Meta: Shut down your invasive AI Discover feed | Hacker News Reader

Meta: Shut down your invasive AI Discover feed

mozillafoundation.org

538 pointsspeckx225 comments

Context:

- “Meta has a new stand-alone AI app. It lets you see what other people are asking.” https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-ai-app-public-feed-warn... (may 2025)

- “People are seemingly accidentally publishing their AI chat histories with Meta’s new AI app” https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/05/05/meta-ai-chatbot-discove... (may 2025)

Note that the first link states that conversations are private by default and that user error is likely involved[1]. Mozilla’s use of text emphasis almost implies otherwise[2].

[1]: “To be clear, your AI chats are not public by default — you have to choose to share them individually by tapping a share button. Even so, I get the sense that some people don't really understand what they're sharing, or what's going on.”

[2]: At least that’s how I understood “_Make all AI interactions private by default_ with no public sharing option unless explicitly enabled through informed consent.” at first glance.

It blows my mind how many people still publicly post venmo payments, so this doesn’t surprise me actually.

why venmo even has a "feed" is unknown to me. are people actually doom scrolling that?

If it's there people will use it like social media. "Ooh looks like Adrian went to La Bamba with Chilliwack, he paid them $50 for drinks there"

Engagement. It's part of a dark pattern that triggers that little neuron tie our tendency to compare ourselves to others, a sort of "keeping up with the Joneses" type thing. It is also billed as a free advertising for businesses (e.g. hey, look where your friends shop!) which encourages more businesses to accept Venmo as a payment method.

Anything for the sake of growth or perceived growth, up to and including privacy violations.

I figure whatever they are trying to achieve probably doesn’t work. Otherwise Cash App would do it. But important decision makers are in too deep to admit they were wrong. Smells of turning the Magic Mouse upside down to charge it.

CollegeHumor, now Dropout, made a skit about this very question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFLztKBrLY

If i put your information in a feed, you'll look really stupid when you cry privacy violation down the road as you realize what I've been doing with your information.

It is definitely odd. I think it started off as a KYC-kind of check. If there’s some weird, possibly illegal reason you type into the “what is this payment for?” input, I read that someone on behalf of Venmo will contact you to have you explain it further and to investigate if it should lead to the closure of your account.

It is unsurprising that Venmo has a log of transactions, right? That’s a necessary part of the job. Having it as something that can be presented as a social feed is the weird thing…

It almost seems like a radical art project, philosophical statement, or social experiment around transparency. Like, hypothetically in some alternate universe if they did no KYC, and just published everybody’s transactions, your peers could inspect your transactions, the police could just look and see if you were transacting with criminals… sort of like open source transactions. Maybe that was the original idea? And then eventually they got some actual customers and said “shit we’re a real company now, let’s put the social experiment on the back burner, add an opt-out, and start doing in-house kyc.”

I had no idea this was true until a buddy of mine who I play hockey with started putting super offensive notes on the payment, trying to trigger someone since it was a hot debate after one of our games if this actually occurred. After about five or six of these, someone did in fact contact him first via email, then actually called him and asked him to explain the notes and yes they do monitor these and yes, if its really suspect, the feds will be notified.

Which then begs the obvious - if you're buying drugs, then don't put you're buying drugs or paying off your bookie.

I guess it's law enforcement on the honor system - when you do something illegal, you're expected tell the police-monitored feed that you did it. We assume that no one is so unethical that they keep their illegal acts secret.

For extra credit, let's put this stuff on the blockchain. Crime is solved!

Seems odd to me, I use the app and it has never once nudged me to share anything?

Perhaps you're sharing things without knowing it.

I did a test to see how it works, the app make it pretty clear. You click share, it then shows you a preview of exactly what you are posting, and you have to hit a post button to actually post it.

You are a power user. How about the median meta user? Would they know? Is the app designed to alert them?

Are you pointing out an actual issue with this app? Or are your questions just hypotheticals about some mythical app that Meta may or may not have built?

Thank you for this. One of these links should really be the one in the submission. The Mozilla petition doesn't provide any useful context.

Sidenote: How is Mozilla's comm's so bad? I had no idea what their petition was talking about.

Thank you for your service.

It's honestly impressive how bad Mozilla is at communication and its been like this for years.

Effective communication is quite humbling.

It's been my experience that I need to take full responsibility for the effectiveness of my communications.

A few years ago, I threw together a PowerPoint show, based on Randall Munroe's Communication comic[0]. I did it for an organization I participate in, that is full of some of the worst communicators I've ever encountered.

It astounds me, how people that get paid to communicate, don't understand the fundamentals.

[0] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qQDAuhGvBvBlZVH2zn_V... (You need to view the slide notes, or it doesn't make any sense).

Anyone know how to show the speaker notes on mobile?

It seems like the xkcd comic itself is pretty hard to follow. It would probably be better with dialog.

I'm not sure. It was originally a PP show, and I dumped it into Google Slides, for a friend.

Probably doesn't matter. My experience is that most folks have no intentions of doing what it prescribes, so it's kind of wasted effort.

Not what you asked for but should help https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1028:_Communicati...

That PowerPoint made my irony meter explode!

Even with the notes, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would you illustrate communication problems with people who literally don't speak the same language?

It’s almost impossible to understand, just from looking at the comic. Some of his comics are like that.

I stared at it for quite a while, before it “clicked.”

Once it did, the message was obvious.

The PowerPoint was designed to be presented. It’s not particularly useful, just being read. It really needs a narrator that can explain the concepts.

The idea is that it’s possible to communicate effectively, even when it seems impossible, as long as we are willing to take responsibility for the message, and figure out how to make it work. In order to do that, we need to understand the message, the recipient, the context, and the medium.

It also shows how we can lose the message, when we get sidetracked by the messenger or the medium.

If you read the notes on each slide that becomes pretty clear.

> people who literally don't speak the same language?

That's not my understanding of the XKCD comic, if that's what you mean.

Also, I don't find the comic to be hard to understand. It takes a little work but it's pretty clear.

It’s kinda funny, but this is also covered in the presentation. Something may seem clear to you, but it’s not clear to others.

Ha. Great point.

It's a great presentation and deserves to be more widely disseminated, you should probably submit it to HN as a submission.

Thanks, but it would probably not be received too well.

It has been my experience, that folks really don’t like its message.

I recently wrote this to someone who tends to give commands instead of advice, which is along the same lines:

"You can lead a horse to water, and it may not drink. If you drag a horse to water, it will refuse to drink, then kick you, and run away."

Stealing it...

The reason is that most people wouldn't care about the actual thing happening. Mozilla chooses to frame things in a way that is more likely to motivate people to action, even if that means being vague or dishonest. In this case their point #2 is dishonest because it already works that way.

In the app there is a "Share" button at the top right. After clicking you see an interstitial with a big "Post" button at the bottom. When you click that button, the chat is shared.

The ends justify the means always backfires in communication. People just lose trust in what they are being told.

There are so many examples of this. There was a poster that attempted to reduce needle reuse by showing the same needle degrading after multiple uses. The problem is that was not very dramatic (also not where the risk lies) so they increased the magnification at each stage to make the degredation seem worse than it was. People recognised this and the primary message amongst their target demographic was anti-drug campaigners lie to you.

I'm not sure how much this will damage Mozilla. Perhaps not much because they have already lost so much mana. Before coming to the comments and reading this thread, I had already thought to myself, "Can I really trust what Mozilla says anymore?".

Perhaps that makes it even worse. To have doubts that are so quickly confirmed suggests not only that you can't trust them, but you reliably can't trust them.

I want to like and support Mozilla, I'm posting this from Firefox, that makes me one of the few sticking with them. They make it so hard sometimes.

The fact that the crafting of the message and its match with the audience is poor, doesn’t mean that “Ends justify the means approaches always backfire”.

You can make a whole media empire that just spends its time saying that “The other sides is lying” and taking on the role of pointing out every crack and flaw in a wall, lavishing hours upon hours of coverage.

You can find just the right audience to support you, who themselves believe that the ends justify the means. Willing to rethink their lines in the sand for their team.

Well yes, if your goal is to reduce trust in the things people are told. The side-effects amplify the effects.

The Mozilla organization is run poorly. I really wish it was different.

The Mozilla organization has leadership that is complicit with Google.

- Mozilla acts as an antitrust sponge for Google and in exchange gets lots of money

- Mozilla is encouraged not to make Firefox better than Chrome. They thus under-invest in Mozilla, Rust, and core browser tech.

- Mozilla spends all of its money on irrelevant efforts like VR, shitty platform plays, half-baked AI, and insane exec comp.

It's a drop in the bucket for Google's peace of mind.

If Mozilla wanted to be a next-gen serious company, they would become a developer tooling and platform company. They'd keep developing Firefox and Rust, they'd build up an ecosystem around Rust and WASM, and they'd be the best in the world at it. Deploy websites, micro services, and run CI with Mozilla.

Rust is infectious and growing, WASM will eat the web and the data center, and Mozilla is completely sleeping on it. What's sad is how much of a hand they had in developing it all.

They threw away the stuff that mattered.

>Mozilla is encouraged not to make Firefox better than Chrome. They thus under-invest in Mozilla, Rust, and core browser tech.

Is there any evidence of this kind of corruption? It always seemed like misguided altruism to me, or at worst a serious lack of focus.

I wish people had such faith in my own competence.

All it takes is one CEO. The ICs have nothing to do this.

> there any evidence of this kind of corruption

Follow the money. Google gives so many millions to Mozilla, it would be a miracle if that had no effect on their priorities.

Honestly, even after (quickly) reading the context, I still don't know why Mozilla had such a strong reaction to this.

Maybe one of their execs fat fingered and shared something embarrassingly.

I haven't used the app and likely won't but neither article shows the mechanism by which users opt into "sharing" their interactions. Is there a dark pattern involved?

Like, in lots of other app contexts, you can hit "share" and then get a modal that gives you options (do you want to share it via WhatsApp or messages or email or ...) and only after you select a mode and a recipient does it actually get shared -- but if you make a "share" button whose behavior is "immediately publish", people might reasonably be surprised if they actually just want to share the results with a specific trusted person who they expected to select next in the interaction.

I'm not sure about this specific situation, but from Google Docs to ChatGPT to Notion, there's a clear distinction between "make this a shareable link to only those who have the link" and "also make that shareable link searchable/discoverable by the public."

If Meta is turning that "searchability/discoverability" on by default when a share button is activated on an AI chat - or worse, if they're not even giving this industry-standard option - that would both explain the confusion, and be a terribly unexpected dark pattern. As the parent notes, the activation of a share icon is not informed consent.

I don't think that is the case with ChatGPT: https://www.vice.com/en/article/chatgpt-users-report-being-a...

That situation was a bug, with a detailed post-mortem: https://openai.com/index/march-20-chatgpt-outage/

It is worth noting of course that per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44185913 ChatGPT will now be required by law to retain a record of all chat history for courts and lawyers to review, but at least that data won't be made fully public.

Both of those are different from a willing and intentional dark pattern of making things publicly discoverable!

I did a test in the app, and it is pretty obvious you are posting the chat. You click share, then you are given a preview, and you have to hit post to actually post it publicly.

There’s a chance you’re overestimating a large percentage of the public.

Then should publishing always be disallowed on all platforms? I’m having trouble understanding how is what Facebook is doing any different from ChatGPT, and in general all web apps.

ChatGPT sharing is anonymous + you are also having to share the link itself, it doesn't randomly go to other people's feeds.

Oh that’s terrible, I didn’t get that part.

If a part of the population is dumb, the issue is that it’s dumb, not meta user interface.

I’m the first to bash on meta but there are things that they are not responsible for.

No, the issue is that Meta is weaponising that stupidity by breaching naive trust, and that's... stupid too. But for different reasons.

If you don't communicate at a level suitable for your audience, then you're not communicating. At best, you're just making noise. At worst, you're being a manipulative sack of shit. I do not believe Meta are in the noise-making business.

Life is tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid.

And then does it ask who you want to post it to, or to which app? Because that's a fairly common pattern when I "share" something on my phone.

Or does it just post it onto the public feed?

That context should be in there. Give me the facts or else it’s just whining.

Thank you, the linked article was completely unclear and vague on what the issue was.

Has someone noticed a similar thing with ChatGPT and private Github repos? ChatGPT has recommended private repo links to me many times. Because they are not public, I get repo not found error. But ChatGPT can generate private code with no issues.

Are you sure the private repos exist, rather than just being hallucinations?

Yeah it's always been hallucinated repos. It's easy enough to verify - do a google search on the repo name itself and see if it's ever been mentioned or used anywhere and if it matches what ChatGPT thinks it was suggesting. And check to see if the owner of the repo exists and if they do, check their repositories to see which programming languages & topics they favor and see if it matches or not.

Github -> Microsoft sharing everything with OpenAI sadly sounds realistic.

Or they don't exist in the first pLace, or they're now deleted repos, or they used to be public but went private, etc.

Unfortunately, everything you mentioned above is a possibility.

After trying the app, it's hard for me to interpret this article as anything other than Mozilla lying. Sharing in this app is the same as any other social media app.

In the app there is a "Share" button at the top right. After clicking you see an interstitial with a big "Post" button at the bottom. When you click that button, the chat is shared.

Am I seeing something different than anybody else? Why would Mozilla lie like this? Most of the "demands" are already satisfied.

> Shut down the Discover feed until real privacy protections are in place.

Everything is already private by default and you can see what is public.

> Make all AI interactions private by default with no public sharing option unless explicitly enabled through informed consent.

This is true already

> Provide full transparency about how many users have unknowingly shared private information.

Meta shouldn't have to do this

> Create a universal, easy-to-use opt-out system for all Meta platforms that prevents user data from being used for AI training.

This already exists (EDIT, looks like only for EU users. Personally I don't believe this is related to the public sharing claims)

> Notify all users whose conversations may have been made public, and allow them to delete their content permanently.

This already exists

This is a dark-pattern problem. A large number of people are accidentally sharing things to the general public when they intended to share them to specific people. That is one issue being flagged here. To many people, "share" means "give me a way to share to specific people", not "mark this for indexing/searching for the general public".

I don't think this is a dark-pattern problem in the sense that I don't think it is _intentionally_ deceiving.

I think Meta fully expected this feature to be used by people who are excited about their conversation with the AI and wants to share it publicly. Just like we see with OpenAI Sora.

There's not much to win for Meta if users instead are unknowingly sharing deeply personal conversations.

> I think Meta fully expected this feature to be used by people who are excited about their conversation with the AI and wants to share it publicly.

That's really what you think? And what they think? That people are so enamored - in droves - with their exchange with a chatbot that they're trying to share it for the world to see?

Maybe I'm the old fogey who doesn't get it, but it's just hard for me to believe that this is something many people want, or something that smart people think others earnestly want. Again, I may be the outlier here, but this just sounds crazy to me.

Considering that 90% of the chats I see share are people tripping over themselves to demonstrate the AI being silly and dumb, yeah they are enamored to share with the public :p

People share AI chats all the time on Twitter, Reddit, etc.

I don't personally think the feature makes a lot of sense in Meta AI.

However it's a lot more likely their product team genuinely thought it might do, than it is likely they intentionally wanted to give users a bad experience and risk more bad press (again, Meta would benefit nothing from people sharing by mistake).

If you aren't using AI your peers and competitors are. It is highly effective at getting you through tough problems quickly.

It has problems for sure, but if you aren't "enamored" with AI then I don't think you've actually tried to use it.

You completely misunderstood me. I am not incredulous that people use AI, nor am I in any way doubting how it can aid all sorts of processes.

I am incredulous that a primary use case of a genAI chatbot is sharing your chat conversation publicly. It's easy to see why people would do this for genAI images, videos, or even code; I even understand some occasional sharing of a chat exchange from time to time. But routine, regular interest, from regular people, of just sharing their text chat? I do not understand that at all.

On that we can definitely agree.

I agree. Further, these companies show us over and over again who they are, and whether it's tobacco companies, pharma, food, or oil companies they always know - in exactly the way and at the time that makes you sick to your stomach - what they're doing and who's likely to fall for it in a way that makes. The comments in this topic are feeling a bit sophist

> I think Meta fully expected this feature to be used by people who are excited about their conversation with the AI and wants to share it publicly. Just like we see with OpenAI Sora.

META expectations=/= expectations of a reasonable human that has used other "share" buttons before.

Share buttons offer no inherent privacy settings.

Sharing to a text message is private. In contrast, sharing to social media platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, and LinkedIn makes the content public. The destination determines the audience.

The TYPICAL behaviour when you hit "share" on any platform is not to immediately share. It TYPICALLY gives you options to share to a variety of other sources, both public and private. It also generates a link if you want to grab the link and specifically share that.

That is the TYPICAL share behaviour. If what META is doing with their new app is obscuring this typical behaviour and a "share" click directly going to the public, that would violate the defacto behaviour users are accustomed to when using the share button.

The initial "Share" click doesn't post anything publicly.

It just opens a modal so you can choose to post. You have to make a second click to confirm.

Typical behavior on a Meta/social app is that it shares it to everyone. See Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, etc.

If you index on chat apps, you're correct, if you start from Meta's social apps, which they said they have, you are incorrect.

A typical "Share" button, e.g. as seen in every Google app, allows to choose the recipients, including everyone (public sharing).

A button that always shares content with the general public should be called "Publish".

(We'll discuss cache invalidation next time.)

The difference is that on those apps it would be a miracle if your "publicly" shared post were ever seen by more than a handful of strangers. None of those send it to the front page except in very rare circumstances (going viral).

The point is not the fanout factor but the lack of limitations. A public post is such that anyone can see, without authentication. A widely shared post that requires login to see is not public. An obscure pastebin paste is public, even though it's normally seen by a handful. But you don't get to control who these handful are.

I think it's reasonable to see this as mimicing every other AI chat app, where "Share" means share publicly. For example in ChatGPT.

But it is different? In both Gemini and ChatGPT when you click "Share" you get a link to the post you can share. It doesn't add the chat to common "Discover" section in the app (there is no such section there). As others pointed out "Share" in Meta AI app is actually "Publish", unlike the one in other chat apps where it is, in fact, share.

The action button says "Post", which to me is pretty close to Publish

And shared ChatGPT chats are often indexed by Google, so they become public. Although I agree it's not exactly the same because of the lack of builtin discovery

“Post” is indicative for a person paying attention. For a random non tech person trying to share thing it’s just one more button to press to get the link. Note it’s very hard to share the chat while not making it public - you will need to explicitly mark it private after you posted it. I bet you for absolutely majority of users posts being public and discoverable pretty much unintended consequence of them trying to share it to someone.

As for google I assume it’s true if you post your chat somewhere (I.e Reddit). For most of shares these chats never end up being on the internet (I.e stay in private chats in messengers). So it is different again.

Overall it is pretty much predator behavior exploiting people’s need to share their chats to get them doing something unintended and good for Meta. This being said whole idea of an app with chats as posts is quite lame, so not sure if it will stick.

> And shared ChatGPT chats are often indexed by Google, so they become public.

Do you mean creating the sharing link would make the chat log public? It will be interesting to read other people's chat on a specific topic, but googling "topic site:chatgpt.com" seems to just return Custom GPT stuff.

Try "topic site:chatgpt.com/share/*"

What is the purpose of quoting "topic" as if it is a search keyword? Are you searching for this literal string in the logs? Why are you bundling it with the "site:" operator?

I got an empty search results error with your suggested turd.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?sjid=128...

Why not a blank search without it -- you do not need to specify any search term if using "site:[...]"

  site:chatgpt.com/share/*

Quite fruitful -- I didn't need to put any quotes around yet

Yeah I included quotes for the comment to delimit the quiet, you don't need them in the search

Thank you. I know what my next five hours are going to be spent on.

>And shared ChatGPT chats are often indexed by Google, so they become public. Although I agree it's not exactly the same because of the lack of builtin discovery

I didn't know this. I think I have used share button to share chats with personal stuffs with close people thinking that the chat is as close as possible to "unlisted" youtube videos. Hope that OpenAI implements something similar or even something with a password.

It would have made sense for Mozilla to mention that in the article. Instead they just lie about how it works.

Not a user, but isn't de difference here that users might expect a shared item only to be visible for friends, but instead it is public?

That is possible. I wouldn't think that because there are no "friends" in this app but I could see why a Facebook user might think that. On the other hand, when you open the app you immediately see content from people you aren't connected to. It all feels very public to me.

I opened the app and the third post was someone making a note to self to cancel their car insurance, followed by a reply comment saying oops that wasn't supposed to be public, so at least one user was confused.

It seems to be mostly generated pictures though.

Your question is important because we need to understand nothing is private online. Yes, thankfully our bank accounts and other important info is PW protected, however, these PW's are eventually stolen by data breaches. (Didn't we all recently have to change our PW's on FB, Microsoft, Google and Apple?)

To think that anything used on AI is going to stay private is nice, but not likely.

Bad take. And these types of takes are why privacy continues to be eroding.

I agree with you that privacy right now is fragile at best. Disagree that it needs to be.

Please explain. I don't think that privacy should ever be fragile.

Why did we all “have to change” our passwords on these large platforms. What happened? Was there a leak I didn’t hear about?

Only 184M, this time!

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/184-million-...

That wasn’t a data breach, that was malware:

> The records exhibit multiple signs that the exposed data was harvested by some type of infostealer malware.

> > Provide full transparency about how many users have unknowingly shared private information.

> Meta shouldn't have to do this

And couldn't either. How would they know if users shared unknowingly?

> Am I seeing something different than anybody else?

Maybe. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow.

As others have mentioned, the core problem with Meta today is the dark patterns. They move, edit, and remove UI elements specifically to optimize against whatever behavior they want the user to take. I'm always amazed when things end up posted, shared, or alterated in a way I did not intened or can't even remember having taken an action against. Things just seem to happen with Meta products… even for accounts that are idle.

And if you spend enough time with Meta products, you'll start to realize that no two users are guaranteed to have the same experience. There is no standard experience. The experience changes based on region and langauge and honestly who knows what else. They are constantly testing and optimizing for dark patterns in production. Spend an hour with the Meta Business Suite. The entire platform is essentially a dark pattern labyrinth of broken links, broken features, and UI elements that go nowhere or to deprecated functions. One team is trying to get you do X and use feature Y, and another team is trying to get you to do Z and use feature W. Business Suite just mashes it all together. You could freeze the codebase today and study Business Suite for months and you'd find that it's dark patterns all the way down.

Why would Mozilla ship a hidden adware addon with system privileges to advertise a TV show?

Why would Mozilla integrate a random 3rd party service without asking?

Why would Mozilla send your browsing history to Cliqz?

Why would Mozilla integrate Google tracking without ability to block?

Why would Mozilla sell your data?

Why would Mozilla install a telemetry service that gets reenabled after update even if you disabled it?

Why would Mozilla lie like this?

Because it's Mozilla.

Mozilla post is quite bad at explaining what's wrong so I went to Meta AI app to try it myself:

- When you have a chat it has "Share" button

- When you click on the button it shows you a draft of the chat with "Post" button

- Clicking on the "Post" publishes the chat to public and sends you to "Discover" tab

- From published chat you can click on "send" icon to send link to the chat to someone else

IMO it is in fact dark pattern and goes against of how people perceive "Share" action. The fact you can't share without making chat public is also not cool.

For example top discover post I see right now is stylized picture of a baby, with original photo available if you open the post. I'm pretty sure the person who posted it was trying to share the picture with their relatives/friends.

Overall: Meta at its "best", better to say sorry rather than ask for permission...

If you are unsure what you are doing, do not do it. For example, I just posted to hackernews. The button in my app says "submit", but doesn't warn me about posting to the internet. Is there any problem with that? No, because I know what I'm doing and anyone using the Internet should too.

The nature of "being unsure" often inherently precludes being aware of that unsureness. Some companies are well known to exploit this basic fact of existence.

Let's not pretend that context doesn't matter, including the average technical proficiency of the intended audience, or the fact that HN's conventions are recognizable to people who have grown up with Usenet, BBS, forums, aggregators, etc. That is not the case here.

You don't need context there is terms and services that no one reads

This argument kind of defeats itself.

> IMO it is in fact dark pattern and goes against of how people perceive "Share" action

Yes, exactly this. I use 'share' all the time on my phone between various apps which privately share photos, webpages etc with other people through messaging apps. That is my current understanding of what 'share' means.

This sounds like a big deal but could we get more details from Mozilla?

An example? A screenshot?

I don’t understand, after reading, when this is happening or how.

It does a terrible job of explaining (in fact it doesn’t even attempt to!), but I think it’s related to Meta’s new “AI social media app”:

https://about.fb.com/news/2025/04/introducing-meta-ai-app-ne...

I heard that some people are using the AI in it without realising that they are sharing their prompts publicly.

>And as always, you’re in control: nothing is shared to your feed unless you choose to post it.

You have to explicitly hit a share and post button in order to post to your feed.

It's still a problem they should fix (clearly they're not making it obvious enough that you're making your chat public), but that hardly fits Mozilla's accusation of "quietly turning private AI chats into public content." Disclaimer that I have not seen the UI, maybe it's much more misleading than it sounds.

To be fair, Meta has a history of pushing people towards sharing when they wouldn’t otherwise do so. Doesn’t explain the petition’s wording, which suggests interactions are public by default.

But Mozilla isn't showing the supposedly problematic flow. Where, exactly, are things going wrong? Show an example?

Same, here's some context:

"Meta’s rollout of social features in its stand-alone AI app, released last week. Those quiet queries — “What’s this embarrassing rash?” or “How can I tell my wife I don’t love her anymore?” — could soon be visible to anyone scrolling through the app’s Discover tab."

https://www.fastcompany.com/91327812/metas-ai-social-feed-is...

> While the company insists that “nothing is shared unless you choose to post it,” the app nonetheless nudges people to share—and overshare—whether they fully realize it or not.

Lacks context & examples to know what they're concerned about.

Has a righteous, bossy tone that doesn't seem earned by case particulars or its (anonymous) author.

"Mozilla: Improve your messaging. Now."

>"Mozilla: Improve your messaging. Now."

That was the first thing I saw. It was so bad I wanted to leave immediately. Dead givaway. My bullshit senses were tingling, but it got so many points on HN so I had to read the rest. I wasn’t wrong.

The punctuation in "Meta: shut down [...]" implies that meta is saying "shut down". It should be a comma, as in "Meta, shut down your [...]".

Should probably be: "Dear Meta: ..."

Colon was how you'd get someone's attention in old chat apps. For example IRC clients that tab-complete nicknames would automatically add it if the input started with the nickname.

Interesting point. Then today it could be "@Meta shut [...]".

Of course, but then it reads like Meta shut down my invasive AI Discover Feed if I didn't realize what the @ meant. Really, the best solution is a comma after Meta instead of a colon, so it's clearly a command at Meta, like you said.

Meta: Shut down. You're invasive. (AI Discover feed)

> I’m okay with Mozilla handling my info as explained in this Privacy Notice.

The irony by making that checkbox mandatory for submitting a privacy protest form

Really just get off meta platforms

Network effects have most people stuck on at least one of them. If all your friends use instagram/fb/whatsapp to keep in touch / make plans, leaving the platform is akin to cutting ties with your community.

Which is why there is a role for gov in regulating privacy and mandating interop between platforms. Asking people to “just stop using them” isn’t a realistic ask.

Besides that, pretty much everything “after school” is being arranged over Facebook, as well as community “blogs”, newsletters etc.

Facebook solves this problem extremely well. I still remember the “good old days” of poorly managed Wordpress sites, shared Google calendars, mailing lists, and texts, and I’m not particularly keen on going back to that.

The sad truth is that there is nothing on the market today that solves this problem in a combined package, and you can add discoverability to the mix. If you’re interested in X you can search for it on Facebook and 9/10 times you’ll find what you’re looking for, from menus for restaurants to opening hours. Yes, Google does this as well but somehow people (here) are more aware of the feature on Facebook.

Yeah, it's a tradeoff. I don't mean to be glib, but on one side we have a loneliness epidemic, mass misinformation campaigns, and centralized control, and on the other side we have better information about restaurants, easier after-school arrangements, and community blogs. I really don't mean to say that the benefits are not real benefits - they are! I just think their price is way too high.

I would rather prefer the good old days with wonky WordPress sites and mailing lists. It is true that most business owners moved to Facebook at some point, but the price to pay is having all content undiscoverable and inaccessible, unless your user has a Facebook account.

Actually it is very realistic to stop using Meta products - I've done it. And the more people stop, the less effective the network effect becomes.

People in my community are bragging about getting off social media - it's like a new status symbol around here.

Being off their social media products is one thing, I am myself, but being off of WhatsApp is like being off the grid in most countries.

In the early 2010s not being on Facebook meant you couldn’t really engage with university clubs, neighborhood groups, etc.

Now a lot of that stuff is on WhatsApp.

I want to push back on this narrative - I got off facebook and now my friends just text me instead. A few of my friends also got off facebook. Sometimes I can't see a facebook event so I text a friend asking for details. It's fine.

I'm with you. But it doesn't work 100%.

I dumped Meta probably a decade ago, and anyone who wants to get in touch with me does so through e-mail.

But I still have two relatives stuck on FB Messenger. Even if I contact them via SMS, they still respond to my dormant account in FB Messenger, because Messenger is where all of their friends are. To them, it's the only messaging app, and have no idea why it doesn't work sending messages to me.

Of the people who accumulated in my Facebook friends list over the years, the only ones I know who actively use Facebook still are almost entirely using it to have stupid political arguments with each other. It really has snowballed and bred derangement.

You can enable email notifications specifically for Facebook events btw. I quit, but leave that enabled.

In some countries it has become difficult to live without a WhatsApp account. I'm doing it, but it's a pain since WhatsApp is used for everything that phone calls were once used for: schedule appointments, keep in contact with your kids' teachers, buy and sell goods, etc. The same numbers often won't pick up the call, or it will be simply turned off (since it's used just for WhatsApp).

Imagine living without a phone, or whatever is equally important in your area. Sure, it is possible, if you're at the right level of masochism.

Facebook isn't the worst of it. WhatsApp is, in those areas where it is the de facto standard app for texting. This is not the case for Americans so they are mostly blissfully unaware of it, but just imagine literally not being able to text anyone.

It's not wrong to ask people to be leaders instead of followers. The message and pressure will sometimes get through. It's better than doing nothing.

I finally ripped the bandaid off with Instagram early this year. I can't say it's done wonders for my social life. Mental health has been a lot better though.

Yep, I've tried, but if I say, e.g. "let's use Matrix!" it ends up being the app they only have to talk to me, and most of what they say is "why can't you use the app everyone else uses". Most people already have a second choice that isn't much better than a Meta app (or is also Meta).

Only reason I use it is because of my meta ray bans. Once a competitive product comes out I’ll delete app immediately.

I agree, but I am more of the mindset that we should be getting off all platforms if possible.

And from Mozilla business as well

Reminds me of the story the other day, "Meta found 'covertly tracking' Android users through Instagram and Facebook" with the STUN requests being sent from web pixels back to localhost Meta apps (FB/IG).

I just don't think anyone can be using Facebook/IG, especially persistent mobile apps, while have any real concern about tracking.

Does FB still run their Tor onion service? That seemed to be the only possible way to use these products in the past without being subject to extreme tracking.

Most of the world outside of the US runs on Whatsapp.

SMS is not an option because, again outside of the US, people pay by SMS sent.

There are plans for Whatsapp interop but probably only in the EU.

https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-interoperability-messag...

Signal exists, Telegram exists, and many providers are actually not charging per sms.

In many countries, WhatsApp's data usage is zero-rated, which makes WhatsApp more attractive than Signal, Telegram, etc.

sounds like a bit of a government sanctioned monopoly.

I mean for context, in those countries Meta paid to setup these networks. They're not a government-enforced monopoly, you're more than welcome to start a competing network.

they did this while the usa public was up in arms against them doing this in India. meanwhile meta was eating south America, eu, Africa...

Whatsapp has 3 billion active users.

Countries like Mexico or Spain have adopted it as the default form of messaging. Only today I used it to chat with our lawn maintenance guy, our car washer, and someone who's repairing our espresso machine.

I could maybe try to convince friends and family to use another app but I won't be convincing an entire country.

Think global. Act local

Don’t get off meta, leech off of it. Don’t contribute any posts, comment, or any behavioral signal. Use the webapp, use them in separate, private browsing containers (if able). Uninstall and eradicate all Meta apps from your devices.

Why does this website not work correctly on FireFox Mobile? Good lord Mozilla, sort yourself out.

(The viewport only covers 1/4 of my phone screen and I can scroll it around in the black abyss)

A social media company made an AI app that lets users share its results to social media. Shocker!

But sure lets write an article with zero details and just the right amount of buzzwords and engagement bait that it’ll make it to the top of HN and sustain today’s outrage cycle. We’ll go back to “Google is bad” tomorrow.

Why are they getting worked up about THIS issue in particular? Meta is doing tons of other really shady stuff along with Google, MS, etc.

Are Mozilla they now the privacy guardians? This seems so weird.

Who is even using the Meta AI app?

They should be doing a petition about the Meta AI stuff thats happening in Whatsapp now.

I so don't understand why everyone's been taking the bait and calling this company Meta. I guess because the restructuring was intentional by Facebook for manipulation purposes (everyone mistrusted Facebook at that point and they needed a new identity in order to try to gain people's trust again), while Google doesn't really use Alphabet as a front because they seemingly don't care if people know them as evil.

I very commonly see things like Google acquires this, Google acquires that, even in cases where the acquirer is actually Alphabet, but I almost never see anything about Facebook, because everyone's now calling them Meta. Maybe I'm fighting a losing battle at this point, but I will never forget their past actions nor malicious intentions just because they tried to change their name.

I know the brand "Facebook" still exists for the social network, but Meta is still Facebook at its core. Same people, same values, same data harvesting. They're just using other methods to get at your data, abusing trust that maybe people wouldn't have given to Facebook if the name change hadn't occurred.

I think I must feel a little bit like Louis Rossmann must've felt when Time Warner Cable changed their name to Comcast. He still holds all of their former misdeeds against them and I think it's a real shame that more people don't do that for Facebook.

Sure in plenty of people's minds Meta is still its own entire dystopia and a half, but it still feels to me like they've all forgotten the precedent that Facebook set all the way back when that name was the one they put on their dystopia.

To me, Facebook is the service I use as login credentials on McDonalds app and other companies, separate from my offline and online identities. Also it is a social network I don't engage with. Owned by Meta.

WhatsApp is a chat program I use almost every day. Owned by Meta.

Oculus was a brand of VR goggles, but now the brand name is Meta. Owned by Meta.

To me, Facebook is something I deleted around 2013. Never saw any real reason to create another account, honestly saw so many reasons not to.

WhatsApp is something I only use in a strict sandbox to communicate with certain Chinese sellers, as well as one friend who sometimes can't use Discord/Telegram.

Oculus used to be usable offline, wired and without an account, but now requires to be logged into an account ever since Facebook acquired it (as Meta). So my first headset was an HP Reverb G2.

Also, since 'VR goggles' are starting to genuinely be a thing (see Bigscreen Beyond, or probably more the Ray-Ban stuff and the other stuff starting to pop up in that category), the more general term that the Oculus Rift counts as would be HMD (head-mounted display).

While I am happy Mozilla is still going after privacy disasters like Meta, it does ring a little hollow after the Firefox terms of use change and subsequent back pedaling [1].

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/firefox-deletes-...

Mozilla is definitely not ideologically pure. But so what? Who is?

Dear mozilla (actually loads of Web debs)

Make your website strip trailing spaces off autofillled emails instead of saying they are invalid.

It's really not hard, I can manage it.

Seriously? That's your complaint? You pasted in an email with a space in it (somehow on purpose?) and rather than just hitting backspace once you had too make a mostly irrelevant comment about it?

lmao

Mozilla, come on. WTH is the "AI Discover Feed"? Can you link to something? Show a video? Post an image?

This entire page assumed you know everything about it, assumes you know about some kind of issue involving private chats leaking, and assumes it's been proven they training on private chats.

I'm not interested in trusting Meta at all and I can completely believe they are doing something horrible but this page doesn't give even 1/10th of the information needed.

Ok so this comment section is 'appropriately' (really, guys? Listen to Mozilla) derisive

Bear in mind Meta/Facebook/Zuckerbook is the same company that's always employed dark patterns to get you to unwittingly share more

Kinda funny how they get upset at this, but not at the recent court order to preserve all chat history with ChatGPT.

To be fair, in this one Meta is intentionally publishing these on their front page, while OpenAI is subject to a legally mandated retention policy pursuant to an ongoing lawsuit. While I think both are problematic, the Meta one seems much more underhanded.

I don't understand the outrage about the court order and chatgpt. Is user data retained by a tech co somehow exempt from discovery? Say you're suing a company over mishandling user data, wouldn't that data become material to the case?

Coming from the company that "owns" everything you type into the browser, except maybe you the user miss read that...

Go away Mozilla, so trying to wade into a new sector and virtue signal.

At this point, if you're using any Meta product, that's on you.

Don't touch anything that comes out of Facebook. There, it's that simple. Facebook and its people can't be trusted <period>

So like do if I buy the Meta Ray-Bans will my pictures and stuff be posted for everyone to see or is this an opt-in type thing?

The sad thing is if they told you they wouldn't I am not sure I would trust it.

People think this is about giving away embarrassing information. Think if you are using AI to explain a contract, explore a business deal, etc. The sensitive information could be very valuable.

Meta has never accidentally shared private photos. I don't see any reason to believe this would happen

I wonder what chain of events led to this design in the PM's mind.

Who in their right mind would trust fb with AI questions?

fb users

Why wouldn’t they ? For a couple years now with llama they were the ai good guys

Because they've spearheaded the downfall of the internet and society in generally maybe?

Why doesn't Mozilla provide any specific context?

Yes please. It's invasive garbage. When I click "uninterested" on ukraine war news I immediately got russian propaganda. When I do it again I get back Ukrainian news. I just dont want to see it. Same with politics. It's just switching sides which it shows when I click hide but I cant hide the theme as a whole.

I recommend this extension. It blocks this ridiculous bullshit.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/undistracted-hide-f...

Says the company that recently changed "we don't sell your data" in the terms.

How about you make a good browser (it's great) and you leave the political righteousness out? I remember when you ousted Brendan Eich unjustly. I remember when you came in favor of censorship for "safety".

I love the browser for its customization but the people at the company who write these things tend to be quite delusional and damaging to the brand and product.

Good luck with the protests; we protested when they brought the newsfeed in in the first place, and it was quite an uproar. You can see how well that panned out.

Deleting my Facebook as a gift to myself in 2013 was one of the better Christmas presents I ever got.

yep https://www.meta.ai/@halcon5555/prompt/jg3cmKxENMh

I mean if you're using meta, x or whatever 'free' apps, you're the product. I am not sure why anyone would he surprised at this point.

The article really reads like as if Mozilla just wants attention.

In all seriousness, who expects and decency, privacy, respect (of human rights) from the makers of Myanmar flame-fanning, the scum who allowed/facilitates Cambridge Analytica (and the likes), to name but a few?

Perhaps Zuck wants to look like a good tech-bro by smiling at Joe Rogan and advertise "I am one of you guys, I too do BJJ", but in his soul he is a filthy snake who lies all the time ("FBI forced me and I railroaded you but 3 years later I come clean")..

"...it's my nature, said the scorpion."

Mozilla: Stop lying. Now.

about what?

They don't share chats with others unless you click the "Share" button to share the chats.

They are private by default. It's basically the same as every other AI chat app.

I mean... People are willingly sending their data to another computer operated and fully owned by another entity, and then take offense when that other entity does what it wants with that data (which I'm pretty sure is allowed according to their incredibly/intentionally vague T&Cs).

What exactly are they complaining about?..

Stop asking and expecting a private for-profit corporation to do what you want or what you think is right. They are not there to serve you, they exist to profit off of you. Delete your account if you're unhappy with the service or the ethics.

Mozilla should be more focused on figuring out how to actually make money and not this sensationalist stuff. Depending on how the Google case lands, they're finished.

Meta should be more focused on not being massive ass holes and not this invasive shit. Depending on how their own anti-trust suit lands, public society might decide to break them up out of spite.

Yeah that’s not going to happen. They’re going to be building weaponry for the government soon.

Is that why there's an ongoing anti-trust case against them?

There is one reason and one reason alone that this case is still ongoing. Mark's financial contributions, character change, and makeover weren't enough to make nice nice with the man in charge.

Going to be fair, when Mozilla focuses on new products to try to make money, people complain and tell them to focus on the browser because it's bad (it's not).

no, people tell them to focus on the browser because the majority of features added in the past 15 years are either incredibly flavored (here's your new AI tab!) , or they're profit-seeking motivated (we're proud to present our new collaboration with Pocket (tm) (c), P.S. welcome to your new hompeage with cookies and sponsored assets. )

The major reason Firefox has a large market share is simply because Google is that much more abusive to users -- and that's not a great reason.

None of those products include "the browser", which is the only thing that keeps Mozilla relevant.

> Depending on how the Google case lands, they're finished.

Whiche case? Can you elaborate?

https://www.theverge.com/23869483/us-v-google-search-antitru...

Google paid others to give preference to their search engine. Among those paid is Mozilla, who may lose this payment from Google if the court decides to block such payments.

Thanks for the link.

Yeah if Google stops paying FF it's game over for them.

> Mozilla should

Why is HN obsessed with suggesting strategic decisions for this company in particular? It’s like the most popular thing to have an opinion about, and only on HN.

because it represents a paper thin condom that prevents Google from fucking the whole world, and if it gets steered the wrong way we're doomed until the inevitable 1990s style anti-trust suit.

Criticizing Mozilla in every situation is almost guaranteed. An odd behavior for a community that supports FOSS.

Mozilla's credibility is a threat to the powers-that-be in the industry. I wonder if that drives a lot of it:

Attacking the messenger is a very popular tactic now. You can see it on Fox, for example. Attacking the messenger changes the topic - it makes the messenger the topic, not the undesired thing - and the messenger often responds by embracing this new topic by defending itself. The undesired thing is forgotten and to the degree it's remembered, the attack is discredited.

Because Mozilla's long term sustainability is good for the internet.

Just assume that every interaction you have with Meta will be public. Because it will be, either accidentally or if they think they can make an extra dollar by selling it.

And behave accordingly.

After 10+ years of using Messenger daily, my chats still have not become public.

I agree there are huge privacy concerns with meta, but hyperbole that anyone can immediately see is false isn’t the right way to convince people.

Messenger is also the only one of Meta's apps that I still use regularly and I was pleasantly surprised with their decision to roll out E2E encryption by default.

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/12/default-end-to-end-encrypt...

It’s probably beyond your 10 year cutoff, but back when Messenger was still just an email inbox on Facebook and the Timeline was all the rage, I do remember a message leak. For some period of time, if you scrolled back far enough in someone’s Timeline you would begin to see their messages as posts in the feed.

Do you know though that they haven't been accessed/used/sold? Chances I would say are much higher compared to Signal, Telegram, etc.

> accessed/used

I have no idea

> sold

I very strongly doubt it. There’s no evidence that Meta sells user data, despite people having confidently claimed for many years that they do.

But regardless, none of this is the same as the messages being public, which is what was originally claimed. Facebook selling my messages to nefarious companies that want to profile me, while bad, would be quite different from them being accessible to anyone who wanted them.

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