Meta can also just lie about it. If they were secretly granting backdoor root access to some NSA spooks, like Microsoft did with PRISM or AT&T did with 641A, most likely no one would find out, so, there'd be zero actual downside to simply lying.
Camera: https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/facebo...
Audio: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41424016
Conversations: https://www.vice.com/en/article/facebook-said-it-wasnt-liste...
Mass surveillance: https://thehill.com/video/facebook-spying-on-users-new-repor...
Across the web: https://www.wired.com/story/ways-facebook-tracks-you-limit-i...
Beacon: https://www.wired.com/2007/12/facebook-ceo-apologizes-lets-u...
Apps: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analy...
People who aren't even on facebook: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17254312/facebook-shadow-profi...
Others do it too, e.g. Amazon: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone...
But Facebook has always been on a whole other level
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/17/facebook-...
Are you going to suggest to me that I should force them onto Signal and a pile of other DIY platforms? I dare you. Look a burned out parent in their bloodshot eyes first.
Eventually, I decided to step away. This was partly because I was not willing to engage more deeply just to make the platform work properly, and partly because of personal circumstances, such as having twins. After deleting my account, I noticed a significant reduction in stress.
These days, my children’s kindergarten uses a dedicated app to communicate with parents, and their sports club uses another (Spond, which seems fairly common in Norway). However, when I try to connect more informally with other parents, the conversation almost always leads back to Facebook, Messenger, or "insta". Even when people express understanding or sympathy for my choice to avoid those platforms, exchanging phone numbers or using alternatives rarely leads to real communication. It feels as if, socially, I cease to exist if I am not part of those groups.
So no, I would not suggest trying to push others onto Signal or similar platforms. I relate to your experience completely. Although we may have made different choices, the underlying challenge is the same: wanting to participate meaningfully, but finding that the tools we're expected to use often come with a cost we are not willing to pay.
I have three kids. Sure it's not easy, buying used local things is basically impossible, but it's not terribly hard. You just work around it
- tell parents and teachers I can be reached at xxx-xxx-xxxx if they need anything
- absolutely never had meta-requirement to volunteer. if I did I would 100% know my time there is better spent elsewhere
I am not going to suggest you anything except to tell you that you can live a beautiful live outside of the meta-world. it is super easy
Great it is super easy for you, but why do you think your individual experience is valid for other people (who might be thousands of km away in a very different setting)?
Imagine that times a billion.
The alternatives are also probably up to the same sketchy shit, so your choices are to be a hermit, or accept that your services will spy on you.
If you want to participate in society, you have to either trust a very large list of untrustworthy people... Or acknowledge that they are untrustworthy, and mitigate accordingly. Part of that mitigation is accepting the possibility that if the Mossad want to murder you by blowing up your toaster, nobody's going to stop them.
People are not accepting that possibility, they are assuming it will not happen to them and that they are not a target of interest.
Change that assumption and attitudes toward privacy also change.
> I have been off social media for years now and my life and health and relationships and career and … have improved so much I cannot put it in words.
It sounds like you personally had a problem. Congratulations I suppose on solving it. However, I have no such issues. My life, health and relationships are all already where I want them to be, and are not impacted by occasional interaction with others through technology as luckily, I have had no such struggles with self control or moderation.
My relationships would be impacted on the other hand if I was to throw a big toddler tantrum about using whatsapp for two weeks whilst i'm overseas with my employer and twenty other people. So i'm probably not going to do that.
There's social media use and there's social media use. Hacker News, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, EMail, and my phone's SMS systems all serve dramatically different purposes, and all of them are a varied mix of pros and cons and risks.
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[1] Any Arcanist worth his salt knows that copper has no name, and thus cannot be turned against you.
I do, however, believe that you aren't engaging with what I'm saying, or recognizing some very obvious logical holes in your arguments. Your argument seems to be one of dogma, not one of reason.
Sure, I can also avoid putting chemicals on my body by washing my hair with apple cider vinegar and baking soda, and I can also churn my own butter by hand…
There are a lot more of them, and they are kind of integral to its meaning.
jokes aside, I did read your entire post and I don’t disagree with a single word you wrote. I still don’t understand why anyone in their right mind would install a Meta-owned application on their PHONE. Lots of people overall and number on this thread go with “hey, the GOVERNMENT is already spying on you so why don’t I also let one of the most evil corporations in the history of mankind access to all my everything too… I don’t expect privacy in general, it is 2025 after all and we are talking on HN but these silly “plate reader excuses” are really too much… like saying “well the government can obviously break into my home whenever they want (in 2025 without a warrant as well) so why don’t I leave the door wide open, if government can enter why would I care if someone else does :)
That ends with them mostly not communicating with me, not with them switching apps.
Nor the inability to add people to groups. sms doesn't have groups; it has pools of numbers. And it works terribly when, eg, one of you is traveling or living outside the US.
You're definitely in a minority. Most people send and receive zero non-MFA related SMS.
If you think that your phone provider isn't spying on you, I would like to cut you into an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity in some Louisiana waterfront property.
All I need is your phone number, mother's maiden name, ...
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/chinese-hackers-stole-...
For the second one in particular, Meta never listened to anyone's mic. I would know, I worked on this stuff there at that time.
They even paid them to do transcribe chats: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-13/facebook-...
And this is just the publicly known stuff. So perhaps you weren’t privy to everything?
So Facebook (not Meta at the time) just “forgot” to turn off the camera after they were done with it? Sounds reasonable… except wait, they were actively re-activating it while you were scrolling, and until iOS 14 users were none-the-wiser. If it was an honest mistake, do you think FB testers would have not caught it during the MONTHS between iOS 14 developer preview and release? And yet, for this one I do think it was probably a bug about when to activate the camera.
https://medium.com/macoclock/apples-ios-14-catches-facebook-...
You're confusing the audio calls with secretly listening to microphone, which never happened
Do you consider misrepresentation a lie?
If there's a lawsuit which determines that Meta misrepresented something, do you consider that a lie, even if Meta says it was merely on honest mistake made in good faith?
If the European Commission "fines Facebook €110 million for providing misleading information about WhatsApp takeover" and that "contrary to Facebook's statements in the 2014 merger review process, the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook and WhatsApp users' identities already existed in 2014, and that Facebook staff were aware of such a possibility" then that statement was not actually a lie, right, because no one at Facebook said they lied, correct?
Can you give an example of any company which has lied, but where the company officials have never agreed with that conclusion?
There is a long history in the US of companies having to pay a fine but never accepting responsibility. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/paying-a-fine-bu...
Large public companies do not lie very often because it's incredibly easily for lies to be discovered, and the penalties are high. There are many examples where the popular narrative is the the company lied, but when you look at details it becomes clear that no lying occurred.
For example, David Rainey probably did not actually lie about the extent of the BP oil spill even though most people still believe he did. He was acquitted by a jury who had access to far more information, and more time to think about it, than anyone else.
People did find out.
Imagine if Snowden decided to just do his work and move on? How much longer would it have taken for these facts to be revealed to the public?
So literally no downside to putting a backdoor and lying about it
Just like lots of people want universal healthcare, a clean environment, an arms embargo on Israel, affordable housing and education, etc.
It can hard to believe these are majority views sometimes, but that's what you get when the entire media landscape is owned by like 10 people.
The European Commission has found that Facebook provided “misleading information” about its 2014 takeover of WhatsApp following an investigation into the deal.
The commission’s complaint relates specifically to the sharing of user data between Facebook and WhatsApp. In a submission to the EU made in August 2014, Facebook said it would not be possible to create a reliable automated system for matching users. In August 2016, WhatsApp announced that it would be linking WhatsApp user phone numbers with Facebook user identities.
The fact that they successfully got the book removed from sale for a while speaks volumes. They not only lie they are encouraged to.
They are also uttered on TV, in public talks and to a far lesser extent in court. Court is a formal process. Outside it's not. There's a big difference.
But the statement itself is technically not a lie, they did say “upto”, lol. That is how corporate speak works
And you're not even talking about Meta
The privacy settings also did not obviously do what their wording suggested - accidental over-sharing was their goal, and the wording was carefully crafted to deceive and confuse. Is that lying? It's a technical argument, and not really relevant - they are shady AF and always have been.
The bragging wasn't about their lawyers' ability in court, it was about their lawyers' ability to draft Terms and Conditions such that they could not be caught in a lie.
And yes, not Meta in this story, but come on.
It is rather shocking seeing how rapidly the US is shifting from all of its historic norms. Trump sees the US as a "store" where he dictates the terms, he directly has control over US Steel after the Nippon Steel "takeover" -- straight out of the communist central control dictums -- and now US major corporations are embedded in the US military.
It is insane. This is stuff people accused China of for time eternal but apparently it was taken as a good lesson to learn from.
But absolutely no one outside the US -- whether enemies or allies -- should trust anything from US corporations now. The country has fallen.