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That's not censorship, that's generous. If you don't agree with the Google terms of service, it's not as if you can make use of their services. Facebook apparen

by lucb1e 6y ago

That's not censorship, that's generous. If you don't agree with the Google terms of service, it's not as if you can make use of their services. Facebook apparently allows people to still have WhatsApp, run the software, connect to the servers, and receive messages. Presumably to make other people talk to those users, making them want to reply, and then sell their soul after all, rather than haunting those users off the platform altogether. It's clever and insidious.

sneak 6y ago
Whether or not is it generous doesn't change the fact that is is censorship.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  To censor: "to examine in order to suppress (see suppress sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable" (Merriam Webster). That's not what this is. Nobody is reading messages or selectively withholding them. They're denying access to certain parts of the service for people that don't want to agree to the service's contract (I said, mostly jokingly, that this is "generous" because most other services just stop working altogether if you don't agree; I obviously don't think Facebook is the benevolent party here, as the rest of my previous comment made clear). Whether that contract Facebook offers is reasonable and just, or whether perhaps we can consider WhatsApp public infrastructure due to its ubiquity and importance in certain countries, is a separate discussion. The new contract may not be fair to require because people often don't really have a choice to move away, but for it to be censorship there has to be more than "we can't provide you a service because you didn't agree to our contract under which we provide it". If I don't agree that Deutsche Post sells my metadata to third parties, it's not suddenly censorship if Deutsche Post refuses to then deliver my letters. They're not censoring my letters, they're telling me to go and find another delivery service or deliver my own damn letters. Which, to get back to the point, you can do on https://matrix.org https://matrix.org.
  - sneak 6y ago
    > Nobody is reading messages or selectively withholding them Facebook is selectively withholding messages sent by users who haven’t agreed that Facebook should get to arbitrarily and unilaterally change contract terms at any time.
    - lucb1e 6y ago
      Somehow I feel like we are speaking different languages.

by lucb1e 6y ago

sneak 6y ago

Whether or not is it generous doesn't change the fact that is is censorship.

lucb1e 6y ago
To censor: "to examine in order to suppress (see suppress sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable" (Merriam Webster). That's not what this is. Nobody is reading messages or selectively withholding them. They're denying access to certain parts of the service for people that don't want to agree to the service's contract (I said, mostly jokingly, that this is "generous" because most other services just stop working altogether if you don't agree; I obviously don't think Facebook is the benevolent party here, as the rest of my previous comment made clear). Whether that contract Facebook offers is reasonable and just, or whether perhaps we can consider WhatsApp public infrastructure due to its ubiquity and importance in certain countries, is a separate discussion. The new contract may not be fair to require because people often don't really have a choice to move away, but for it to be censorship there has to be more than "we can't provide you a service because you didn't agree to our contract under which we provide it". If I don't agree that Deutsche Post sells my metadata to third parties, it's not suddenly censorship if Deutsche Post refuses to then deliver my letters. They're not censoring my letters, they're telling me to go and find another delivery service or deliver my own damn letters. Which, to get back to the point, you can do on https://matrix.org https://matrix.org.
- sneak 6y ago
  > Nobody is reading messages or selectively withholding them Facebook is selectively withholding messages sent by users who haven’t agreed that Facebook should get to arbitrarily and unilaterally change contract terms at any time.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    Somehow I feel like we are speaking different languages.