 6y ago
  At least they made it unmistakably clear to those who'd prefer to forget it that their tentacles up your every orifice is the price you have to pay for using their "free" products.
• sauntheninja 6y ago
  In India whatsapp is ubiquitous my whole family uses it my college uses it to send information all my friends use it using a alternative would be ideal but convincing people to not use whatsapp is a fool's errand here
• codegladiator 6y ago
  Is there a possibility that we (us at hn, pro-privacy) are all just paranoid and the worst case scenarios we can imagine are never really going to happen ? I am a heavy advocate of privacy and the main driving factor for these conversations in my friend/family circle. Trying to get people to a different platform since 2 years now (they did and came back), so now I wonder if I am just wasting time really for a apocalypse that was never going to happen.
  • bitcharmer 6y ago
    The worst case scenario has been happening for years. Didn't Snowden teach us about how these platforms are a gold mine for shady government agencies and oppressive regimes?
    • rusk 6y ago
      And let’s not forget organised crime. It’s not beyond reason that some of the larger organisations could get their fingers into this. I think in Europe we are more aware of these issues because shady organisations in the past have been able to get their hands on government files and use them for nefarious purposes.
  • blackbrokkoli 6y ago
    I mean the advent of business computing was very literally the systematic eradication of 6 million Jews. IBM's custom designed punch cards and the absolute openness of census records (church books are rarely encrypted) was the only reason the third Reich was ever able to census all European Jews and then systematically deport them in any reasonable time frame. That is obviously very different from new WhatsApp TOS, but this incredibly prevalent opinion of "Well, nothing really bad regarding privacy and tech did actually happen, right?" irks me a lot.
    • jjcon 6y ago
      I’m pretty fricken sure they would have worked around not having that specific punch card tech - it’s like saying 9/11 wouldn’t have happened if Linux didn’t exist because the taliban used Linux systems
• saos 6y ago
  I stupidly accepted this. How can I decline it? Edit: Just did a comparison of all the data collected by Whatsapp, Signal and Telegram Telegram - https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/telegram-messenger/id686449807 https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/telegram-messenger/id686449807 WhatApp - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/whatsapp-messenger/id310633997 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/whatsapp-messenger/id310633997 Signal - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/signal-private-messenger/id874139669 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/signal-private-messenger/id874... WhatApp collect a stupid amount of data. Its time for me to shift.
• yawaworht1978 6y ago
  What if I am a WhatsApp user but I do not have a Facebook account? Will Facebook use images from WhatsApp conversations with my friends who do have a Facebook account? So much for "WhatsApp will never cost you a cent"(post acquisition statement)
• Cyber_squad 6y ago
  Don't blame the tiger for its claw. I mean, we should help our friends to migrate to new solutions. If we don't we lose.
• sdevonoes 6y ago
  Damm, now I have to stop using WhatsApp. I'll probably lose 40% of my contacts or so, but I believe it's worth it. Sad days we live in.
• gregjw 6y ago
  Adios!
• hajderr 6y ago
  New apps on the rise!
• hajderr 6y ago
  What happened to Telegram?
• bladelessninja2 6y ago
  I love how they give you plenty of time before ultimatum /s
• teekert 6y ago
  WA is so deeply ingrained in the Dutch society, we even have this all over the place: [0] At this point it's just a lost cause. I have some friends on Signal and use NextCloud talk (my own server, yay, still waiting for federated chat to chat to other servers), but so many "official" things are on WA, children's birthday parties, school announcements, sports related announcements, neighborhood announcements. We are really too dependent on WA, and you know, based on WA's original promises this wouldn't really be a problem. Now it is, although I fear I'm one of the very few that sees it that way. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=whatsapp+buurtpreventie&t=ffsb&iax=images&ia=images&iai=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.nieuws.nl%2Fmedia%2Fsites%2F305%2F2015%2F12%2F05153708%2Fattentie-whatsapp-buurtpreventie.jpg https://duckduckgo.com/?q=whatsapp+buurtpreventie&t=ffsb&iax...
  • jraby3 6y ago
    Same here in Israel. Messages from daycare, zoom class info for kids, alerts, are all connected to WhatsApp. There is no way to avoid using it. Wish there was something I could do.
    • teekert 6y ago
      Yeah, I do hope the EU (and your government) do(es) something about this, I feel betrayed because WA became dominant here under very different terms and conditions. FB: "Yeah we are just going to buy this platform with a privacy focus that everybody loves and grew dependent on and turn it into FaceBook." I don't even understand how that is legal.
• a0-prw 6y ago
  I use Signal to chat with my family and friends. I use sms or an in-house service to communicate with colleagues. I only use WhatsApp with my gf. I don't have fb or Instagram. What effect does this policy change have on me? Obviously, fb will receive some data on me and my communications with my gf, connecting me to her (extensive) network on fb, but how worried should I be ?
  • mtrycz2 6y ago
    You should be worried for your gf, probably. And all the other millions of non technical users.
• Nwil 6y ago
  :-) On this page, at this moment, 149 times the word "WhatsApp" and 142 times "Signal". I will help a Signal - Signal,Signal,Signal,Signal,Signal,Signal,Signal. :-)
• Razengan 6y ago
  I guess the most valuable data WhatsApp leeches from you is your contacts graph. Wish Apple would let us choose which contacts to give specific apps access to, like they did for photos. In the meantime, you can try minimizing what WhatsApp sees about you by turning off access to contacts, using the desktop or web app, and just talking to people via https://wa.me/{phoneNumber} https://wa.me/{phoneNumber}
• rvanmil 6y ago
  Market share of WhatsApp in The Netherlands is somewhere around 90%. It is time for the government to step in here because the free market will not be able to fix this.
• silasdavis 6y ago
  As others have mentioned increasingly small businesses (like my outdoor exercise class) and loose communities (like my child's school year parent's group) rely on WhatsApp. persuading these loose connections to move away from WhatsApp for one's own benefit is almost impossible. Sacrificing access to these social amenities on the altar of incremental privacy invasion and power transfer to an unaccountable basically malign organisation is hard to stomach. And rather inconsequential taken in isolation. What technical and legislative means might be effective in limiting the network effect around group chats? For example requiring in law that groups be accessible to an open federated hub and spoke messaging protocol to allow messages to flow from syndicated groups established on other systems (like matrix or signal or whatever) to WhatsApp groups. What technical and legal prior art is there here? I would be interested to hear some ideas.
  • Hermel 6y ago
    It might be enough to use many different messaging apps in parallel. This enabled competition and a smooth transition between them. For example, I tend to slowly move from WhatsApp to Telegram as more new groups I join are created in Telegram while old groups in WhatsApp tend to get abandoned. Also, I often access these groups through opera via their API and not the native apps. This is a natural development in a market where people use multiple apps in parallel: aggregators emerge and with that, the power shifts to them. That’s a good thing as it makes it easier to transition from one solution to the other. What could be done legally to help this development is requiring services to offer open APIs to reduce the lock-in.
    • jannes 6y ago
      Which Opera API are you talking about? Isn't it just a wrapper for https://web.whatsapp.com/ https://web.whatsapp.com/ ? I wouldn't call that an "API"
    • edeion 6y ago
      Having different apps is probably a step forward indeed. But (as far as I understand) just having WhatsApp installed on my phone allows them to keep an eye on my contact list. That sounds quite despicable to me.
• csunbird 6y ago
  Can we unleash the EU anti-trust regulators on them for monopoly abuse?
• Tomte 6y ago
  Wasn't not doing that a precondition that the EU imposed on the Whatsapp acquisition by Facebook? Was that time-limited, is it not running afoul of that, or does Facebook just risk it?
• weitzj 6y ago
  There was a political cartoon from the NewYork Times or the NewYorker about pigs in front of a slaughterhouse eating happily and enjoying that the food was free. And in the background you could see a slaughterhouse with Facebook on its name. Does anybody have this picture ? I can’t find it
• peter_retief 6y ago
  The sooner Facebook gets broken up the better.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• pmlnr 6y ago
  HN, I linked this yesterday - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25656842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25656842. Good thing it got completely ignored.
• sdfjkl 6y ago
  How to get your friends and family to use Signal instead: "I'm on Signal if you want to talk to me."
• kashyapc 6y ago
  Not unexpected at all. After all, it is gratis; WhatsApp will jolly well do as they please—until regulators unleash the whirlwind. On a related note, as a regular Signal user (and I've had a modicum of success converting some friends to it), I worry how they intend to stay afloat with "grants and donations" for the next 95 years.
• beertoagunfight 6y ago
  Fuck Facebook, I'm out.
• 98hio 6y ago
  Seems like a GDPR violation. I think collection of user data has to be voluntary in a meaningful way.
• bibelo 6y ago
  I was barely awake, and saw the popup this morning (I'm in EU) and with my sticky eyes, I couldn't see how I could send a message without accepting the popup So does anyone know if there's a way to revert the agreement?
  • cesarb 6y ago
    For me, there was also a clearly labeled "not now" option right next to the "agree" button. I quickly clicked that "not now", option (I didn't have at that moment the time to review a pair of long documents), and now I have no idea how to make the popup show again (so I can read these documents). I hope this doesn't mean my account will be banned in a few weeks.
• anon_user22 6y ago
  If someone's convincing please recommend federated decentralized protocols such matrix or xmpp rather than e2e such as signal or telegram. Its easily to switch it the same fiasco happens with these companies
• numlock86 6y ago
  I have read the article. From my current understanding this is what WhatsApp/Facebook has been doing since its release. What am I missing?
• submeta 6y ago
  Does anybody know how we can export our Whatsapp chats in Germany? It used to be possible, it‘s not allowed anymore. But any workarounds?
  • jeroenhd 6y ago
    On a rooted/jailbroken phone, there are apps that just dump the database into a readable format. Theoretically you might be able to get something out of the local or cloud backups, but they're encrypted so they're probably difficult to get a hold of. The key is stored in the private application data, but there must be some way to get it back/regenerate it because you can restore a backup without copying any secrets from the previous phone.
  • submeta 6y ago
    Actually I bought a piece of software [1] that perfectly exported five years of messages out of my cellphone, then I didn’t hesitate once day to delete my WhatsApp accout. [1]: „Backuptrans iPhone WhatsApp Transfer for Mac“
• jariel 6y ago
  This is not nice, but remember they are merely doing what Google does, in the sense that all of their properties are inexorably and deeply linked. The only surprise is that this was not done sooner. WhatsApp is somewhat more essential for a lot of people, and contains more sensitive information, so this is not good. At least with FB and Insta, you can just keep rubbish information stored in there.
• BatteryMountain 6y ago
  Facebook and by extension Whatsapp needs to be regulated. Also, I'd be happy to pay for Whatsapp but then they need to isolate themselves from Facebook/third parties and slow down with the feature creep. It works great for what it is. If they mutate the thing further, it's going to become a gross/convuluted app that tries to cater to all use cases.
• kar1181 6y ago
  It's harder for US folks to understand just how much of a monopoly WhatsApp has in Europe and the UK. Pretty much all of our school and local community communication happens via WhatsApp. I'd change to Signal or Telegram in a heartbeat, but the inertia is so great it's not possible. It pains me to say, but we're getting to the point where companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google need to be treated like utilities or something so that such moves as these can be scrutinised and controlled more effectively as Facebook could pretty much (within current law) introduce whatever policy they like and users would be faced with the option of accepting or being cut off from their local community. Given the pandemic and the UK lockdown, this is not tolerable.
  • ravingraven 6y ago
    >Twitter, Facebook and Google need to be treated like utilities [...] Our generation is reinventing the wheel here, our ancestors had exactly the same problems with the power, water, gas, telephone and rail networks (at some point in time, all those were unregulated and privately owned) and did exactly that. Critical infrastructure needs to be heavily, regulated if not outright publicly owned.
    • emteycz 6y ago
      Sure, let's make the public alternative, but I am strongly against taking over businesses.
      • llampx 6y ago
        I am strongly for taking over businesses which are de facto monopolies.
        • emteycz 6y ago
          If your public alternative can't win the users then "breaking the monopoly" will worsen the user experience. I don't want to live in that world - consider Telegram, a much better experience than WhatsApp, and it won over many users already. Evidently the monopoly is not as strong as is suggested. Telegram might not exist if there was a risk of losing the company. I don't want to be stuck with bad public software. In reality, when you destroy WhatsApp, people won't use the bad software, they will go to the next player and make it a "monopoly" because it most likely will be a better user experience.
• scotty79 6y ago
  On one hand I never read through any TC or license and never agreed to anything in them. I'm just clicking buttons to be able to use the app. Often I don't even read the text on the button. And I think most people behave this way. On the other hand as tech savvy person I have no expectation about what happens to the data that I enter into the app beyond expecting it not to be immediately published for everyone to see unless that's what the app explicitely does. I know data I entered might be viewed by unspecified number of people all over the world during normal operation, and that this data might be published at some point in the future. I'm hoping none of the unknown people that can view my data knows me personally or uses this data against me. There's no end to end encryption hosted service I currently trust to do what they say. If I were to transfer information that I don't want under no circumstances to go public I'd have to research what wikileaks is now using for communication. That's the contract I'm operating under. I think it's a good balance because it's aligned with physical reality.
• isoprophlex 6y ago
  A nice dark pattern in WhatsApp: Turning off access to contacts in ios immediately makes your profile picture invisible to others. Meaning: we cant all revoke access and try to identify contacts by profile pic. Fuck you FB.
• sbt 6y ago
  This should not be legal.
• arendtio 6y ago
  The core issue seems to be, that companies want to profit from the information they can extract from communication and governments don't want to create laws, to make end-to-end encryption mandatory and information extraction illegal, as their own law enforcement depends on it. So the company with the deepest pockets controls our daily communication channels and as consumers we feel powerless due to the network effect. One way to overcome this would be to make it mandatory that communication services must allow federation. Sure, it would not be a perfect solution, but it would be a lot better than the current situation and should be acceptable by all parties involved.
• VadimPR 6y ago
  European resident here - ended up deleting WhatsApp and asking contacts to switch to Signal/Telegram. Quite a few people were happy to make the move and some were happy for the push.
• 8fingerlouie 6y ago
  I have 2 contacts on Signal and 4 on Telegram, and don't even have WhatsApp installed. I'm puzzled where Denmark went "wrong". I see other EU users say that WhatsApp is absolutely dominant in their countries, and yet everybody i know uses iMessage, which may not be surprising if you look at graphs like this https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/denmark https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/denmark For "social circles", coordinating sports activites and more, people use Facebook or Facebook Messenger, which is just as bad as WhatsApp. Schools here use Microsoft Teams for remote teaching classes, and Office365 for schoolwork, and there's not a single Google account to be found anywhere. O365 may be just as bad, but the contract is negotiated on a government level, and bound by the GDPR and other local laws, so i assume my kids personal data are relatively secure.
• Number157 6y ago
  If you're in the EU, you could try reporting this as a GDPR violation. How to report: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rights-citizens/redress/what-should-i-do-if-i-think-my-personal-data-protection-rights-havent-been-respected_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...
• sandGorgon 6y ago
  this may fail regulatory test in India - where Whatsapp has been blocked from rolling out payments for 2 years now. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/whatsapp-pay-has-now-met-all-data-localisation-rules-npci-tells-rbi/articleshow/77343179.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/news... Because of regulations, Whatsapp may neither move data out of India or transfer to a third party.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• sashokbg 6y ago
  I live in Europe (France) and I don't have the part "As part of the Facebook family of companies .." in the EULA that is presented to me. Maybe they have different versions and the one in EU is kinda still OK ?
• drunkpotato 6y ago
  I just deleted WhatsApp rather than “agree” to their ultimatum. I liked the group chats, but not enough for that.
• comeonseriously 6y ago
  Get that data before they're forced to break up.
• ubermonkey 6y ago
  What's weird is that I don't know anyone who uses it. This is because (a) I'm an American and (b) nearly everyone I know uses an iPhone, so we all use Apple's own messaging tool instead. I know some crypto fans who really try to push for folks to use Signal, but there's too much inertia. WhatsApp isn't really on the radar. It's wild to read how much of a monopoly it enjoys elsewhere.
• Funes- 6y ago
  This would be the perfect time for the team behind Signal to make registration through username available, for those who don't want to give their phone number away but would otherwise make the switch. Think about it: competitor gets a closer grip on its users' privacy, while we fortify it instead. One can dream, right?
• rutthenut 6y ago
  A colleague shared this (Apr 2020) link about Signal .vs. WhatsApp, which may be more important in light of this change. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/signal-vs-whatsapp https://www.wired.co.uk/article/signal-vs-whatsapp
• antpls 6y ago
  At that point, I believe the strategy for Whatsapp was never to snoop into private conversations with other people, but to get all the transactions and interactions made with businesses.
• domano 6y ago
  I consciously refuse WhatsApp and live with the consequences - but people are coming around slowly or maybe my social circle is small enough to avoid the aforementioned inertia. Usually people have it installed alongside WhatsApp, i am the only one without it i think.
• YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
  Oh, good. This is the perfect excuse for me to finally uninstall whatsapp. My friends and family can SMS me if they need me. So long whatsapp. I never needed you. :bird emoji:
• pavel_lishin 6y ago
  The WhatsApp app on my phone already has permissions to access my contacts, so presumably they're already on WhatsApp's servers - how would I go about removing this information before February 8th?
• teekert 6y ago
  Hmm, this Dutch website says the effect for EU citizens will not be so big. [0] https://tweakers.net/nieuws/176412/whatsapp-verplicht-datadelen-met-facebook-maar-niet-voor-europese-gebruikers.html https://tweakers.net/nieuws/176412/whatsapp-verplicht-datade...
• Tactic 6y ago
  Facebook has also recently started to require a Facebook account to use Oculus VR. It appears they are starting to crack down on the services they have acquired. I assume this more hardline approach of "give us your data or get out" will continue with any other current or future services created or purchased.
• johnwayne666 6y ago
  Can an iOS dev tell me what data Facebook can gather if I install WhatsApp on my iPhone but disable every permission except the notifications and mobile data access? People I talk to and my IP address but what else?
• Mc_Big_G 6y ago
  Well, there goes the "You don't need to quit WhatsApp because they don't collect data like Facebook" argument.
• cybert00th 6y ago
  Oh excellent! I'd been putting off moving all our family WhatsApp groups to Telegram. Now I can actually justify the time it will take.
• malinens 6y ago
  I got some popup from whatsapp didnt read it and clicked back. It was probably this message and I do not get this popup anymore. Looks like some dark pattern. I did not accept any new changes...
• nutanc 6y ago
  Everyone here seems to be mentioning how they want to move but cannot move because of the network effects. Even for me, my kids school sends updates on WhatsApp. Bank also sends its updates on WhatsApp etc. But I have avoided using WhatsApp for these purposes. And so far I have survived. Because almost all businesses don't rely exclusively on WhatsApp. Atleast in my case. They send emails, SMS messages etc. It's not as clean as WhatsApp. But everything has its pros and cons. If we really want to move, then I think we can move. It will be a little harder to start with. But then something better will hopefully come across. Tech has always filled gaps which come up.
• julianmarq 6y ago
  It's very interesting how upon news like this, everyone rightly jumps at the throat of the evil corporation pushing for more control of everyone's information. But when the discussion is about free speech—which this stuff is directly related to, just in a subtle way—then suddenly at least half the comments are clamoring in defense of the large corporations' right (to censor) to host whatever they want in their platforms. All because "the users don't know better, so it's good to filter the information they get access to" or because "information overload is somehow more likely to push people to the extremes than siloing and letting people live in filter bubbles" and other similarly paternalistic justifications. It's interesting how facebook trying to get the information is bad, but using that information, among other things, to filter what its users see or not is apparently good.
• rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
  I just added a status to my Whatsapp, telling friends and family to "leave Whatsapp and join Signal.org". None of my friends can see it (I checked for two close friends). Can one of you guys try the same and confirm Whatsapp does not block such status?
  • pmlnr 6y ago
    Works for my friends me, though I didn't out URL (.org) in the status.
• donut2d 6y ago
  I wonder how they will deal with people such as myself who use Whattsapp but do not have a Facebook account.
• graposaymaname 6y ago
  We all saw this coming, and it’s most unfortunate that the network effects simply make us all share our data with them. But doesn’t this violate GDPR? Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought asking the user to share data or leave service was illegal under it. Also the same under iOS 14, again I have almost zero knowledge regarding the app store policies but I thought it had the same condition that an app should be functional without the user accepting data sharing policies.
• nabla9 6y ago
  Zuckerberg while waiting to see if FTC would clear the deal: “We are absolutely not going to change plans around WhatsApp and the way it uses user data. WhatsApp is going to operate completely autonomously,” >https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2014-feb-24-la-fi-tn-mark-zuckerberg-whatsapp-worth-even-more-than-19-billion-20140224-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2014-feb-24-la-fi-tn... >The WhatsApp acquisition has raised concerns among some users that WhatsApp would become, well, more like Facebook. Zuckerberg took the opportunity to quiet those concerns, saying WhatsApp would continue to operate independently from Facebook. >“We are absolutely not going to change plans around WhatsApp and the way it uses user data. WhatsApp is going to operate completely autonomously,” Zuckerberg said. “They might use people and infrastructure to grow, but the vision is to keep the service exactly the same. They do not keep the content you send, and we’re not going to change that.”
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Maybe governments should support SMS to be free. (also force operators to ban spam so it is usable).
• dikaio 6y ago
  I don’t understand the problem. Use Signal.
  • fouric 6y ago
    As many, many other people have stated here - beyond just burning social capital by forcing your other friends and family to use Signal (which isn't even federated), a lot of social, community, and commercial things are coordinated exclusively through WhatsApp. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25673859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25673859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669072
• oakpond 6y ago
  So my real life fb profile may end up on somebody's suggestions list because I happened to have contacted them on WhatsApp? I guess it's time to say goodbye to my fb account.
• blippage 6y ago
  WhatsApp wanted me to give my phone number in order to sign up. That's a hard "no" from me. I gave up on Facebook ages ago.
• vlsbr 6y ago
  EU citizen here. Not a lawyer so correct me if I'm wrong. :) WhatsApp uses "privacy shield"[0] to allow it to flow data from the EU to the US. However, privacy shield was rejected by the European Court of Justice on 16 July 2020 (Schrems II) [1] so we're back to "standard contractual clauses" [2]. There's currently no alternative to Privacy Shield. [0] https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-shield/?lang=en https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-shield/?lang=en [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU%E2%80%93US_Privacy_Shield#Legal_challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU%E2%80%93US_Privacy_Shield#L... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/international-dimension-data-protection/standard-contractual-clauses-scc_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/inte...
• mderazon 6y ago
  I would leave WhatsApp if there was a way to send an auto reply message to anyone messaging me telling them where I'm available at. Actually maybe I can put it in my bio and keep the account floating ? Hmm
• gerash 6y ago
  Can someone ELI5 the ramifications of this change? The WhatsApp FAQ says only chats with businesses are affected. Also what happened to the "if you're not the customer you're the product" mentality. Do people expect some entities to pay for servers and teams of Android and iOS developers to create a chat app without getting paid and out of pure goodwill?