Isn't whatsapp another data mining app for Facebook?
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Yes, although to nowhere near the same extent as Facebook and Instagram.
The chats are E2EE using Signal's encryption protocol, so very good.
But they will certainly mine everything else they can get. They may not know what you're saying, but they do know who you're talking to, when you're doing it, your contacts, your profile pic, how often you send images, etc. any web links with tracking info embedded in the URL will likely be tracked too, once you open them.
E2EE doesn't mean that the developer/company can't be a member of the "ends" in "End-to-end encryption". WhatsApp is closed-source, so nobody can really confirm which E2EE algorithm is at play. However, considering that the E2EE is the implementation of a known E2EE algorithm, such algorithms often support more than two keys (hence, more than two people), so, a third-key from Charlie can be part of the conversation, unbeknownst to Alice and Bob. If Meta would inject their own key inside every WhatsApp conversation, they could effectively read things.
For example: GPG/PGP support multiple public keys, so the same encrypted message can be decrypted by any private keys belonging to those public keys. Alice can send a message to both Bob, Charlie and Douglas, collectively specifying their public keys at the moment of the encryption. Then, the exact same payload would be sent to them, and they would use their own private keys to decrypt the message.
So, let's suppose that a closed-source messaging app company/developer had their own pair of public and private keys, and they public key is injected in every conversation made through their app. They'd also obfuscate it from the UI so the UI won't show the hardcoded "third-party". This way they could easily read every single message being exchanged through their app. It's like TSA with a "master key" that can open everyone's travelling bags, no matter where you bought the travelling bag.
Even Signal may have this. Yeah, libsignal is "open-source", but the app isn't. What if their app had some hardcoded public key from Signal team? The only trustworthy E2EE is encoding it yourself using OpenPGP and similar. And if one is more privacy-worried than me, there are projects such as the "Tinfoil Chat" which is almost-immune to eavesdropping, involving optocoupled (hence, airgapped) circuitry, separate machines for networking, decryption and encryption, Onion-routing, and so on.
In summary: nobody should trust out-of-the-box E2EE, especially those hidden within a closed-source app.
This still baffles me. What's Facebook's end game here? They are built on data collection and spying, but they own an app that is E2EE.
If you go only by the metadata, they know all your friends, their phone numbers, your location history, when do you chat, with whom, how often and how long. And I'm fairly sure they index conversation in some form.
Just location history can paint a decent picture of what you do, where do you go, what do you like, which friends are nearby, etc... and all of that was implemented like 15+ years ago, imagine what they can do today with AI. It's fair to say FB knows more about you then you do (FB, IG, Wapp...). And to be blunt, it could probably determine what ppls shit smells like, judging by all the pictures of a meal they post on IG.
Honestly, I think they just saw that Whatsapp was becoming the standard chat app for basically all of the world outside of the US and China, and just didn't want anybody else to have it.
Additionally, metadata is better than no data, I guess.
Meta data is prolly more valuable at scale...
Most of are really generic so any single normie data package has but so much value. Middling income with middle hobbies etc
However, having data on 330 million pedons along with each ones connections, thats power.
The metadata. The message content is E2E, but the data about the content isn’t necessarily e2e.
Good point. Figuring out who is talking to who is valuable info for them too.
Meta data is more valuable than whatever is being discussed most of the time
Yes
Teens are on Facebook?
How else you gonna cyber bully the transfer student
Gee I wish they had just left Facebook as a way to share photos and updates with friends and family, instead of turning it into a viral content clusterfuck to capture the youth audience. It didn’t even work.
Marketplace function is their future IMHO
Craigslist eventually got rid of personals, give it a decade
My family has a signal group. I started it two years ago.
Almost no one pays any attention to it, unless they accidentally open the app once a month, but they're all still there and can be spoken to.
I put a PSA out a month ago that I'll no longer respond on Facebook Messenger or SMS after the turn of the year. Tough shit. There was some groaning but, if there's no other way, either use Signal or invest in a Pigeon coop and get training.
There was some groaning but, if there’s no other way, either use Signal or invest in a Pigeon coop and get training.
Any particular reason you are abandoning SMS? Any particular reason for the strict rule?
RCS ain't universal. I only have it with some iPhone users and the rare Pixel.
If it's what's for dinner, I don't care. Musk can know I had some hamburger steak.
If it's the code to your tablet, mom, ask on Signal.
RCS is shit, with SMS at least my phone comes with a messenger and I can download one from F-Droid. With RCS only one proprietary app supports it and it functions weirdly on GrapheneOS. In its current state it's practically a downgrade at this point and considering how bad SMS is that says a lot.
This is news? The article’s own graph puts this about 6 years ago
No teens on blue sky, nice
I had to block a few ones on Bluesky.
I guess I'll never know what the kids are saying ever again because there's no way I'm installing either of those apps.
Gyna
it's why politicians want to ban it
They’ve been trying to ban it for awhile now, so no. They want to ban it because they can’t directly control the companies that own those platforms overseas whereas Facebook, IG, etc. are very much able to be controlled if necessary by those in power
It's a delicate topic. TikTok collects a ton of data from devices and infers a ton of data from watching patterns. This is really true of most of the modern web apps, but especially true of TikTok because the short-form means more content to churn through, and the algorithm is practically an IV drip of dopamine.
The much, much more important issues are user privacy and truth-in-media, and is something that just as well needs to be pointed at Meta and Twitter and Reddit and Google. TikTok is probably more critical at the present moment, because it's run by a country our president-elect wants to start a trade-war with, and they've got quite an upper hand with all the data that we, the users, give them for free, via a propaganda machine under their control.
Proper analysis.
People really underestimate the state corpo connections when looking at their own regime and domestic corpos. Since these are "our" guys
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