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Comment by zer0zzz | Hacker News Reader

Care to back that up with any citations, or should everyone just take it on faith that what a throwaway says isn’t made up?

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Facebook is on both ends of the e2e.

e2e encryption means no from client to client can read your messages.

Your client certainly can - and Facebook is the client. It would have no problem sending back signals on your messages (or the full message) to Facebook servers.

Doesn't mean it's happening. But it's interesting that e2e encryption alone makes you positive it isn't.

Agreed, and that’s how it would work. I was more highlighting the throwaway with comment that had no context or link to sources.

There’s been many stories over the years of people being advertised to from things mentioned in what’s meant to be a private conversation.

“People are saying…”

“People say trust Facebook because they control the e2e and I can’t imagine an attack vector”

So much for those “many stories”

lol I’m not going to try convince some nobody who thinks he’s safe cos Facebook makes a claim.

That’s a huge leap. I never claimed that anyone was safe. I just think your assertions have no basis or citations and you’re posting them from a throwaway. This is the equivalent of writing something on a bathroom stall.

Of course I post on a throwaway. HN is full of idiots who downvote cos it goes against what they believe in.

Fact is Facebook has been advertising using user data on messenger and WhatsApp. Some believe it’s not possible and some theorise that they analysis the message on the device and send metadata over.

But it doesn’t change the fact Facebook is in control of the whole pipeline.

You should have started with that, and added some sources (based on reversing, there are many out there). There’s a good claim to be made that even if they don’t use their app to wholesale decrypt chats locally, they do use metadata. Its likely they can’t do a good job of moderating without it.

Can you point out where in their contracts or privacy policy they have legally binding terms that irrevocably dismiss their right to give your messages to advertisers?

If they have no intention to sell, then they have nothing to fear by putting it in writing with a appropriate liquidated damages clause. Otherwise it is quite suspicious why they reserve the right to do that in the contracts that they wrote.

Download a naughty gif/video from reddit and send it to someone on messenger. It will report you and say you are sending a naughty video and that multiple attempts will ban you. Fine for unencrypted chat.

Send same on e2e chat. The video will say "not sent".

Why is Facebook processing anything before being encrypted? The understanding is e2ee means content gets encrypted on device, sent to server in encrypted state and decrypted at other side. There is NO way Facebook should be able to analyze the contents of message, photo, video. .if they are doing this for csam/nudity, what stops them from using same tech for ad targeting and more seriously, for letting governments to spy on people?

Well, how can anyone trust facebook and whatsapp? How can we be so sure that e2e is done properly without looking into source code.

These are all a fair questions, but they’re still questions and not some confident assertion with absolutely no sources from a total throwaway account. That was my point.

It's both true and false. They don't do advertising with msg, and it's e2e encrypted. But they can use the metadata

Yes... meta data

OMG, that's such an obvious word play that has such dire ramifications. FARK!!! I have to hand it to theZuck, this totally changes how I look at the name change

Is metadata useful for ad targeting?

If the claim is that they use the content of messages that's be one thing, but what kind of ad value is really pulled out of timestamps and phone numbers of who you messaged?

That said, collection of metadata can still be a problem, I just don't see the ad value.

Yes it is useful. Knowing who you contacted and when tells advertisers demographic information and probably more that I can't think of

What demographics can be gleamed from who and I contact and when?

This is one of those times where I feel like I'm annoyingly peppering someone with questions, hopefully it doesn't come across that away. I really am curious what ad-related use case I may have missed with regards to metadata.

It is end to end encrypted but facebook controls both ends so... ?

That's not how it works. They won't be able to see the messages themselves if it's e2e encrypted. You can say they are lying of course

Facebook is organized as a for profit company.

Anyone expecting capitalism to not capitalism is going to have a bad time.

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