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Comment by Calvin02 | Hacker News Reader

> After failing to compete with new innovators, Facebook illegally bought or buried them when their popularity became an existential threat.

Illegally bought or buried them?

1) FTC approved all the mergers. So, it is surprising that they'd say that these were illegally bought.

2) Facebook seems to be operating all key acquisitions (Instagram and WhatsApp) as separate products and hasn't made their usage conditional to having a Facebook account.

This is re-writing history and it is just as dangerous when the FTC does it as it is when a political party does it.

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Facebook lied about its intentions to keep Instagram and WhatsApp user data fully independent, and in that light the FTC is reevaluating its position.

That isn't true. Did you read the complaint?

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/ecf_75-1_ft...

It specifically discusses the 2012 consent order, approved by the FTC, in which it penalized Facebook and allowed future uses consistent with the consent order. It's not relying on that as a basis for reevaluating the legality of the mergers.

The complaint does not explicitly describe why the FTC has changed its mind, but the general idea seems to be that over time Facebook has demonstrated a pattern of buying competitors that wasn't apparent to the FTC in 2012 or 2014. It has nothing to do with data per se.

did they really promise that with Instagram? and as for WhatsApp - they do keep that promise, user data is separate.

Yeah, no: https://www.wired.com/2016/08/whatsapp-privacy-facebook/

This year they were pushing to expand more data sharing between the platforms, but the profiles have been linked internally by phone number for years now.

Wasn't there a larger change to the privacy policy of WhatsApp that stated otherwise?

There is a link to a dissenting opinion from one of the commissioners specifically calling out your first point [1]

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...

I thought Instagram and Facebook were tied/unified under a single account now

they are not. you can do cross-messaging between FB and IG if both parties have accounts linked, but otherwise you can have an IG account that is not linked to FB.

Instagram.com tries to execute a script from Facebook.com.

So your data is almost certainly linked.

The origin of a script of unknown functionality to be executed on the client can only tell you so much about the linkage of accounts on the backend.

It tells the site owning the endpoint at which the script it hosted your current IP address and in most instances the site you visited (referrer).

Large internet companies can combine this information across other properties / sources to have a very good idea of who you are.

Internet companies of all sizes can do all sorts of things to identify you. Instagram could also do things server side to link your accounts without any scripts from other origins. The fact a script from FB.com is loaded tells you zero information about account linkage.

By that logic any company including FB ads is a Facebook company

Linking accounts is optional, and combined cross account data is used when they are linked. Otherwise, subsets of the apps may or may not "know" about the link between your accounts via your phone number, email address, or access patterns.

Facebook also lied about requiring a Facebook account on oculus. Now they have cameras and microphones in peoples homes and a spectacular privacy history

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