I have not accepted it and I keep clicking away. And you?
Suffice to say I did not respond well to the TOS change.
I guess this was their intention all along by showing repeated pop up windows.
Correct me if I am wrong but my understanding is that to run a WhatsApp bot you currently basically need to run a version of the whole app.
No idea if my theory is correct but if it is I wonder why they won't just provide a good library which implrments their protocol, E2E encryption and everything.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25875802
Not trivial to setup and operate, as it was designed for high-throughput scenarios. It’s very understandable that smaller customers wouldn’t want to handle that little monster.
I feel FB is solving a technical problem by alienating a bunch of their users with a terms change. Why not instead just build the right technical solution?
Still will be nice to have another opinion.
But I couldn't find any confirmation. There is a WhatsApp business API that is from Facebook, but apparently you don't necessarily need to use it.
Does the term "business" include governments as well?
By business I'm referring to WhatsApp business accounts.
Of course I suspect Meta actually will listen on business calls while traditional phone companies will most likely only do so after a court order, but we put the bar much higher with digital services compared to regular phone calls.
[1] Advertising, and maybe political messages
This means that when a message is decrypted by a recipient, that decryption is taking place within a Facebook service, rather than on an end user device.
Unfortunately, as you say, cynicism is a problem with anything linked to a company like Facebook/Meta that has earned a certain amount of distrust.
However, I use WhatsApp sparingly - my mum and one friend, that's it.
At some point I'll remove it completely.
I still run WhatsApp for the people I absolutely have to.
For that, I am using an old, and almost bust phone I have from 5 years ago.
No spyware on my primary phone.
May I ask how you achieved this? I would be interested in that setup, maybe I could then get over the hump and start using signal (though I don't like centralized communication platforms, nor do I like phone numbers as identifiers). Last time I checked, signal required android or ios, so only usable with built-in spyware.
You might be interested in https://grapheneos.org/ . I run it on my primary phone and it works great.
- "have you accepted the TOS?" as the question
- "the TOS gives FB access to (all) your WhatsApp data" as the assertion
My questions: do you believe that this new TOS gives FB access to my WhatsApp data? If so, to which of my data? All of it?
I personally don't believe this TOS gives FB access to all of the communication data I have on WhatsApp, and thus rendering e2ee useless, yet, I'm open to learning how I might be wrong on that.
everyone i know uses whatsapp and nothing else, no real choice until the apps talk to each other.
Problem is that everyone knows the spyware issue, but if you leave WhatsApp, install every secure messenger that no one you know uses, you'll be a lonely guy.
Real security it turns out is just not communicating.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20211210IP...
I would expect the competition and markets authority to act.
~"This contact does not provide a secure means to communicate with them, click below to ignore this warning however your communication may be monitored."
With the Signal client being FOSS [1] and WhatsApp being proprietary, I also think that me using Signal to message someone on WhatsApp would still downgrade my privacy because I don’t know what the WhatsApp client is really doing with my message.
[1] In reality I don’t know that the Signal app on my phone is actually built from the publicly available code.
You don't know that the person receiving your signal message hasn't jailbroken their phone and installed spyware unknowingly.
When you first message someone using a different platform, Signal could display a warning ~"This contact is using Whatsapp and Signal cannot confirm that communication will be secured, do you wish to continue?"
But I've never tried. I'd love to learn about any misconceptions.
[1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/wiki/How-to-buil...
Signal could also place in their TOS or require a contract signed with third-party platforms for legally binding guarantee, received signal messages will not be analysed.
- Those who didn't accept the new terms are glad to use the opportunity to virtue-signal.
- Those who accepted the new terms are afraid to admit so.
I'll bite the bullet: I accepted the terms.
If you want more honest opinions, you should probably post an anonymous poll.
However I never accepted the new ToS. WA keep asking me to accept them and I don't (can't remember the actual wordings). It has been like that for months. I've even chatted with a business a couple of weeks ago. It seems they are doing like when they were asking for 1 Euro per year. They eventually gave up and never interrupted the service. The network effects of losing users work against them.
I am not sure how hard it is to grasp that some people just don't use any of it. But I guess this is where you come to virtue signal about virtue signalling.
Besides, when you boot up your phone and you see the Android logo, you're fucked anyways.
It's the jujitsu you did at the beginning of your first post. "People who chose the opposite of my choice are just here to brag about that and show us how concerned they are with big tech and privacy. I on the other hand have the stones to admit that I took the path of least resistance for convenience and there are many others like me that did the same that are just to scared to admit it. But I'm not - look at me!"
I depend on WhatsApp heavily to keep in touch with friends and family and cannot imagine not using it (it would require everyone switching to signal enmasse).
I switched to Telegram, Wire and Threema.
When Matrix became viable in 2020, I switched to it.
Though, I still have a few contacts remaining at Telegram.
On top of that changed permissions: no microphone, no file system, no camera access.
Or maybe, everyone that accepted in the meantime has received a brand new Meta VR headset maybe :D?
Seriously though, I didn't accept either. Should really set an auto-reply before removing account. Thinking of Watomatic.
I also stopped sharing my contacts with whatsapp around the time the whole fiasco started.
My parents, my GF and around 5 friends installed Signal because of me, one friend started calling me instead and the rest... well I guess I wasn't that important to them.
Overall I'm much happier now.
I always use Facebook via the web, in reverse chronological order. If I suddenly see a stream of old/very interesting stuff, I know I've accidently let the algorithm into my brain, and click on the url again to get back to sanity.
I can use Facebook and Instagram via the browser if needed, although I have not logged into fb from my phone since I updated my phone, just to keep it exclusive to my desktop.
Trying to move everyone to signal but there are stragglers....
What are your hobbies?
Also, I have found that the only people who insist on using it and aren't willing to contact me through other means are exactly the people where I was mostly keeping in touch because of social obligations, and not because I actually enjoy talking to them.
Its my opinion its just a box ticking permission for what they are doing already....
I am the only one who don't care that much about Facebook knowing stuff about me?
I dislike Facebook and use it as little as possible for other reasons, but that some company knows about my favorite brands is low in my list of considerations.
I actually care about my privacy, it is just that governments and multinational companies are not my main focus. Too big, too far, at least for someone like me.
They all switched, except my sister who works with people in countries where Whatsapp is the dominant communication platform.
I'm still ticked off that Google Allo was the best designed chat app of the past decade and that they thought Messages with RCS features could take its place.
This. Allo was baller and I used it to chat with basically everyone and then it shut down. Took me years to convince anyone to switch off of WhatsApp after that
However, unfortunately, I still use WhatsApp to this day - because of convinience.
Now, I wouldn't be surprised if that data was shared anyway before I'd clicked, and that in the end, Facebook only pretended having given user's the choice!
And if Facebook provided me the choice, I would happily revoke my consent.
As of WhatsApp. Refused to install the app even before FB bought it. Lucky me was right for once.
Instagram though... Can't imagine getting off of it anytime soon.
You didn't even bother to read it did you?
So perhaps they only continue to nag the users they arbitrarily detect as in jurisdictions where it’s legal to hoist new terms like that?
And they say, thay update their contract. Sounds like a reason for me, to read what it is about, or stop using it.
What do you mean by this?
But the first official release of Signal was June 2014 (which was just the merger of Redphone and textsecure)
*All from Wikipedia correlations and faulty memory :D
I wonder if Facebook and Google and the rest assume it is just one person they are dealing with or if the algorithms they've trained are smart enough to detect that there is a high chance that particular usage patterns strongly imply an individual user.
If so that is to say they have identified profile 1 and profile 2 but have only asked profile 1 for permission and received permission but then continue to store data for profile 1 and 2 and think they are disparate users - would this run afoul of GDPR?
I was coerced into choosing "Agree" (or whatever the button said) without any other practical option (I accidentally touched it when it appeared for the umpteenth time). I haven't given my consent and so they don't have permission to process my personal data except as strictly necessary to provide me with their messaging service. Whether I dismiss the nag prompt every time or just touch "Agree", the legal effect is exactly the same.
Ask yourself where do you draw the line? If you don’t think facebook has crossed it, then you don’t know enough about facebook.
A lot of this moral panic about Facebook's effect on society is just a projection of our general angst the democratization of media. A lot of our type of people, squishy liberal nerd types, cheered it on when it was starting, supposing that it will be an improvement over the status quo of pre-2010. Information flow will finally be free, and Evil Gatekeepers won't control it, that sort of stuff. Now that we've been disabused of the notion that this is a good development, we get all uppity.
Turns out your friends and neighbours always liked fake news, and always will. And so do you. Oops.
It’s not a moral panic, the people who run facebook have provably done terrible things. Would other people in their position do those things? Some would, some wouldn’t. There are people who do the right thing, even when it means their company losing a few bucks.
It is our responsibility to speak out against terrible companies like facebook. And if you, like me, work in tech, it is your job to not do terrible things.
If it’s not our responsibility, then it’s no one’s — and if you believe that, you believe in nothing.