Hacker News Reader

Comment by dabedee | Hacker News Reader

Except you can never trust Facebook to care for user's metadata in a privacy-preserving way, which, to me at least, seems like a security risk. While the actual messages are encrypted, everything else (i.e the metadata such as your contacts, your connections, etc.) is not and is probably used/mined by Facebook. Why anyone would trust that company to do the right thing at this point is beyond me.

View on HN

This is why I recommend friends & family use Signal, and they've actually adopted it due to the really easy on-boarding. It's probably the best iMessage alternative out there.

That's why I run an XMPP server for family and friends. It's the IETF standard, no vendor lock-in and has Signal-style encryption nowadays.

How hard was it to onboard less tech savy friends and family?

I am not sure op actually runs that server or was just being sarcastic

Not that hard. Everyone already knows how email works: you have to get an address first, download a client and login. I then showed them where to register (https://providers.xmpp.net) and how to download Conversations. It got easier once a good chunk of my friend group was already available there.

I tried this. and it didn't work! network effect is a thing and its hard to move away as people have to maintain 2 messengers.

It helped a lot that I refuse to be reachable on messengers that are not XMPP compatible. Most of the people I care about actually have reachable chat addresses now. For the rest I fallback to SMS and Email.

> network effect is a thing

Sure is. So is getting anyone to do more than the default.

I have an extended family SMS group, an "after hours" work SMS group, and an SMS group of some people I play online computer games with.

Nobody across any of these groups is happy with the down-sampled videos, the inconsistent emoji reactions, and other SMS oddities. It's a constant complaint across all groups.

I have suggested we switch to Telegram or Signal multiple times. Not a single person is happy with SMS. Not a single person has even bothered to install Telegram or Signal.

I love XMPP but I onboarded 20+ extended family members just by giving them the Signal group link. I don't want to think what kind of headache introducing my 92 year old grandfather to XMPP would be.

Funny you should say this. It's exactly why I started the Snikket project. I already ran a family XMPP server, but it was nowhere near user-friendly enough, and I was tired of provisioning accounts manually and explaining what an XMPP client was every time someone got a new phone.

I started the project early 2020, obviously with no knowledge of what was around the corner. Then during lockdown managed to onboard ~11 family members entirely remote by sending them a simple invitation link (some via SMS, some via email). The best part of the whole thing was how it enabled my (then) 4 year-old to independently video call 80 year-old grandparents (using an old Android tablet).

Happy to report that a couple of years later it's still the primary method of communication between family members. Obviously it hasn't fully replaced WhatsApp/etc. which they still use for most of their contacts. But still, gotta start somewhere!

Checked out your website, this is an excellent idea and a great approach to fixing XMPP UX issues. Best of luck with your project!

Signal is dropping SMS support soon. It was one of the main features that I was able to convince my friends and family to use this app, a convenient all-in-one messaging app. Without it I'm not sure anymore, quite a baffling decision on their part.

Many years ago when Signal was quite new I thought that they should implement SMS mirroring, similar to how you can access iMessage on your phone/laptop, and how services like Pushbullet and Project Fi offered SMS mirroring. It'd be a great "carrot" to get people using Signal and the more that did, the less would actually be using SMS!

I submitted a feature request and it was promptly denied. I got the impression they never really wanted to support SMS from the beginning. It was just a carrot even then, and they weren't going to focus any more effort on it.

I am disappointed by this but my family is 50/50 iPhone and Android. I'm not sure anyone knew of the SMS integration.

Seems to be the same with my crowd. The only people who messages me over text is my dad and distant relatives. But I haven't tried to push Signal on them. While I do understand the "need" here, I do think it is easier to push on Gen Xers and younger as they are far more comfortable with multiple messaging apps (and I don't know of one that doesn't have multiple. Minimum SMS + WA, but usually includes GroupMe, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger). I know this is an issue people are pretty vocal about but I'm having a hard time believing it just isn't a sampling bias.

And to onboard iPhone users you just need to get them frustrated with not being able to send photos and videos to Android users. Thanks Apple. Apple users get tired of sending videos to Android users and them responding "email it to me" or "let's use Signal."

Nailed it. WhatsApp was the first or among the first few kids on the block... and maybe if FB didn't acquire them, they'd have improved or heck, even gotten subsumed by Signal. Signal's non-profit and for now, well funded... nowhere near the coverage of WhatsApp but I steer everyone toward Signal when I can...

I was chatting with a friend on whatsapp about a guy we used to play sports with in our childhood. Hadn't really seen or heard of him in decades. Very next day, top recommended friend on facebook was that guy. Seems unlikely to be a wild coincidence. That said, I wouldn't(and don't) trust Apple either.

WhatsApp may be sharing your contacts with Facebook to provide friend suggestions.

Reference: https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/117130

This is different though. Never had this person's contact, we just mentioned his name in a chat a couple times cause we were talking about stuff from when we were kids.

It could be because your friend looked him up. Or friended him. They don't go through messages.

This is likely a recognition of a hit and ignorance of misses. If the friend was suggested before then you probably wouldn't notice. But there's still a lot here that even me with little information can give reason to suggest that friend. For one, you mention that it was an old mutual friend. Facebook is going to use the metadata (you talking to your friend) and search for potential mutual connections. But there's more. If that friend recently talked with that other friend (likely a prompt for that discussion), Facebook knows (either by GPS or by mutual conversation on one of their platforms, or even a friend of that friend connection).

I'm not trying to say that Facebook isn't reading your messages (I doubt they do tbh, because ->) but rather trying to demonstrate that they don't need to in order to make these creepy connections. This is the importance of metadata. Data you may not even know about!

Think about it this way: a private investigator sees who you talk with, how long, where you go, etc. But they don't have the actual record of your conversations. The PI is working on metadata. We find this creepy and invasive because we can recognize how this information can be used to gather intimate aspects of our lives. Companies like Facebook are essentially doing the same thing but at scale. And you can probably imagine how the scale both helps and hinders this invasion (but likely overall helps).

> old mutual friend

Just someone we played sports with. He didn't live in our city, moved away in his youth, and we had zero friends in common on facebook. Haven't seen him suggested as a friend since he disappeared as a suggestion a couple of weeks after that.

I think you've missed the important information I was trying to convey. What sparked the conversation about that friend? Did your other friend say "Hey, I ran into so and so recently"? If so, then that's more than enough information for FB to make that connection (FB sees that these two people were in close proximity, through GPS, and stayed near one another for an extended period of time. Meaning they probably were talking). But that's not the possible path to the suggestion.

There is also the psychological aspect of we recognizing hits more than misses (in this case. Often it is the reverse but context matters).

People care about utility, usability, and cost. Except for the 10 neckbeards in Hacker News, no one cares about privacy in the real world. People won't stop using Apple products which is built on slave labor in China but will froth in the mouth about privacy.

The mainstream media will be frothing at the mouth at how Apple products are built on slave labor, while all phones, Apples and their competitors, are built in mostly those same factories.

The only difference is that Apple publishes their yearly Supplier Responsibility report, which, yes, does contain reports that their audits found violations. And then the violations are resolved or the supplier is banned. What more are they to do?

There is a long way to go, that’s why it’s a progress report. And yes, there are aspects that are left unmentioned, like the unionization debacle in the stores. But really Apple is not who you should be focusing on for slave labor.

https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2...

I don't trust Apple either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com