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Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

VR could simultaneously be the freshest thing since sliced bread and Meta could do the most masterful job at baking, slicing and packaging it – I would still not use it.

Why not? Simple: I don't trust Meta. And what I mean by that is, that I do actively distrust them in the sense of: if they made it, it must be bad for me and I should not use it. It is a little bit like if Malboro tried to sell you vitamin pills all of the sudden. Maybe they are good genuine vitamin pills, who knows, but I would not be the person to try that out. And even if there was conclusive proof they were good genuine vitamin pills, I would like to give my money to someone else.

Facebook would be a decent product in the hands of people who knew how to wield it and how to earn (and keep) a users trust. Similar any VR they develop could be technologically really a masterpiece, it would howver still be a masterpiece managed by Meta.

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It's true, few people are going to want to give themselves to Facebook and in live in their toxic platform. If Mark was smart (and honest with himself) he could've funded a completely different company appointed different management completely separate from Facebook and got started that way. I'm assuming he didn't because he sees Meta as his chance for keeping Facebook alive. Which is why I hate the idea of it even more.

I loathe Facebook. I could think of nothing worse than having Facebook strapped to my face and it's never going to happen for me.

The problem for Mark is, anything he innovates will be pretty easy to steal / copy and there will be a huge market for Apple (for example) to build something similar but more trustworthy for people to buy...this is all under the proviso that VR actually takes off. Personally, I'm not so sure it will because while I find it a fun novelty with some application, I feel there is too much value in being aware of my surroundings to go "all in".

Apple is so trustworthy that everytime they have an opportunity to adopt open web standards, they choose instead to not do that and re-implement something proprietary.

If Apple is the bellweather for tech in terms of privacy, all I need to do is point to their new revamped advertising division to say "lol"

There's a vast difference between intent and ability to make someone drink the coolaid.

Whether Apple are just as evil as facebook is immaterial. What matters is that every time someone expresses disgust at having silicon valley control and inspect every facet of their lives someone nearby will say 'what about apple, they're much hetter for privacy'.

Apple is the best of a bad lot.

What?

No, seriously... Apple created WebKit (former engine for Chrome, replaced by Blink) and basically pioneered many web standards. Even some standard HTML elements are Apple's creation, like canvas. Apple is literally a founding member of WHATWG.

That's not to say Apple doesn't deserve their share of criticism for various proprietary efforts, but at least recognize they've been a pretty big contributor to the web.

Apple didn't create webkit. They forked it from KHTML.

You had me til Apple. For me Apple is selling the idea that they are the ones to be trusted with privacy, i.e., power. And that's a hard pill for me to swallow.

I've been an Apple customer and a Facebook user for about the same duration.

In that time, Apple has taken many measures to improve security and privacy.

Facebook on the other hand has gone in the opposite direction, to the point of leaking data to hostile third parties and needing to be reigned in by the OS platform.

It's reasonable to trust Apple more than Facebook, simply based on demonstrated behaviour.

I’m amazed at the level of distrust and fud from meta when the other side of the coin, google, is much more invasive and people generally enjoy opting into the google ecosystem.

Gmail is reading all of your emails, google maps knows everywhere you’ve been and are probably going to go to, etc

For me it's not about the collection of the data, it's about what the company does with it. I don't love that Google makes a fortune harvesting my data for targeted advertising, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make to in order to use their services sans fee. OTOH I am not willing to support a company that has been shown to use their masses of data to influence election results or engineer a behavioral addiction to social media.

Did Facebook the entity influence election results, or was it the result of awful guardrails by Facebook the platform?

Bit of both. Hard to say "they didn't do enough" when its clear that they have enabled all of their client's evil activities via their loosy goosy ruleset

i.e. choosing to not do enough to enable more revenue is worse than the potential remedy by saying "sorry, we didn't do enough" and should be penalized as such

Their bias is very clear at this point and the same was true of Twitter before the Jan 6 whistleblower and selling to Muskovich

How is Google "much more invasive"?

I don't find Google invasive at all. I know Google harvests my data, but I get so so much in return for it. They make great products which have improved my life unimaginably and I choose to login to their services to reap those benefits. I am choosing to give them my data to use the services, maybe I'm doing a deal with the devil but at this point I feel the tradeoff is worth it.

I also can say confidently, that I have plenty of good, working alternatives to Google services which I can use at anytime, for example, I can open a private tab and use DuckDuckGo when I want to be a bit more anonymous.Other people get by without Google at all.

I think in the past Google made more invasive products but I feel they have moved on from that and probably learned from the negativity aimed at Facebook.

In comparison Facebook has done almost nothing beneficial for me have built a business model which doesn't give me the option to "opt out", I'd love to hear your counter arguments though.

> example, I can open a private tab and use DuckDuckGo when I want to be a bit more anonymous

That’s the thing, even if you use DDG, the resulting pages have google and other trackers who share with google your information. So even though you think you’re being anonymous, they are still amassing data on you.

How do you know DDG is trustworthy? You should use a searx instance. Better if it’s not running on your server but a friend’s.

Once you visit a search result regardless of the search engine, that search result can tell google Facebook or whoever everything about your connection

Google just has a much broader set of products, many of which are about as close as you can get to unavoidable infrastructure for everyday life. There are always alternatives, of course, but it's no surprise that Google is much harder to avoid when they offer either the only dominant product or one of a very small number of dominant products in so many areas: web search, email, calendar, maps, smartphone operating system, web browser, video sharing, office suite, ... what did I miss?

That's a function of brand derived from leadership.

I did not say I trusted google any more. The only services I use by them are the search engine and youtube. I avoid everything else. And the search engine is not the only search engine I use.

>Why not? Simple: I don't trust Meta.

Absolutely correct. There’s a meme going around saying “Meta” is short for “metastasize”

Here, here!

Now do TikTok!

Tiktok is the result of that meeting where someone asked: "What would be a good spiritual successor to Facebook?" and the brightest person in the room sarcastically rattles down a list of satirically bad ideas and expects a laugh — only to have the manager say: "Great! This is precisely how we are going to do it!"

Just use a fake username. What’s so hard about that?

That still contributes to the bad thing existing.

You really think a username obsfuscates your behaviour at 60 frames per second?

Do you really think you could use a tool that is, by its own admission, expressly designed for collaborative experiences without giving up your implicit identity?

The answer, by the way, is no. Facebook has had highly-accurate "shadow profiles" for people who do not use their service for over a decade.

Having a basic interaction graph, geo-location data, and being in the income band able to afford a $1500 headset begins to narrow down people a lot faster than you think. Not to mention the headset is technically capable of gathering skin tone (easily mapped by the hand recognition), IP address, height, and even performing facial recognition.

Using a fake username achieves nothing. Unless you use it for sideloaded, offline, single player games and nothing else - at which point, the pro headset doesn't really make sense.

And a payment card (which you can’t get without strong identity in the USA)?

What about phone number and IP?

Your friends list also probably uniquely links the account to your shadow profile which has your real name and address bought from data brokers.

Don’t forget that Facebook has your name/phone number from all of your friends’ phones who gave FB/WhatsApp contacts permission. Friend enough of them and they’ll know it’s you.

Also, they have the plaintext of all of your chats with your friends, including that initial “hey it’s me bob” intro message.

It’s cute that you think that would hide your identity.

Wait till your profile gets temporarily blocked somehow and then they ask for a photo of driving license or passport to unblock it.

You'd be surprised how hard it is to not be tracked by FB/Meta (and a bunch of other organisations), even if you don't sign up at all.

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