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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

Ok, so in return Facebook and WhatsApp get to learn about you. That is the cost of doing business with them.

Why is that cost so different than the normal cost we pay for things (cash money)? Yes, things we value have costs. It is always a sacrifice to go without that thing, but if we want to AVOID having to go without it, we have to pay something.

"I can't believe you are making me pay this cell phone bill! I have no choice but to use it, and you are CHARGING ME MONEY for it?! This is outrageous!"

I mean, there are things we need even more that we have to pay for - food, shelter, etc. In order to get something from someone else, you have to give them something in return that they value. That is just how the world works.

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If I give someone money, it is their money and they can do what they want with it, it does not matter to me. If I give someone information about myself, it's still connected to me, but now it's under their control. They can use it to exploit or harm me, and so can anyone they sell it to, or anyone who steals it. It's that indeterminate potential for future abuse that makes it important. That's why we consider it differently.

I hate to break it to you, but when you make a payment online, the recipient learns your legal name, probably a billing address i.e. where you live, and you probably don't even think about it.

I do see a lot of double standards in these discussions. People never articulate who is specifically being hurt or what the specific problem is. Instead allusions to fascist governments are made, which would be fine, if these companies were governments. But they aren't: they have no power. If you're rightly scared about the combination of information and force, it's government surveillance that deserves the attention, not harmless chat apps.

and who do you think gives that data to the government?

> ... if these companies were governments. But they aren't: they have no power. If you're rightly scared about the combination of information and force, it's government surveillance that deserves the attention, not harmless chat apps.

In the meantime government surveillance agencies can piggyback just fine on information collected from fb, emails etc and can continue to spend money on even more scary surveillance tools.

I can give you personal example of harm: family member was a victim of fraud because of the leaked information online. I would argue that the existence of social media and it being promiscuous with our data makes it extremely easy for criminals.

> it's government surveillance that deserves the attention, not harmless chat apps.

Oh, but it's not harmless when it gets in wrong hands. The only precaution is to get assurance that those services don't collect your data indefinitely and more than necessary.

> allusions to fascist governments are made, which would be fine, if these companies were governments. But they aren't: they have no power.

It only takes one affected person to know what it's like to be spied on and abused with the information at hand. We don't need an entire country to come to shambles to know what such vast information collection could result in. You also seem to be making assumptions that governments cannot force a private company to part with data or that those in power cannot manage to create a warrant just to pay lip service to "due process". Additionally, there is also potential for abuse of the data by the private company's employees. Like how LOVEINT [1][2] exposed the fact that NSA employees used their privileges to spy on and track people in their personal spheres of life, Facebook employees may be doing the same without any kind of monitoring at all. We just don't know yet.

[1]: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog-...

[2]: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/loveint-on-his-fi...

>But they aren't: they have no power.

Sorry, what?

Even if that were true, nothing prevents them in principle from serving as the eyes and ears of a fascist regime. Nothing prevents a government, in principle, from compelling them to reveal sensitive information.

At the risk of being conspirational, need I remind you that Facebook was funded by DARPA? Need I remind you that the NSA is installing backdoors in ISPs and other service providers?

Do you really not see the problem being described by the parent comment, or are you just being contrarian?

It looks like you hit reply on my comment by mistake instead of on the parent comment (which was the one that said "But they aren't: they have no power", and I quoted that to add some counterarguments). :)

whoops! Indeed! :)

If you think it takes the power of the state to cause trouble, you're not imaginative enough. If you need convincing, just download your information from all the sites you visit (I know FB and google provide an easy way to do this), send it to me, and I'll help you understand the problem.

That's a moot argument because every human transaction, whether money or messaging, has meta data tied to it that can be exploited by bad actors.

True, but no reason to let companies collect even more data than they need to perform the transaction. Your argument goes a bit like "every lock can be picked, so why are you opposed to just keeping your door open?"

That's a terrible straw man. My counterargument to the "indeterminate potential for future abuse that makes it important" is that the same logic applies to all human transactions, so it's a moot premise.

Increased security standards on metadata for human transactions is actually the right response to the existence of bad actors, but increased security != forcing bans on the use of metadata.

It's not about outright banning, it's about limiting to the minimum amount required to perform the service. Btw. nobody complains about WhatsApp holding metadata about connections between people. We complain about WhatsApp transmitting this data in a quite hidden fashion to Facebook.

>It's not about outright banning, it's about limiting to the minimum amount required to perform the service

That's not how the German government is defining their ban.

>We complain about WhatsApp transmitting this data in a quite hidden fashion to Facebook.

FB announced last month [1] that they were sharing specific types of data between Whatsapp and FB. That's not "hidden".

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/technology/relaxing-privac...

An article in NY Times does not help to make it less hidden, particularly for German users. What is required is to inform every user individually and ask for his/her permission to transmit the data to another party. Explicit permission (= informed consent) is necessary because this data transfer is not required to perform the service (see above).

When you pay cash your business relation ends there. When you pay with your personal information...it never ends.

You misunderstood my comment. My point is that quitting WhatsApp, when everybody around you uses it, is not simple and does not warrant that snark.

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