Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

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Now things are going to get interesting! I completely understand the desire for privacy but I thinkmit's unrealistic to expect that Facebook won't consolidate its data by user across all their applications. Facebook (and Google, etc.) are now in the same business as the credit reporting agencies ... You are their only product.

The difference in this particular case is that Whatsapp made an explicit promise that they would not start sharing their data.

Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA, and we built WhatsApp around the goal of knowing as little about you as possible: You don't have to give us your name and we don't ask for your email address. We don’t know your birthday. We don’t know your home address. We don’t know where you work. We don’t know your likes, what you search for on the internet or collect your GPS location. None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we really have no plans to change that.

If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn’t have done it. Instead, we are forming a partnership that would allow us to continue operating independently and autonomously. Our fundamental values and beliefs will not change. Our principles will not change. Everything that has made WhatsApp the leader in personal messaging will still be in place. Speculation to the contrary isn’t just baseless and unfounded, it’s irresponsible. It has the effect of scaring people into thinking we’re suddenly collecting all kinds of new data. That’s just not true, and it’s important to us that you know that.

Make no mistake: our future partnership with Facebook will not compromise the vision that brought us to this point. Our focus remains on delivering the promise of WhatsApp far and wide, so that people around the world have the freedom to speak their mind without fear.

https://blog.whatsapp.com/529/Setting-the-record-straight

I read that blog post when the acquisition was announced ... And laughed! While it feels like the (then) WhatsApp CEO was sincere, did anyone really believe that Zuckerberg would be a hands-off owner? Or that his public-only data content ideas wouldn't become dominant? I'll agree that I think this move contradicts his blog post but I also don't think the purchased entity gets to set the terms after agreeing to be bought ... That would be an interesting contract to read.

you wouldn't pay 2 billion for messaging app with few hundred millions of users that is without ads and doesn't make any money to be philanthropic about it, would you (or anybody else)

22 billion

Well, they could've actually started charging for the service. $1 a year was more than reasonable for me.

I remember it said 1$ from next year onwards and first year was free. May if they weren't not bought out by FB that would have been their option and it would have been a better one. Not sure why any of the lead not start new clone and start charging

20 Billion. 2 Billion was what it was worth. Maybe.

I for one didn't believe that blog post and deleted my WhatsApp account the moment the acquisition notice came up. It didn't make much sense why a messaging platform would be bought for $19 billion and not used by Facebook to better target advertising.

This all comes back to the two-faced saying of one thing loud and publicly while in the small print buried in legalese proclaiming something else. That practice needs to be illegal. It is basically fraud.

One aspect of European data protection is "freely given, informed consent". You can only do what the user has consented to. If a company loudly says "We'll never share it" and the ToS says "We can share it", then what has the user consented to? You could make a case that the user is consenting the loud proclamations. EU data protection law doesn't allow dense legalise behind a click-through as "consent".

So maybe EU law is already doing what you say it should do. :)

German law basically says that terms of service and end user license agreements can't contain surprises. If a service explicitly states it doesn't do certain things, the user hasn't consented to the service doing those things, even if the ToS or EULA contain a snippet in fine print saying the service may actually do these things after all.

This already bit WhatsApp when they tried to ban users for using alternative clients. A German court ruled while they may block those alternative clients, banning the user is unexpected because most other services don't have that kind of policy on alternative clients.

So they could have still kept that policy but they would have to make it unambiguously clear and draw attention to it outside the ToS or EULA because it's something users wouldn't expect from that kind of service.

The EU is way ahead in protecting consumers. Thankfully I am an EU citizen (for now, #Brexit) but unless other major economies follow corporations will keep trying.

Part of the "product/service" is the protection of privacy that was promised and since breeched. It is because of network effects that make it hard for users that understand privacy and value it to move to another service such as Signal. If there were that form of "user liquidity" then our privacy would not be violated for users would simply switch to a product that valued their privacy.

> The difference in this particular case is that Whatsapp made an explicit promise that they would not start sharing their data.

    They "trust me"
    Dumb fucks
    / https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg /

They trusted a promise. Again. The only question is how many times can this be done.

Thanks for bringing up the quote. It is worth remembering when it comes to Facebook.

That said:

> The only question is how many times can this be done.

Seems like German courts says it stops here.

Where does it say that Facebook will respect that blog post?

That blog post is written and published by Facebook on their own website.

We could ask this question recursively ad infinitum. Because their intention to respect wherever it says they'll respect the blog post can be questioned too.

qed.

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