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When I read articles like this I experience a mini existential crisis that we could be heading to some very dark places technologically. I don't need to go int

by jmfldn 5y ago

When I read articles like this I experience a mini existential crisis that we could be heading to some very dark places technologically. I don't need to go into the reasons why it's bad. For anyone who's aware of the last 15 years of social media critique or novels like Brave New World, it's obvious that this would be a dystopia multiplier. Ad tech on steroids. If you think the manipulation is bad now just wait until this data is fed into the ML models. If you must have everything you see, do and say recorded then please, for the love of god, let's use non-profit, open source / free software platforms where we own our own data.

sneak 5y ago
In one generation in the US we went as a whole society from most private p2p conversations not being logged and monitored and recorded by the government, to most private p2p conversations not only being logged and monitored and recorded, but available to the state at any time without probable cause or a warrant (FISA Amendments Act). iMessage, WhatsApp, Gmail, Facebook Messenger, Instagram: all of these are stored on the server effectively unencrypted (in the case of iMessage and WhatsApp, via the chat backups, a backdoor to the e2e encryption they promise). The state has access to all of them at any time. To top it off the carriers and a million different apps are constantly logging your location history for all time, for every member of society. If you think that isn't one of the most useful and powerful databases in the history of mankind, I question your imagination. The massive damage, which may just be existential, is not apparent to the USA just yet, but it will be eventually. The balance of power has shifted even more dramatically than just about ever before in history, in any country in history. Alarm bells should be going off left and right but nobody seems to care and it's just business as usual.
- jmfldn 5y ago
  Agree. We desperately need something like Tim Berners Lee's Solid. A way for us to take control from the centralised data silos owned by big tech. I know its almost mission impossible to turn the tide, but if the alternative is giving in then engineers worried about this must fight for alternatives, however grim the odds. As for this specific issue, of course there are the usual massive issues around data privacy. The major issue I was alluding to here is ad tech AI processes being fed an unimaginably rich source of intimate data. It's a horrifying prospect.
- 01100011 5y ago
  > most private p2p conversations not being logged and monitored FWIW, I think telephone company billing records have been doing this for nearly a century. Sure, it wasn't the official government policy, but the data was recorded. ECHELON has been around quite a long time as well, and that was indeed government monitoring of large amounts of international communications. I'm not trying to normalize it, just adding some context.
  - sneak 5y ago
    I meant content, not metadata. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp chat backups, iMessage chat backups (incl all geotagged photo attachments), et c.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Sure. Though metadata is often more useful than content. And the point is that telco providers, government agencies, and all those who've hacked into them, know of phone calls made from numbers you no longer remember you had.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    I'm ... "only" ... aware of US call history data being available dating to the 1980s, through the "Hemisphere" programme: https://www.eff.org/cases/hemisphere https://www.eff.org/cases/hemisphere There may well be earlier extant data. It was probably tabulated either on punch-card or magnetic tape, and certainly was used for billing purposes. Prior to the 1980s, large-scale data preservation was quite expensive. If anyone has information of earlier comprehensive call history data surviving to the present, I'd appreciate being illuminated. More citations of Hemisphere and call history data in an earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22208434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22208434
- LuisMondragon 5y ago
  AFAIK the chat backup is optional. I've never stored a backup.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Everyone you chat with does (because it's on by default), making your choice irrelevant.
- ianlevesque 5y ago
  WhatsApp just fixed that by encrypting its backups too. https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-turn-on-and-turn-off-end-to-end-encrypted-backup https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-turn-on-and-tu...
  - sneak 5y ago
    Is it opt-in? If so that means ~0% of people will be using it, so all your chats will still be backed up non-e2e by the other side of every conversation.
  - _Understated_ 5y ago
    It's Facebook! How can you trust them? If you honestly believe them then I've got a bridge you might wanna take a look at...
  - still_grokking 5y ago
    The key handling is (as always with this big corp "crypto") murky to say the least. FB effectively still controls the encryption keys. Coincidentally nobody of the usual suspects complained that "the terrorists are going dark". Putting this facts together I'm assured the crypto can be broken at will.
decasteve 5y ago
Social media have become Bradbury’s parlour walls.
908087 5y ago
As a society, we've been sleepwalking into a very dark place technologically for well over a decade now, and those of us who have tried to point that out have been routinely shouted down and called luddites for it. I fear we're far past the point of no return, and there is no escape from the disaster we've created even for those of us who have avoided participating ourselves.
radmuzom 5y ago
In addition to being a "dystopia multiplier", I predict this is going to cause a lot of social problems going forward. This is what the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of You" warned us about.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
still_grokking 5y ago
I'm already looking forward to brain-internet interfaces. Does FB invest also in those? Just imagine, all the possibilities! [Do I need to mark this as sarcasm?]

by jmfldn 5y ago

sneak 5y ago

In one generation in the US we went as a whole society from most private p2p conversations not being logged and monitored and recorded by the government, to most private p2p conversations not only being logged and monitored and recorded, but available to the state at any time without probable cause or a warrant (FISA Amendments Act). iMessage, WhatsApp, Gmail, Facebook Messenger, Instagram: all of these are stored on the server effectively unencrypted (in the case of iMessage and WhatsApp, via the chat backups, a backdoor to the e2e encryption they promise). The state has access to all of them at any time. To top it off the carriers and a million different apps are constantly logging your location history for all time, for every member of society. If you think that isn't one of the most useful and powerful databases in the history of mankind, I question your imagination. The massive damage, which may just be existential, is not apparent to the USA just yet, but it will be eventually. The balance of power has shifted even more dramatically than just about ever before in history, in any country in history. Alarm bells should be going off left and right but nobody seems to care and it's just business as usual.

jmfldn 5y ago
Agree. We desperately need something like Tim Berners Lee's Solid. A way for us to take control from the centralised data silos owned by big tech. I know its almost mission impossible to turn the tide, but if the alternative is giving in then engineers worried about this must fight for alternatives, however grim the odds. As for this specific issue, of course there are the usual massive issues around data privacy. The major issue I was alluding to here is ad tech AI processes being fed an unimaginably rich source of intimate data. It's a horrifying prospect.
01100011 5y ago
> most private p2p conversations not being logged and monitored FWIW, I think telephone company billing records have been doing this for nearly a century. Sure, it wasn't the official government policy, but the data was recorded. ECHELON has been around quite a long time as well, and that was indeed government monitoring of large amounts of international communications. I'm not trying to normalize it, just adding some context.
- sneak 5y ago
  I meant content, not metadata. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp chat backups, iMessage chat backups (incl all geotagged photo attachments), et c.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Sure. Though metadata is often more useful than content. And the point is that telco providers, government agencies, and all those who've hacked into them, know of phone calls made from numbers you no longer remember you had.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  I'm ... "only" ... aware of US call history data being available dating to the 1980s, through the "Hemisphere" programme: https://www.eff.org/cases/hemisphere https://www.eff.org/cases/hemisphere There may well be earlier extant data. It was probably tabulated either on punch-card or magnetic tape, and certainly was used for billing purposes. Prior to the 1980s, large-scale data preservation was quite expensive. If anyone has information of earlier comprehensive call history data surviving to the present, I'd appreciate being illuminated. More citations of Hemisphere and call history data in an earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22208434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22208434
LuisMondragon 5y ago
AFAIK the chat backup is optional. I've never stored a backup.
- sneak 5y ago
  Everyone you chat with does (because it's on by default), making your choice irrelevant.
ianlevesque 5y ago
WhatsApp just fixed that by encrypting its backups too. https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-turn-on-and-turn-off-end-to-end-encrypted-backup https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/how-to-turn-on-and-tu...
- sneak 5y ago
  Is it opt-in? If so that means ~0% of people will be using it, so all your chats will still be backed up non-e2e by the other side of every conversation.
- _Understated_ 5y ago
  It's Facebook! How can you trust them? If you honestly believe them then I've got a bridge you might wanna take a look at...
- still_grokking 5y ago
  The key handling is (as always with this big corp "crypto") murky to say the least. FB effectively still controls the encryption keys. Coincidentally nobody of the usual suspects complained that "the terrorists are going dark". Putting this facts together I'm assured the crypto can be broken at will.

decasteve 5y ago

Social media have become Bradbury’s parlour walls.

908087 5y ago

As a society, we've been sleepwalking into a very dark place technologically for well over a decade now, and those of us who have tried to point that out have been routinely shouted down and called luddites for it. I fear we're far past the point of no return, and there is no escape from the disaster we've created even for those of us who have avoided participating ourselves.

radmuzom 5y ago

In addition to being a "dystopia multiplier", I predict this is going to cause a lot of social problems going forward. This is what the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of You" warned us about.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

still_grokking 5y ago

I'm already looking forward to brain-internet interfaces. Does FB invest also in those? Just imagine, all the possibilities! [Do I need to mark this as sarcasm?]