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Comment by BiteCode_dev | Hacker News Reader

WhatsApp is controlled by Facebook, and they already centralize a gigantic amount of personnal data. Their moral track record has also been consistently bad. They were part of the PRISM program. They meddle with politics. They are rich and powerful.

The chinese WeChat example shown us how convenient a popular chat app coupled with a payment system can be, and how quickly an entire society can adopt it.

I think this feature should be considered as a threat to users, and be avoided, while actively and strongly, but respectfully, advising people around us to do the same.

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> They were part of the PRISM program.

This is highly deceptive framing. PRISM was a passive cable tapping program. Companies weren't "participating" in it as much as they were victims of it.

Facebook was targeted by PRISM and rapidly worked to mitigate as soon as they knew about it, just like every other cloud service provider that was victimized by cable tapping under that program.

I wish.

But for what we know, they didn't have direct access, they made requests to the companies.

Wikipedia states "PRISM collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#E...

CNET says:

"Sources challenge reports alleging National Security Agency is 'tapping directly into the central servers.' Instead, they say, the spy agency is obtaining orders under process created by Congress."

https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-...

Which makes sense.

Why pay the cost for a huge and complicated setup when a cheap piece of paper can do the job, and the gag order make it as secret?

My paypal account cannot receive money - send only because of my location. Consequently, I've been shut out of many legitimate opportunities. Got scammed multiple times as a freelancer both by the job providers and the platform.

Can't wait for this to available in my location. "Threat to users" be dammed.

Receiving money as a freelancer can be challenging, but given how dangerous it is to give FB more power, I think it's worth spending a bit of time in finding alternatives.

Personally I use https://stripe.com/.

Last customer was in India, and it was hard for him to wire me money. Stripe made it a breeze, I created an invoice, enter his mail, and he just paid using his credit card.

The fees are a bit high, so the question is more "how much inconvenience do I think is worth this moral stand?".

And there is no universal answer to this question, since moral is arbitrary, and I don't accept the inconvenience in many other avenues.

Good luck

Facebook is actively hostile to privacy and security, including by building black hat exploits for open-source software and not reporting it to the developers afterwards and quietly shelving E2EE for Messenger (rumor mill says because of LEA influence or pending water down / walk back).

I have no doubt there are innumerable FB employees who will defend privacy and security. Zuckerberg doesn't care, and will sell his users out the second it impacts the bottom line or offends the government FB is in bed with (go listen to the hot mic recording between Zuckerberg and Angela Merkel, for example).

We knew who Zuckerberg were since the "They trust me. Dumb fucks" line was reported.

FB behavior didnt show any reason to believe he would have had a change of heart ever since.

Just because you care and are right about the advice doesn't mean those needing the advice care enough to receive it

Yes, when you have a lot of difficulties in your life, it's hard to add to it the burden of thinking about the virtual services you use.

It's my privileged position to be able to do so.

Doesn't mean I should not advice for it though. It's an important message, it should be spread, as long as we are not guilt tripping people.

> They were part of the PRISM program.

Do you think that they longer are part of it or its successor?

I think it's very likely, given the Patriot Act has been renew several times since 9/11 despite the fact it was supposed to be a temporary measure.

But I doubt we'll get another Snowden anytime soon to prove it.

Can you provide a source on "FB being a part of PRISM"? I can't find anything concrete to substantiate the claim.

The main support for this claim are the leaked documents by Snowden that were pusblished in The Washington Post and The Guardian in 2013.

You can find an archive of the article here:

https://www.webcitation.org/mainframe.php

Thankfully, the NSA slides were directly included by wikipedia, so we don't have to hunt them down:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/...

We can see that PRISM targets (or should I say, partners) list contains at least: Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, YouTube, AOL, Skype Apple.

As usual, this is what we know. Meaning what could be extracted, proven, communicated and accepted by the public. A pretty big filter already.

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