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Comment by Kenji | Hacker News Reader

I uninstalled WhatsApp the moment it was bought by facebook. It's so obvious that facebook corrupts this fantastic company/chat application.

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Thanks for doing it. If the whole community of hacker news decided to avoid shady companies like facebook we would probably be all better by now. As technology enthusiasts, I think we have a lot of influence on our relatives/friends.

To all reading, please consider deleting your account from shady companies.

Handy links http://justdelete.me/

Funny that it's impossible to delete you HN account.

Or scrub your HN post history of old content. Even Facebook lets you go back and (one by one, painfully) delete all your old content all the way back to day one. Of course they're probably soft-deleting everything, but they provide the ability.

Funny irony that Facebook gives me slightly more control over my content than HN!

Can you use a fake account on facebook? Does HN actively collect private information of you from around the web?

Nope, I'm not trying to compare the privacy ethics of each site (that would be a pretty lopsided comparison). Just pointing out a conspicuously missing feature.

Pretty sure you can email HN and they'll do it.

Why is Facebook shady? They provide a free service and get paid by using your info to target ads. Of course they haven't been perfect, but it's hard/impossible to run a company of that size without ever doing sth controversial.

https://stallman.org/facebook.html

Most of that are valid business decisions. Just because you disagree doesn't mean that FB is shady. You're free not to use their service. Political censorship is often mentioned in these discussions, and it's exactly what I meant with controversial. I don't think there's a way to satisfy everyone. Telegram doesn't censor and they're known to be the favourite tool for many terrorists to communicate, which is something that would probably upset more FB users than censoring critical posts.

The tax policy could be different, but Facebook is no other than most American companies. Other services will only have different policies if they are either not based in the U.S. or don't make enough money abroad to justify these constructs. It's the job of the Government to introduce more sensible tax laws, not using Facebook won't change anything.

What's the issue with using your "real name"? Honestly I think that should be the policy more places, so people aren't hiding behind their online personas.

To defend minorities. Image a group of transgenders on facebook that want to talk about they daily lives, social relations, etc. With pseudo-anonymous accounts they can do that freely, on facebook they risk to be vandalized, insulted, etc.

I generally agree with Stallman here, in that people should be allowed to use pseudonyms, but I often wonder if the pseudonymity that places like Twitter, reddit et al. provide just serves to facilitate widespread abuse and harassment. Online harassment is a pretty big problem, especially against women. [0]

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/mar/08/online-...

You can hide online. I'm more worried about offline abuse (losing job, being persecuted, being beaten, etc.).

Yes online harassment is a BIG problem but forcing to reveal your identity may not be the best solution.

>Why is Facebook shady? They provide a free service and get paid by using your info to target ads.

That's shady enough in my books. Charge for the damn service, instead of going into ever increasing depths to try to milk out ad money from the users (in deals that they are seldom if ever informed of).

How did Facebook corrupt WhatsApp? Pre-Facebook there was no end-to-end encryption, etc..

Did you see the source code of WhatsApp? Do you know somebody that saw it?

They can tell all they want, but I won't trust them until I (or someone I trust, e.g. Debian, FSF, etc.) see the code.

Also being end to end encrypted does not block whatsapp from censoring you or your friends/family! See how they "disabled" links to telegram https://orat.io/blog/as-of-today-whatsapp-is-blocking-telegr... and removed the telegram page from facebook.

It seems the end-to-end encryption was done by OpenWhisperSystems.

And so?

1. They still censorship telegram which means they can read messages locally. With new updates whatsapp could have new rules to censor or modify "dangerous" (to them) messages.

2. E2E encryption is implemented now, what about the future?

Ok, I'm not defending them. I will uninstall this damn app.

Earlier, anyone could get access to messages if they wanted to. Now, ONLY Facebook can access data.

> How did Facebook corrupt WhatsApp?

Previously WhatsApp had subscriptions ($1/yr) and were proudly ad-free. Facebook scrapped subscriptions and is about to add Ads. WhatsApp also never shared your number with anyone; sharing your number with advertisers is undoubtedly corrupting WhatsApp.

Yeah, I actually paid for the 3 year subscription. Now I can't even see the option. It was a big differentiator in my opinion. Their logic was sound too - even at $1 a user they could make a $1bn a year. (Even in developing countries - because of the networking effect - people would have paid that modest fee.)

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