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Facebook Undermines Privacy Protections for Its 2B WhatsApp Users

41 points by webmobdev 5y ago

glugc 5y ago
The anti Facebook slant of the mass media is appalling. A gazillion words to explain that content reported by users is then judged by the company as abusive or not.
- lpcvoid 5y ago
  The "anti Facebook slant" is rooted in a history of complete disregard for user data and privacy, so I find it warranted.
  - duud 5y ago
    The fact this site has a fixed AdSense ad at the bottom of the page suggests they don't care that much about privacy.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Barrin92 5y ago
> "A 49-slide internal company marketing presentation from December, obtained by ProPublica, emphasises the “fierce” promotion of WhatsApp’s “privacy narrative.” It compares its “brand character” to “the Immigrant Mother” and displays a photo of Malala Yousafzai, who survived a shooting by the Taliban and became a Nobel Peace Prize winner, in a slide titled “Brand tone parameters.” what on earth? Legitimately how do you design this and don't think you're in some sort of American Psycho skit.
stavros 5y ago
Since the announcement a few months ago, almost all of my friends and groups migrated to Signal. Good riddance to WhatsApp. I even find Signal a better messaging client than WhatsApp.
uniqueuid 5y ago
I am highly sceptical of Facebook's ethical stance on many issues. But we have to admit that some of the decisions here are not trivial. The report is not about randomly monitoring messages, it's about messages that were reported by users. The executive actually puts the dilemma pretty well: > “WhatsApp is a lifeline for millions of people around the world,” the company said. “The decisions we make around how we build our app are focused around the privacy of our users, maintaining a high degree of reliability and preventing abuse.” These platforms are helping a lot of people, and they can't fix all man-made problems (i.e. crime, hate speech etc.). There is a lot of valid criticism against the way they are facilitating hidden discrimination, helping obscure political targeted influence and so on - but this issue is IMO not as contentious.
seanieb 5y ago
This story is FUD, pointing out that WhatsApp users can forward messages they received to WhatsApp’s abuse team, when reporting abuse… I’m not a fan of FB, but the series of stories on this reporting tool which has been in the product for years is so bad, from journalists and publications that should know better, that I’m almost certain there’s some level of malice to it. Apple muddying the water with its billion dollar PR tentacles?
- schleck8 5y ago
  i wonder what the solution here looks like — not being allowed to report spam etc? Them completely ignoring moderation and going down the instagram path, direct message style?
square_usual 5y ago
At first I thought the bit about seeing user-reported content was a nothingburger, but this is far, far worse: Artificial intelligence initiates a second set of queues – so-called proactive ones – by scanning unencrypted data that WhatsApp collects about its users and comparing it against suspicious account information and messaging patterns [...] as well as terms and images that have previously been deemed abusive. The unencrypted data available for scrutiny is extensive. It includes the names and profile images of a user’s WhatsApp groups as well as their phone number, profile photo, status message, phone battery level, language and time zone, unique mobile phone ID and IP address, wireless signal strength and phone operating system, as a list of their electronic devices, any related Facebook and Instagram accounts, the last time they used the app and any previous history of violations. So the WhatsApp AI can arbitrarily decide to unencrypt your chats and send them for review. This makes the recent event where their CEO attacked Apple's CSAM detection algorithm almost funny in hindsight: takes one to know one, eh? E: Upon looking into this further, the source from ProPublica makes it clear that the proactive queue cannot decrypt your messages. This was unclear in the linked article and only clarified separately in the ProPublica one. Despite that, I think the point still stands: WhatsApp gathers a ton of your personal data, and can reveal that to authorities on request.
- throwaway525142 5y ago
  > So the WhatsApp AI can arbitrarily decide to unencrypt your chats and send them for review. Where do you read the "decide to unencrypt your chats" part? I could only find that they have to decide based on the unencrypted parts of a WhatsApp profile plus other unencrypted data.
  - square_usual 5y ago
    The article clearly mentions that the AI initiates the proactive queue: Artificial intelligence initiates a second set of queues [...] by scanning unencrypted data. Initiates pretty clearly signals that no user reported the users in this queue. Also, the article mentions before this that the workers have to look at two queues of tickets which have unencrypted content for the moderators to judge. I agree that this is somewhat unclear, but I think it's certainly talking about two different things. E: the ProPublica article clarified that this is incorrect: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-facebook-undermines-privacy-protections-for-its-2-billion-whatsapp-users https://www.propublica.org/article/how-facebook-undermines-p...
lvs 5y ago
Link should be replaced: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-facebook-undermines-privacy-protections-for-its-2-billion-whatsapp-users https://www.propublica.org/article/how-facebook-undermines-p...
bsaul 5y ago
i'm still unable to tell if what they've implemented is some kind of automated copy/pasting from the recipient side (which can always be done by screenshotting the phone and sending it via email), or a server-side backdoor that lets one get cleartext copies of the messages.
- schleck8 5y ago
  pretty sure its neither but manual reports by a user and probably account rating based on how many chats a user has and their phonenumber to prevent large campaigns
- seanieb 5y ago
  Great journalism eh?!
top_sigrid 5y ago
This shows that all e2e encryption efforts are totally worthless with regards to the company owning the service/app. Of course e2e encryption is very important and a good thing, but I never trusted all the "not even we can see your content unencrypted on our server" talk, as they could access anything in the app anyways if they wanted. I brought this argument up many times in discussions but it was often deemed as being a conspiracy theory, but now here we have it.

41 points by webmobdev 5y ago

The anti Facebook slant of the mass media is appalling. A gazillion words to explain that content reported by users is then judged by the company as abusive or not.

lpcvoid 5y ago
The "anti Facebook slant" is rooted in a history of complete disregard for user data and privacy, so I find it warranted.
- duud 5y ago
  The fact this site has a fixed AdSense ad at the bottom of the page suggests they don't care that much about privacy.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Barrin92 5y ago

> "A 49-slide internal company marketing presentation from December, obtained by ProPublica, emphasises the “fierce” promotion of WhatsApp’s “privacy narrative.” It compares its “brand character” to “the Immigrant Mother” and displays a photo of Malala Yousafzai, who survived a shooting by the Taliban and became a Nobel Peace Prize winner, in a slide titled “Brand tone parameters.” what on earth? Legitimately how do you design this and don't think you're in some sort of American Psycho skit.

stavros 5y ago

Since the announcement a few months ago, almost all of my friends and groups migrated to Signal. Good riddance to WhatsApp. I even find Signal a better messaging client than WhatsApp.

uniqueuid 5y ago

I am highly sceptical of Facebook's ethical stance on many issues. But we have to admit that some of the decisions here are not trivial. The report is not about randomly monitoring messages, it's about messages that were reported by users. The executive actually puts the dilemma pretty well: > “WhatsApp is a lifeline for millions of people around the world,” the company said. “The decisions we make around how we build our app are focused around the privacy of our users, maintaining a high degree of reliability and preventing abuse.” These platforms are helping a lot of people, and they can't fix all man-made problems (i.e. crime, hate speech etc.). There is a lot of valid criticism against the way they are facilitating hidden discrimination, helping obscure political targeted influence and so on - but this issue is IMO not as contentious.

seanieb 5y ago

This story is FUD, pointing out that WhatsApp users can forward messages they received to WhatsApp’s abuse team, when reporting abuse… I’m not a fan of FB, but the series of stories on this reporting tool which has been in the product for years is so bad, from journalists and publications that should know better, that I’m almost certain there’s some level of malice to it. Apple muddying the water with its billion dollar PR tentacles?

schleck8 5y ago
i wonder what the solution here looks like — not being allowed to report spam etc? Them completely ignoring moderation and going down the instagram path, direct message style?

square_usual 5y ago

At first I thought the bit about seeing user-reported content was a nothingburger, but this is far, far worse: Artificial intelligence initiates a second set of queues – so-called proactive ones – by scanning unencrypted data that WhatsApp collects about its users and comparing it against suspicious account information and messaging patterns [...] as well as terms and images that have previously been deemed abusive. The unencrypted data available for scrutiny is extensive. It includes the names and profile images of a user’s WhatsApp groups as well as their phone number, profile photo, status message, phone battery level, language and time zone, unique mobile phone ID and IP address, wireless signal strength and phone operating system, as a list of their electronic devices, any related Facebook and Instagram accounts, the last time they used the app and any previous history of violations. So the WhatsApp AI can arbitrarily decide to unencrypt your chats and send them for review. This makes the recent event where their CEO attacked Apple's CSAM detection algorithm almost funny in hindsight: takes one to know one, eh? E: Upon looking into this further, the source from ProPublica makes it clear that the proactive queue cannot decrypt your messages. This was unclear in the linked article and only clarified separately in the ProPublica one. Despite that, I think the point still stands: WhatsApp gathers a ton of your personal data, and can reveal that to authorities on request.

throwaway525142 5y ago
> So the WhatsApp AI can arbitrarily decide to unencrypt your chats and send them for review. Where do you read the "decide to unencrypt your chats" part? I could only find that they have to decide based on the unencrypted parts of a WhatsApp profile plus other unencrypted data.
- square_usual 5y ago
  The article clearly mentions that the AI initiates the proactive queue: Artificial intelligence initiates a second set of queues [...] by scanning unencrypted data. Initiates pretty clearly signals that no user reported the users in this queue. Also, the article mentions before this that the workers have to look at two queues of tickets which have unencrypted content for the moderators to judge. I agree that this is somewhat unclear, but I think it's certainly talking about two different things. E: the ProPublica article clarified that this is incorrect: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-facebook-undermines-privacy-protections-for-its-2-billion-whatsapp-users https://www.propublica.org/article/how-facebook-undermines-p...

lvs 5y ago

Link should be replaced: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-facebook-undermines-privacy-protections-for-its-2-billion-whatsapp-users https://www.propublica.org/article/how-facebook-undermines-p...

bsaul 5y ago

i'm still unable to tell if what they've implemented is some kind of automated copy/pasting from the recipient side (which can always be done by screenshotting the phone and sending it via email), or a server-side backdoor that lets one get cleartext copies of the messages.

schleck8 5y ago
pretty sure its neither but manual reports by a user and probably account rating based on how many chats a user has and their phonenumber to prevent large campaigns
seanieb 5y ago
Great journalism eh?!

top_sigrid 5y ago

This shows that all e2e encryption efforts are totally worthless with regards to the company owning the service/app. Of course e2e encryption is very important and a good thing, but I never trusted all the "not even we can see your content unencrypted on our server" talk, as they could access anything in the app anyways if they wanted. I brought this argument up many times in discussions but it was often deemed as being a conspiracy theory, but now here we have it.