4 ms·

Curious as to why they suddenly seem to care about adding E2E? I wonder if, with ML models running on devices now, they've found a way to show relevant-enough a

by atonse 4y ago

Curious as to why they suddenly seem to care about adding E2E? I wonder if, with ML models running on devices now, they've found a way to show relevant-enough ads by doing all the "relevancy" processing on-device, at one of the "ends" of the encrypted chat. It just doesn't add up.

tapoxi 4y ago
Probably because their main competitor, iMessage, is E2E. If they can be E2E and cross-device, they can take share from Apple.
- baby 4y ago
  BTW, iMessage is not their main competitor (or even comparable to a non-text message cross-platform messaging app). IMO that was messaging from Facebook to avoid antitrust issues. Their main competitors are telegram, wechat, kakao.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    In the U.S., the competition is Discord; overseas, WeChat, QQ, Snapchat and Telegram [1]. iMessage is a tool for the rich or young [2]. [1] https://spectrm.io/insights/blog/messaging-app-statistics-most-popular-communication-method-2020/ https://spectrm.io/insights/blog/messaging-app-statistics-mo... [2] https://www.androidauthority.com/imessage-big-deal-guide-3087606/ https://www.androidauthority.com/imessage-big-deal-guide-308...
- masterof0 4y ago
  I agree with baby here, iMessage ate their lunch long ago,their competition is Kakao, Line, and the likes, not even Wechat, as they have 0 presence in China, and they are far behind features wise.
  - saurik 4y ago
    You make it sound like iMessage won... is that true?! Most of the people I know use some combination of (Facebook) Messenger, whatever you want to call the thing in Instagram (which is now compatible with Messenger), WhatsApp (or some Signal), and even Twitter DMs (which surprises me to no end)... there are only a few people I ever talk to with iMessage anymore. Some people use Telegram (but those people are more techie; the "normal" people I know are on the Meta apps... maybe they are also on TikTok but I'm too old to talk to them ;P). Meanwhile, iMessage seems to be frantically trying to throw in features from Messenger and WhatsApp in order to remain competitive (and then doesn't even do them as well).
    - xen2xen1 4y ago
      Depends on your age and demographics. Young people in the US are probably the biggest market. Everyone else uses Facebook (old US), we chat, Whats app (most of the world?), telegram in Russia, and so on. Actual text messages tends to be a US thing largely, and the the young folks are terrified they will be seen than less than if they don't get the proper color on Imessage with their friends... Yes, that is a thing. My teenage sons will do anything to have an IPhone.
    - xen2xen1 4y ago
      Depends on your age and demographics. Young people in the US are probably the biggest market. Everyone else uses Facebook (old US), we chat, Whats app (most of the woqrld?), tooqok elegram in Russia, and so on. Actual text messages tends to be a US thing largely, and the the young folks are terrifies they will be seen than less than if they don't get the proper color on Imessa881756ge with their friends... Yes, that is a thing. My teenage sons will do anything to have an IPhone.
    - masterof0 4y ago
      Nah, at least for me , all my friends(mostly faang SDEs) use iMessage, even the ones working at Google's Android team. The people who own Android devices, I know that in other countries outside the US, Android phone are way more popular(accessible), but I was referring in the US. Regarding features, the integration of iMessage with iOS is superior, I don't get what features of WhatsApp you are talking about, I don't think people who use iMessage would want to broadcasts stuff in channels, etc...
  - baby 4y ago
    I never said iMessage ate their lunch o_O I know one person in my life that uses iMessage because for some reason they don't want to use whatsapp.
noptd 4y ago
My thoughts exactly. With their closed source app running on the client, they can do literally anything with the plaintext before encrypting it. Be ready for an expansion of their fear-mongering ad campaigns about how anyone in your office or home can read your messages when you send them unencrypted.
baby 4y ago
They always cared about E2E. It was added really early to Whatsapp due to the mobile first client. Messenger always had trouble because users are expected to open the app from different browsers. The value? They don't need to secure their databases against external AND internal attacks (believe it or not, fb has protections in place so that employees don't randomly access user data), they can more easily be compliant with the never-ending stream of regulations like GDPR, and... they can more easily do interop with WhatsApp (which doesn't have plaintext messaging).
- dylan604 4y ago
  >It was added really early to Whatsapp so early it was pre-FB purchase?
  - fsociety 4y ago
    No and you are likely talking to a WhatsApp dev. They added E2EE in 2016, plans announced in 2014. Backups weren’t encrypted until recently.
    - baby 4y ago
      I not a whatsapp dev o.o
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  > They always cared about E2E. It was added really early to Whatsapp due to the mobile first client. Define "always". The very early releases of WhatsApp used plaintext. Encryption was added in 2013, and E2E (using the Signal protocol) was added in 2016.
  - saurik 4y ago
    WhatsApp wasn't originally a product from Facebook. They bought it in 2014 and the article I found about them fully launching end-to-end encryption in 2016 says that it was in rollout for the prior year on various platforms, which would imply they had already been working on it before that; I've always understood it to be a thing that Facebook took seriously pretty quickly after getting WhatsApp. https://threatpost.com/whatsapp-adds-end-to-end-encryption-to-one-billion-users/117213/ https://threatpost.com/whatsapp-adds-end-to-end-encryption-t... > “Over the past year, we’ve been progressively rolling out Signal Protocol support for all WhatsApp communication across all WhatsApp clients. This includes chats, group chats, attachments, voice notes, and voice calls across Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Nokia S40, Nokia S60, Blackberry, and BB10,” wrote Open Whisper Systems founder, Moxie Marlinspike.
godelski 4y ago
> with ML models running on devices now, they've found a way to show relevant-enough ads by doing all the "relevancy" I think you're missing how information is extracted and what E2EE means. Most of the machine learning models work off of metadata and so the actual content of the messages isn't exactly necessary. Yes, they can help, but it is also often a lot of noise. They've probably found and experimented with WhatsApp and found that they are able to extract enough information through the metadata that they can still maintain high accuracy on inferences. So why not make the PR stunt and move towards encryption? It actually does do some good for people (also note that Twitter has been talking about E2EE messages, though remember that they partnered with OpenWhisper very early on...). This is really the main difference between the technical aspects of Signal and WhatsApp. Both use the same E2EE protocol but Signal does not capture metadata. We need to remember that metadata is essentially all the information a private investigator would have on you if they followed you around but could not hear the actual content of any conversations you had with the people that you meet. But they would know who you meet, how often, where, etc. Metadata is pretty useful data.
- eecre 4y ago
  Agreed and I think people underestimate the amount of metadata the WhatsApp servers see. It includes: - all numbers in every user's contact list - the membership of every group - the sender and recipient of every message - when every message was sent, received, and viewed or played - the dates and times that every user has been present - the type of every message sent (text, sticker, video, voice recording, poll, etc.) - the size of every message sent (to the nearest 16 bytes) - the date, time and duration of all calls made between users And probably other metadata too. Basically everything except for the message content. The client also uploads crash dumps (along with a copy of the log output), and periodically sends usage statistics too.
kart23 4y ago
correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure they don't target ads based on private messages.
nimbius 4y ago
Casual reminder: facebooks e2e is absolutely marketing. Facebook has no interest in your personal security. Download signal.
msh 4y ago
Facebook had several privacy scandals. E2E encryption is a way to signal that they take privacy seriously.

by atonse 4y ago

tapoxi 4y ago

Probably because their main competitor, iMessage, is E2E. If they can be E2E and cross-device, they can take share from Apple.

baby 4y ago
BTW, iMessage is not their main competitor (or even comparable to a non-text message cross-platform messaging app). IMO that was messaging from Facebook to avoid antitrust issues. Their main competitors are telegram, wechat, kakao.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  In the U.S., the competition is Discord; overseas, WeChat, QQ, Snapchat and Telegram [1]. iMessage is a tool for the rich or young [2]. [1] https://spectrm.io/insights/blog/messaging-app-statistics-most-popular-communication-method-2020/ https://spectrm.io/insights/blog/messaging-app-statistics-mo... [2] https://www.androidauthority.com/imessage-big-deal-guide-3087606/ https://www.androidauthority.com/imessage-big-deal-guide-308...
masterof0 4y ago
I agree with baby here, iMessage ate their lunch long ago,their competition is Kakao, Line, and the likes, not even Wechat, as they have 0 presence in China, and they are far behind features wise.
- saurik 4y ago
  You make it sound like iMessage won... is that true?! Most of the people I know use some combination of (Facebook) Messenger, whatever you want to call the thing in Instagram (which is now compatible with Messenger), WhatsApp (or some Signal), and even Twitter DMs (which surprises me to no end)... there are only a few people I ever talk to with iMessage anymore. Some people use Telegram (but those people are more techie; the "normal" people I know are on the Meta apps... maybe they are also on TikTok but I'm too old to talk to them ;P). Meanwhile, iMessage seems to be frantically trying to throw in features from Messenger and WhatsApp in order to remain competitive (and then doesn't even do them as well).
  - xen2xen1 4y ago
    Depends on your age and demographics. Young people in the US are probably the biggest market. Everyone else uses Facebook (old US), we chat, Whats app (most of the world?), telegram in Russia, and so on. Actual text messages tends to be a US thing largely, and the the young folks are terrified they will be seen than less than if they don't get the proper color on Imessage with their friends... Yes, that is a thing. My teenage sons will do anything to have an IPhone.
  - xen2xen1 4y ago
    Depends on your age and demographics. Young people in the US are probably the biggest market. Everyone else uses Facebook (old US), we chat, Whats app (most of the woqrld?), tooqok elegram in Russia, and so on. Actual text messages tends to be a US thing largely, and the the young folks are terrifies they will be seen than less than if they don't get the proper color on Imessa881756ge with their friends... Yes, that is a thing. My teenage sons will do anything to have an IPhone.
  - masterof0 4y ago
    Nah, at least for me , all my friends(mostly faang SDEs) use iMessage, even the ones working at Google's Android team. The people who own Android devices, I know that in other countries outside the US, Android phone are way more popular(accessible), but I was referring in the US. Regarding features, the integration of iMessage with iOS is superior, I don't get what features of WhatsApp you are talking about, I don't think people who use iMessage would want to broadcasts stuff in channels, etc...
- baby 4y ago
  I never said iMessage ate their lunch o_O I know one person in my life that uses iMessage because for some reason they don't want to use whatsapp.

noptd 4y ago

My thoughts exactly. With their closed source app running on the client, they can do literally anything with the plaintext before encrypting it. Be ready for an expansion of their fear-mongering ad campaigns about how anyone in your office or home can read your messages when you send them unencrypted.

baby 4y ago

They always cared about E2E. It was added really early to Whatsapp due to the mobile first client. Messenger always had trouble because users are expected to open the app from different browsers. The value? They don't need to secure their databases against external AND internal attacks (believe it or not, fb has protections in place so that employees don't randomly access user data), they can more easily be compliant with the never-ending stream of regulations like GDPR, and... they can more easily do interop with WhatsApp (which doesn't have plaintext messaging).

dylan604 4y ago
>It was added really early to Whatsapp so early it was pre-FB purchase?
- fsociety 4y ago
  No and you are likely talking to a WhatsApp dev. They added E2EE in 2016, plans announced in 2014. Backups weren’t encrypted until recently.
  - baby 4y ago
    I not a whatsapp dev o.o
chimeracoder 4y ago
> They always cared about E2E. It was added really early to Whatsapp due to the mobile first client. Define "always". The very early releases of WhatsApp used plaintext. Encryption was added in 2013, and E2E (using the Signal protocol) was added in 2016.
- saurik 4y ago
  WhatsApp wasn't originally a product from Facebook. They bought it in 2014 and the article I found about them fully launching end-to-end encryption in 2016 says that it was in rollout for the prior year on various platforms, which would imply they had already been working on it before that; I've always understood it to be a thing that Facebook took seriously pretty quickly after getting WhatsApp. https://threatpost.com/whatsapp-adds-end-to-end-encryption-to-one-billion-users/117213/ https://threatpost.com/whatsapp-adds-end-to-end-encryption-t... > “Over the past year, we’ve been progressively rolling out Signal Protocol support for all WhatsApp communication across all WhatsApp clients. This includes chats, group chats, attachments, voice notes, and voice calls across Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Nokia S40, Nokia S60, Blackberry, and BB10,” wrote Open Whisper Systems founder, Moxie Marlinspike.

godelski 4y ago

> with ML models running on devices now, they've found a way to show relevant-enough ads by doing all the "relevancy" I think you're missing how information is extracted and what E2EE means. Most of the machine learning models work off of metadata and so the actual content of the messages isn't exactly necessary. Yes, they can help, but it is also often a lot of noise. They've probably found and experimented with WhatsApp and found that they are able to extract enough information through the metadata that they can still maintain high accuracy on inferences. So why not make the PR stunt and move towards encryption? It actually does do some good for people (also note that Twitter has been talking about E2EE messages, though remember that they partnered with OpenWhisper very early on...). This is really the main difference between the technical aspects of Signal and WhatsApp. Both use the same E2EE protocol but Signal does not capture metadata. We need to remember that metadata is essentially all the information a private investigator would have on you if they followed you around but could not hear the actual content of any conversations you had with the people that you meet. But they would know who you meet, how often, where, etc. Metadata is pretty useful data.

eecre 4y ago
Agreed and I think people underestimate the amount of metadata the WhatsApp servers see. It includes: - all numbers in every user's contact list - the membership of every group - the sender and recipient of every message - when every message was sent, received, and viewed or played - the dates and times that every user has been present - the type of every message sent (text, sticker, video, voice recording, poll, etc.) - the size of every message sent (to the nearest 16 bytes) - the date, time and duration of all calls made between users And probably other metadata too. Basically everything except for the message content. The client also uploads crash dumps (along with a copy of the log output), and periodically sends usage statistics too.

kart23 4y ago

correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure they don't target ads based on private messages.

nimbius 4y ago

Casual reminder: facebooks e2e is absolutely marketing. Facebook has no interest in your personal security. Download signal.

msh 4y ago

Facebook had several privacy scandals. E2E encryption is a way to signal that they take privacy seriously.